When we finally emerge at dinner time, my mom has conjured a feast with all the comfort foods of my heart. Tuna casserole, mac and (very orange) cheese, green beans and corn on the cob slathered in butter. I think Paige gains ten pounds just looking at it all. I watch as she digs in and I know she can tell the difference, when a meal is created out of love.
The kitchen table is quickly cleared after dinner and we bring out the games. A rowdy game of Cards Against Humanity has us howling with laughter deep into the night, my Mom waving away suggestions about her going to bed to rest for work the next day as she gleefully deals another round, talking trash.
The clock ticks over into another single digit hour of the early morning when Paige and I wish each other goodnight, her breath quickly becoming soft and steady.
I close my eyes, and all I can see is his face.
“Piss off, Jez,” I whisper, shaking my head etch-a-sketch style, but the screen in my head doesn’t clear. Those lines of his face that I drew with my mind in those first few days together at the hospital have burned themselves into my memory. He’s the background of everything I do, think, feel.
In those first few days, I was numb.
The band-aid had been ripped so fast, that I was still reeling from the shock.
But the saying shouldn’t be “time heals all wounds.” It should be “time heals and wounds.”
Because as the days ticked by, that numbness gave way to a crippling, breathtaking sense of loss.
I miss him so much. Sometimes I realize I’m holding my breath because I’ve forgotten how to breathe without him.
But there’s nothing I can do.
I’m what he hates most.
There’s nothing I can do.
Except love him and miss him from afar.
I pull my phone from under my pillow and open you tube, searching for the Rock Chamber Boys, something I only let myself do in the hardest moments.
I open an old interview video of his and watch on mute, watching him flick his fringe back off his face as he flirts with the interviewer, winking and grinning, his eyes bright and warm. Everything I’d come to take for granted in the short time we had together.
I wipe the single tear that falls as the video ends. I wish him goodnight, goodbye.
And let him go.
A few days later, Paige is on the porch with a cup of coffee when I join her after a sleep in.
“Hey,” I say, taking the coffee from her and taking a sip, making a face when I realize it’s cold.
“You are so lucky,” she sighs, ignoring my splutters from the coffee.
“Why do you say that?”
“You have all this,” she says, waving her hand around.
I look around, she can’t be pointing to the disheveled porch with the obligatory rusted bikes and dusty baby pools in the corner. Wilted plants on wobbly tables in someone’s vain attempt to garden, rickety chairs salvaged from the side of the road.
“All of what?” My eyebrow raised.
“Family.”
“Ah. Well, you have that, too. Your Dad adores you. He spoils me, that’s how much he adores you.”
“No, he buys me off. We both know that.”
“You and he know that?”
“No, you and me. I think he thinks that he’s actually showing love.” Her voice is hard, resentful. I wonder what’s brought all this on.
“But he does love you, Paige. I’ve seen you guys together. He does love you.”
She just shrugs. “Sometimes, love is giving someone what they need most. Not just what you can afford to give. And all I ever wanted was his time. And a little attention. But he’s never had any of that to spare for me. Never could give me anything that interfered with his precious company.”
“I’m sorry it feels that way for you.”
“Me too,” she sighs.
“Well, we can’t say that my Mom ever tried to buy my love.” I think of her having to get up early this morning to take on a shift at the local penny store.
“Maybe I can give her some money? Just a little to help?”
“It’s bad enough you paid for my medical expenses. I think that probably keeps her up at night as it is. She doesn’t need your money. babe. You brought me back here, that’s more than anything she could’ve asked for.”
Paige nods and goes quiet for a few minutes, staring out into the woods across the street. I wonder how many times in her life she’s spent an extended time in a place quiet enough she can hear her own thoughts, not interrupted by car horns and traffic and loud thumping music.
“How do you feel?” she asks, after she comes back from her mind wanderings.
I shrug, truth is I thought coming home with be cathartic, but it’s just been a different location for the same thoughts.
I still can’t forget him.
Every breath is laced with missing him and mourning what could’ve been.
All because I made the biggest mistake of my life. One I can’t even comprehend myself committing. It makes for a tough time for an already confused brain.
“Do you… want me to call…?”
“No!” I yell. I don’t want either of us to try to contact him. I couldn’t handle more rejection.
She holds her hand up. “Wait, you didn’t let me finish. Do you want me to call Chris?”
I instantly shudder at the thought. “Even MORE no!”
“He’s been asking about you.”
“Look, I don’t know what happened there, but I think it’s better for the both of us that that just stays dead. You should’ve seen how he acted the last time I saw him at the hospital. He was such an asshole, totally repulsive. I wouldn’t want to be with someone like that. I’m glad I saw it in him, it made things a lot easier for me. Less guilt, for sure.” And not for the first time, I wondered how I could’ve been with him in the first place.
“Okay, I’m just saying, if you’re lonely, nothing wrong with barking up old trees.” Paige waggles her eyebrows, reverting back to her old silly self.
“Dude, are you calling me a dog?”
“No, babe, I’m calling you a dawgggg! You hot and you need to get some!” She holds her hands up like paws and pants.
I laugh and grab an old chewed up dog toy on the ground and launch it at her head. She yelps as it bounces off the top of her head and throws me a wounded puppy look.
She opens her mouth to yell something but the sound of a car engine echoing down the quiet street drowns her out. We look at each other, you don’t hear that often around here. Downtown L. A., yes. Not in this backstreet of rural Maine.
I stand up and look out to see two cars driving up the street. Expensive cars, luxury cars, polished and beaming new cars, that have no place in this setting.
They both come to a screeching stop in front of the house and the car doors open, letting the drivers and passengers out.
And suddenly he’s here.
Jez.
Jeremy.
Jez and his bandmates.
“What the…?” I mutter under my breath, too speechless to go on.
My heart lurches at the sight of him.
I was wrong, my mind hadn’t been true to him. He was so much more… alive, than anything I’d been remembering and even watching on my iPhone screen.
He was… otherworldly.
Vibrant and sexy and warm and… making my internal organs forget their form and function, turning my insides into complete mush.