I felt like a different person.
Like I’d aged a century since the last time I saw her. I felt more like Pops than myself. I was bitter and sick of everything. And every day I got worse instead of better.
Losing Alexis would alter me forever. Like the rings in a tree, you could open me up fifty years from now and see when it happened, see the damage. I was ruined. I’d never be as good ever again.
I didn’t laugh anymore. I didn’t want to see anyone. Doug and Brian circled me constantly, but I was a bear to be around. I felt bad about it, so I stopped answering the door when they came over.
The only good thing that had happened since Alexis left me was that I’d raised the money for the house. The sale had just been finalized two days ago.
I’d put up the last of my custom pieces for twice what Alexis had charged her friends. Three times as much, four times as much. Because I didn’t care. I didn’t care if people bought them. I didn’t care if they didn’t. I didn’t even care if I saved the house. And the funny thing was, the higher I priced them, the more people seemed to want them. They just paid it. So I raised the money and became a successful carpenter overnight, a homeowner. And the victory was so hollow, I didn’t even care that I’d done it, because I didn’t want any of it without her.
She was the one. I’d had four months to make her know it too, and I’d failed. Now I would live with that failure for the rest of my life.
I didn’t need to keep running Grant House as a B & B, now that I was making so much with my carpentry. And that was good, because I couldn’t stand to step foot in it. Not without her. I couldn’t look at the snow-covered landscape on the stained glass on the landing or the roses on the banister or the mosaic around the fireplace because it was where I’d fallen in love with her, and that was so painful for me now, I couldn’t lay my eyes on it. So I shut the house down and left it vacant.
I was driving by Doug’s place with Hunter on the way back from hauling some stuff to the dump and decided to stop. I knew if I didn’t make at least a few appearances, they’d never lay off me. I didn’t tell him I was coming. Just sat on his porch until he saw my truck outside.
I heard the screen door slam, and a second later Doug was handing me a can of Coke.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, taking it.
It was so humid you could’ve cut the air with a knife.
Doug sat down in the rocking chair next to me and opened his soda with a pith. “Don’t like the looks of those clouds.”
I didn’t answer.
It had been pouring every day since Alexis left. It had been so miserable the town was almost empty of tourists. Couldn’t use the bike trail or the river, couldn’t walk around. All the weekenders had canceled. Even when it stopped, it didn’t really stop. The sun never came out, nothing was ever dry. Then it would start again, like there was no limit to how much water could fall from the sky.
Hunter sat at my feet, his head on his paws. My dog had been good ever since Alexis had left. Like he knew I couldn’t deal with his shit right now—
or he was too sad to give me any. At home he kept staring at the driveway, waiting. Every time I tried to bring him in, he’d fight the leash. So I just left him out there.
“Did you eat today?” Doug asked.
I’d been losing weight. No appetite. He probably noticed it more than I did, not seeing me every day like he used to.
It was a moment before I gave him a slow head shake.
“You gotta eat, man. You get hungry, and you’re gonna feel worse.” “Nothing can make me feel worse,” I said, my voice rough. I was
mortally wounded. A sandwich wasn’t going to save me.
He didn’t answer. He just procured a granola bar from somewhere and handed it to me. I took it slowly and just stared at it in my hand.
“This hurts so much,” I said. “I can’t breathe without her. I just want it to stop.”
Doug peered out into the yard. “Maybe it’s not meant to stop. Maybe this is supposed to make you strong.”
“It’s not making me strong. It’s killing me.”
He just looked out over the pastures. We went quiet for a few moments. “I’m leaving,” I said.
He turned to look at me. “What?”
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I can’t be in this place without her. I can’t breathe here.”
Thunder rumbled overhead.
“But…you can’t leave, man. What the hell are you gonna do somewhere else?”
I shrugged. The same thing I did here. I’d miss her. That’s what I’d do. But at least then I’d be missing her in a place that didn’t remind me of her every second.
It was amazing that one season of someone could paint over a lifetime. This wasn’t the place I grew up in anymore. It wasn’t my home. It was just the last place I was with her. And why would I want to remember that?
A sharp gust cut through the property, and a bucket rolled across the yard. We watched it bounce like a white tumbleweed and then disappear behind the barn.
“I wasn’t what she needed,” I said so quietly I didn’t think he heard me. “Yeah, you were,” Doug said. “She’s just got other shit going on, shit
that doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
I shook my head. “Yes, it does. She was embarrassed of me. I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t worth the trade-off.”
“You know what?” Doug said from next to me. “She loved you. I don’t care what you think. I saw it. Everyone did.”
I stayed quiet. She did love me. I knew that. I believed that. But what does love matter when it can’t outweigh the rest of it?
The rain started to fall. It came down in heavy sheets so thick tiny creeks started to form in the grass. Dragonflies darted around in the downpour.
Doug squinted out at the yard. “What’s up with this weather? I haven’t seen it like this since the month your grandparents died. This shit’s ridiculous.”
I didn’t answer. Because the answer didn’t matter. Nothing did.
“I’m going,” I said, getting up. Hunter rose like his bones hurt and dragged after me.
“Well, when are you leaving?”
“I don’t know. Tomorrow maybe. The day after. I need to pack up my tools.”
“Don’t go,” Doug said. “Stay for dinner. Or let’s go out, do something fun. We can go to Jane’s.”
It must speak to my mental state that Doug was the one worried about
me.
I shook my head. “I’ll call you when I land somewhere.” I paused, looking at my friend. “Thank you. For everything.”
He looked like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t. I turned and walked with Hunter through the rain to my truck. I got in, drenched.
I peered up at the clouds as I pulled off the property and started driving home along the river, my wet shirt clinging to me.
I didn’t know where I would go when I left. South. That’s all I had. South. I’d just drive until I ran out of gas or out-drove the rain. The thought of coming up with a plan felt so exhausting to me, I couldn’t even consider it.
Maybe it would get better the farther away I got from here and her. Maybe it would lift like a fog, and I’d be able to breathe and think enough to function again.
When I got home, I peeled off my wet clothes and climbed into bed. It was only six o’clock and I was more weary than tired, but I didn’t want to be awake anymore.
I fell into one of those sleeps of the brokenhearted. The kind that breathes in and out, between here and gone. You want to dream about them but then regret it when you do, because waking up hurts too much. So you hope for nothing but black. The temporary reprieve from existing without them.
It was dark outside when my phone rang. Rain was tapping on the roof. I almost didn’t answer the call. I was glad I did. Because it was her.
“Hello?” I said into the darkness.
There was a long pause before I got a quiet “Hi.”
My heart didn’t pound the way I would have thought at getting an unexpected phone call from her, a month since the last time I’d heard her voice. But it didn’t feel like this was actually happening. It felt like a dream. Like I wasn’t fully awake. And then when I started to realize that I was awake, my heart didn’t pound because it was in pieces in my chest and it didn’t work anymore.
We just sat there, quiet. Like just being on the phone not saying a word to each other was its own form of communication.
It was.
A thousand words passed through the silence. She missed me.
She was thinking about me. She loved me.
Not a single one of those things stopped being true when she ended us.
And that was the most tragic thing of all.
“How have you been?” she asked into the silence. “Fine,” I lied.
A long pause.
“Did you save up enough for the house?” I let out a breath. “Yeah. I did.”
“You did?” She sounded genuinely happy for me. “That’s amazing.” “Yeah, the Etsy store and Instagram page helped a lot. So thank you.” I could picture her nodding.
“You want to know how I did it?” I asked. “Yes.”
“I raised my prices. A lot. Like, twelve thousand dollars for that lightning strike table.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. I realized when you hit zero fucks, that’s when negotiations begin.”
“What does that mean?” A small smile in her voice.
“It’s just that I didn’t care if they sold or not. When you don’t care, everything’s on your terms. They can take it or leave it. It doesn’t matter to you, so ask for whatever the hell you want.”
“Ahhh. Well, I always thought you were undercharging. I’d pay that for one of your tables.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a Kardashian, so…” She gasped. “I am not a Kardashian.”
I smiled a little. “Have you seen your house?” She made a playful indignant noise.
“You even have a surgeon living in the basement.”
She let out a laugh. The sound made me feel happier than I’d felt in weeks.
It amazed me how easily we just started again. But then it didn’t. Because if I didn’t see her for twenty years, it would still be like this. It was like this from the moment I’d met her, and it would always be like this between us. This was part of it. This is what made it easy.
This is what made it hard. “Where are you?” I asked. “In my room. In my bed.”
The ache that I felt at this was almost more than I could stand.
I could picture that room now. Where she was lying, the blanket she was tucked under. I could be there. Or she could be here. Or we could be anywhere, as long as we were together, and everything would be okay again.
“Where are you?” she asked. “In my bed.”
Now she went quiet, and I wondered if she was thinking the same thing I had.
“Is your room dark?” she asked.
“Yeah. But I forgot to turn the light off in the bathroom, so there’s a little light coming from under the door. Is yours dark?”
“Totally dark.”
There was something intimate about calling someone in the pitch black of your bedroom in the middle of the night. It’s like a whisper. It’s private. It means something.
I wanted to ask her if the things I’d given her were still on the nightstand. If she was wearing one of my hoodies. But it would break my heart either way.
“So how is everyone?” she asked.
I rubbed my forehead. “They’re good. Kevin Bacon has a hashtag on Instagram now. Doug just sort of gave up keeping him locked up, so Kevin hangs out by the fudge shop begging for handouts and taking selfies with tourists.”
“So he’s living his best life.” “Oh, yes.”
“And Hunter?”
I paused, debating if I should tell her how he’d actually been. “He’s good. He’s here, with me.”
He wasn’t. He was sleeping on the porch of the house, waiting for her to come home.
“Liz left Jake,” I said, changing the subject. “She did?” Her voice brightened.
“Yeah. She showed up a few weeks ago with a black eye and Doreen. She took that stuff you were keeping for her. Brought it down to the police station in Rochester.”
“She got a restraining order?”
“Yup.” I scoffed. “But he violated it anyway. Came back looking for her.
Pops pulled a gun on him.”
“What?”
“Right in the middle of Main Street, in front of everyone. Told him he would shoot his balls off if he ever came back.” I laughed a little. “Jake filed an assault charge, but nobody saw anything.”
She snorted. “Of course they didn’t.”
“Anyway, Liz had him arrested for violating the restraining order. Then I guess she had a bunch of other dirt on him. He got fired. He’ll be at least two years in jail. He won’t be back.”
“Good. What did Brian say?”
“He was happy. They went on a date last night, actually.” I felt her beaming through the phone.
“I have it on the highest authority that Liz’s car was still parked outside of Brian’s house this morning,” I said.
“The highest authority?” “Doug.”
She laughed.
“So that’s it then?” she said. “No more police presence in Wakan?”
“No, we have to have at least one. They sent us a new guy named Wade. He just parks the police cruiser by the walking path and plays on his phone. I think he’s bored out of his mind.”
“Well, maybe he’ll be better than Jake at curbing the teenager crime wave,” she said.
“Maybe.”
We went quiet again.
“How’s your new job?” I asked.
I pictured a shrug. “It’s a lot. I work fourteen-hour days. My feet hurt all the time.”
I didn’t want to tell her that if I was there, I’d rub them every night. I’d have a bath ready for her when she got home, I’d have her scrubs for tomorrow washed and pressed and laid out, dinner ready. I’d take care of her.
I felt a lump form in my throat.
Nobody was taking care of her. That hurt almost as much as the thought of some other guy doing it.
Almost.
She got quiet on the other end. We were quiet for so long I’d have thought we’d lost the call if I didn’t hear the occasional shift through the line. The rain outside my window filled the long silence, and I wished, so much, that she was with me. That she was lying next to me and I could smell her hair and wake up and make her breakfast. That all the things we talked about could be things we both already knew because we’d been together when they happened.
My chest felt tight, and I clutched a hand over my heart and squeezed.
I missed her so much it was physically painful. It was a form of grief. A withdrawal. Starvation.
It was unnatural. Because I wasn’t supposed to be without her. My eyes started to tear up.
There’s something more final than forever. It’s never. Never is infinite.
I would never see her again. I would never touch her again. I would never make her lunch or listen to her breathing while she slept. We’d never
get married or have children or die on the same day. And I wouldn’t do those things with anyone because it would just be the poor man’s version of what I’d had with her and I’d always know that.
“Daniel…”
I had to swallow hard to answer. “Yeah?” I heard her sniff in the darkness.
“Will you still come for me?” she asked quietly. “What?” I asked gently.
“If there’s a zombie apocalypse. Will you come get me like you said?”
I had to move the phone away from my mouth. Tears squeezed from my eyes. “You mean if the world ends and none of this shit matters anymore?” I said, my voice thick.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Hot tears slid down my cheeks.
“The world is ending, Alexis. That’s what this feels like. So come with me now.”
She started sobbing softly in the background, and I had to put my phone on mute so she wouldn’t hear me cry.
The hole inside of me was so deep, it was all I was. I didn’t know how I’d live the rest of my life without her. And then I knew unequivocally that leaving Wakan wouldn’t change any of it. It wouldn’t get better somewhere else. Because you carry love with you. And the realization that I couldn’t escape this was so devastating, so overwhelming, I couldn’t breathe.
“I have to go,” she said. Then she was gone.
I bawled into my pillow like a baby. And when I was done, I blocked her number so she could never do this to me again.
