by Ace Gray
“This okay?” James asks as he dries my foot.
“No,” I murmur.
“I’ll get some cold water.”
“No, James. I mean all of this. We’re not okay.”
“Mina…” He freezes except where his fingers dig into me.
“I don’t think we should be together, James.” I can barely get the words out.
“Don’t…”
“I don’t even know if we can be together, let alone should.”
“That’s bullshit.” His voice is brittle but only because it’s about to break.
I reach down and brush my knuckles on his cheek. “I don’t think it is.” I sigh. “All we do is hurt each other.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.” My hand falls to my knee. “I can’t live like this. You can’t either. I won’t let you.”
“I’ll change. We can change.” He rests his head against my knee.
“I don’t want you to change. I love you because you’re you.”
“If you love me…” Defeat colors his voice. He knows where this is going. I suppose I do too. Haven’t I always? Haven’t I for years?
“It’s not enough. I wish it was.” With every fiber of my being. “God, do I wish it was,” I add in a rushed breath.
“I wish I were enough.” His lips, his beautiful, plump lips brush against my skin.
“I wish I was too.”
He looks up at me. No, through me with that ice blue gaze that first pushed me over the ledge and into love with James Larrabee. The one that was so piercing and disarming that I was sure he saw every single piece of me.
“Mina, you are.”
I stare up at the ceiling after he leaves. Everything feels so empty. My house, my heart, my whole.
When I finally slide out from between the covers, and my feet hit the ground, the tears finally come. Looking down at the Band-Aids he so carefully placed in the lines of my Chaco tan is everything good and wonderful about James. Gentle, precise, thoughtful, caring. The wounds they’re covering up is everything awful.
I miss all of it.
Tears roll down my cheeks over and over, but I don’t bother to push them away. They’re not the first and probably not the last I’ll cry over James Larrabee. Specially since, for however brief a time, he was mine.
I let my face fall into my hands. The tears slip between my fingers and start to trickle down my wrists and forearms. And in the relative safety of my own hands, I start to draft another letter to James.
I didn’t want to. Not today. Not ever. But what choice did I have?
We’re a comedy of errors you and me. I looked that term up once. A situation made amusing by bungling and incompetence. And while I wouldn’t call this amusing, we certainly have screwed it all up with complete incompetence. It might even be funny in a tragic kind of way.
I will always remember you because I will always love you. Another tragically funny piece of this puzzle.
This time I may not get over you. (Keeps getting funnier and more tragic, right?)
But we couldn’t. We can’t. Because as much as I love you. Need you. Want you.
I don’t know how to keep writing. I don’t know how to justify it. Not in a letter anyway. Not in a way that someone might read and understand.
Maybe if I write it rather than draft it, the words will come. The reason that we can’t be together. The reason that goes beyond because. The one that goes beyond because I’m hurt, and he hurt me. There has to be more than that.
I shuffle down to my dining room, to the notebook that’s seen me through all the seasons of James. Before I sit down, I start a tea kettle. I find a favorite pen then flip to the last page.
There are five words scribbled on the last page. Five words that I stare at for far too long. Five words that symbolize everything left of James.
I will always love you.
It’s been ten days, nine hours and thirty-seven minutes since James walked out of my house but who’s counting. I’m trying not to. I’m trying to move forward.
Losing James is harder this time. I can’t thank him for the lessons he taught me and the strength he helped me find. I can’t tell myself that I’m worth more than the way he treated me. We didn’t explode this time, leaving pieces lying about for me to pick up. We imploded and the pieces are all lodged deep beneath my skin.
Each day I get up, I go to work, and try not to let people see me when I wince at the way those shards slash at me. I go through the motions, a little numb, and then I go to bed. Or stare blankly at old movies as the flash across my screen.
“Hey, Mina.”
My eyes snap up and my mind comes back to itself as Swany steps in front of me. It takes a second to orient myself. I’m in a bar, to meet Courtney. I’m supposed to get out—her words, not mine.
“Hi, Swany.” I’m getting better at stringing together sentences in a timely manner.
“I heard about what happened with that asshole. I’m sorry.”
I try, and fail, to hide my wince.
“Thanks,” I mutter.
“I heard it was brutal out in the middle of the street by the coffee shop.”
I close my eyes and try and shove that image out of my mind. The one of James and Jenna at the coffee shop. Of me turning and running. Him holding me in the street. I can’t shake them. I can’t shake anything about James.
“Well I think that’s about enough time riding the town bicycle for one night,” Courtney interjects, grabbing my arm. “Bye, Swany.” She pulls me away by the crook of my elbow.
“Thank you,” I say when we’ve left him in our wake.
“Call me,” Swany shouts after us; neither of us flinch.
“You looked like you were drowning.”
“Every. Single. Day.”
“I’m sorry.” She leans her head onto my shoulder and keeps pulling to the booth she has picked out.
“Not your fault. You tried to warn me.” I sigh as I slide opposite her.
“Yeah…” Her voice drifts off and her gaze follows.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar.” I arch my eyebrow. “Tell me.”
“That’s the most expression I’ve seen from you in a week.”
“Courtney,” I warn.
“I saw him, okay? I saw James.” She throws her hands up but still won’t meet my eyes.
“Drinks, ladies?”
“Yes,” we answer in unison.
After we order gin, silence falls on the table. Me waiting for and dreading completely the continuation of her story. Her…God, I don’t know what she’s going to say. Usually I do. It’s tough and full of love. It’s honest. As honest as anyone I know dares to be with me. So this hesitation…
“You’re killing me. Please finish.” Urgency makes me squeaky. “You saw, James?”
The fear of him leaving town has been a low-level pin prick in my shoe. I hate to think of him gone just as much as I hate to think of him here. I don’t know if I’m happy or miserable over it, but I know I need her to finish her sentence.
“What if I was wrong?” she finally asks.
“What do you mean?”
“What if all the times I told you to stay away, that he was going to break your heart, that he was a bad idea, I was actually wrong?” She audibly swallows after she asks.
“I told you what happened. I’m sure you heard about what happened. It’s the town gossip. How can you say that?”
Our cocktails arrive and both of us reach for our glasses and gulp.
“I just…when I saw him…” She can’t quite assemble a full sentence. “He was heartbroken, Mina. He reeked of it.”
“That makes two of us.” I sigh and go back to my drink.
“Yeah but everything I ever said was based on the assumption that he couldn’t feel for you what you felt for him. Often it was based on the assumption that he couldn’t feel anything at all.”
The corner of my lips turns up in the clo
sest thing to a smile I’ve managed in days. She smiles fully back.
“That man, the one I saw at the grocery store staring blankly at the frozen burritos, felt everything. As much and maybe more deeply than you.”
The image of dejected James staring into space beneath the buzzing florescent lights is a sucker punch to my stomach that I can’t stay upright during. I let my head fall to the table.
“Sit up, before we get kicked out of the bar.” Courtney reaches across the table and shoves on my shoulder. I groan. “Come on.” She shoves again.
I finally sit up only to flop back against the booth behind me.
“The dead fish act is coming along nicely.” She arches her eyebrow at me.
“It hurts. HE hurts.” I keep my dead fins at my side and my head back against the wood of the booth.
“And he’s hurting just like you.”
The silence settles between us. The din of the bar fills any of the space that the slow sips of my gin does not. The weight of the world seems to settle back on my chest.
“Look, Mina, I’m not delusional enough to think that you broke up with him because of what I said nor that you’ll get back together with him because of me either but…” She takes a deep breath. “But you love him. More than I’ve ever loved someone. And it’s hard and it’s messy and I know more than a few times it’s sucked, but I’m guessing that sometimes it’s beautiful.”
“It was better than beautiful, it was real.”
“Huh? How is that better?”
I drink a little more of my gin. “You know when you watch a romantic movie and you wonder what happens after happily ever after?”
“Yeah.” She shrugs.
“It’s because that, the movie, isn’t real, and deep down you know it. All you really want to know is whether they can stand to sit across the table and have cereal with each other five years later.”
“I doubt seriously that Cinderella and Prince Charming eat cereal,” Courtney quips with a sly smile over top of her cocktail glass.
“You’re missing the point.” I roll my eyes.
“On the contrary. I understand completely.” Her smile softens to something more sad and wistful. “Five years from now you’d like nothing more than to be eating cereal with James.”
Twelve days, three hours and four minutes. I don’t mean to keep counting but James and the world relating to him has become my internal clock. Considering the one on the dashboard of my car has gone out, it’s probably a decent thing. I have to find some way of keeping which hours I’m supposed to be sleeping and which I’m supposed to be people-ing.
Speaking of people-ing, these are the people I’ve been dreading the most. Jonas and Aspen and Gold Mine Brewing. It turns out people keep drinking beer at my restaurant as if the world is still turning so I have to order kegs. Candice offered, picking up so much of my slack because she’d heard the gossip, but I just couldn’t pawn this off.
Forward involves facing it. Facing him.
I sigh as I push out of my car. I try and straighten my shoulders as I walk through the garage doors, repeating I am an adult over and over again. Adults have to keep going. They have to face each other. They have to keep their responsibilities no matter how hard or taxing they seem. Or at least that’s how the argument goes in my head.
“Hey, Mina,” Aspen says, pity thick in her voice.
“Hey.” I do everything in my power not to sound as broken as I feel.
Her soft smile says she doesn’t buy it. But she also doesn’t press. “Can I get you a beer? We have a new Imperial IPA on?”
One brewed by James no doubt so practically perfect in every way. I shake my head. “I’m good.” Placing my order in person is one thing, sitting here, waiting to see him—because I will see him—is just begging for torture.
“Mina?” Jonas enters the taproom, surprise coloring his voice. “I didn’t expect to see you.”
“Jonas,” Aspen scolds.
“It’s okay.” I force a smile. “I can’t hide under a rock forever.”
“James said the same thing.”
I try and cover up the wince at his name and either I do a great job or Jonas doesn’t notice because he keeps talking. About James.
“He took four or five days off to go out into the woods—”
Oh God, that means he had a panic attack. Or was going to. And he was alone when it happened. In the middle of nowhere. Because of me. Because of us. I want to puke. The pain I feel is for James not because of him.
“—I don’t even know if he really came back. He’s been hollow. He hasn’t even been playing music, just brew, brew, brew—“
“Jonas!” Aspen mercifully cuts him off. “Jesus Christ, man, she doesn’t need to hear that. I doubt highly James would appreciate it either.” She swats him in the chest with her bar towel.
I want to tell them it’s fine, that I’ll live but both feel like a lie. I try and haul up a smile instead. That works even less than my first attempt. The image of James, alone, staring at frozen burritos pops into my head and the knot builds in my throat. When it shifts to him, even more alone, taking seizing deep breaths and rubbing on his tight chest in the middle of the woods, tears prick the corners of my eyes.
“I just want to place an order,” I squeak.
“Oh, Mina.” Aspen jogs from her spot behind the bar to my side, enveloping me in a deep hug. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine.” I try and shrug off her arms and steel myself. No one needs to see me like this. Certainly, no business partner, even if they are friends. “What do you have in stock?” The words are garbled in my mouth.
Aspen and Jonas look at each other and I can figure out the answer before either one says it. Their faces contort, mirrors of each other, and their mouths open a few times, neither one managing a sentence.
“James does the orders now, doesn’t he?” The boulder bottoms in my stomach when I ask.
They both nod. Aspen looks like she’s seen a ghost and Jonas like he’s swallowed something sharp.
I try and straighten my shoulders again, my mantra of I am an adult starting back up. Systematically I remind myself I own my business. And this is for my business. I have to grow up and do what’s right.
“Can I go in?” The tears are just on the brink again.
The both nod again, and I can’t help but feel like I’m turning from relative comfort to facing the firing squad.
My legs shake a little as I walk down the hallway. The giant stainless steel fermenters appear through the windows of the brewhouse. I know a few more steps and it’ll be James I see through the windows.
Sure enough, three more shaky steps and there he is. A maroon shirt, Carharts, and his brewing boots. His big hand is rubbing his forehead as he stands over the control panel for the brew system. There are deep bags beneath his eyes, the kind I always saw when he and Jenna were fighting, and they break my heart. This time, they’re because of me.
He looks over after a moment and his eyes lock on mine. A barely-there smile pulls into place. It’s a sharp contrast to the man that used to light up when I walked into the brewhouse, but I walk in all the same.
“Hi,” he says, the quiet tremble of his voice still deep and dark and delicious but it sounds wounded too.
I start crying. I can’t help it.
It’s the man before me versus the man that once was. Tall and strong and beautiful. Who always made time for me, always had something to say to me. Now… The sobs shake my shoulders and cease any thought, any feeling. Besides an excruciating pain blooming from want.
Want of that man. Those days. Of all the simple reasons that I love him filling up my home, my heart.
“Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.” He steps toward me and pulls me into a hug. “It’s going to be okay.”
I let him hold me as I cry into his shirt, the heat of my tears spreading wet against his chest. “I just wanted to place an order.”
“I can do that.
” He doesn’t let go of me. “What do you want?”
“I dunno.”
“You’d really like the Imperial IPA. I brewed it with you in mind.”
I laugh one loud shotgun laugh that turns into renewed tears.
“We can do a lager instead. They always sell great.” He leans his chin onto my forehead.
“I miss you.”
His arms fall away, and I realize what I’ve done three words too late.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.” I step back and almost trip over a hose. He reaches to steady me, an envelope in his hand. “I’ll take a lager and an Imperial IPA, Candice will be there tomorrow if you can drop them off. Or she can come pick them up. I mean, you’ll have to help her load them. Or I could send one of the guys—”
“Mina, stop. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
“I’m sorry.” A vise grip from nowhere is squeezing on my throat. “I didn’t mean—”
“I’ll take care of the kegs,” he says softly. “But do me a favor and open this before you decide who’s there to sign for them.” He holds the crisp envelope he’d suddenly materialized out for me.
My hand shakes a little before I take it. There’s a weight to it that I didn’t expect as I grasp it and turn it over in my hands.
“What is this?” The smooth texture could give way to sharp thorns at any moment.
“Just read it okay?” He brushes a single finger down the back of my hand and shivers shake my spine. “Please.”
“But what is it?” I can’t make myself open it without a hint at what lays inside. I don’t know how to stomach the good or the bad. I don’t know how to stomach James.
“It’s the only letter I’ve ever written to you.”
The envelope sits beside me on my bed, a tad cream compared to the crisp white of my comforter. I’ve run my fingers over it a thousand times since James gave it to me. The envelope is the fancy kind, weighted with the cross-stitched fibers that you don’t just find laying around. Whatever is inside of it is a hard, small square. The outside has no name. I want to read his words every bit as much as I want to burn them unseen and add them to the bowl.