by S. Walden
“I’m having a hard time coping with the loss of my father,” she said finally.
“What I did didn’t help,” Reece said. “Bailey, please forgive me.”
“I forgive you,” she said. “And I know why you did it. I understand that you’re angry and frustrated because I’ve been absent. I’ve been consumed with me. I think that’s how you put it.”
He hung his head. Another bad memory resurfaced: the argument in the kitchen months ago when he accused her of selfishness.
“You’re right, I’ve been consumed with me. Only thinking about me. But right now, I don’t know any other way to be,” she said.
“It’s okay. We’ll work through it together,” Reece said.
“No.”
He flinched.
“No, Reece. We can’t work through it together. I’m . . . I’m sick. I need help. I need to be alone for a while to deal with my shit. I need you to be happy, and right now, you’re not happy.”
“Bailey, I’m happy,” he replied. His heartbeat ramped up, and he jumped from the couch toward her.
“You’re miserable!” she countered. “I’m making you miserable!”
She shrugged off his embrace.
“Bailey . . .”
“No, Reece,” she said, backing away. “Please listen to me. I’m not well. I need time alone. You shouldn’t have to deal with all this stuff. You shouldn’t have to deal with a person like me. There are tons of great women in the world who don’t act this way—who don’t have these problems. You deserve a girl like that.”
“I don’t want any of those women,” he argued. “I just want you.” He held out his arms to her.
“No, Reece. You don’t want me. You want the Bailey I was months ago, but she’s gone. And I don’t know if she’s ever coming back.”
“Bailey, please.”
“I need you to go,” she whispered. The tears coursed down her cheeks, and his instinct was to wipe them away. She would have let him do just that, a long time ago, when she trusted him. When she wanted him.
He was determined to keep her. “No. This is my home, too. And we’re getting married. And we love each other. And we stick together no matter what we’re going through.”
“Jesus, Reece!” she cried. “I’m not asking you to fight for me! I’m telling you that this is what I need. I need to be alone! I need to figure it out!”
“Why can’t you figure it out with me?” He tasted the salt tears on his lips. He didn’t realize he was crying. He only knew that he was losing, and he was running out of battle plans. He had no strategy left.
“Because you can’t help me.”
“But I can be there for you.”
“No. I need to do this on my own. Can’t you understand that?”
“But we’re a team,” he whispered.
His heart broke then. He felt the ripping. No cracking. It was ripping, like his heart was made out of construction paper. He thought that made sense—that he didn’t have a stronger heart. How could he when there was never anyone in his childhood to help grow it? Nurture it? It remained in its papery infantile state—easy to crumple, easy to tear, easy to blow away in the changing wind.
He tried again. He knew it was a lousy tactic to make her feel guilty, but shouldn’t she? She was sabotaging their life together!
“How could you do this?” he asked. “How could you discard me like this?”
“I . . . I’m not discarding you,” she replied. “You have to believe me. I know it seems like that, but I’m doing what’s best for you. I’m not trying to hurt you.”
He said nothing. He walked past her to the bedroom and packed a bag. He didn’t know where he would go. He thought a hotel room for the night. Everything would look different in the morning. Different and better. They would apologize, and everything would be all right again.
He emerged, bag flung over his shoulder, and stood in front of her. Waiting. Waiting for her to change her mind. Waiting for her to say it was all a big mistake. But she just stared back.
“Don’t do this,” he said. It was a last ditch effort, and he prayed hard she would suddenly come to and realize the absurdity of her request.
“Reece, please,” she whispered. “I need you to go.”
There was nothing more to say. He loved her. He wanted her. But he was also a man with pride. And his pride steered him out the door into the darkness of a new reality.
***
It was scary crying. I didn’t do it much, not even after terrible breakups, but this time I let it consume me because it was Reece who drove away. Not some other guy from my past who I learned was completely inconsequential. No. This was Reece. And I let him go.
I curled up on the couch under the pergola and wept bitterly. I couldn’t do it inside with Poppy. I couldn’t look at her. She sat at the front door waiting for Reece to return, like he’d gone to the grocery store for milk and would be back in five minutes. I didn’t hear the latch lift. It wasn’t until Soledad took me in her arms that I noticed she was even there.
“Bailey, Bailey,” she said softly, rocking me side to side. “Tu corazón duele.”
“I let him go!” I cried. “I let him go!”
“Shhhh,” Soledad said. “Sólo llorar se puede. A veces esa es la única cosa que podemos hacer.”
I clung to her, listening to the rolling, fluid sound of her foreign words. And I understood all of them. She was comforting me, trying to soothe the pain that lay heavy like a cinderblock on my heart.
“I had to,” I said. “I had to do it! I don’t deserve him. I never did!”
Soledad talked on and on, her tumbling words sending me out to sea on my surfboard, floating up and down and up and down on soft waves. I wanted her to keep talking. She could lull me to sleep, and then I’d have peace for a while. I could pretend in my dreams that nothing had really happened. I could put the earth back together under my feet, rework the shifted plates, and wake up in the morning to see Reece standing in our back yard, asking me if I wanted pancakes or eggs.
“Keep talking,” I whispered. And she did.
She rocked me to sleep, singing a love song in Spanish, or at least that’s what I imagined. I drifted into a memory. Him. Already a memory.
In the morning, everything looked different. I was scared out of my mind but determined to see it through. Reece deserved better. And I was not better. I was worse off than before my dad died. I watched him gather his clothes from the closet, Poppy at his heels, worried and whining. When his car was packed, he just stood there, car door open, waiting for me to say something.
I gave him the ring. He resisted.
“Please take it,” I pleaded. “I don’t deserve it.”
He slipped it in his pocket without a word. And then he left. For good.
***
Christopher tentatively walked through the door carrying beer and a box filled with spicy chicken wings. He heard the sound of Reece’s favorite band floating from the back bedroom. They sang a depressing tune that complemented the mood of this “long December.”
“Reece!” he called.
He watched his friend emerge from the bedroom, disheveled and dazed. He wore a ratty white T-shirt and even rattier pajama pants. He shuffled down the hall and into the kitchen, leaving a faint acrid stench behind him.
“Dude,” Christopher said under his breath, then plopped dinner on the kitchen counter. “I love you, man, but you stink.”
Reece ignored him and grabbed a beer. He trudged to the couch—the only piece of furniture in his living room.
“Where your dishes?” Christopher called.
“I don’t know.”
“Reece, did you leave your box of dishes in storage?”
“I don’t know.”
“You got any napkins?”
“I don’t know.”
Christopher paused. “What day is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“For Christ’s sake, man! When’s the last time you ate
?”
Reece guzzled his beer.
Christopher took a deep breath and peered into the box. He pulled out some napkins and packets of wet wipes, then brought everything over to the couch.
“You lucky they put some napkins in here,” he said, setting the box between them on the middle cushion.
“I have toilet paper,” Reece offered.
Christopher snorted. “Man, you use toilet paper on your hands after touchin’ one of them wings, and you tell me if you like it.”
Reece smirked.
“You plannin’ on takin’ a shower any time soon?”
“What’s the point?”
“It’s called being a human being and living,” Christopher said. “Brush your damn teeth!”
Reece slurped his beer.
“When you comin’ back to work?”
Reece shrugged and turned on the TV.
“You made sure to get the cable working, but you couldn’t be bothered to have plates and, oh, I don’t know, furniture and shit in your place?”
“This isn’t my place,” Reece replied. “It’s just temporary.”
Christopher grew quiet. The men ate a few wings before Christopher dared to broach the subject.
“Did you fight hard enough?” he asked tentatively.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Kind of tired of being discarded, Chris. I know you don’t understand that, but when you’re a kid who gets shuffled around from home to home throughout your entire childhood, it’s bound to give you a complex.” Reece finished his beer. “I’ve got a complex.”
“She does, too,” Christopher pointed out. “So how does that work?”
Reece grunted. “She’ll come to her senses. This is temporary.”
Christopher took a deep breath. “Reece, you gotta be okay with it if this winds up being your permanent place. And maybe get you a chair in here and a table or something.”
“What are you saying?” Reece asked, alarmed.
“I’m just sayin’ that you can’t function like this much longer. You gotta get yourself together. Come back to work. Dan’s only gonna be so patient with you.”
“Is she back?” Reece asked.
Christopher nodded. “Yeah. Bailey was back on Monday.”
“How?” Reece asked. He couldn’t comprehend it. She pushed him out of her life on Saturday night. How could she be fine to go to work Monday morning? Wasn’t she as heartsick as he was?
“That’s not to say she didn’t look like shit. She’s walkin’ around like a zombie. I don’t even think she hears anything anyone says to her.”
That provided a small measure of relief, but Reece was still concerned. If she was functioning better than he was, that didn’t bode well. That meant this shithole he was currently living in could actually become his permanent residence. And suddenly he understood Christopher’s words.
“She’s fine, isn’t she?” he asked.
“No, she’s not fine. But she’s trying. And you gotta try, too. You gotta get back to work. Focus on some ad campaigns.”
“I can’t see her,” Reece replied. “I can’t face her.”
Christopher sighed. “This is why . . .” And then he caught himself, but it was too late.
“Why what?” Reece snapped.
“Nothin’, man. Nothin’.”
“Why coworkers shouldn’t get involved with each other? Is that what you wanted to say?”
“No, Reece. I wasn’t gonna say that,” Christopher lied.
“Yes, you were,” Reece spat. “And you’re right! This is exactly why coworkers shouldn’t get involved! Now I’m gonna have to find another job!”
“Don’t do that,” Christopher said.
“Why not? It’ll be hell every day of my life working in the same building as her. The same fucking room as her!”
“You don’t have to see her much. She’ll be in her cubicle in the corner, okay? I’ll email her the campaigns to proof. You don’t have to interact with her at all.”
Reece scratched the back of his neck. “I need another beer.”
“Then go get it. I ain’t your maid. It’s enough that I brought over something to begin with.” He watched Reece plod to the kitchen. “But I figured I better. I thought maybe I’d find you in here passed out from starvation. Thought I could shove a chicken wing down your throat and bring you back to life.”
Reece chuckled as he walked back to the couch. He sank into the cushion and cracked open his beer.
“Thanks, man,” he said softly.
“You’re welcome,” Christopher replied.
They fell silent.
“I don’t want any fun stuff,” Reece said after a time.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t wanna work on any fun stuff. If I go back to work—”
“When you go back to work,” Christopher corrected.
Reece nodded. “When I go back to work, I want some serious products to work on.”
“I can’t do magic, Reece. We get what we get. And if you turn baby formula into something depressing, ain’t no woman gonna buy it.”
“Baby formula is depressing,” Reece argued.
“It is?”
“Have you ever tasted it?”
“No, have you?”
“No.”
Christopher furrowed his brow. “Then what the hell are you talking about?”
“I don’t know,” Reece sighed.
Pause.
“You losin’ your mind?” Christopher asked softly.
“Maybe a little,” Reece confessed.
“Well, I know the remedy for that.”
“What is it?”
“A shower, some perspective, and a plan,” Christopher said.
“I’m not ready to see her,” Reece replied.
“Monday. I’m giving you the rest of the week and the weekend to sulk and stink and not brush your teeth. But then you better report to work Monday.”
Reece didn’t respond.
“You hear me?”
“I hear you.” Reece ate another wing. The more he consumed, the hungrier he became, his body begging him to never neglect it again. “I had a chance,” he said suddenly.
“Huh?”
“I was almost adopted.”
Christopher waited.
“It was a couple who couldn’t have a baby, or so the doctor told them, and so they were seriously considering me. Actually, more than that. They’d made it through all the paperwork. I was six.”
Christopher nodded.
“Put my room together and everything.” Reece snorted. “And then she got pregnant. And two kids are too much, you know? They only planned to have one. They only wanted one.” He stared off at the TV. “I have some hang-ups. You understand? Maybe I didn’t fight harder to stay with B— her, but all I could see was that couple trying to explain to me why they didn’t want me any longer.”
Christopher sighed. There were no words for that revelation, and he knew Reece wasn’t looking for them. He reached inside the box and pulled out a wing, extending it to his friend. Reece smiled ruefully and took it.
They finished the chicken wings and beer, talking sports and politics and any topic that didn’t involve Bailey. When Christopher left, Reece went to bed. He hoped she would surface in his dreams, and then he could spend just a little more time with her before the healing in his heart took place. He knew it would. It always did, time after time, home after home. It’s the healing that taped up his construction paper heart, eased the ache, and eventually made him forget.
The mood in the office shifted abruptly. The change was so sudden that it jarred even me, and I was still walking around half-oblivious to everything and everyone. I finally understood the importance of the company policy about dating: it had nothing to do with the couple involved. It had to do with protecting company morale, and right now, there was no morale. There was Marjorie sitting with her face propped in her hands staring at the blinking lights on her p
hone. There was Christopher caught in the middle of Reece and me: Who do I talk to? I heard him think. There was Dan wondering where the hell Reece’s pizazz went. I actually heard him say it yesterday: “Where’s your fucking pizazz?” he snapped. “This campaign is shit!”
Reece and I were experts at avoiding each other. It was easy when we knew each other’s schedules. Or schedule. We had the same one for so long. He would visit me at my cubicle during a short break at ten every morning. We ate lunch together outside at noon. If it rained or was too cold, we’d eat in his cubicle. He checked in around three o’clock every afternoon just to say hi. And sometimes to sneak a kiss. And then we would leave together around six. All those things disappeared, and we moved like ghosts to one another about the office.
We may have succeeded in being invisible to one another, but we weren’t doing the best job being invisible to Dan. Reece’s “pizazz” had still not returned even after two weeks, and my proofing skills were slipping. I was horrified when a document was emailed back to me with a note attached from the boss—the boss who never looks at my work because he doesn’t “have time for that shit.” (His words.)
The note read, “Bailey, you wanna take another look at this? Because I’m sure Kevin from ‘Kevin’s Autamotive’ would like his company name spelled correctly. Your friend, Dan.” As scared as I was, I knocked on Dan’s office door at the end of the day to apologize. He seemed understanding, but there was something in the way he looked at me, like he was trying to figure out what to do with me. I was a problem that needed solving, and the idea sat like a boulder in the pit of my stomach for the rest of the day.
***
“Let’s talk about it,” Dan said. He propped his elbows on the desk, and Reece thought he was trying for a non-confrontational approach.
“About what?” Reece replied.
“The work you’ve been turning in,” Dan explained. “Come on, Reece. Don’t pretend like you don’t know.”
“You gonna fire me?” he asked. He thought absurdly that he’d like that. Then he wouldn’t have to look like a coward for quitting.
“Never,” Dan replied. “And you know it. You’re the best one we’ve got in Creative.”
“Not right now,” Reece mumbled. He smoothed his shirtfront then folded his hands over his stomach.