by J. S. Cooper
“It sounds like he has a lot of issues to work through. I don’t know that that excuses how he’s treated you, but it makes sense that that is why he’s so closed off.”
“I wanted to help him. I wanted to be his one.”
“I know.” Anabel nodded. “I know.”
“Fine.” I sighed and stood up. “We should go to the dinner.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” I said and then I collapsed back onto the couch. “No, no, I’m not sure. I don’t know that I can see him again and not burst into tears. Am I ever going to get over this?” I could feel myself starting to get emotional. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can do it, not yet.”
“That’s okay, hun. You need to do what’s good for you.” She stroked my shoulder. “Hey, I gotta get going to work now. Are you going to be okay? I can call in sick.”
“No, go. I’ll be fine. I’m going to take a bath and then I’m going to bed. I need to sleep.”
“Take care of yourself, Janie. I promise everything is going to be okay. I promise.”
“Thanks, girl.” I stood up to give her a hug. “I’ll see you later. Have fun at work.”
Chapter Twelve
Nate
The first time I knew I loved her was the day I realized that I’d lost her. Ironic, isn’t it? The moment I realized I wanted to be the man that made her smile was the day that she walked away from me. I’ve never had a broken heart before. I’ve never been in love. I’ve never had to feel or think anything other than what I’ve wanted to. And this feeling, this gut-wrenching pain, this void inside of me, it’s horrible. It makes me wish I’d never heard of the word love. It makes me wish I’d never met her. But then I think about the fact that I’d never have looked into her warm chestnut brown eyes, I’d never have ran my fingers through her lush, silky black hair, I’d never have touched her skin, soft like rose petals, I’d never have seen her pink lips curling up in a smile for me. And that just wouldn’t do. Even if I’d lost her, I wouldn’t change having known her. How do you lose someone you never had? I don’t know. I’m a fool. I could bang my head against the wall. But what would that accomplish? Would that make her love me again? Would that make her give me a chance? Would that open up her heart to me? I don’t know what to do? I don’t know how to tell her that I messed everything up. I don’t know how to tell her that pangs of sadness just hit me for no reason. I don’t know how to tell her that I’m grieving the loss of a relationship that we never had. I don’t know how to tell her that every beat of my heart beats for her and every second of the day she is in my thoughts. I have to keep it inside. I have to pretend. At least that was what I told myself the first time she left me. When I broke her heart the first time, I was too chicken to fight for her. I was an idiot then. I wasn’t going to be an idiot now. Now I’m going to make her talk to me. Now I was going to make her understand. It was the only shot I had. I couldn’t let her just walk away. I’d spend the rest of my life fighting for her. There would never be anyone else for me. There never had been. Janie was my life. My love. My one and only.
Chapter Thirteen
Janie
I groaned as the doorbell rang just as I was about to get into my bath. I wondered if Anabel had left something in the living room earlier. I wrapped my towel around myself and hurried to the front door as the doorbell rang again. “I’m coming,” I shouted as I opened the door quickly. “Oh.” I stood there frozen as I saw Nate standing on the other side. “It’s you.”
“It’s me.” He nodded as he looked at me. “Can I come in?”
“You have a key, you could have just opened the door.” I looked away.
“Can I come in please, Janie?” His voice sounded hoarse.
“Why?” I looked at his face. He looked unkempt. He hadn’t shaved since I’d last seen him and he almost looked skinnier as well. His hair was an unruly mess and his clothes were crumpled.
“I need to see you. I need to talk to you,” he pleaded. “Please. I’ve tried to give you your space, but I need to talk to you. I can’t take this anymore.”
“We have nothing to talk about, Nate.” I shook my head and all of a sudden tiredness hit me. “Please just leave.” His handsome face stared at me and I could feel every piece of my heart breaking as he looked at me with sad puppy-dog eyes.
“Please, Janie. I’m sorry. I miss you,” he said. “Can I please come in?”
“I suppose so,” I said warily. I didn’t really want him to come in, but I had a feeling he wasn’t going to leave unless I let him in. “What do you want, Nate?”
"I need you, Janie.” He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “I need you in my life. I need you to live. Just like I need air, and food and water. In fact, I could do without them. I can’t do without you. I can’t live without you. I don’t want to and I don’t think I physically can.” Nate’s face looked intense as he stared at me. He grabbed my hands and he pulled me toward him. “This last week has been the hardest of my life.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Nate.” I shook my head as I refused to get my hopes up.
“I didn’t want this to happen.” He continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “I still remember the day when we reconnected after college and you ran up to me and you hugged me so tight and you kissed me on the cheek and you told me you missed me. And I saw you standing there in front of me and all the old feelings came rushing back. And I realized in that moment that I had missed you as well. I saw you and I knew that I never wanted to lose you from my life again. Never. For no reason. I saw you and I thought to myself how could I have treated you so poorly in college. I thought to myself maybe we should give it a go. But then I remembered that relationships come and go. They end. And when they end, those people go away from your life. Lovers leave you. Friends don’t. True friends are for life. I didn’t want to risk it. It was never a possibility in my life that we could or should be more than friends. I didn’t want to ever have to go without you again. I didn’t want to go through the pain and heartache of losing you ever again.” His eyes burned into mine. “Do you understand, Janie?”
“I’m not sure what you want me to understand?”
“I love you, Janie. I think I’ve always loved you. Deep inside. I’ve always been jealous of you and other guys. I don’t want you to be with anyone else. I don’t want to be with anyone else. You’re inside of my heart. You always have been.”
“You’re lying,” I said, though I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe him so badly.
“No. No. I love you so much, Janie. I’ve been a fool. I know you might not believe me. Might not trust me right now, but I need you to know that I’m being sincere. I need you to know that I’ve always felt this way. I just haven’t wanted to acknowledge it.”
“I don’t know what to say, Nate.” I looked into his eyes, trying to find the truth. “You know I love you. You know I want to be with you. I always have.”
“I need you to read this story I wrote for my granddad,” he said as he led me toward the living room and then we sat down on the couch. “I need you to understand what it was like for me. How close we were. He was like a part of me. When I was younger he looked after me like I was his son. He took me to ball games, he played chess with me. He was my everything and then he got old and he couldn’t remember me. Only sometimes he could. And then I could remember things about him and I’d try to remind him. And sometimes when I told the stories it was almost like it was me.”
“You really loved him,” I said. “It’s hard to lose someone you love. I know that.”
“It’s so hard, Janie. I don’t ever want to lose you. Romantic relationships end, but friendships don’t. Not real friendships. They last forever. What we have can last forever, Janie. I can’t lose you.”
“I want more than friendship, Nate. I love you as more than friends.”
“Janie.” His face was twisted and he leaned over to kiss him. “I need you to understand where I was coming
from. Please read this story. I love you as more than friends as well. I realize that now. I realize that I’ve always loved you. I just didn’t want to acknowledge it. I was scared that accepting it would mean accepting that one day we would part, but I was wrong. I was so very wrong.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him quietly. Did he really love me?
“Please read this story first. I know you might not think it’s relevant, but it really is. It’s the last piece of the puzzle that’s me.”
“Okay,” I said, wanting to scream at him. I didn’t want to read another story right now. I wanted to have a real conversation about the two of us. I wanted him to give us a chance. A real chance. I wanted him to tell me he loved me and that he wanted to give a relationship a chance. Now, not later, not after I read something. But I knew I had to be patient. This was important to him. And what was important to him was important to me as well.
“It’s called Edward Sullivan. After my grandfather,” he said as he handed me his laptop as he took it out of his backpack.
“Okay.” I stared at the screen and then at his face. This meant a lot to him. I needed to concentrate. I needed to feel what he was feeling to truly understand what was in his mind. To understand why he had pulled away from him. I closed my eyes for a few seconds so that I could concentrate and then I opened them and started reading.
Edward Sullivan
They say his name is Edward Sullivan. He lives in room 35. He’s seventy-seven, graying, his memory comes and goes. I think he has Alzheimer’s. Scary disease that. Alzheimer’s. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. I couldn’t imagine not being able to remember things. Important things. Like where I left my keys or hid my pack of smokes. Or the first time I held a gun. Powerful moment that. Or my first kiss. Not that it was anything special. It’s just nice to remember. Janie was her name. Janie what, I don’t know. She had freckles, big brown eyes and a nervous giggle that always made me feel anxious. She wasn’t my first love or anything, but still it’s nice to remember. It’s weird the things you still remember. Maybe she was my first love. I don’t know. She’s gone now.
Edward Sullivan used to be a bookstore owner. Or maybe it’s better to say the proprietor of a bookstore. That sounds smarter. The words we use matter. And even more importantly the order of words matters. At least it does to me. Sometimes. Sometimes I don’t care. I met Edward ten years ago. Well kind of. It’s complicated you see. We met a while ago, only we didn’t realize it at first. We met in a bathroom of all places. It was awkward making eye contact with him in the mirror as we both pissed our hearts away. My young eyes meeting his old ones. Both blue, both curious, both familiar, yet not. We nodded. Said hello. It’s always awkward to say hello in the restroom. I didn’t really want to acknowledge him, but I’m not an unfriendly guy. He looked away first. I pretended that he wasn’t fumbling with his zipper when he was done. Not like I wanted to offer to help him. Then I saw him the next day in the cafeteria trying to decide between the lasagna and the meatloaf and something in what he said sparked something in me. He said, “what the good lord wants me to eat, so shall I eat.” I remembered that saying, from somewhere, from the back of my mind, from when I was young.
Edward Sullivan, such a common sounding name. It should have been familiar given our history. When I was a young boy I knew so many people. I lived in a small town you see, used to have a paper route, not that I got to keep the money. No siree. My momma needed every dime of that money I made. Not that she liked to admit it. It was just ’til my dad came home from war, only he never came. I had two sisters, younger than me, annoying pains in the asses, though I loved them. I didn’t have many friends, I think because as my great aunt used to say, I was a “unique” kid. I wasn’t into the things other boys were into: I didn’t play ball, didn’t go down to the crick on the weekends, I didn’t like going to old man Smith’s farm and stealing apples from his orchard. I liked to read. First it was the papers I used to deliver, I used to get up extra early just so I could read the paper before having to deliver it. If I’m honest, I didn’t start reading for the fun of it. I started reading because I wanted news of my pops. Weird word that, pops. I don’t even know why I use it. In my everyday vernacular, I use father or dad, but pops, well pops seems more homey, more familiar, more loving. Makes me seem more relatable. I like to be relatable, even though I’m a words guy. Momma told me once that every single word was important, no matter how big or how small. She said the words we used in speech, in writing, even in scribbling notes mattered. Made a difference to someone. Momma was smart of course, she was a schoolteacher. At a time when really all she could be was a teacher or a nurse, but that didn’t detract from her greatness. Momma taught me that if only one person saw our greatness that was enough. That was enough because all you needed was one. One person meant that it was real. I was that person for Edward Sullivan. I believed that he had the talent. I believed that he was destined for greatness. I believed. I can remember one night we had a long conversation and talked about how much he wanted to write a book that changed the world. That changed lives.
“One day, I want to impact someone. I want to make them believe in things like God and dinosaurs and aliens. I want to make them believe that anything is possible, that everything is probable. I want the power of my words to give them faith in themselves. I want the power of my words to change lives. It doesn’t even have to be multiple lives. It can be one life. If I can change just one life. If I can make just one person believe. If Poppy could only understand that all the things I did, all the things I said, all the things I wanted, if she could only understand that I did it all before I knew, before I understood exactly what I wanted. If she only knew that I wasn’t half the man I would grow to be in those early days. I want to write a book for her. I want to write a book to make her understand. She was the love of my life. I just figured it out too late.”
The pain emanates in me every time I think about those thoughts. I had faith that Edward could get those words out. I had faith that he could get Poppy to understand. I had faith that if he just wrote, even a few words a day he’d be successful. That’s all he needed to do. That’s all that needed to happen. Then he could do all the things he wanted to do. He could achieve his dreams. He could convince Poppy before it was too late. He just had to have faith. That’s what I thought. That’s what I told myself. That’s what I told Edward. That’s what I tell him. Every day.
***
Edward Sullivan lives in room 35 and I live in room 19. In a big apartment building in New York City. We both like to be noticed. We both like to talk. We both like to remember. Though, it’s so very easy to forget. So many intertwined memories. So much baggage. So much pain. So much we forgot. We both came to the realization that we knew each other at the same time. It was all about the words, you see. The words matter. It was the words that brought it all back.
***
They make us go to church. Me and Edward. I don’t know how that’s legal, but Edward and I endure it. Some weeks he doesn’t go, but I always do. It reminds me of my childhood. And it’s nice to remember something. Anything these days. Sunday’s were all about church growing up. Much like now. It’s comforting, even though I don’t really enjoy it. How I hated church. A more boring activity I’ve not come across. And it was an all day affair. I can still feel the itch against my chest from my freshly starched shirts and the tightness in my too small dress pants as I kneeled in prayer asking God to forgive my sins and to make me a better boy. Better in what ways I didn't know. I suppose that later on in my life, my wife would have asked for me to be a better husband and my kids would have asked for a better dad. Or a dad that seemed to care. I don’t know. I never had a way with kids. Didn’t know how to connect. Kids don’t care about the words like I do. They want the time and the fun. I wasn’t about fun. At least not the fun that they craved. I was too inside my head, too caught up in being fantastic. I wanted to be a writer. A writer that touched people. I wanted to change the
world with my words.
Edward Sullivan helped me write my first short story. It was a Sunday. I was meant to be in Sunday school, going to my confirmation classes. On the first day, God created the earth. Or did he make Adam? Or Eve? Or did he spend the day laughing? Maybe God didn’t create anything. Maybe he didn’t exist. Strike me down with lightning. I still feel a sense of guilt when I push my thoughts to the realm of disbelief. My momma would have beat me if she ever heard my doubt. She didn’t know I used to skip confirmation though. Only Edward, the priest, and the good lord knew. I could hear the boys saying the Lord’s Prayer like good sheep, hallowed be thy name, they said in unison as I sat in the dirt reading psalms, taking in the words, trying to figure out the meanings. Wondering if God would strike them or me down first for being a sinner. I desecrated the words on the pages. Questioned everything. Doubted nothing. Makes no sense does it? I’m a complicated fellow. Unique, remember? My son once said that if I spent, as much time thinking about people as I did about words then I wouldn’t have a hard time connecting or remembering. I don’t know if he meant to hurt my feelings or not. Either way, it’s fine. I deserve it. Fine, that’s a lovely word. Means absolutely nothing in any context. What is fine? Really? Useless. Apathetic word. Apathetic.
Edward whispered in my ear as I bent over the Old Testament, his voice clear and curious, “What you reading, boy?” I looked up, the sun blurring my eyes as I gazed at his face, his features distorted, his hair a halo of blinding gold in the light.
“The bible,” I said, my voice a squeak. He looked like a shepherd to me and I blinked as I stared at him. Was this the reincarnation of Moses? Was he here to lead me to the Promised Land? That’s what I remember. Edward in my mind, with a cane, watching me with keen eyes. Familiar. Testing me. Testing myself. Pushing the limits.