Regretting You

by Hoover, Colleen

  Jonah walks back into the house with Chris’s toolbox and carries it into the kitchen. I follow him to help him with the door.

  I hand him a knife, and it only takes him a few seconds to pick the lock. After he opens the lid, he lifts the top tray out so that he can search through the larger section in the bottom.

  There’s a perplexed look that suddenly appears on his face. That look prompts me to walk over to the toolbox and look inside.

  We both stare at the contents that were hidden beneath the top tray.

  Envelopes. Letters. Cards. Several of them, all addressed to Chris.

  “Are these from you?” Jonah asks.

  I shake my head and take a step back, as if the distance will make them disappear. Every time I feel like one of my many wounds might be starting to heal, something happens to rip it open again.

  Chris’s name is written in Jenny’s handwriting on the outside of all the open envelopes. Jonah is sifting through them.

  My heart begins to race, knowing there could be answers to all of our questions inside those envelopes. When did it start? Why? Was Chris in love with her? Did he love her more than he loved me?

  “Are you going to read them?” I ask.

  Jonah shakes his head with assurance. His decision is so final. I’m envious of his lack of curiosity. He hands them all to me. “You do what you need to do, but I don’t care to know what they say.”

  I stare at the letters in my hands.

  Jonah grabs what he needs from the toolbox and pushes it aside, then gets to work on the last stubborn door hinge.

  I walk the letters to my bedroom and drop them onto the bed. Even just holding them feels too painful. I don’t want to look at them while Jonah is here, so I leave my bedroom and close the door. I’ll confront them later.

  I push myself up onto the counter in the kitchen, and I stare at my feet, thinking of nothing but the letters, no matter how hard I try to think of something else.

  If I read them, will it give me a sense of closure? Or will it only deepen the wound?

  Part of me is afraid it’ll make it worse. The small memories I have make it bad enough, like the one I had this morning that almost brought me to tears.

  Jenny and I were downtown last year, a week before Chris’s birthday. She was adamant about getting him a particular abstract painting she saw hanging in a store. In all the years I’d been married to Chris, I’d never known him to be interested in art. But the painting reminded Jenny of Chris somehow. I never thought much about it. After all, she was his sister-in-law. I loved how well they got along.

  The painting hangs above the portable kitchen island I keep shoved against the wall.

  I’m staring at it now.

  “Jenny was adamant about getting Chris that painting for his birthday last year.”

  Jonah pauses what he’s doing and looks over his shoulder at the painting. Then his eyes sweep quickly over me, and his focus is given back to the door.

  “I told her he would hate it, and do you know what she said to me?”

  “What’d she say?” Jonah asks.

  “She said, ‘You don’t know him like I do.’”

  Jonah’s shoulders tense, but he doesn’t respond to that.

  “I remember laughing at her because I thought she was joking. But now, knowing what we know, I think she actually meant it. She was serious about knowing my husband better than I did, and I don’t think she meant to say that out loud. Now, every time I look at that painting, I can’t help but wonder what story it holds. Were they together the first time he saw it? Did he tell her he loved it? Every memory I have of them I thought was set in stone. But the more I think about it—about them—those memories are all changing shape. And I hate it.”

  Jonah finally gets the door off the hinges. He props it up against the wall and then leans against the counter and grabs a Jolly Rancher. I’m surprised when he pops it in his mouth.

  “You hate watermelon.”

  “Huh?”

  “You just ate a watermelon Jolly Rancher. You used to hate them.”

  He doesn’t respond to my observation. He’s staring at the painting when he begins talking. “The night before they died, when we were all eating dinner at the table? Chris asked her if she was excited about the next day. And I thought nothing of it when she said, ‘You have no idea,’ because she was supposedly starting back to work the next day, and I assumed that’s what they were talking about. But they were talking about staying together at the Langford. They were talking about it right in front of us.”

  I hadn’t thought about that moment. But he’s right. Jenny looked Chris in the eye and more or less told him she was excited about getting to sleep with him. Chills creep up my arms, so I rub them away. “I hate them. I hate them for lying to you about Elijah. I hate them for rubbing it in our faces.”

  We’re both staring at the painting now. “It’s such an ugly painting,” Jonah says.

  “It really is. Elijah could probably paint something better.”

  He opens the refrigerator and pulls out a carton of eggs. When the refrigerator door falls shut, he opens the eggs and pulls one out, cupping it in his hand. Then he throws it at the painting. I watch the yolk trickle down the right side and fall onto the floor.

  I hope he knows he’s cleaning that up.

  Jonah is in front of me now, holding out an egg. “Feels good. Try it.”

  I take the egg and hop off the counter. I draw my arm back like I’m throwing a softball, and then I hurl the egg at the painting. He’s right. It feels good watching it splatter over a memory Jenny and Chris made together. I take another egg from the carton and throw it. Then another.

  Sadly, there were only four eggs in the carton to begin with, so now I’m out, but I feel like I’m just getting started. “Find something else,” I say, urging Jonah to open the refrigerator. Something about destroying one of their memories fills me with an adrenaline rush I didn’t even know I’d been missing. I’m bouncing on my toes, ready to toss something else, when Jonah hands me a plastic cup of chocolate pudding. I look at it, shrug, and then throw it at the painting. Part of the plastic punches through the canvas.

  “I meant for you to open the pudding, but that works too.”

  I laugh and grab another pudding from him, then tear open the film. When I try to throw the pudding at the painting, the contents are too thick and too hard to get out. It’s not as satisfying as the egg until I dip my fingers into the cup and walk to the painting. I smear the pudding across the canvas.

  Jonah hands me something else. “Here. Use this.”

  I look down at the jar of mayo and smile. “Chris hated mayonnaise.”

  “I know,” Jonah says with a grin.

  I dip my whole hand inside of it, scooping out a cold glob of mayonnaise before smearing it on as much of the painting as I can. Jonah is next to me now, squirting mustard on the canvas. Normally, I’d be freaking out about the mess we’re making, but the satisfaction far outweighs the dread of the eventual cleanup.

  Besides, I’m actually laughing. The sound is so foreign I’d smear mayonnaise all over the house just to keep up this feeling.

  I’ve smeared almost an entire jar of mayonnaise over the painting when Jonah starts at it with a bottle of ketchup.

  God, this feels good.

  I’m already thinking about what else in this house might hold secret memories between the two of them that we could destroy. I bet there’s stuff in Jenny and Jonah’s house too. And Jonah might even have more eggs than I did.

  The jar of mayonnaise is finally empty. I try to turn around so I can find something else to throw, but the combination of bare feet, egg yolk, and tile flooring doesn’t make for a reliable surface. I slip and grab at Jonah’s arm on my way down. In a matter of seconds, we’re both on our backs on the kitchen floor. Jonah tries to push himself off the floor, but the mess we’ve made is everywhere. His palm slips on the tile, and he’s on his back again.

  I’m lau
ghing so hard I roll onto my side in the fetal position because I’m using muscles I feel like I haven’t used in forever. It’s the first time I’ve laughed since Chris and Jenny died.

  It’s also the first time I’ve heard Jonah laugh since they died.

  Actually . . . I haven’t heard him laugh since we were teenagers.

  Our laughter begins to subside. I sigh, just as Jonah turns his head toward me.

  He’s not laughing at all anymore. He’s not even smiling. In fact, everything funny about this moment seems to be forgotten as soon as we make eye contact, because it’s so quiet now.

  The adrenaline coursing through me begins to change shape and morphs from a need to destroy a painting into an entirely different need. It’s jarring, going from such a fun moment to such a serious one. And I don’t even know why it became so serious, but it did.

  Jonah swallows, and then in a rough whisper he says, “I’ve never hated watermelon Jolly Ranchers. I only saved them because I knew they were your favorite.”

  Those words roll through me, slowly warming up the coldest parts of me. I stare at him silently, not because I’m speechless but because that’s probably the sweetest thing a man has ever said to me, and it didn’t even come from my husband.

  Jonah reaches a hand out, wiping away a sticky strand of hair stuck to my cheek. As soon as he touches me, I feel like we’re back to that night, sitting together on the blanket in the grass by the lake. He’s looking at me the same way he was looking at me back then, right before he whispered, “I’m worried we got it wrong.”

  I feel like he’s about to kiss me, and I have no idea what to do, because I’m not ready for this. I don’t even want it. A kiss between us comes with complications.

  So why am I leaning in toward him?

  Why is his hand now in my hair?

  Why am I completely caught up in the thought of what he might taste like?

  Other than the quickening of our breaths, the kitchen is quiet. So quiet I can hear the hum of an engine as Clara’s car pulls into the driveway.

  Jonah releases me and quickly rolls onto his back.

  I sit up in a snap, gasping for a breath. We both pull ourselves off the floor and immediately begin cleaning.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CLARA

  Jonah’s car is in the driveway. Hopefully he hasn’t lost his mind again and is here dropping off Elijah for another week. That’s the last thing my mother and I need right now.

  I’m not sure what we need, but we need something. An intervention? Separate vacations?

  Hopefully she’s as ready as I am to forget about what happened at school today. If there’s one thing I like about my mother, it’s her ability to avoid confrontation when she needs time to think about something. I don’t want to have to stay home and talk it out tonight, because all I want is to go inside, change clothes, and head to the theater to see Miller. But I doubt it’s going to be that easy.

  When I walk into the house, I see Elijah asleep in the bassinet next to the wall. I start to walk toward him to give him a quick kiss, but my attention is pulled to the kitchen.

  The door isn’t there anymore, but that’s not the weird part.

  The weird part is my mother and Jonah. And the mess.

  My mom is on her hands and knees, wiping up the floor with paper towels. Jonah is pulling down the painting that Aunt Jenny bought my dad for his birthday. There’s stuff all over it. I tilt my head, trying to get a closer look, but can’t tell exactly what it is.

  Food?

  I take a few steps toward the kitchen before I’m able to put it all together. There’s an empty mayonnaise jar on the counter. Empty pudding cups on the floor. An empty carton of eggs on the counter. There’s food on Jonah’s shirt and in my mother’s hair.

  What the hell?

  “Did you guys just have a food fight?”

  My mother’s head whips in my direction. She had no idea I was even here. Jonah spins around and almost slips. He drops the painting but catches himself by gripping the counter. He and my mother look at each other; then they both look back at me.

  “Uh,” Jonah says, stuttering. “We, um . . . don’t really have an acceptable explanation for this.”

  I raise an eyebrow but keep my thoughts to myself. If I don’t judge them for behaving strangely, maybe they won’t judge me for not wanting to be here.

  “Okay. Well . . . I’m going to the movies with Lexie.”

  I expect my mother to protest, but she does the opposite. “My purse is on the couch if you need money.”

  My eyes narrow in suspicion. Is this some kind of test? Maybe she feels guilty for what she said to me today.

  Something isn’t right, but if I stand here much longer, she might realize it too. I spin on my heels and head toward my bedroom to change. I don’t bother taking money out of her purse. Miller never charges me for anything, anyway.

  As soon as I walk into the building, Miller’s whole face lights up, and he stops what he’s doing to come around the counter. There’s no one around, so he pulls me in for a hug and then kisses me. “Meet me in theater one. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “But . . .” I point at the concession stand. “Popcorn.”

  He laughs. “I’ll bring you some.”

  I head toward theater one, surprised to see it’s completely empty and the lights are on. There’s nothing even showing on the screen. I take the top row like I always do and wait for Miller. In the meantime, I pull up the theater guide on my phone to see what’s playing in theater one.

  Nothing.

  The last showing was a cartoon, and it ended an hour ago.

  I text Miller.

  Me: Did you say theater one? There’s nothing playing in here tonight.

  Miller: Stay there. I’m on my way.

  Miller rounds the corner a couple of minutes later, holding a tray of food. Nachos, hot dogs, popcorn, and two drinks. He walks to the top row and takes a seat next to me. “I feel like we were mistreated at school today,” he says. “I’m pretty sure it’s a law that students should get to eat. Even if that means taking our food to detention with us.” He hands me a drink and balances the tray of food on the back of the seats in front of us. “Steven owes me about five favors, so he’s manning the concession stand for the next hour.”

  I grab a hot dog and a packet of mustard. “Nice. Does that mean this is a date?”

  “Don’t get used to it. I don’t normally go to such extravagant lengths.”

  We spend the next several minutes eating and talking. I let him do most of the talking because it’s nice. He’s animated and he smiles a lot, and every time he touches me, I get a stomach full of cliché butterflies.

  When he’s finished eating, he pulls a sucker out of his pocket. “Want one?” I hold out a hand, so he pulls another one out and gives it to me.

  “Do you keep a stash of suckers on you at all times? You’re always eating them.”

  “I have an issue with grinding my teeth. The suckers help.”

  “If you keep eating them at the rate you do, you won’t have any teeth left to grind.”

  “I’ve never even had a single cavity. And don’t act like you don’t enjoy how I taste.”

  I grin. “You do taste pretty good.”

  “Shelby hated my sucker habit,” he says. “She said they made my lips sticky.”

  “Who?” I’m only teasing when I ask that, but he takes it like I’ve been insulted that he brought her up.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to go there. I don’t want to be that boyfriend who talks about his ex.”

  “I actually have a lot of questions, but I don’t want to be that girlfriend who makes you talk about your ex.”

  He pulls the sucker out of his mouth. “What do you want to know?”

  I think about his question for a moment. There’s a lot I want to know, but I ask him the most pressing question. “When she broke up with you after I gave you a ride that day, why did you seem so heartbroken?
” I’ve been wondering how he could seem so affected by it that day but be perfectly okay with it now. It makes me worry he’s hiding something.

  His finger gently brushes over the top of my hand. “I wasn’t necessarily upset about her breaking up with me. I was upset because she thought I cheated on her. I didn’t want her thinking that, so I was hell bent on making her believe me.”

  “Does she know you broke up with her for me?”

  “I didn’t break up with her for you.”

  “Oh,” I say, a little taken aback. “You sort of made it sound like you did.”

  Miller readjusts himself in the seat, sliding his fingers through mine. “I broke up with her because when I went to sleep at night, I wasn’t thinking about her. And when I woke up in the morning, I wasn’t thinking about her. But I didn’t break up with her just so I could date you. I would have broken up with her whether you and I ended up together or not.”

  It doesn’t seem like there’s much of a difference in breaking up with someone for someone else or because of someone else, but it feels like it makes all the difference in the world when he explains it.

  “Has it been a weird adjustment? You guys were together for a long time.”

  He shrugs. “It’s been different. Her mom never cared if I spent the night at her house on weekends, so Saturday nights at home with Gramps are taking some getting used to.”

  “Her mom let you sleep at her house? Like . . . in her bed?”

  “It’s unconventional, I know. But her parents are pretty lenient in a lot of areas. And technically, she’s an adult in college. I guess that had a lot to do with it.”

  “My mom will never let you spend the night. Just putting that out there.”

  Miller laughs. “Believe me, I got that vibe from her. I’ll be surprised if I’m even allowed to visit you in broad daylight.”

  I hate that he feels this way. I hate that my mother made him feel this way. And if I’m being honest, it worries me that it’ll be a turnoff for him later down the line, if she never accepts that he’s my boyfriend.