But this time, Cam decided to move permanently, dragging an eighteen-year-old Dillon with him.
Things had been rocky at first, with the bar failing and our family failing even worse, but now the bar was doing well, and I had a feeling as long as we kept up with what we needed to do, it would do just fine in the future, too.
It was a legacy, and we were all determined to keep it that way.
Things were still a little tense with the four of us, but we were doing well. I liked Dillon. He was a good kid if a little too lazy sometimes—as all teens finding themselves were. But he had a good heart, and I thought he would do well. He was going to college in the spring and was even thinking about going to culinary school, following in his brother Aiden’s footsteps.
My plan was to just stand there and try to help, watch it all as a passive observer who wasn’t so passive. I got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around my waist, wondering why I was so introspective today.
That dream had put so much weird energy into me that I needed to run it out. So, I towel-dried my hair and put on my jogging gear, knowing that it would be a little too fucking cold to do this. But maybe the briskness would help.
I put a hat over my still-wet hair and bundled up before stretching and starting my exercise. I jogged when I had too much energy, and I ran so I could keep up with myself, with everything that kept coming up around me. I wasn’t the most athletic person and was probably even less athletic than Cameron and Aiden, but I tried. I was a little more slender than my brothers and worked hard to stay disciplined.
Plus, I was planning to run a 10K with my friend Harmony soon. She was training, and that meant I would be training, as well. She hadn’t wanted to do it alone, and none of the rest of her friends were really interested in running for sport.
The cold air slapped my face, and I shivered as I kept my pace. I pushed thoughts of that 10K out of my mind and exactly who I’d be running with because I didn’t have time for that train of thought at all. Plus, the idea of jogging and running that long really didn’t appeal to me, but I was doing it because Harmony needed me.
And I would do anything for her.
And that’s enough of that.
I kept up my brisk pace, waiting for the sun to come up even though it wouldn’t for at least another hour. We were too far into the winter for that to happen, so now I would just be running in the dark like a crazy person.
But considering that I used to live on these streets, it didn’t really bother me. I already had enough nightmares, I might as well run through the safely-lit places and try to forget the time before when I didn’t have a home, where I was dirty, and everything just kept coming at me.
I swallowed hard, annoyed with myself. My breathing was smooth, my pace decent, and yet I couldn’t stop thinking about everything that was happening around me. I couldn’t stop thinking about the past and what the future might hold.
I already had too much on my plate, yet I knew I would just continue to add to it so I didn’t have to think about what was important.
Like the fact that I missed Jack and Rose as if I had lost a limb. They’d taken me in, were my first real family. And now they were gone, and they’d left behind the shambles of what our family once was.
I knew it wasn’t their fault that my brothers and I had broken apart, that we had failed each other. Jack and Rose had done their best to mend the rift, but it hadn’t been enough because our ghosts were stronger.
But now the three of us—four of us, actually—were better than we used to be. We had needed time to grow apart so we could come together stronger.
I just wished that Jack and Rose were alive to witness it.
There was a lot of stupid decisions made on all of our parts, and I hated that Rose and Jack ever thought that what happened was their fault.
They were the good in the bad of the world and, honestly, they had deserved far better than us.
I finished my jog and went back into my house, taking another shower. I sometimes took upwards of three a day. I knew my water bill was astronomical, and it wasn’t the best thing for the environment or my body, but I couldn’t help it.
I needed to be clean.
For a man who didn’t know when he would get his next shower, when the idea of the dirt caked onto my skin meant another layer of warmth, it was the best thing for me.
I needed to stay clean, and my clothes had to be meticulous. I practically paid a living wage to the dry cleaners.
I got out of the shower, did my hair, dealt with everything else, and tried not to fall asleep since I needed more coffee. Then I slid into my suit, the crispness feeling like a second skin.
It was clean, I was clean, something I desperately needed. After living for so long in filth, I had a tendency to overdo the cleanliness. I looked at myself in the mirror, pulled back my dark hair again, and nodded.
“This’d better be good enough,” I said to myself.
Then I went to work.
Because that’s what I did.
I worked two jobs. One was helping with the bar. Jack and Rose had left the place to the three of us, and I was in charge of the business side and bringing more people in with different, innovative ideas. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t my forte, but with Aiden in the kitchen, and Cameron as the face of the company, we were doing pretty damn well.
We had some good staff, including Dillon as a busboy and waiter, and Beckham was a pretty damn good bartender. We would be okay.
It had been a little sticky at first, but between the pool tournament and Aiden’s food, and the different beers that Cameron was bringing in, we were getting a better clientele. A deeper one.
But before I could do any of that, I had to go to my other job. The one I had started with.
My career was to buy and sell businesses. To make them better and more efficient. It was much like I was doing with Jack’s old bar, the Connolly Brewery, but on a far grander scale. I never explained what I did to others because it confused them. While it made me a lot of money, it was also a ton of work. And considering that a large percentage of my earnings went to the different shelters around the city, it meant that I had to work twice as hard to make sure that I didn’t end up on the streets again.
I went to my office and nodded at my executive assistant who was already typing away.
She was older than me by a good twenty years and had far more experience than I could ever hope for, for someone in her position. I had offered her a job in sales, and she had simply shaken her head, saying that she liked where she was. She enjoyed bossing us around rather than having to be the boss.
I’d just smiled and doubled her salary.
Fran was the reason our company worked, and she should be paid for that.
I looked over at the empty office and frowned. I had offered her the place where Moyer used to work. The office that was still empty most days. When Moyer died, the company had taken a hit. Not financially, but emotionally.
Moyer had been part of sales, and an integral cog in our machine.
The person that had taken his position usually worked remotely because she was a mother of three, and it was easier for all of us if she stayed home a lot of the time to help with her kids.
It didn’t bother me at all. I had even offered to put in a daycare center at the company itself, and maybe that would come one day. But for now, she telecommuted well.
And that meant that Moyer’s office stood empty most of the time.
Yes, she worked there sometimes. And, yes, it was still her office, but it would always be Moyer’s in my mind.
And when I thought about Moyer, I thought about Harmony.
I shook my head and sat down at my desk, booting up my computer so I could start work.
I had meeting after meeting, a couple of phone conferences, and then some more admin work to get done before I could hand things off to Fran and others and get to the bar. But I kept thinking about dinner the night before and how I had just wanted some p
eace and quiet and ended up eating dinner while Harmony drank tea and had dessert, both of us laughing.
She’d made me laugh. I didn’t do it often, not because I was sad or angry with the world, but because I was a little more contemplative than others. And I was fine with that. I had seen enough therapists in my life to figure out exactly why that was.
But Harmony made me laugh. She made me remember the times when everything was a little lighter, when all of us had been slightly damaged but still came together as friends.
It had been the four girls and us three guys.
Me, Aiden, Cameron, Harmony, Violet, Sienna, and Allison.
We had split apart after Cameron left, each of us going our separate ways, although the girls had become an even closer unit.
Then Allison had died, and we’d all come together again. We all had different sets of friendships. I had become friends with Harmony over time because her husband had worked here. Moyer had been my friend, and Harmony had been my friend. Then we’d lost Moyer, and I tried to stay close to Harmony, tried to help, but it was too painful. For multiple reasons.
Then, everything had come together again after Allison’s funeral, and we were all a little tighter now.
We weren’t the same people we were before, but then again, who was? We all had different connections, different layers of relationships, and we were even adding more people to our group with Beckham and Meadow hanging out with us sometimes, and Dillon always there because he was our brother.
But it was different.
As I looked down at my computer, knowing I had work to do but my brain not in it, I knew that sometimes different wasn’t good. Sometimes, different hurt and peeled you apart until you couldn’t breathe.
The fragments of my dream slid into me again, and I shook them off. I wasn’t the same Brendon I had been when I lived on the streets, when I was scared at every twist and turn. But I knew that if I weren’t careful, I’d break again.
Because everybody counted on me. And I had to be the strong one. Aiden and Cameron could get angry and yell at each other and just let it out. But I had to be strong.
I couldn’t let any feelings that I might have break me.
Because, in the end, I wouldn’t be the only one broken.
In the end, I’d be the one who shattered the others.
Chapter Three
I picked out a new dress today. I have no idea if you’d have liked it. But I’d like to think you would have smiled.
- Harmony to Moyer. 3 months ATE.
* * *
Harmony
I’d always written in journals. They kept me sane even when I didn’t really think myself on the correct mental path at all. The day after I’d said goodbye to Moyer, I didn’t write, but I did look at a notebook, wondering if it would be prudent to write.
The day my mother had left after the funeral was the day it’d truly felt real, and that was the day I’d picked up my journal.
For every day he was gone, I wrote to him as if he could read it. Maybe he could, or perhaps I was just writing to myself because the idea of saying these things aloud was far too hard. The stuff I wrote about might not make sense to anyone else, but it did to me. It might be too personal for people to read, or too boring for anyone to care.
But they were the little moments I missed.
The times that told me I was alive.
And Moyer wasn’t.
Some moments didn’t make it into the journal. And maybe those were the hardest. Like the first time my period was supposed to arrive about a week after the funeral. I was late by four days when I was usually regular. I’d had no idea what to do, what to feel, so I’d taken a pregnancy test, not knowing what I hoped for. Did I want a baby? Did I want that memory? That gift? Would it hurt?
I’d peed on a stick and hadn’t felt a single thing. Numbness had taken over as I tried not to think about the results.
I couldn’t feel much those days.
It had been negative.
I’d felt nothing, and yet at the same time, the grief had hit again. Because, apparently, that choice had been taken from me. Then I’d bled the next day, and I’d known that the last chance for me to carry Moyer’s child had been taken from me.
I’d spent the first months figuring out how to be on my own because people kept making sure I could do it, and they didn’t know how to help me any other way. They’d brought in food and flowers. Had bought me blankets and pillows to keep me warm and comforted. They’d helped me with the to-do list we’d gathered from the internet and friends who’d been through similar situations. It had been odd to think that there was a checklist for becoming a widow, but apparently, it even came in your choice of template, color, and symbol.
Then, somehow, I had to be the unselfish one and let the grief in. Because it wasn’t just about me. It never had been, but I’d spent so many days trying to figure out how to live, that it let me not think about the fact that Moyer was gone. Though, in the end, it wasn’t as if I could forget that.
I had to let myself feel the loss. Because the man wasn’t back. The man I loved wasn’t back.
But he wasn’t just the man I loved.
He was a person. And he wasn’t there anymore.
There would be no smiles. No times when he’d put on his coat and grin at me. There would be no more texting him images of random, happy things.
He wouldn’t get to see who won the next election or see who died on The Walking Dead. He’d never know what happened to our neighbor with the plants that kept dying in the front yard.
And I’d had to figure out how to make it work.
How to make my life work…
I wasn’t sure I could at first. Even with my friends and family supporting me, the task had seemed insurmountable.
The funeral was the easy part. The funeral home had had a checklist. An easily useable folder with paper cut down just to the right length so you could see each of the headings without having to page through. They’d dealt in death enough that they had a template.
That was the easy part.
The hard part came later.
When the house was quiet. Because soon, people went back to their own normal while I tried to figure out my new one. They left after giving me big hugs, saying I was so strong, and then I was left alone in the house, wondering what had just happened.
And even then, that wasn’t the hardest part.
That was realizing that I was now one person, not half of a whole.
The hardest part came when I had to make a menu or think about how to cook for one.
It was when I realized that I didn’t want to do Christmas or Hanukkah with family members, but I didn’t know how to say no.
The hardest part was deciding how to put up a tree. Deciding if I should.
It was trying to remember a password.
The hardest part was changing a lightbulb in a fixture for the first time and realizing I had no idea how to do it because it was on his list. Not mine.
It was having no one to hold the ladder when I needed to change that lightbulb.
The hardest part came when I had to live.
Because in the end, he couldn’t.
So I had to.
And I have. For two years, I have lived.
I became a widow at the age of twenty-five, yet I felt so much older. As if I’d lived a thousand lives while Moyer only got to live a part of one.
I set down my pen and stared at the blank pages, wondering what I could say today. I didn’t write to Moyer daily anymore, and for that I was grateful. I didn’t wallow in death and what my life used to be, but I did write to him occasionally. He was always there in the back of my mind, or just around, as if I could feel him near.
I missed him with every breath in my soul, and yet I knew I wasn’t the same Harmony I was when we were Moyer and Harmony, two young kids who’d gotten married because they loved each other and thought they had their whole future in front of them.
I shook m
y head and put the journal away. I’d write more later, just not today. Or maybe I wouldn’t write again. It had been a couple of months since I had, and it felt like I was reaching the next level of my new normal, the one where I didn’t need to journal like I had.
It wasn’t an anniversary or anything, but for some reason, it felt like it was going to be a hard day. So, I’d go for a jog, something I didn’t particularly like but needed to do to train for the 10k I was planning, and then I’d eat something with a lot of carbs that wasn’t good for me.
I’d learned to let go of those insecurities when everything else fell apart. Sometimes, after running a few miles to train, I totally deserved a glazed donut.
I put everything away and stood up, stretching. I needed to change into my workout gear, even though part of me really just wanted to curl up on the couch with a book and not do anything.
But because I knew that wasn’t good for me, at least right now, I changed into my workout gear and continued my stretching because I knew it wasn’t going to be easy today. My body hurt, and my heart ached a little, too.
Maybe that date had annoyed me more than I thought.
I’d always thought that going on my first date after Moyer would be easy. But feeling slightly dejected afterwards? No, I wasn’t a fan of that. I had thought maybe if I were dejected at all, it would be because of my feelings for Moyer and how he would possibly feel as though I was cheating on him. But that hadn’t come up at all. Instead, I just hadn’t felt any connection with Jason, even though I probably should have.
He was nice, if a little self-centered, maybe a little egocentric, but perhaps I was only glimpsing the surface. Maybe he had more depth.
And then I remembered him making a casual comment about the pasta that I wanted to eat and the fact that he had assumed we were going to split the check because of the women’s movement and all that.
No, I would not be going on a date with Jason again. And, no, it had nothing to do—or at least mostly nothing to do—with the lack of chemistry.
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