It's someone's birthday, or - no, there aren't any gifts, no cake with candles. They are celebrating, though. Fiona's backyard seems to have multiplied in size; an endless stretch of cut grass, their pool big enough to fit in the whole family (included the extended one). There are balloons tied to the house and to the fence, all of them so bright, impossibly so, that Fiona has to shield her eyes when she looks at them.
Her brothers are all in the pool, happiness like waves spreading out from them. Debbie's sat on the ground, her fingers playing with the grass between her crossed legs, and beside her Jimmy is talking animatedly, his words causing Debbie's face to light up as she giggles.
Fiona feels like she's floating; free of everything that has ever weighed down the corners of her mouth. She catches Jimmy looking over at her and everything around him becomes sort of hazy, like the images are being seen through a steamed up mirror, but he's so clear. Despite the distance between them, she swears she can see the little crumbs on his black t-shirt, could count each of his eyelashes. He winks at her, exaggeratedly, and Fiona snorts, puts the back of her hand to her mouth in surprise.
He's right in her space when she looks up again, takes her face in his hands and kisses her - kisses her as Lip and Ian and Kev catcall and whistle; as Liam splashes loudly in the pool and Carl shouts about puking in the water.
He kisses her until she feels like her body can't possibly contain everything she feels right now, until that voice in her head whispers "this is perfect".
...
Fiona wakes with a start. A thin layer of sweat has gathered around her hairline and she wipes it away with her hand.
Her eyes remain shut; she welcomes the darkness, the nothingness devoid of the what-could-have-been images that she dreamt of.
Night after night she dreams of him, of them together. At times it feels like she's simply reliving memories; her brain acting as her own personal video recorder. Other times, though, it's different. They'll be sitting at a restaurant they never went to (that may not even exist), having dates and doing ordinary shit that people tend to take for granted. Having huge arguments that closely resemble their last until Fiona is forcing Jimmy out of the house and her life. She throws his clothes out if the window like they do in the movies, screaming about how she hates him, hopes she never has to see him again.
When she awakens from those dreams she feels sick with guilt. And those are the days that she snaps at Debbie, who is at that early adolescent phase where she wants to be treated like an adult until being treated like an adult isn't fun anymore. She says 'no' to all of Carl's requests regardless of whether they're dangerous or not. She looks at Ian with so much anger that it becomes palpable and he ends up spending most of the day out doing whatever it is he does now. Those are the days that Fiona wishes (so selfishly) that Lip didn't go off to college, just so she could have him telling her to take it easy, that she doesn't have to everything all the time. (Which was actually one of the first things he said to her when he arrived home yesterday morning).
Thankfully, today isn't one of those days, but that common, dull pain she's been carrying around, pulling her down, is still there. Something she's learned to live with.
The familiar sound of movement coming from downstairs urges Fiona to move. She pushes the sheets to the side, pulls a sweater over her head and then heads downstairs.
Debbie is busy making pancakes whilst Ian pours himself some orange juice and continues his conversation with Lip who's both putting Liam in his highchair and trying to stop Carl from stealing his breakfast.
Fiona feels her throat begin to tighten, eyes close to filling with tears. She hurries to blink them away before any of them see. Jimmy leaving her has turned her soft, she thinks. Yesterday, as they had a dinner celebrating Liam's birthday, accompanied by Frank, Sheila, Kev and Vee, she kept having to pinch herself under the table every time the happiness became too much.
"Want some?" Debbie asks her, putting four pancakes on a plate for Ian. She smiles when he kisses her head in thanks.
Fiona nods. "Sure, Debs." She begins her way over to the sink, remembering the piles of dishes she had left. But the sink is empty and there's nothing drying on the draining board. One hand goes to her forehead, the other to her hip. "Sorry - I overslept," she says, running her fingers through her hair.
Shrugging, Debbie says, "It's cool. Lip and Ian did them", like she doesn't get it either.
Not that they aren't helpful, but Fiona can count on one finger the amount of times Lip and Ian have voluntarily done the dishes. A horrible feeling settles itself in the pit of her stomach.
They're feeling sorry for her.
Everyone, even Vee, has carefully been tiptoeing around the subject of Jimmy. The subject of Fiona being left. The only time it was brought up was when Lip was having it out with Ian over trying to get into the army. "How the fuck did you think we were going to react, Ian?" he's shouted. ""Did you even stop to think how this would affect us? Did you stop to think about how Fiona was going to feel having Jimmy leave and then you?". Silence descended upon all of them and Lip stormed out and Ian went to his room and Fiona had to make dinner, wiping her tears away with the her arm.
And now she feels like that again. That mix of love and hate for her brothers trying to make it all a little better. Because she shouldn't need it - she's the grown-up here, they're the kids, she shouldn't need looking after. It's her job to look after them.
"Go sit down, Debs, I'll take care of it," she says, rushing to gain some normalcy here.
"They're almost done."
Fiona fakes a smile (it feels so wrong on her face), nods at the plate of pancakes by her side. "By the time they are yours'll be cold," she rubs a hand over Debbie's shoulder. "Go on," she adds in a sterner voice.
An eye-roll and a mutter about if she's old enough for talks about periods then she's old enough to cook breakfast, and Debbie is sat by Lip at the table, pouring syrup all over her pancakes just like how Fiona used to love them.
Fiona smirks over at her then flips the pancakes a few more times until they're done. She reaches into the cupboard for a plate and almost drops the one in her hands.
It's Jimmy's. The one he brought back with him after his time spent in Costa Rica. It's got palm trees and a map and words written in Spanish all over it. Someone must've used it yesterday at dinner because Fiona can't even remember the last time she saw the thing, let alone saw someone eat off it.
And it's stupid. The plate and how it's making memories flood her mind, no matter how hard she tries to think of other things, of anything but Jimmy and the hole he's left in her life.
It's a fucking plate and yet at the same time it's Jimmy's ridiculous attempt at talking to her in Spanish, putting on an accent, his voice going husky as he says, "Me llamo Jimmy", because it was the only thing he could say properly. It's him bringing her breakfast in bed for valentine's day, the kids already taken care of. It's him getting some of the icing off the plate and swiping it across her cheek on Carl's birthday.
Fiona shakes her head, clearing her mind.
It's just a plate.
...
After that, Fiona starts to notice the little pieces of Jimmy that still linger. Before his things didn't stand out because they were supposed to be there. It made sense for them to be mingled with the rest of their's because he was here for so long.
Yet now that he isn't here, now that Fiona knows he's gone and not coming back, all she sees when she walks into a room is every fragment of himself that he left behind.
...
Her eyes are sore from staring at the computer screen all day at work. Overtime is great but she needs to invest in some eye drops if she wants to comfortably carry on.
She shuffles the plastic bags full of food to one hand, rubs her eyes and then opens the back door. "Food's here!" she calls out, kicking the door closed behind her and dumping the bags on the table.
The expected stampede of people doesn't come and she frowns. Follows the sound of the tv into the living room where she sees Kev, Vee, Ian, Debbie, Carl and Liam with their eyes set firmly on the screen.
Her breath catches at the sight of what they're watching.
It's just that stupid animated movie with that Scottish ginger girl and only Jimmy knew how badly she wanted to see it when it first came out. She had plans to get Kev's friend to pirate it for her but Jimmy was adamant. "Why don't you just let me take you out to see it?" he'd asked. "We can get popcorn and sit in the back and make out."
Fiona can picture his smirk so clearly that it hurts and now she's thinking about the way he pretended to stretch and put his arm around her, how it made her laugh like an idiot. She's thinking about his fingers, how they traced circles into her shoulder. It's Jimmy begging her to have a night off, getting sweet popcorn even though he prefers salty; it's them staying until the credits were ending because he wanted to make good on his promise to make out like they were teenagers on a date.
Fiona takes in a deep, shaky breath. "Guys, c'mon," she says, "dinner."
It's just a movie.
...
Now that Liam's begun walking a lot more, everyone is on high alert at all times. It seems like he's developed Carl's love for all things dangerous: his favourite things to do are either to try to get knives out of the drawer or to open up the oven and climb in. Fair to say that Fiona is stressed until she puts him down to sleep.
He smiles up at her, scrunching up his nose and she smiles back before kissing his cheek.
"He down?"
She turns around and shrugs at Ian. "Not quite. Shouldn't take long, though."
Ian chuckles, moves to sit on his bed and that's when she notices what he's wearing. It's Jimmy's t-shirt, one of his nondescript black ones that he had about a thousand of. It fits Ian well.
"Fi?"
Her eyes dart up to see Ian's face and she knows that she's completely missed whatever it was that he's been saying but she can't focus right now. "Yeah?" she says, faking a smile.
Ian doesn't look convinced, but he says, "I was saying how I'm not surprised given how busy he's been today." (Jimmy used to joke that he wore so much black because it matched the darkness in his soul. He'd say it so straight-faced that Fiona always laughed a little, even though it wasn't all that funny.)
Ian stands and joins Fiona at Liam's crib. He leans down and Fiona swallows hard. "Yeah," (She'd been bored one night, waiting for him to come back from wherever he was and saw a couple of his t-shirts), "he, um, he was actually almost running at the park today and," (she picked up one of Debbie's Sharpies and crawled across the bed, picked them up and began writing the days of the week on them. He smiled and kissed her when he noticed), "um, he really liked it, though. Especially the swings," (Ian's wearing Thursday).
She notices too late how Ian's looking at her. Concern screwing up his eyebrows and softening his eyes. Fiona quickly ducks her head down to look at Liam again, hopes that if she keeps talking about him then it'll give her mind something else to concentrate on, something less painful.
She opens her mouth to speak but that's when Ian says, "It's okay to miss him", and Fiona's left speechless as she looks back at him and sees that his concern has been replaced with empathy. She doesn't understand how her baby brother can get this, can know how it feels to have someone you love leave you; who's left him? She wants to ask and she wants to cry and she fucking wants Jimmy to come back.
There are tears in her eyes but she smiles at him. "I'm fine," she lies.
It's just a t-shirt.
...
She's a little bit tipsy, tripping up the last stair but she needs to get to her room right now. Needs to get Jimmy out, needs his stuff gone, needs his presence gone because Kev making a joke about stealing cars should not fucking set her off. She shouldn't have had to force herself to keep herself calm.
She can feel the tears streaming down her face, dripping onto her shirt, but she doesn't wipe them away. Dropping to her knees in front of the drawers, Fiona begins to empty them out, dumping the contents onto her bed.
Most of his t-shirts are easily recognisable and Fiona spends a long time staring at them, closes her eyes so that she can see Jimmy wearing them. Images so clear that a sob leaves her and she curls in on herself because he's gone and she's not going to see him in his stupid v-necks and leather jacket and jeans that were too tight.
She shuffles forward. With shaky hands she separates his clothes from hers, treating his with far more care. And there are enough clothes to fill at least two suitcases and she just doesn't understand how he could leave like this. No warning, leaving almost everything he owns behind and for what? Does he want to hurt her? Does he want her to feel this way?
It's too much. Fiona isn't sober enough for this and her crying has gone from a silent, private thing to loud and messy, but she can't reign it in, she can't stop and she feels like she's going to run out of breath and-
And Vee is putting her arms around her and letting Fiona cry against her shoulder. She becomes a dead-weight against the strength of Vee and she doesn't even care anymore how weak she is; all she can do is feel it.
"Shh, shh, c'mon, it's okay," Vee is saying, words muffled into her hair.
Fiona tries, she does, but it's like everything she's been pushing down is bubbling out of her now and she's helpless.
Vee pulls back and looks her right in the face. "Look at me. You are Fiona fucking Gallagher and you're gonna get over him, okay?" Vee raises her eyebrows expectantly and Fiona gives a halfhearted nod. "And I'm here for you. Whether you wanna go out and fuck him outta your system, or drink or fucking watch The Notebook and eat Haagen Dazs." Fiona laughs a little. "I am here for you, we all are. One step at a time, okay?"
More confidently, Fiona nods and looks back at her bed, the clothes littering it.
"Yeah." She wipes her nose against her sleeve. "One step at a time."
...
One Saturday, before anyone else is awake, Fiona gets up, puts the things of Jimmy's she feels she can part with in a laundry bag, and gets a bus to the nearest charity shop. She doesn't give them everything - a couple of his t-shirts are more hers than his, ones she wore to bed - but it feels good to do it, to let go of some of the pieces of him.
A smile threatens to break out across her face as she's walking back home; from the relief, the optimism she's reluctant to feel and the fact that today is the first day she woke up from a dreamless sleep. There was no Jimmy, no romantic dates or raging arguments. Nothing.
The first time in a long time, she woke up this morning and her first thought wasn't Jimmy.
When she gets home, Kev and Vee are over, passing around the scan pictures they got yesterday. Fiona's already seen them, had Vee call her up last night ordering her to come over and see.
Fiona walks through the living room, following the sound of her family into the kitchen. She drops the empty bag by the washing machine and catches Vee's smile aimed at her. Fiona smiles back, feeling light and happy.
She sits beside Ian at the table, listens to Carl arguing with Debbie about what is what on the scan picture; listens to Ian talking on the phone to Lip, clearly discussing one of the girls Lip's seeing; listens to Kev and Vee talking about cribs and toys.
She looks around at her family and is hit with how lucky she is to have these people around her.
Because she loved Jimmy, loved him more than she's loved any other guy before.
But he was just a guy.