Another tangled, twisty-turvy oneshot. Nate, Mitchie's first love, was killed in a car crash and no matter how hard she tries she can't forget him. Is it ever really truly possible to let go of the first person you loved? Maybe. Yes, maybe if there is someone there to take their place. A someone named Shane.
Let Go
It has been 17 months and 23 days since you died. I have not smiled since then. I don't know if I ever will again.
You were my first love. I don't know who was your first love. The air maybe, the wind. You were a free spirit – untameable, unpredictable. That's why I loved you. You brought madness to my saneness. You made me me. You didn't love anyone. Sure, you were one of my best friends, but you didn't love me. Because to love someone you have to want them, you have to need them more than life itself. And you didn't need anyone. Least of all me.
Your brother loved me. Probably loves me still. I don't know. I wouldn't deserve it if he did. Not after the way I've treated him since you died.
I know it's not his fault. People tell me that. I tell myself that. But still, sometimes I find it hard to convince myself that he didn't have anything to do with it. At the very least, it's not fair. He was in the car with you the night that it happened.
It being when the drunk driver ran through the red light and hit your car. You were on your way back from a concert, choosing to take your convertible for a spin instead of taking the limo. You had music from some little indie band that you loved blasting from the stereo. He was in the passenger seat. Then it happened.
He survived. You didn't.
It took him a long time to get better. It was three months before he smiled, six before he laughed, ten before he could pick up a guitar again and just over fourteen before he played another concert. He cried almost the whole way through.
He rang me the night before to ask if I would go with him.
I cried, because that is all I seem to do now and said no, I couldn't. I said I was busy; I had to go to my grandma's house; I was grounded; I couldn't leave the house. Anything to get out of it. We both knew I was lying. I hadn't been out of the house in months and there was no reason for my parents to ground me. No reason at all.
The truth was that I couldn't handle watching the stage without you on it. I knew that I wouldn't be able to look at the two other guys, at your empty place at the piano and not see you there. I knew I couldn't do it, so I said no. Then I cried some more.
And he cried with me and he said, "It's okay. I know how hard it is for you. It's okay."
But I forgot how hard it was for him too.
So today, 17 months and 23 days after the accident I am at home in my room, like I always am. I'm looking at the picture of you on my bedside table. I'm making progress you know. For a long time I turned all the photographs over so that your face was against the wall. But I can look at you again now.
In this photo you are not smiling with your mouth, but your eyes are twinkling and I know that if I had of waited a split second longer, then you would have smiled. That picture is frozen in my mind – always about to smile, to reach happiness, but never quite getting there. It reminds me of that poem, Ode on a Grecian Urn I think it's called. Maybe Ode to a Grecian Urn? I don't remember. The lovers have been frozen in time about to kiss. At once they are so close and yet an eternity away.
Like us.
Our love is a two-sided triangle. 'Two-sided?' you say. But then it wouldn't be a triangle because the very essence of tri means that there are three.
Well, that's where you're wrong. In our triangle there are three points, three persons, but only two lines – only two loves.
He is at the bottom left point of the triangle. His love connects him to me, the second – middle, point. Then my love connects me to you, the last point. I suppose we could be all happy and fluffy and draw a third line – because you and him are brothers, so of course you love each other like brothers do. But I am choosing not to draw that line because you know if there are three lines on a triangle then everyone is both giving and getting, loving and being loved. But I don't draw that line because you didn't really love and because what I am trying to say is that I am in the centre, at the point of the triangle, being loved by him and loving you.
And besides, if the triangle had three sides then it would be complete. And our story was never completed. And like the lovers on the urn, never will be.
But now you are gone. Does love die just because the person you loved died? I don't know. I don't think so. It didn't for me anyway.
Since you died I have developed a way of coping. In my mind there are rooms. Each room has one purpose. There is one room for school, one for family, one for church and so on. I can cope, I can get through each day if everything is separated out in my head and I don't have to think about more than one thing at a time. One day at a time. One step at a time. One room at a time.
But the thing is, you are in all of the rooms. Everywhere I turn, inside and out, I see you. The ghost of your smile haunts my every move. It is what is stopping me from smiling. You are. You made me who I am, but now you are stopping me from being me.
My love is a cord that connected me to you. But with every passing day the cord is fraying, getting thinner. Now it's a thread. One day it's going to break and I don't know if I'll be able to stand it. I don't know if I can bear to let you go.
And it has taken me a long time to get to this point, but I am starting to wonder if maybe I want to be free from this love, even if it breaks me. I thought love was supposed to make you free, not chain you down, make you a prisoner in your own life, haunt your every move. It's not supposed to keep you watching life from the sidelines, never smiling, never laughing. You wouldn't have wanted that. I know you wouldn't.
I reach for the phone, my eyes on your photo – your eyes shining, encouraging me on, almost smiling at me.
I put in his home number slowly. Remembering each number, putting each digit in, takes a little bit more out of me. It is, was, your number too.
I pause before pressing the talk button. Is this what I want?
I don't know, but something inside me tells me that it's what I need. Yes, I need him. Because I don't have you anymore. I need him.
And he is good and kind. He is like you – a more perfect, tamer, version of you. And he loves me.
I have always known that. But he is three years older and I always thought that he thought of me as a little sister, the one who tried to protect me when you dragged me into one of your crazy schemes. I always thought that he thought of me as a child – until the day when he told me that he loved me. And not in the way that a big brother loved his little brother's friend – in the way that the Prince loved Cinderella or Lancelot loved Guinevere. That sort of love.
And I had laughed because although I thought I was so grownup, really I was little more than a child – a girl with one foot still in the tree house in your backyard and the other in womanhood.
But like all children, I grew up. Sadly. Or fortunately. I guess you could look at it either way. And when I grew up I realised that I ought not to have laughed at him, because love is not something to be laughed off, scorned, taken lightly.
And although I love you, maybe I love him too. Because he is waiting for me – he said he would. He knew that no matter what my childhood fantasies were, that you could never give me what I wanted. So he waited. Is waiting still.
And I am waiting too. For someone to tell me that it's okay to let you go. That you will still have a special place in my mind even when you've long gone. Although, 17 months and 23 days is a long time already. Maybe it's time to be happy again.
So I press the talk button and there is the sound of the phone dialling and then ringing and then picking up and when I hear his voice I let out my breath suddenly, realising that I've been holding it. For the past 17 months and 23 days. I need to breathe again. I need air. I need life.
"Yes?" he says.
There is a long pause. "Hello?"
Finally I find the courage to speak. "It's me."
There is a sigh of relief on the other end. "How can I help you sweet?"
Sweet. That's what he's always called me. Right from when I was a child. Sweet, like sugar donuts and apple pie.
I pause again and he waits, patiently. Like he always does. Patience is what he does best.
"Can you come over?"
"Yes," his voice is soft, gentle, yet eager. And there is a hint of something else there that I can't quite place. "I'm on my way."
Then I realise what it is. It's love.
He knows what my request means. He knows I'm ready. I don't even know if I am, but I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to be free. Finally.
I hang up the phone, not saying anything else. I don't need to. He knows me well enough to know what I mean, long before I've said it, long before I even know what I mean. He knows me far better than you ever did. He loves me far more than you did. Than you could. 'Cause I totally don't blame you. You just didn't have it in you to love someone. And now I'm starting to think that that's okay. Maybe I can live without you. Maybe if he's there for me.
So I get up slowly, shakily and make my way downstairs. I sit on the couch, twisting my hands nervously, winding a strand of hair around and around my finger until the circulation is cut off.
I look at the clock. Now I'm starting to panic. I don't know if I can do this. I glance towards the clock again – it should only take him 3 minutes and 45 seconds to get here. We have run to and from each other's houses from the time we were children, so I know exactly how long it should take. That is, if he left straight away. And I know he would have. Because he's good like that.
But instead of the clock, my eyes fall on you. There is another photo of you, which sits above the fire. You are smiling in this one. That gorgeous smile which made your dimples show.
I'm about to look at the clock again to see if the 3 minutes and 45 seconds are almost up, when there is a light knock on the door.
I know it's him. You never used to knock.
Besides you'll never knock, or rather, not knock, again. Ever.
I sit frozen for a minute, but then I rise slowly. I'm going to do it. I'm going to cut the thread. I'm going to let myself be free. I'm going to stop living life on the sidelines and just start living. I walk slowly towards the door. My thoughts are reeling, my head is spinning, for a minute I think I'm going to be sick. But I make it to the door, leaning on it for support. I don't think I've ever done anything this hard in my life.
There is another tap on the door and I jump, startled, my hand on the doorknob. Outside there is the shuffling of feet and the soft clearing of a throat. Then he speaks and the voice is so like yours that I want to cry.
"It's okay."
But I don't. From somewhere inside of me, strength I didn't even know existed rises up and I find myself turning the doorknob.
I almost sob when I see his face. He looks so much like you – same dark eyes, same curly hair – that my world starts spinning and I hold onto the doorframe so that I don't fall.
"It's okay," he whispers again and then I brace myself and look up slowly and when I reach his face, the look there makes me want to cry.
He loves me. He waited for me. 17 months and 23 days since you died. 17 months and 23 days he waited for me, knowing that eventually I would break, that I would need him the same way I thought I needed you.
And then he opens his arms and although my eyes are so blinded by tears that I can hardly see, I stumble into them. He wraps his arms around me and that's when the tears spill over.
He smells like you.
No, I shake my head furiously and he holds me tighter, knowing that I'm fighting with myself. He smells like himself and that's just as good. It's better. Because he's alive and living and breathing and you, well… aren't. Maybe you never were. Even though you always seemed so alive. I don't know. All I know is that he is real.
So I relax in his arms and although my head is buried in his chest, I can feel him smiling into my hair. He knows he's won. I've won. Together.
Then he pulls me into the house because standing outside is getting cold. He doesn't do anything though, just holds me. Then I feel him stiffen slightly. I know what he's seen.
You.
On the mantelpiece above the fire.
And then I remember that I'm not the only one that has been through hell and back. I'm not the only one that misses you. You are his brother after all. Were his brother, sorry. Or are you still? You were a brother once so does that always make you one, even when the other half of the equation is gone?
But then he relaxes and I turn around in his arms so that my back is against his chest, his arms around my stomach and we both look at you.
He leans down so his mouth is against my ear and he whispers so quietly that if I hadn't actually felt his mouth forming the words then I would have thought I had imagined it.
"I love you."
And I whisper back, my eyes locked with yours, so quietly that the sound is that of a butterfly's wing touching the air. "I love you too."
But I don't know if we're talking to each other or to you. Maybe it doesn't matter. Or maybe it does, because I take my eyes off yours and turn back around so that I'm facing him. His eyes are filled with tears and when they overflow, they fall onto my upturned face.
And then I smile. For the first time in 17 months and 23 days, I smile.
And he smiles back shakily, touching my cheek gently, letting me know that it's okay to let go; that loving him doesn't make me a bad person. I'm just putting you in a different place in my mind, giving you a room of your own. I'll come and see you there sometimes. On rainy days in ten years time when I can no longer remember the way your eyes crinkled when you smiled or the way your voice got higher when you laughed. That's when I'll visit you. But not now, because as much as I love you, loved you, I'll be happier if I let you go free.
"It's okay," he whispers and I sink into him, letting him love me.
I look up at him, "I love you," I whisper.
From behind me I can feel you smiling at me from the mantelpiece.
And this time I know I'm talking to him, not you.
It's okay.
xoxo
-Hannah