Goodbye, Love
Keith sat at the table in the little diner, more nervous than he had ever been in his life. He unconsciously tapped his fingers on the table, the rap rap rap almost exactly matching the thump thump thump of his heartbeat. His nonsensical twitch was enough for his neighbor from across the floor to stare. Not in a "Look, it's Keith Partridge!" kind of stare, but more like a "You better stop moving those fingers before I rip them off," kind of stare.
He nervously glanced at the angry customer, then slowly turned back around. He put his hands in his lap, but didn't find that a comfortable place for them, either. He was too nervous to hold still. The words on the phone from his girlfriend June rang in his ears….
"Keith, I have something to tell you, but I can't really say it over the phone."
"Um…what do you mean?"
"I just mean it's something that…well, I just need to see you."
"Okay. Do you want to meet at the diner attached to the drugstore on Maple Street tonight?"
"Sure, Keith.'
And then she hung up the phone. Just like that. No goodbye or anything. He was sure she was going to break it off with him, and he didn't know what he would do. This was a whole new feeling for him. He'd never felt the way he did about June with any other girl. He loved June. Not that cutsie little teenage puppy love.
This was real.
If he hadn't have really loved her, they never would have….
Keith's stupor was broken by the ring of a bell, caused by June opening the front door of the diner. An involuntary smile that always sprung across his beautiful face did so at that moment as she walked toward him. But June wasn't smiling. Keith knew what she was going to say, and he didn't want to hear it.
She sat down across from him. The couple didn't speak for almost two minutes before Keith broke the unbearably awkward silence.
"Hey, June," he said, trying not to sound nervous.
"Hi, Keith," June responded, her hands in her lap, not hiding her emotions as well.
"You hungry?" Keith asked, trying once again to kill the uncomfortable silence that took its place in between sentences.
"No," June replied, still trying not to look him in the face.
Keith couldn't help but to stare at her. Her beauty had surpassed any other girl he had ever seen. Her golden locks and blue eyes enthralled him in a way he'd never felt possible. Pretty didn't even start to describe her for Keith Partridge….
His mind floated to two months before, when they had only been together for a couple of weeks. They had just pulled out of the drive-in in Keith's plush new ride, and were headed to June's house.
"Do you have to take me home right now, Keith?" she had asked, her beautiful eyes almost iridescent in the moonlight.
"Well, I thought that's what you wanted to do. Don't you have a curfew?" Keith had asked, really hoping that she could stay in his car just a little longer.
"Keith, you know my parents don't care what I do. They wouldn't even notice I existed if they didn't have to buy me food at least once a week," June laughed.
But she wasn't kidding. Every time Keith dropped her off at her house, no one even opened the door for her, or seemed to notice that she was entering the house at all. The first time he had picked her up, she made sure to step outside the door so he wouldn't have to come in her house. Her parents didn't care.
Not at all.
Keith tried to keep his eyes on the road, when all really he wanted to do was look at her.
"C'mon, June," he started. "How could anyone not notice you?"
At this she wrapped her arms around his waist.
"Let's just drive over to Muldoon's point, please. Just for a little while. I don't want to go home."
Keith glanced down only for a moment at her, and then looked back at the road.
He hated taking June home. It wasn't just because he had to be without her, but he knew what she said was true. She didn't want to go home.
She never wanted to go home.
"Okay," he sighed, trying to sound disappointed.
They pulled into Muldoon's point, staring at the city skyline.
"Beautiful," Keith said, leaning back in his seat.
"Yeah, it sure is," June said, her head burying into Keith's chest.
Keith smirked as he looked down at the top of her golden head.
"No, silly. I meant you."
June raised her head and turned to him, looking at him in complete and utter surprise, her eyes as wide as if he had just told her a horrible joke.
"What's the matter?" Keith replied, even more surprised then she was.
"You called me beautiful. No one's ever called me that before."
At this Keith rose a little in his seat. June had tears in her eyes.
He didn't understand.
"Well, I wasn't trying to make you cry," he said, as comforting as he could. "I can't believe no one's ever called you that be-"
Before he could finish his sentence, June had reached up and kissed him on the lips, wrapping her arms around his neck. He kissed her back ever so gently.
June pulled away from him, staring into his eyes. Keith stared back into hers. His heart felt as if it would burst through his chest as excitement, fear, anxiety, and passion rushed to his brain at one time.
"Are you sure?" he whispered, his eyes never leaving hers.
"Yes," she answered, so softly as if the very birds and mice in the trees around them were listening.
Her hands leisurely slipped off of his neck, and her fingers traced the first button on his flowered blouse as she opened it….
Flawless. That's what she was.
Her beauty almost made him forget why they were both sitting there in the first place, so he decided he might as well get it over with.
"Is there something you wanted to tell me, June?" he pathetically asked.
June seemed to be choking on her words as she finally looked at him, her face no longer exhorting even the slightest effort to control how she felt. She closed her eyes, and a reluctant tear dripped down her left cheek.
"I didn't know how to tell you, so I thought I'd show you."
With trembling hands, she reached down to her purse at her side, and put it on the table. Out of it she pulled an envelope.
"I'm a bit of a coward," she started to say, her voice almost completely hoarse with emotion. "Because I'm going to give you this, and walk out of this restaurant without a word. I want you to know that however you feel is fine. If it's too hard for you to see me anymore, I'll understand."
She put the envelope on the table in front of Keith, which he didn't even seem to notice. It was impossible for him to hide his shock as he looked at his girlfriend's distraught face. He was absolutely baffled by what was happening. This wasn't going anything like he'd expected it to.
"Goodbye, Keith Partridge. I love you."
With that she immediately picked up her purse, and raced toward the door.
"Wait, June! June, hold on a minute!"
Keith grabbed the envelope and rushed out the door after her. He threw it open, the little gold bell almost breaking from the commotion. But he couldn't see her anywhere. She was lost in the sea of people on the sidewalk.
As he fought back tears, something dropped on his foot, and he looked down to see that he had been holding the envelope upside down, and that it wasn't sealed. He picked up the piece of paper that had fallen and turned it over.
It was blurred with a plethora of numbers and large words Keith didn't understand, and it was hard for him to make out what it was. At first the only thing he could identify was "June Akins" in large letters at the bottom of the page. The he found a bench in the middle of the crowded sidewalk and examined it more thoroughly.
He scanned the page for any words that he could possibly recognize, and was horrified when he finally found out what the paper meant. It was the results of a blood test from a doctor's appointment that June had a few days before, a doctor's appointment that Keith didn't know the reason for.
Two words stuck in his brain: "cancer" and "positive."
It was a very nice ceremony, as nice as funerals can be, anyway. Georgeous roses lined the long, cherry wood coffin. Candles were lit on either side of her gravestone, and she looked as flawless as she ever had in life, in the dress her aunt had picked out for her, which paled in comparison to her comeliness.
Shirley, Reuben, Laurie, and Danny stood on either side of Keith, all dressed in black. Shirley decided it was best to leave Chris and Tracy home. They had all loved June, and would miss company at the Partridge house. But not like Keith.
No one would miss her like Keith.
At everyone's departure, tears and frowns seemed to permeate through the crowd like the soft moonlight spreads over the formerly sunny day. All of June's friends, classmates, cousin's. aunts and uncles were there, but her parents were nowhere to be found. They would move a few weeks later, to a sunny place on the beach like June had always told Keith they'd talked about moving to if she had never been born. She was right.
They really didn't care, and it made Keith sick to his stomach.
When everyone was walking to their cars, he stayed, his eyes fixated on June's face. He couldn't leave her.
"Keith, honey," Shirley said, walking up behind him, "Do you want to stay here for a while?"
Keith turned to her, his eyes red and swollen from tears he'd tried to hold in during the funeral.
He couldn't speak, so he just nodded his head.
Soon the rest of the group walked up behind Shirley.
"You doin' okay, kid?" Reuben carefully asked, trying not to hurt him any worse than he was.
"I think-" Keith began to say, closing his eyes to try and stop the tears, "I think I just need to stay here for a while."
"Okay," Reuben replied. "Shirley, I'll be in the car."
And with that Reuben patted Keith on the shoulder, half smiled into his eyes, and walked away. As close as he was to the Partridges, Reuben knew when to let family be with family.
"Keith," Danny said, looking up at him.
"Yeah, buddy?" Keith replied, barley able to speak.
"I'm really sorry," he said. He hugged Keith, then went to follow Reuben.
Laurie walked up to her brother, and was completely broken by how he looked. In all of her life, she'd never seen him this upset since their father passed away.
She hugged him, as if she was completely out of control of her own emotions, and sobbed into his shoulder. She looked up at him, then kissed him on the cheek.
She didn't know what to say.
"I'll see you at home," she pitifully replied, fighting through the tears. Keith nodded at her, and she walked away.
Now it was Shirley's turn. Her eyes trembled with tears as she looked at her son. She knew how it felt to lose the love of your life.
Keith rushed toward her and hugged her as if he hadn't seen her in years. Shirley petted the back of his hand with her hand as he sobbed.
"Shh…" she murmered, her cheek rubbing against his.
"Mom, what am I going to do without her?" he cried against her shoulder. "What am I going to do?"
Shirley held Keith's head in her hands, and pulled his face up so his eyes met with hers.
"I'm not going to lie to you, baby," she began to say, tears muddling her speech, "it's not going to be easy. Losing someone you love is one of the hardest things you'll ever have to get over, and it won't happen right away. Don't you remember when your father passed away?"
Keith nodded. He didn't like thinking about his mother like that, sobbing for days, only coming out her room to eat barely anything.
It was unbearable.
"Sweetheart," she began again, her hands now resting tenderly on his shoulders, "I don't think you can judge love by how long the relationship lasted, or the age of the people in love. So if you think I'm going to tell you it won't be as hard for you to get over June as it was for me to get over your father, you're wrong. I saw the way you looked at her, Keith. I'd never ever seen anything like it, and you were so happy." Tears overcame her, but she didn't let them take over what she needed to say.
"And you'll think that you'll never be that happy again, but you will. You don't have to think about that right now. I just want you to know that we all loved June, and we all love you. Keith, I'm sorry, but I think now is the time to say goodbye."
She kissed him on the forehead, something she had done many times when he was a small child. She looked at him once more, then walked to the car and went home.
Keith turned back around to June, taking small, deliberate steps toward her coffin. He stood over her, his lips trembling.
"Hi, precious," he managed to whisper as he knelt by her side.
"They, um…" he started to stutter, "they want me to say goodbye to you. And I can't." Tears flowed from his beautiful eyes.
"The doctors told me to say goodbye to you, do you remember? And I didn't. Your relatives told me to say that there was no more hope, but I didn't listen to them. But now…you're gone."
He laid his head just below her neck, sobbing uncontrollably. He grabbed her around the shoulders, and hugged her. Then finally, he lifted his head, ever so slightly and kissed her soft, cold lips. Then, he lifted himself off her, stroking her head with his hands ever so gently.
He stared at her for what seemed like days, and his knees seemed to be frozen to the ground.
The priest in charge of the funeral, who had apparently been talking to someone visiting a grave, walked behind Keith.
"I'm sorry, son, but we have to close the casket.
Keith raised his head and sorrowful eyes to look at the priest, wanting to ignore what he said more than anything.
But, as his mother had said, it was time.
He stood up, his knees cracking from the sudden change of place. The priest gracefully lowered the top over June's eyes, and she was out of view. The priest briefly looked at Keith, then walked away.
Keith raised a fervent hand to his lips, then placed it on the lid of the coffin.
"Goodbye, June," he whispered, and walked home.