a/n: Okay, there is just this chapter and then the epilogue afterwards. And then that really is the end to the whole saga...promise. Thank you to everyone who read this far and to those who left feedback. It is much appreciated.
Chapter Ten
When I return to the apartment, for eventually I must return, I know this, it feels naked, barren, suffocatingly quiet. It feels like a set dressed without actors. It feels like no one really lives here.
I reluctantly, yet magnetically drift to the bedroom. My bedroom. Our bedroom…my bedroom…
It still smells of her, that fresh, perfumed, newly shampooed smell. I open the closet, it looks empty. Of course my clothes are still there. I open the drawers, one by one, they stare back at me, half-full, mocking me. She hasn't taken everything, but she may as well have.
I dissolve into the bed, too weary to take my jacket off, too oblivious to let go of the strap on my bag. The whole hushed atmosphere is identical to that time, that time, when I returned home, when she wasn't there, when I knew she wouldn't be, it would have been impossible, but somehow I hoped beyond hope it had all been a terrible mistake, a sick joke, a nightmare from which I would awake. Because even though she was gone, her presence was everywhere. In the creases in the coach, in the chip on that red coffee cup she used, in the disgusting drapes she had brought home years ago that now had the smell of cigarettes embedded in them, in her soap, in the water line that marked the tub, the hair left in her brush on the dresser. Everywhere I looked, stepped, breathed, there she was. And somehow it didn't scare me, it didn't creep me out, it was a comfort. Because if these things could still exist then maybe…maybe… I mean, how could a plastic, 99cents comb with two teeth missing, how on earth could that still be here, how could a piece of junk possibly outlast my mother. It made no sense.
It still doesn't. And now Paige, gone, away from me, taken her stuff, yet still I can feel her, she's here, but she's not here…
I sit on the bed, eyes fixed on the wall, motionless, I am a clean sheet of paper, I am the period at the end of a sentence. I am the space between the words. I sit through the dark descending over the city. I sit through Jaime coming home, turning the light on in my room, making me wince as it stings my eyes. I sit through his questions, his puzzlement. Why are you sitting in the dark? Where's Paige? Alex? Alex? Why won't you talk to me? I sit through his phone call to Diana, asking her to come over. I sit through him offering me a beer. I sit through her arrival, her arm around my shoulder, both of them refusing to leave me alone. But eventually they do leave me alone. I'm here for you Alex, he says. He's here. But I am not. I sit through the night ebbing away into hazy blue dawn. I sit through my alarm going off. I sit through Jaime making another phone call, making some appointment, telling me this guy's a real professional. Whatever. I'm not here anymore. I sit and wait. Wait for them to leave, to leave me the fuck alone.
He keeps on trying to get me to eat something. Why do people do that? Like, wow, if she eats, if she can chew food, swallow it, then she can't be a crazy, surely. She must eat, she must keep her strength up.
"Count Chocula."
"What?"
It's the first thing I've said since he found me like this.
"I feel like a bowl of Count Chocula."
"What? You mean the cereal?" his bafflement is ingrained in every crevice on his face.
"Yes."
"We - we don't have any, I don't think…" he trails off then looks back at me, hesitantly, uncertain.
"Alex, if I go to the store and get you some, you're not… you won't do anything stupid…will you? If I go, I'll be ten minutes. But…you'll stay right here, won't you?"
He's doing that serious look I hate. Not that I blame him. My behaviour is anything but normal right now. Even I know that. It makes me feel less insane, that I know it.
"Go to the store. I'll wait right here. I'm not going to do anything stupid." I repeat the words emotionlessly, churning them out like a metronome. He leaves, he backs out the door looking at me.
He's worried that I'm going to try and hurt myself, kill myself possibly. He doesn't need to worry about that. What I have in mind is far more stupid.
oooOOOooo
I've never been to her apartment before. It's an old brownstone, fashionably elegant, totally and typically her.
"Come in," she offers coolly, not a hair misplaced on her head. She reaches out to my shoulder, brushes an invisible piece of lint off it.
This is what I want. Someone who doesn't care how I'm feeling, what I'm doing. Someone more preoccupied with the dust that threatens to descend on her eyelashes.
She saunters through her dinning room, absently running her hand over the edge of the mahogany table. I numbly follow.
"Where's your husband?" I ask casually, more for something to say than anything else.
"Dubai. Business," she offers with her evil smile, turning with a flourish, opening the door to her bedroom.
She grabs both my hands, she looks magnificent. It alarms me that I'm thinking this simultaneously with the realization that I'm feeling nothing.
"June?"
She starts to undress, slowly, seductively. She puts her arms around my neck.
"June?"
"Ssh," she tells me, her lips pressing against mine softly, silencing me momentarily.
"Wait," I untangle myself from her grasp, I walk away, towards the bed. It's the only available seat so I perch on the end of it. She turns expectantly towards me.
I can see the impatient agitation in her eyes, waiting to devour me, waiting to be devoured. And yet, I want to know more, I feel compelled in some way to know, curiosity, confusion, affirmation…
"You once implied that you and your mom, that, y'know, you didn't get on. Why?"
She raises her eyes skywards, than looks back at me, a small smirk of dissatisfaction, then relenting, looking more shyly away. Remembering.
"We were very different kinds of people. She was small-town America. I wanted more. I wanted everything."
That made sense, I thought, looking around at her sash windows, her Ralph Lauren sheets.
"And you seem to have got it," I murmur ruefully.
"Not quite," she says, reaching me in a few steps, cupping my face in her hands.
"Did she know that you, y'know, liked women?"
"My, aren't you full of questions today," she's trying to silence me again, her breath hot against my ear, as I turn my face away from hers.
"No Alex. She didn't know. We didn't talk about things like that," she says it with an impatient sigh, like she's pacifying a child. "We didn't really talk at all," she then offers.
Her expression is softer, somber almost, having to recollect what she probably hasn't thought about in a long while. I can feel the blood starting to drip back into my veins. I run my hand along her arm, reassuringly. She suddenly looks at me, embarrassed, like she's forgotten for a split second I was there.
Her expression melts into a smile and she sashays her way onto my lap, pulling my arms around her. It feels warm. The rush of blood gets increasingly louder. "Do you miss her?" I murmur into her shoulder. I can feel her head jarring away from mine, her hands fumbling to loosen my hold.
"Alex," she whispers, "Let's not talk about this."
"Why?" I whisper back. Because now that I'm here, I can't stop it. "I miss mine, all the time. I think I don't, I think I'm not thinking about her at all, but really, that's all I'm thinking about, I can't stop thinking about. Every hour, every minute, every second of the day…"
"Alex," she tries again, "Don't talk to me about this, okay? This isn't what I'm here for, to talk about this." She says the words firmly, but softly, she runs her finger over my bottom lip, looks into my eyes.
"But…"
"Listen to me. I'm too old to be you're girlfriend. I'm too young to be your surrogate mother. I don't know what you're looking for, Alex. But it's not here."
I raise my eyes to her, and I'm surprised not just at her words, not just at how she speaks them, tenderly, with the most compassion I've ever heard her muster, but at my tears that have unexpectedly started to fall. Softly, slowly, hot prickly saltwater, pooling in my eyes. At the realization that all this time I had been lost. Lost and looking and not even knowing it.
She wipes a tear off my face and shakes her head. "It's not here sweatheart."
She kisses me goodbye.
oooOOOooo
I'm waiting in the blistering cold on a freezing park bench in Central Park. It's early, almost too early, only the occasional jogger passes me by. She suggested the time. Lectures, classes, it seemed only fair to attempt to fit in with them.
I shift about nervously, checking my watch constantly, pulling my coat over me. I'm a few minutes early, which is rare, considering me and early mornings, but there you go. For once I had to beat her to it.
I see her from a hundred yards away. I can tell by her walk, by her pink wooly hat. I watch her form approaching, my heart lurching wildly around. The most important conversation I'm ever likely to have is fast approaching. I want to fast forward it, just skip to the end, good or bad, I'm terrified. But I'm ready. At long last, I'm ready.
"Hello," she says quietly, looking into my eyes with a mixture of wariness and apprehension.
"Hi," I've stood to greet her. Will she offer her cheek? No, of course not. Do we embrace? No, to soon.
I just sort of stand there, swinging my arms back and forth a bit.
"How are you Alex?" she says, sounding sincere, implying a real desire to know as opposed to just being polite.
"Yeah, I'm good, thanks… I mean," I catch myself with a faint smile, "I'm…better. I'm getting there. How are you?"
"Yes, good, thanks."
I nod to the bench and we sit down together. She puts her hands in her pockets and buries her face into her scarf, shivering loudly.
"It's gotten cold so quick," I observe.
"Yeah," she agrees.
We admire the park in front of us for a minute, her no doubt in quiet contemplation, me wondering how to begin. I've run this over and over in my head so many times now. But all the words have suddenly jumbled together into a fuzzy mess that's stuck to the back of my throat. I miss you, I love you, I've been an idiot, I want to just blurt them all out. But none of that is good enough. None of that begins to explain. And this girl, this brilliant, wonderful woman, she deserves more.
"Paige, I need to tell you, or…try and tell you…what's been going on with me. I mean, over the past few months. I know it all went wrong. And I know I should have told you all this at the time, but…there was so much shit floating around my brain…I dunno, it-it just got to the stage where… I didn't know where to begin."
She looks over at me and nods slightly for me to continue.
"But, I'm seeing this guy now, he's really good, this psychologist guy Jaime hooked me up with. And talking to him about everything, well, it's really helped. Helped me come to terms with it. Or, y'know, try to. Begin to…"
"I wish," she says, her voice small against the thick morning cold, "I wish you could have just come to me. Talked to me about it. I was there Alex. I wish you'd have felt that you could." She bows her head like she feels shamed, like she's failed me in some way and I instinctively reach out my hand to her. Clasping her arm through the thickness of her coat, squeezing it slightly. I'm touching her, if only through fabric, but still, it's something.
"Paige, that - that was kinda the problem. I mean, it was part of my problem. When you jumped on that bus, when you just took everything into your own hands like that, I mean, all of a sudden my choices were taken away from me. You had decided to come, you were going to live with me and…"
"But, I thought that's what you wanted?" she says, her voice slightly incredulous, "You were happy, you said you wanted it too."
"No, I did, Paige, really, I did. But…Jesus I'm not explaining this well," I scrape the hair out of my eyes and look away momentarily. My ears feel like they're icing over, I wish I'd worn a hat too. I look back at her, so cute in hers. So pink. So Paige.
"I'm gonna have to go back a bit, so please just hear me out okay?"
"Okay," she says with a sigh, folding her arms against her chest defensively.
"When I moved to New York," I begin tentatively, "I wanted this new start. Away from everything back in Toronto. Away from you, our past that is, our relationship. And Jay, and all the messed up shit we'd gotten into down the years and…my mom. My life with her. All my failings. That's how I saw it. That's how it felt at the time. I wanted to forget about it all. But most of all, I wanted to prove to myself that I could do better, a fresh start, a new me, whatever."
"Couldn't you have just joined a gym or something," she mutters.
I choose to ignore this aside. "And when I saw you the night before I left, it reaffirmed everything to me, why I had to get away. Because, I knew that as long as I was destined to run into you, I'd just forever be thinking about what could have been. Asking myself if I'd made the hugest mistake ever. I knew that I'd never get over you Paige. So I had to just get past you."
She looks at me long and hard.
"But my mom was drinking round the clock and, I felt guilty about leaving her. We had this stupid fight before I left. I was forever mopping up her mess, y'know. And she took my leaving as a big Fuck You. I mean, that's not how I meant it, but…still."
I pause and exhale loudly. Just thinking about it gets me going. I know I need to finish this, but it's harder than I'd ever imagined. Because it's Paige. Not some stranger, not some therapist, not some fuckbuddy.
Her hand finds its way onto my knee. "Go on," she says quietly.
"I guess, despite our mess of a relationship, and all the fighting, all the drinking, she was my anchor. I wanted to go and make something of myself, but… I wanted her to know it, to see it. To be proud of me, for me… I had this kinda fantasy that one day I could just come back and rescue her from this hell that she'd gotten herself into. Just, take her away, get her cleaned up, get her somewhere nice to live, away from all the losers she hung around with. Find her a job, y'know, the whole nine yards, the whole dream. It was. It was just a dream… And she never go to see any of this," I gesture around at the park, at the city. "And we never got to even talk properly. About what I wanted, for her, for me…"
"You never said, back in Toronto Alex. You never said about any of this. Why?"
"I was angry. Don't you remember? I was so angry, that day of her funeral when I ran into you on the street. And even when you came around after and we… we, spent the night together. I was so unbelievably angry with her, and you, you were there, you were the respite from it all. You were so wonderful to me Paige. But all this stuff, it wasn't coming out of me, I was just, sort of, indulging in you. Because I loved you and you made it so easy. Please, no-"
She's wearing that wounded expression now and I instantly grab her hand, shielding it inbetween my two gloved ones.
"What I mean is, you made it so easy for me to forget, to just melt into you. To fall right back in love with you. Paige, seriously, you were everything then. And you still are. But, it wasn't how I'd imagined it. I was a mess, I hadn't come to terms with it. That she wasn't coming back. I felt beyond guilty to be relying on you. You'd given up everything and just blindly followed me. It terrified me. I was certain I would fail you, let you down. It almost became like I was pre-empting it. You know people with vertigo? How they're afraid of being up high incase they fall? And you know how they say really, that the fear comes from this unconscious desire to throw yourself over the edge. That's what I felt like I was doing. Like, everything felt destined to go wrong and I couldn't just wait and have it all screw up around me, it was easier, more painless, more satisfying to just screw it all up myself. I was just, totally and utterly lost Paige. Really, just… just totally lost…"
I trail off, my voice needs a rest. And I'm unsure as to how this explanation is going down with her.
She gives a very slight shake of her head and then lets out the mother of all sighs. "Wow," she offers. "Your therapist is really good."
I laugh faintly, she looks at me thoughtfully.
At last she voices what clearly has been troubling her throughout all this. "Did you…did you sleep with her? Be honest with me Alex. I need to now the whole truth now."
"No, I didn't," I reply and see the little spark of relief ignite in her eyes. "I came close. Twice… She was an outsider, there was no emotional attachment there, I just felt, I dunno, I couldn't hurt her, it didn't matter…"
"But you didn't mind hurting me? You didn't think that sleeping with her would hurt me maybe an incy bit?"
"Yeah of course. And that's why I didn't! But, Paige, I didn't feel anything anymore… It's hard to explain. But there just didn't seem any point to anything anymore, really, to anything. And I knew you'd blame yourself partly, you wouldn't be able to help it. Because that's how you are. And I didn't want that. I didn't want to fail you, I - I…"
Yeah, she's definitely not quite getting this bit.
"I didn't sleep with her," I conclude, raising my hands to indicate the finality of that topic.
She purses her lips tightly. Looks away, looks back again. My heart on my sleeve, my heart in my mouth, where will hers end up?
"Well…. Good." She says eventually, nodding slightly.
"What about that guy?" I can't help but ask. She raises her eyebrows, pretending she doesn't know what I'm talking about. "You know who I mean. The meathead, jockstrap one."
"Who, Dom? Oh please," She says exaggeratedly.
"What? I know he likes you. And I've seen you flirting with him."
"Alex, Ew! That is actually insulting, that you would think he could be my type. The guy is half man half magic marker."
"All asshole," I conclude. She shoots me a look. "So…" I'm hesitant, I'm scared to even ask the question, "What is your type these days?"
We've unconsciously been shifting nearer and nearer to each other. Suddenly the cold no longer seems to be penetrating through to my bones.
"Well…" she looks up at me, shyly at first, but then more determinedly, "I think," she's taken my hand now and the contact is electrifying. It feels just as good as the first time we ever held hands. In the movie theater. In Her Shoes. Not my choice. What a crap movie that was. Although it also ended up being one of my favourites. "I think, I think that you probably know the answer to that."
I grin like an idiot and she returns it, but with a degree of reservation, her expression warning me, "But- you have a lot of work to do," she points her finger like a schoolteacher, reprimanding, yet seeking to be motivational, "We're not out of the woods yet."
"I know," I concede, overjoyed that she's even considering giving us another chance.
"There's a lot you still have to make up for," she carries on.
"I know. Paige," I tilt her chin up with my hand so we can look at each other properly. "Thank you."
Her fixed fierceness dissolves into her gorgeous pussycat smile. "Just consider yourself lucky that I love you so much."
"I do. I am. I love you Paige, so so so much."
And finally we share a kiss like we used to, when kisses were desirous and unpredictable and we were never sure quite what they'd lead to.
And then she pulls me into her warm embrace at last, and I don't fight it, I just give in to her support, her unending, unwavering support. "And don't shut me out Alex. Okay?" she whispers it so faintly it's almost lost to my ears, "Don't go to pieces again on your own. You're never alone. Okay? I'm here. I'm here for you. Always…"
"I'm sorry," I mumble against her neck, "I'm so so sorry."
She shushes me and holds me and as the day gets colder I think back to our park bench in Toronto, when we had met again at Christmas, where she had reignited all the feelings I had about her. How many beginnings would we keep having, over and over? How much rise and fall can one relationship go through? Time would tell. And it stretched before us. And finally, the thought of a future, and not a void of nothingness, seemed once again possible.