6:04 AM
CeCe Goldsworthy tiptoes into her son's bedroom, peering at the two figures fast asleep in the bed, fully clothed and warmth radiating off their still forms as they lie tangled in the bed sheets. Bending over her son, she gently reaches a hand to stroke the fringe from out of his eyes. She plants a kiss on his forehead, watching his peaceful rest, his chest rising and falling and his hand intertwined in Clare's.
She glances over at Clare, too, the covers kicked down her legs, clad in a pair of Eli's sweatpants. She creeps to the other side of the bed and pulls the cover back over Clare's body, taking a moment to look at this girl, who in such a short time has given CeCe her son back. She has pulled him back from the lost place he was wandering around in, the darkness that had taken her baby boy and pushed him farther and farther away from her and her husband until they were certain they had lost him completely.
(Even in his own bedroom.)
Taking a glance around the bedroom now, CeCe is amazed at how far he's come in such a short time. The room is far from perfect- and won't be for a very long time- but there is a clear change in the way things were a few months ago. Just the fact that CeCe could even get into the room in the first place speaks volumes. Eli doesn't sleep in the TV room on the pull-out anymore since he and Clare unearthed his bed, and he doesn't use the padlock on his door at night anymore, either.
(It's still on during the day, but hey, Rome wasn't built in one, and her son won't be fixed in one, either.)
Watching Eli sleep, sprawled out and open, brings it all back.
He sleeps hard, her son. Sleeps hard, runs hard, does everything hard and full-tilt. Loves hard, too. And it's caused him so much hurt.
For awhile, she thought she would lose him completely. Fixed, she thinks again, and the word brings the pain back to her. Not for the first time, she wonders what would have happened if she and Bullfrog had handled Julia's death better, had handled Eli better. Surely, kids don't just get lost like this.
Because kids don't just get lost.
People lose them.
She loves this boy so much. Her son, her Baby Boy, the only son she had was nearly swallowed up by his own darkness, and all she could do was watch as he became buried in his own bedroom. Maybe she could have done something, and maybe there was nothing that could have been done. But either way, she let Eli get so lost, and if not for Clare, she doesn't know where he would be now.
Life is just so hard, Baby Boy, she thinks sadly, bending down beside her son's sleeping body and watching him breathe.
Life isn't a movie. Life is terrible. Life is so insane and sad and just utterly fucking awful.
Maybe they are shitty parents to Eli. Maybe they didn't do him a service by breaking him into adulthood so soon, or letting Julia live with them, and maybe they did a really terrible job of being there for their boy when she died. But Bullfrog and CeCe wanted Eli to just experience life without letting anything to hold him back or encumbered by any inhibitions of society.
Maybe they'd done him a disservice. Who knows? She doesn't.
She did the best she could, mothering her little man, and she loves him.
What else can she do?
She knows that Eli blames her, in part, for what happened to him after Julia's death. That she failed him as a mother, for letting him stray so far away. But she hopes that he can forgive him. She hopes that he will realize that life is too damn short and filled with too much pain to go on hating those that will never stop loving you, no matter what. That for all of their faults, she and Bullfrog are loving if they are over-the-top; caring if they are inept; parents if they are free-spirited and outrageous. How useful would it be to be resentful of them for so long?
(The dead aren't the only ones that need to be let go of. At what point do you need to just live and let things die and rest where they are?)
Whatever her son thinks of them, she knows that she owes Clare her son's life. She wouldn't have what's left of him if it weren't for her.
So even though her son is facing this new heartbreak, another terrible blow, she hopes that with Clare by his side, he won't slip away from her again.
And man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Author's Note: This isn't the last chapter, but this story is going to come to a close soon. Thanks so much for everyone who stuck with it and took the time to read it.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.