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He’s been gone for two weeks.
I feel like I’m also gone. I feel like a shell or just a body, going through the motions, but completely empty inside. The days have blurred completely together, to the point where I don’t know if I’m sleeping during the day or during the night. I wouldn’t be eating or showering if it wasn’t for Maddie taking care of me.
Elliot and José went to our apartment because I refused to go back there. They started with packing my stuff. It helped that we weren’t fully unpacked. They are going to pack up Hayden’s things and put them into a storage unit until his family is able to go through it. Until I can. If I ever can.
Someone blows their nose and I’m startled to the present. The present. A terrible place to be.
I look up at the person behind the pulpit, speaking as if they knew Hayden. Talking about the amazing life he lived. I glance at Marion who is silently sobbing. Haven has her eyes closed, cheeks wet, and Elise is beside her holding her hand. I look at my hands in my lap, tightly clasped together. I separate them and look at them for a while.
He’ll never hold my hand again.
I stop the thought and look back up to the pastor. I purposefully avoid looking at the giant framed picture of Hayden and the black shiny casket beside it. At all the flowers that are covering almost every inch of the stage and steps. Most of them are the same one, white and round with long skinny petals that often adorn caskets. Death flowers. They all—the flowers, the casket, the photo—feel huge, like they take up all the space in this massive church, sucking all of the air out. I don’t look at it though. I don’t think about how that’s Hayden’s body in there. Because Hayden’s de?—
I squeeze my eyes shut and see Hayden’s body on the floor of our apartment, and I open them quickly. Something grasps my hand and I look down to see Maddie’s small hand holding mine. I look at her and see her eyes, which look so helpless and sad for me. I try to thank her but I can’t speak. She nods her head, she knows.
The ceremony goes on and on, and just when I thought it would never end, the person announces that the receiving line will begin with the first row. My brow furrows in confusion. But then the first row of people, or technically the row behind us stands and they all move together, snaking slowly in a line to pass by in front of us. They pass by Hayden’s family, and then me, looking at us with apology in their teary eyes. I recognize some of them, Hayden’s family and friends, but I don’t recognize a lot of them. Some of them grab Marion’s hand. Most of them whisper how sorry they are. Then they pass his casket. Some touch it and some just look at it with their hands over their hearts.
I keep my head down for as long as I can before I stand up and walk out. I feel Maddie following me.
“What do you need?” she whispers in the lobby of the church.
“I need to get out of here,” I croak. She nods, and turns back towards the chapel but Elliot is already walking out. Maddie turns back to me and grabs my hand, and we drive back to their apartment together.
I wake up a few hours later after crashing on the couch. I open my eyes and stretch.
Ugh, why did I fall asleep on the couch? My back always hurts when I do that. Hayden usually carries me to bed. I look around but I’m not in our apartment. I’m in Maddie and Elliot’s apartment. My head is aching and my face feels swollen and tight.
I’m confused for a moment when I go to look at my phone, but don’t see any messages from Hayden. I shake my head, try to clear the sleepy fog from my mind. I feel like a balloon is being blown up inside my head. I bring my hands up to my face and rub at my eyes, not caring if there’s any makeup there that will now be smudged everywhere. I look down and see that I’m wearing a black dress. I stand up quickly.
My reality comes crashing back down around me.
He’s gone.
“No, no, no, no,” I say, my heart physically aching and breaking as I remember everything. “No,” I cry and then I crumple on the floor, my knees hitting the hard wood painfully.
“Ana,” Maddie yells as she runs over to me. “I’m here, I’m here,” she says.
“He’s gone.” Those words are a dagger to my heart, “I can’t do this,” I say through my tears. “I can’t, my heart….everything…everything hurts.” I claw at my chest as if to rip out the useless thing inside that feels broken now anyway. “I woke up and I forgot…my first thought was him…but he’s gone, Maddie. He’s not coming back,” I say, and her own tears fall down her face as she pulls me into her and holds me as I fall apart again.
SIXTY-SEVEN
NOW, SUMMER
I got back to my place from David’s pretty late last night, so I slept in a little bit since it’s the weekend. It feels nice to do that again. It feels nice to wake up without so much of that pain weighing me down.
I’m just about to pour my first cup of coffee for the day when I hear a knock at the door. I grab my phone to check and see if I missed any messages from David or Maddie. Nothing.
I walk to the door and look through the peephole, and then I freeze. I pull away a bit then lay my forehead against the door. Why is this happening?
I reluctantly pull the door open and find the face of the woman whose last words to me were ‘you killed my baby’.
I keep my face blank.
“Ana,” she whispers, her eyes wide and bloodshot. She looks thinner than the last time I saw her, which is concerning because she was already pretty thin to begin with. She moves to the side and Haven walks into view. My face starts to break a bit when I see her. She moves towards me and pulls me into a hug and I hug her back as tightly as I can.
She pulls away to look at me. “Can we come in and talk?”
I nod even though I want to tell them no and to leave me alone. But I walk inside and they shut the door behind them. I walk to the couch and sit down. I don’t offer them any kind of drink or anything, I just look at them—at Haven, then Marion—and wait for what they have to say.
