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Yep…Pauly’s toast.
When a knock sounds on my front door the following day as I’m lounging on the couch after a run, I figure it’s probably Ethel, the next-door neighbor, wondering if her cat wandered into my unit again. “Coming,” I call out, sweeping back my sweat-damp hair and traipsing over to the door. I pull it open, about to tell Ethel that Blinkers isn’t here, when my words fall off.
My breath catches.
“Andrew.”
Andrew Bailey stands right outside my door, with eyes rimmed red and hair looking grayer than ever.
He’s aged.
And I can’t help but feel responsible for that.
Swallowing the brick in my throat, I curl my fingers curl around the doorframe as I stare at him, slack-jawed and shaken.
His throat bobs, his stance weary as he gestures past me into the apartment. “Can I come in?”
I nod instantly.
It’s been two years since I’ve had any real interaction with the man who raised me as his son. Aside from seeing him at the grocery store one time, where we locked eyes then sped our respective carts in opposite directions, I only received a letter from him in the mail last fall.
Well, it wasn’t really a letter; it was only two words.
“I’m trying.”
I wasn’t entirely sure what it had meant.
I’m trying to forgive.
I’m trying to forget what happened.
I’m trying to forget you.
Samantha and I have met up for coffee and lunch a few times since everything unfolded—since she held me on her living room floor with a mother’s love after I’d failed her as a son. And I’ve looked forward to those dates. They’ve been critical in keeping me moving forward, because if someone I betrayed so severely, so wretchedly, can still care about my well-being, then maybe I should care about it, too.
While that first year without June was one of the hardest years of my life, this second year has brought about a semblance of healing. I’m accepting that what happened happened and I’m learning to live with it in a way that doesn’t eat me alive and hollow me out. I’ve stayed busy with work, but more as a means to nourish my creative passion for cooking versus using my job as a way of forgetting. I’ve maintained friendships with Kip and my coworkers and with Aunt Kelly, and I’ve fostered those relationships, letting them restore the rotted parts of me.
People talk about rehabilitation all the time. Broken bodies learning to walk again. Impaired minds fighting disease, addiction, and dark thoughts.
But have they ever had to rehabilitate a heart?
Hearts fall apart, too. Bodies crumble, minds fail us, and hearts turn hopeless. They can deteriorate if we’re not careful, and for all the tragedies I’ve suffered through, for all the tears and pitfalls, I can’t think of anything more tragic than a hopeless heart.
The heart is the crux of life itself, and once it starts to wither, everything else starts to wither, too. And that’s a damn shame. That’s a devastating injustice to everything we’ve fought so hard to overcome and to everything still worth fighting for.
And there’s always something. There’s always a proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, waiting for us to turn that corner.
I wasn’t ready to give up; I didn’t want to wither.
But for all my progress, for all my mending, there’s still been a dark cloud lurking overhead, keeping me from chasing that light.
It’s a cloud that goes by the name of Andrew Bailey—the man trudging past me with a nearly grown-out beard steeped in silver, heavy wrinkles, and a defeated glaze in his eyes.
It looks like he’s checking his own heart into rehab.
I watch as he slinks past me, running his fingers through thinning gray hair, then plants his hands on his hips as he lets out a long sigh. He just stands there for a while with his back to me, a few feet away, while I linger by the open door, clinging to it as if I might need something to hold me upright.
Moments pass.
