The soft sound of her sobbing creeps around the door’s edges, melting my insides like acid. I burn with the shame of it all, knowingIstarted this,I’mthe reason she’s in there crying, and it’smy faultthat her dreams are falling apart. I never understood why she dropped out of school our senior year and abandoned her ambitious plans for the future. I still don’t, to be honest. But I do understand she replaced all that with this different dream of helping people, of having fun, of living a slower, quieter life, and I’ve ruined it.
“I can’t leave yet. You go.”
“I’m not leaving you, Nomi.” I knock on the door again, even though the rough texture hurts my knuckles. Maybe because it does.
“You don’t get it. Iwant you to leave,” Nomi says, her voice suddenly iron.
It knocks the air out of me. I stumble back, understanding now.
She won’t leave until I do, because…
She doesn’t want to see me.
I swallow, the knot in my throat horrible and sharp.
“I—okay. I’ll go. I’ll tell the guards you’ll be right out.” I slide my palm down the door one last time. “I’m so sorry, Nomi.”
I walk away, dread weighing down each footfall as I enter the August night. When I get inside my car, I rest my forehead against the steering wheel, more defeated than I can ever remember. How will Nomi forgive me? I’ve failed.
When morning comes, I let it pass me by. I don’t get up to run, or make coffee, or shower. I lie in my bed, the weight of my fuckups pressing the air out of my chest. When my phone buzzes on the nightstand, I lunge for it, but it’s not Nomi answering the many texts I sent her last night, asking if she was okay, if she made it home, if we could talk.
MOM
Aunt Edna passed in her sleep last night, honey.
I stare at the words, willing them to reorganize, to mean literally anything else. It feels like a punch, delivered to my throat. My eyes burn, and I squeeze them tightly closed against today. Against these feelings drowning me, making it hard to breathe.
JULIAN
Oh, Mom. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?
MOM
Hospice came and handled everything. I’m okay. Just terribly, terribly sad.
JULIAN
I’ll be right there.
The loss feels like regret. Sad and heavy, a circular train of thoughts and feelings looping through me ad nauseam. Regret that Aunt Edna is gone. Regret that the world lost such a person. Regret that death comes for everyone. Regret that I can’t stop it. Regret that having someone wonderful means that, one day, we don’t get to have them anymore.
Even though Edna knew the end was coming and had prepared accordingly, the days that follow are full of helping Mom execute her plans. In lieu of a homily, Edna wanted us to share her favorite stories—the time she punched my Uncle Joseph in high school, when she met Neil Diamond backstage on her fiftieth birthday, when Krimpet, her beloved poodle mutt, caught an actual rabbit during the family Easter egg hunt and traumatized all the children. During the after-party, we are to project a never-ending slideshow of all her favorite pictures separated by themes of her choosing, the most disturbing of which isEdna, the Sexy Years. It’s so, so her, it feels like a last gift, a last joke. I half expect there to be an item on her close-out list for me to loosen my butthole.
Nomi texts when she hears, telling me how sorry she is, asking if there’s anything she can do. She says nothing about how I’ve ruined her life, or how she never wants to see me again. She’s probably waiting until I’ve had time to grieve before ending things officially.
When the service begins, I scan the room for her, feeling guilty for caring so much about the state of us onEdna’s Big Day, which is what Edna wanted printed on the programs. But seeking her is a compulsion; every time I think her name, my eyes reflexively scan the room for her. I haven’t stopped looking since I got here, and when I do find her, it feels like coming home.
Then remembering I’ve been evicted.
After the service, Nomi slips out of the church, and I all but tackle grieving family to get to her before she disappears.
“Nomi, wait!”
She turns, her face guilty and regretful, and it hurts almost as much as the rest of it. Knowing that she feels bad for not wanting to be with me anymore. Even though I deserve her anger, deserve this break-up, deserve her never talking to me again—she still feels bad. I can’t seem to stop hurting her, can I?
“Julian, I’m so sorry about Edna. You know how much I loved her.” Her big, brown eyes are rimmed with red, and her face looks thinner, sharper than usual.
“She loved you, too.” How many times did Aunt Edna tell me Nomi was the one and not to fuck it up, and then I did just that? “Are you coming to Edna’s Big Party?”
