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We were in love. I thought how I felt, how he felt, was real.
But it wasn't.
Turns out it was only real for me. I try to tell myself, as I step from slat to slat on the tracks, that maybe that's not even right.
Maybe it wasn't real for me either.
But that's a lie. A coward's lie. I'm not a coward.
Ezra was a coward. He showed me all his cards when we first met, but I ignored them. I let him make me think we had something. Did he ever really even think we did, or was it always just a game to him, something to do in his spare time?
I ask myself this fifty times a day, and I think I can't answer.
I remember how he'd wrap me up against him, and for that reason—if nothing else—I think he must have felt real feelings for me. The way he'd fucking squeeze me. And his eyes. Sometimes when he looked at me, I swear—
I swallow before tears blur my eyes and try to fix my attention on the woods behind the derelict house. They're not really woods, I guess. Just...vines and grass and these big, mossy trees. It feels like another life when we sat under one of them, the weight of his torso on my lap.
It's quiet and cold out today. Kind of wet and humid, like it might rain. I get into my car and rest my forehead on the wheel before cranking it up. Then I reach into my glove box, turn the car off, get back out, and go sit on the steps of the house. Pull the last cigarette out of his pack and light the thing up.
I smoked the second-to-last one the day after he left. Just like that one, this tastes like shit and makes me cough like crazy. I don't want to do it anymore after the one-fourth mark, but I keep going. I don't even know why. I guess because I need something to make me feel like he was here. Like that shit really happened.
I feel sick when I'm finished with it. Maybe that's what I deserve—for not doing...whatever I should have done. To keep him here. To make him happy.
I wipe my eyes when I get into the car. Mom and Carl went to Carl's Dad's place in Mobile; dude is almost 80 and has Parkinson's, so he lives in a care facility. If Mom knew I was driving, she'd be pissed off, but I don't give a shit. I'm not gonna die at twenty miles an hour on the mostly empty streets of Fairplay.
Back home, I watch some TV on the couch, pick at some turkey and potatoes, and walk upstairs. Mom and Carl are supposed to be home now. Since they're not, though...
I walk through my room into the bathroom. His stuff was in here, but my mom moved it all. She put it in a drawer on his side of the bathroom. I don't open the drawer. I don't want to smell that stuff right now.
I turn the knob and open the door to his room slowly, like he's in there on the bed and I don't want to wake him.
He's not on the bed. Sometime in the week after he left, my mom made the bed. I go sit on it, look around the room. I've been in here two times before this. Checked his drawers. He left lots of what my mom bought. His clothes. Sometimes I want to wear them. Want to smell them.
I lie back on the bed, thinking of the one thing that he didn't leave. The one thing that makes no sense, that keeps me up at night, confused as hell, wanting to drink myself stupid so I don’t have to keep obsessing over this one weird fact: He didn't leave the football pillow that I made him.
Three
Ezra
December 27, 2018
“Did you increase meds as I advised?” Dr. Katz asks, over the phone line.
My mom answers, “Yes.”
She’s being quiet—maybe to keep this from Rich, my ex-stepfather, who Mom’s dating again, and who doesn’t want a fuck-up like me in the house—or, more likely, to keep me from hearing.
I hold the landline phone against my ear, smirking even as Dr. Katz says, “That’s a good thing. It’s a high dose. In a few more days, he’ll be more soundly medicated. Missing one session of ECT is okay. We can resume Monday.”
“I just want to get him out of this depression.”
I roll my eyes.
“I understand. Sometimes after one round of sessions, there can be a relapse. But it’s not to worry. Having such a strong semester—with the football, too—that says a lot about his resilience.”
I ease the phone back onto its base. Walk downstairs to get some fucking food. Since apparently I am a goddamn football god, I need to keep my weight up.
