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Chapter 26
More than a month after Walker left, Aja was no closer to getting over him than she had been that night in her apartment. Life went on, and she was forced to go right along with it, but the process of actually moving on was going to be long and wrenching. Especially when her mind refused to stray too far from thoughts of him.
The first week was spent crying in her apartment. She was sure she looked like something straight out of a romantic comedy. The very picture of a heartbroken woman, her hair and face a mess, her clothes dingy, and a tub of chocolate ice cream in her hand. She did as Dr. Sharp had advised and gave herself full permission to wallow and rage, listening to the saddest music in her playlists and watching movies that got her choked up. She let herself cry and scream and despair until her body hurt from the exertion of her pain.
It hadn’t lasted forever though. When the week was over, she’d cleaned herself up, opened the windows in her apartment, and made herself leave the house. Even going to the grocery store was a trial, but she’d made it there and back without breaking down completely, so she counted that as a win.
She tried to get her old normal back, rework her schedule to the way it had been before he came into her life. The way it had been before her newfound happiness. Wake up, have breakfast, work, lunch, more work, dinner, then bed. It was boring, sure, but it was also familiar. The work kept her mind from wandering too much, and the process of making her meals kept her busy. Any time she wasn’t doing one of those things, she did nothing other than think of him.
She could see him in her mind like he’d never left. If she tried hard enough, she could feel his hands on her. It was like Walker had become a ghost, haunting every corner of her life. Only her grieving process was different because she hadn’t lost him to death, but circumstance.
She started to become avoidant again, a trait she’d been actively working on in the months before, but now felt imperative to her emotional survival. Something was clearly wrong, and everyone she knew could sense it. Any time her mother, or Reniece, or Miri and the girls tried to broach the subject of her obvious change in mood, she balked and changed the topic immediately.
The night she’d won bingo had been the last time she’d gone. Every Wednesday, her bones ached with the need for the routine of going, but she couldn’t bring herself to. She didn’t think she’d be able to sit in the same seat, to play the game the way she always had, without being reminded of him. To her, it didn’t seem fair that someone could be in your life for such a short amount of time but still upend it completely.
There was also the issue of Ms. May. She didn’t know if her friend knew the details of what she and Walker had, but if she did, the thought of facing her was terrifying. Would it even be possible for them to have a conversation without the specter of him hanging over them? Would Aja be able to look into her eyes and not see Walker in them? Ms. May was her own person, independent of her family, and it was wrong to associate her with Walker so heavily that Aja couldn’t even be around her, but she didn’t know what to do about it. So she stayed away and hoped like hell that the woman would understand when… if… Aja had the courage to return to the bingo hall.
She recognized that she couldn’t be fully alone forever. And as much as she missed Walker, the relationship she’d had with him wasn’t the only one she’d built over the summer. She didn’t pull away from her new friends completely. But she did hang out a little less, not wanting to bring the vibe down with her crappy mood. When she did get together with them, she found it hard to stay enthusiastic. She hung to the background, speaking less, slower to laugh.
She was still too sore not to stiffen anytime someone dared to try to talk to her about her feelings. She figured she’d wallow on her own, the way she always did. But it took her a while to understand that the reason she’d spent so much time stuck alone in her sadness was because she hadn’t had many people outside of her family to wade through it with her.
Her actions surprised even her when she reached out to Miri during the last week in August, finally ready to take her up on her offer to vent her feelings.
They decided to get together, just the two of them, at Aja’s apartment. Aja feared getting so sensitive and mushy that she’d cry over a plate of food at a public place. She prepared them a nice dinner at home instead, an Italian pasta dish with enough meat and carbs to make up for opening up to someone she didn’t pay to listen to her.
“So, this is about Walker Abbott, I’m assumin’.” Miri didn’t waste any time getting to the point as she positioned herself on Aja’s couch with her plate in her lap.
Aja’s eyes widened. She’d been expecting some small talk before getting to the heart of things. But Miri clearly wasn’t interested in that.
“Uh… yeah.” Aja nibbled on a piece of garlic bread. “But I don’t want you to think that I only invited you over to talk about some man.”
In a way, she had, and she didn’t know if that was OK. She cared about Miri, enjoyed spending time with her, and at this point, considered her an actual friend. That meant she was allowed to hog the conversation sometimes, didn’t it? So long as she allowed others to reciprocate, that is.
Miri waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Trust me, I have been dyin’ to have you open up to me about this since Jade’s dinner party. It was so clear that y’all were completely fuckin’ in love.”
“I guess that’s the issue then. He’s back home in Charleston now, barely shot me a good-bye on his way out, and I’m here, sad and angry and trying not to be in love with him.”
Miri took a bite of her food, taking time to chew and swallow before speaking. “If I had some advice on how to do that, trust me, I would have followed it years ago.”
The man Miri had been seeing casually had been dropped shortly after Jade’s dinner party. Aja hadn’t known her friend was harboring a secret love for someone else. Maybe the conversation didn’t have to be all about her after all.
Aja’s face must have shown her curiosity because Miri released a sigh that Aja didn’t think was nearly as begrudging as she wanted it to seem.
“I was married,” Miri said simply, rocking Aja’s whole world with three words. “Well, I guess I still am, technically.” That made her head spin even more. “We met when we were kids and fell in love somewhere along the way. I had a husband before I was legally allowed to drink. But it fell apart, because everythin’ does, and neither of us was strong enough nor wise enough to know how to put it back together. But it’s been impossible for me to let him go completely. I don’t know how. So here I am, stuck lovin’ a man I’ve loved for most of my life and haven’t spoken to in years.” She shook her head. “I know that’s… a lot. But I guess, my point is that I absolutely know what it’s like to try not to love somebody. I know how impossible that shit feels, how it takes everythin’ out of you.”
That didn’t make Aja feel any better. She’d hoped that Miri would tell her it got better, that it was actually possible to do.
Aja shut her eyes, appetite gone. “I’m just stuck here, then? Stuck feeling this way forever?”
“I don’t know how it’s goin’ to go for you. It might not even take you that long to get over him. Hell, in a couple months, you might be ready to work your way through all twelve of Greenbelt’s eligible bachelors,” Miri said with a snort. “But I can tell you from experience that there’s no use tryin’ to force it. You’re only going to hurt yourself tryin’ to feel things you’re not ready to feel.”
They were almost an exact repeat of the words Dr. Sharp had said. But Aja hadn’t been fully ready to take them in then. Honestly, she didn’t know if she was now either. It was so much better to imagine that there was an easy way out of the pain. That there was some secret door she could unlock that would send her back to a time when she wasn’t hurting.
“But it hurts.” Aja was ready to cry again. “I can’t help thinking that I’m always going to feel this way. It would have been easier if he had been an asshole and broken my heart on purpose. At least then I could feel angry at somebody other than myself.”
“Trust me, you definitely don’t want that. The on-purpose heartbreak just makes the fact that you still love him even worse.”
Aja released a feral sound from the back of her throat, a barely restrained scream. “I honestly can’t understand why anybody ever wants to fall in love.”
