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The party’s tomorrow night, I added. Unsure of where to go from here. At least discussing the party was a way for me to know whether or not he’d be around for it.
I’m not going anywhere just yet, he sent.I’m trying to stay with you… for as long as I can. But…
“When it’s time for you to go, you’ll need to go,” I whispered. “And that time is drawing nearer.”
“Yes,” he said aloud. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Can I just… never fully heal?”
“For the selfish sake of being with you forever… I wish,” he murmured. “I. Wish.”
We rested against the backing of the shower, our heads leaning against one another. We sat there for a long time—hours, maybe—as the shower rain danced around, coming close yet never directly hitting us.
I would’ve spent the rest of eternity like this.
If someone told me it would mean never having to let him go.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Broken
We’re still so broken, Jamie.
The words danced through my mind as I drifted away.
Away, away, away. Sleep had come for me, stealing me from my own reality, and transporting me into a world of endless possibilities. I floated on through different places. Some I recognized. Some I didn’t. Until I finally landed in a concrete setting.
The wooden dancefloor shined as though it had been recently polished. At the front of the room, an empty set of music stands lined the edge of a stage. A mic in the middle of it all, glistening beneath bright spotlights. The images in the corners of my eyes blurred as if my only ability to focus was straight in front of me.
I scanned the space, stepping forward. My sweetheart heels clacked against the floor. Despite the ground material, my steps felt as though I moved through marshmallows. Body void of the heaviness of the physical world, making me aware that I’d once again drifted into the beyond. In this state, I understood that my physical body remained back in bed in Portland, waiting for me to return from this lucid dream.
I had ventured to the place where we all ended up one day. Usually once we were grey and old and ready to take the big sleep. The idea of this partially reassured me. All of these terrible things could happen, but you always ended up back with the people who you loved.
This system partially terrified me, too. I thought of Holly and me and Jamie and all of the other people who had gone through hell. I wondered what purpose living and dying could have. As if we were all a part of the Prometheus system, burning away in our physical bodies, constantly suffering from tragic events, until we somehow moved forward, survived, subsisted.
I wondered why god or whatever the hell it was had in mind when he sent us over to the physical world to live in hell before bringing us back to heaven? Not that I was a religious person—still wasn’t even after this experience with Jamie—but what was the meaning behind it all?
The bruises covering Holly entered my mind. I winced as I imagined her mother’s boyfriend smacking her around and cornering her, abusing her the way he had. I wanted to do more than what I had done tonight. Wanted to go back and stop it from ever happening. Wanted to save her from the pain.
The same way I wanted to go back and take away all the pain that Jamie had gone through with his own parents. With Danielle, too. Maybe then he’d still be here with me. Maybe then we’d be navigating through this thing we called life… together. And not apart.
And I’d never have to say goodbye to him. Well, not for an insane amount of time, anyway. Maybe he’d die of some disease in his seventies, and I’d live on until my nineties. Or maybe we would have been one of those couples who dies within years of each other. I smiled to myself, knowing full well that could have been us.
Except now we’d never get the chance.
I knew I couldn’t think of it that way. Knew I had to understand that whatever lie beyond the physical obviously was a much more permanent home. But I was bound to my physical body, and right now I needed Jamie to be here with me.
Light bounced off a mirror and hit my eye. As I grew closer, I stared into my reflection and stopped. A ruffled red salsa dress clung to my body, exposing hips I hardly remembered I even had. Clips in the shape of red roses pinned back both sides of my dark curled hair. Despite the atypical getup that you would probably never find me wearing, my eyes appeared to be the same. Tired looking. With thick bags below.
For the first time, I saw just how exhausted I truly was. A person hanging on by a thread. Well, at least a thread was more than it was before.
It doesn’t have to be this way,I told myself, as I continued to stare at the woman in the reflection.Death doesn’t have to come for you. Ever. You can live.
You can live.
After all, as Holly had said, there were always people suffering from worse things. Always people who were going through hell. Maybe I wasn’t bouncing up and down with joy at the idea of my life, but I was no longer the woman ready to take the plunge into nonexistence, either. These last few weeks with Jamie had opened me up to pain—oh so much pain—but with that pain, I’d also found a reemergence of life as well. I knew in my heart I had so much more ground to cover, so much more digging to do before I found a way to heal from the pain of my past.
But I knew now that I had to move forward.
