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“I love Barrett still. Maybe not as a lover. I understand that’s over; he didn’t love me that way. But I love him as a person. I will always love him. Because I knew him. Isn’t that the worst thing about knowing anybody? I think knowing someone well means loving them. It almost always does, if they’re a nice, good person, and they show you themselves. So if it goes south, for whatever reason, you have to turn it all around and cut it off. Except you really can’t. You just pretend to.”
And our time is up—right there. A fitting epilogue, I think as I walk back to my bike.
The days pass slowly. Cold days: gray and rainy. Winter in the Smoky Mountains. I don’t think it’s beautiful. I think it’s lonely. My bears are still mostly sleeping. Jamie comes to visit when she can, but she’s busy with work.
The only person I see with any regularity is Nic. A film has brought him here to my neck of the woods. I’m ashamed to realize I don’t even know what kind of film. I just know he’s staying here, at a fancy Airbnb on the other side of town, and one or two nights a week, he drops by and says “hi.” We play checkers, or I cook dinner for him.
I think I was wrong about how boring he is. He’s not boring per se… More just…very black and white. He doesn’t see many things in gray, so I think that’s why he’s not into long, drawn out discussions. He seems to be a very surface sort of person. And what’s wrong with that? It takes all kinds, as they say. I like movies. Nic makes movies. Annnd we’ve got a match!
Our conversations may not be riveting, but his little hour-long visits keep me from feeling totally abandoned by the world.
Which—okay—I kind of do, but not because I should or anyone’s to blame. It’s just, they’re busy. Everyone is busy with their real lives. They can’t pitch a tent in mine, and I don’t blame them.
When Nic’s not here, I go out sometimes into the yard again. It’s not much, but it’s progress. Ever since what happened, happened, and I had my little drinking binge—which Helga thinks was more serious than that: a real attempt to hurt myself—I’ve been more self-conscious again. And more secluded. More the way I was before I met Barrett.
I can’t seem to fight the regression in my self-esteem and confidence, and it makes me very sad. Like somehow Barrett’s touch has been deleted from my heart.
I started practicing my old Taekwondo forms at the top of the hill, just like old times, and like old times, I always end up crying before my workout is really finished.
Helga tells me this is normal. She says I’ll heal the same way everyone does: a little jagged maybe, with some scars, but that my heart and soul will work again at some point in the future. That I won’t feel broken anymore the way I do right now.
I don’t believe her.
I’m not sure I want to.
That’s the funny thing about grief, isn’t it? It’s like a blanket: protective. I’m not ready to drop it yet. Sometimes I think I never will be.
I’ve started dreaming about him. How could I not? It’s not that interesting, not that dramatic, all things considered.
He and I are riding in my car together, and I’m driving. (I would be, since it was me who drove the whole relationship, who threw myself at him). We’re going up a hill: a slope in Breckenridge, of course. And then the gas pedal stops working. The car slides backwards. I step on the brakes, but they don’t work. I reach for Barrett, and I see his face is filled with shock and horror, just like mine. Barrett jumps out of the car. It slides backwards on the icy road. I’m all alone, and wrecking.
Almost every night.
I have moments where I think I truly hate him. That he left me this way. That he hasn’t even called, he hasn’t written, hasn’t come by. God, I guess there’s nothing he could say, but I don’t care. He should have tried. He should care more.
He should care about me more.
He knew me, too. He said he loved me.
I blow my breath out, pull my hair back up, finish my form, and dry my useless tears. I start back down the hill.
I’m deep in thought, so I don’t notice at first: there’s a man in front of me. He’s wearing camouflage and holding a huge gun.
BARRETT
That fucker came into my house and went into my drawers and stole my ACE camo. He had my .338, I think—the one I pawned. The case looked dinged up in the same spots mine was.
I watched him walk up, dressed in dark clothes, waited patiently as he fumbled through the trusty bobby pin routine on my deadbolt. When he stepped inside the house, I hid, so I could see what that fucker would do next.
He went right upstairs. I followed. He’s so unobservant, he had no idea I was right there, looking over his shoulder as he put my clothes on, went down to the den and put my gun together. I’m surprised he managed to get ammo into it.
Now that he’s striding through the woods, I’m fucking terrified. I’ve got a stun gun and a throwing star—two weapons that survived my self-harm purge.
Jesus Christ, why did I sell my guns?
I know Gwenna is at the top of the hill, and that’s where he’s going. My whole body is ice cold. I’m shaking like I never did before this. Jesus, I’m an Operator, but I just can’t stop shivering. I’m such a fucking wreck that it’s a struggle to stay quiet behind him. As I stalk him, I can feel my phone vibrating in my pocket: call after call. And I know why now. Too bad for Dove and Blue: I can’t answer.
I tell myself, in desperation, that he’s trying to impress her. Mimic me or something. I don’t fucking know.
