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A heartbreaking understanding starts to take over and I wonder how I didn’t see it sooner. How she didn’t.
I step closer to Stella, slowly so as not to spook her, my hands moving to her arms, touching her shaking body. I want to pull her into my arms, but I don’t know if I have that right now, if that’s something she wants from me.
“I called you,” I say, my voice cracking. She shakes her head, but I continue speaking, rushing to explain, to get past this part and to the new, painful realization.
“I was out the morning we were supposed to meet for lunch. I was out… god, I was out to get you flowers.” I shake my head and laugh, remembering the bouquet of sunflowers, the wilted bouquet on my chest a perfect match for what lay on my passenger seat for days. “Your mom bumped into me and told me all about your new relationship with her friend’s son. That you were happier without me, that she’d never seen you so happy. Showed me a photo of you and some guy laughing at a wedding.” I look at her, her face going white as I try and read her to understand what she’s feeling.
“Lenore’s wedding. My mother made me go, her son was there. Another one of her rich friends she wanted me to hook up with but… we laughed all night about our parents trying to set us up when he was secretly in a relationship. Seems he had his own issues, he apologized for that night in the woods.” She shakes her head, panic in her eyes. “I wasn’t dating him, Riggins. I haven’t dated since….”
She doesn’t have to fill in the rest.
She hasn’t dated since me.
“I left, and I lost it. There was a liquor store right next door. Grabbed a beer and drank it. I remember…. I remember feeling guilty as if I knew it was the wrong decision, but I couldn’t stop. I wanted the darkness to stop; I wanted the grief to stop. Somehow, I was suddenly grieving us all over again, and my dad and it was… it was too much.” I shake my head and look up at her again. “I got wasted and then realized how big of a mistake I made. I got in a car to go see you.”
“Riggins, no,” she whispers, eyes wide.
“I got pulled over. I got a call, Stell, so I called you.”
“I wasn’t there,” she whispers. “I’d moved into an apartment. I haven’t lived at home since…” Since before we lived together.
“You weren’t there,” I whisper, suddenly seeing it all so clearly. “You weren’t home, but I thought you were. I only had two numbers memorized.”
“My house and yours.” We were raised in a time of home numbers and landlines, and neither of our parents ever got rid of them.
“I called that night. You were my… Fuck, Stella.” I run a hand through my hair, stalling. “I called. I thought it was you. I was so fucked up. I wanted to go find you, to see you. I wanted to tell you I was going to be better. I remember that clearly, regretting drinking, which had never happened to me. I needed to tell you I was going to get better, to get better, so I could be the person you deserved. Someone picked up….”
I watch her fill in the blanks, but I keep speaking. We spent too long, assuming the other knew what we were saying. That’s what got us in this place, after all. Leaving out details to save her some guilt won’t help us.
“I called, and someone picked up. It must have…” I shake my head and look at my shoes. A tear I didn’t realize had fallen dripping from my shoes. Her soft hand reaches up to my cheek, wiping the trail away. “It must have been her, you know? She always hated us together and wanted better for you. But I was so fucked up, I didn’t know. You were my one call, Stell. I called, and… she said you were done. You were moving on. I went to rehab the next day.”
I don’t tell her that despite the grief I’m feeling, knowing we lost all those years, I’m grateful for it. It ensured I got clean, that I made it long enough to stand on her porch and talk to her like this, to confess this all to her.
“Why didn’t you call again? Once you were clean?” she asks, tears of her own now streaming.
“The steps I was taking in rehab… one of them is to recognize harm you’ve done and how not to continue that harm. To me, you set a boundary by telling me you were done. It was my job to respect that. I did, until I found out we were legally tied. That felt like…. Like a sign.” I shrug. “But I wrote you, of course.”
“What does that mean?” she asks, confused still.
“Just like when we were kids. At every stop, I wrote you a postcard. The first year after you left, they all got sent back to me. I still have them.” Her brows furrow, clearly confused, trying to keep track of all of this new information as we piece our halves together to get a full picture.
“You have those?”
I nod. “I have them all Stella. In a box. I couldn’t get rid of any of them. It was therapeutic, writing to you, but I couldn’t send them, because I was so sure you didn’t want that.”
“Ididwant that. I would have killed for that, Riggins.”
“I’m getting that now. I’m assuming your mother sent them back, tried to send a message, and I was too young and dumb and drunk to realize. But even when they were sent back, it was like a piece of us I couldn’t throw away. So I kept them.”
“You kept them.” For the first time since I pulled up, she smiles a small, weak smile, like she likes that idea. She likes that I have those letters. I nod. A long beat passes, both of us in silence, my hands still on her arms. I refuse to let go. It feels like if I do, she’ll run and be gone for good.
“What now?” she asks finally, what could be minutes or hours later.
“What now?” I mirrored.
She sighs and steps back, my stomach falling to my feet.
“Does this change anything? Everything? Where do we go with all of this? You were angry with me for years, and now I see it wasn’t fully out of the blue. I was mad at you, and I think we both can see it through a blurred lens. What are we now? Who are we? How do we move forward?Canwe move forward?”
