Claire
My knees ached, and my spine felt like a steel rod in my back as I stood from the couch. I’d lost track of time. It had to have been hours, not minutes, since Aiken had gone. Now, Smitty whined by the back door. I let him out, my eyes betraying my heart by glancing next door. The lights were on, the back door slightly ajar, the screen door closed.
What was he doing?
I wanted to rush to him.
I needed to stay away.
My brain was broken. It wasn’t operating as well as it could.
My heart was shattered, small fragments of it floating around my chest, seeping into my veins and arteries.
You must be put back together before you see him again. Otherwise, you will stay splintered forever.
I told myself to slow my thoughts, pace my decisions, but the reality was my heart didn’t want to. It beat with his. His presence alone, being back next door, was beating life back into me.
Whoosh, whoosh. I felt his energy.
“Come on, Smitty,” I called, letting the screen door slap closed behind us.
I had to keep him out. He couldn’t patch me up this time.
With the back door locked, I slid to the floor, my back against the wood, my legs out in front of me, and closed my eyes. This was how I woke up the next morning, Smitty’s head heavy on my legs, the sun peeking through the kitchen window.
The clock read seven o’clock. It was almost an hour past my usual wake-up time. Racked with emotion, my body broken, I stood and opened the back door for my dog. This was becoming a pattern. Me in the door, Smitty outside, neither of us where we wanted to be.
I thought back to a few weeks ago, when Aiken asked me to ask him to move in. It had seemed sweet, sincere, and caring. He had been concerned for my loyalty to this house. All of a sudden, I realized the house I lived in didn’t matter.
He did.
I didn’t need time alone. I’d had enough of that.
I needed to live with Aiken.
To err is human, to forgive divine,I recalled learning in my poetry elective back in school.
Yes, Aiken had done something a bit more than erring, but he’d also brought me back to life.
My eyes were sore from crying. I closed them against the daylight. I was in a daze. I needed to shower, get my act together. When my eyelids fluttered back open, I was determined to face the day, and I saw a freshly showered Aiken.
“Here, even if you don’t want to see me, I know you want this.” He handed me a disposable coffee cup from the place I used to go to with Abby, vanilla-scented steam wafting from the tiny hole.
“Aiken.”
“Don’t argue with me.” He took my hand and secured it around the cup. “I can’t stay away. I wanted to check on you. I had to check on you. Fuck it, I know you’re mad, but I had to know you’re okay…breathing—”
“Hurt,” I interrupted. “Not mad, but hurt. You hurt me when you disappeared. I didn’t understand any of it. Why? Who? Nothing. You up and left, and I was an emotional mess. It was like losing someone again, losing someone so crushingly important. That’s all I seem to do is lose people.”
“I hate that I did that to you, but you have to know I had my reasons. Whether you agree or not, I’m not a hurtful person. I’m not my mom. I’m gentle and kind. And patient. I went to a hotel to get my head straight and make sure none of this came back on you. Except when it comes to you. I want you back, along with everything we talked about. I want all of it now. I don’t want to wait.”
My heart broke for the young boy at heart, who came here searching for his mom, only to find she was a wanted criminal.
She was nothing like the woman his father had described his mother as being. Wasn’t that traumatic enough?
But I couldn’t forgo all the other layers or complexities of us. It was impossible to imagine a happy ending for us.
Or not? Maybe we were brought together for a reason?
