My parents moving to Pensacola Beach was an inadvertent blessing. When they first told me they were thinking about it, I was aghast. Us, leaving Alabaster? I thought they’d lost their minds. I couldn’t think of anything that made less sense than us not living here. As it turns out, it worked out just fine. My parents leaving town was a perfect, reasonable reason for me not to come back. I haven’t needed to. Our house has been rented out as an Airbnb since a couple of months after Romeo and I graduated from college.
It’s late. Well, after midnight. It’s been almost seven hours since I got here. Almost seven hours since I saw Romeo. My pericardium feels bruised, a tight, fibrous sac that’s squeezing my heart too hard.
I didn’t touch the bread or ham. I couldn’t face them, but I ate an entire block of cheese and smashed one of the bottles of Cabernet in under an hour.
I don’t feel well.
I’m what my dad calls “wine awake.” Overstimulated. Tired but not sleepy. My head spins from booze, my stomach deeply unhappy with my food choices and letting me know all about it.
I get ready for bed, brushing my teeth, spitting in the sink, and rinsing it out meticulously. In my stupor, I look up, half expecting my mom to pop into view in the vanity mirror and say, “Good boy, Jude.”
God. I’m drunk.
I should probably have eaten something other than cheese.
I’m home, and I’m drunk.
I’m home, and I saw Romeo, and he’s exactly as terrible as he was the last time I saw him.
He might even be worse.
I bump my way to my room without turning the lights on and throw open the sash window facing the street. I overestimate the force it requires and send it up so hard I almost crack the glass.
“Shh,” I say to myself.
A thick fog of midsummer night air wafts in and causes the mood in the room to thicken. The park across the street is empty and quiet. Deserted. Dark except for the light of a single streetlight that causes long, eerie shadows to fan out from the swings. I take out my phone and manage to open my camera on the second attempt. I take a photograph despite the fact it feels even more stupid than usual to do so, and I save it to an unnamed folder. A folder that now holds one thousand six hundred and eighteen similar photographs.
I try not to feel anything about the size of that number.
Moira, a therapist I saw a while back, said it was okay that I do this. She said rituals are good for us and known to be healthy. Apparently, they can give us a beat. A pause. A second to catch our breath. She said rituals help bring order to chaos.
She was dead serious too. She didn’t mean it as a joke, but I found it funny as hell. I still do.
Jesus. What bullshit.
If you think anything about this little shit show is healthy, there isn’t a damn thing you won’t believe.
I slide the window down carefully and turn the lock, despite the fact there wasn’t a single home invasion or even a serious robbery in the twenty-one years I lived in Alabaster. I’m about to turn in when something catches my eye. A disturbance. A movement. A slow, smooth arc. The swing. The one on the left, near the Dogwood tree. It sways gently back and forth, the movement a careless relic left by someone dismounting before it came to a standstill.
I search the park for signs of life but find nothing.
The person I’m looking for isn’t there.
He’s closer.
Much closer. So close, he steals my breath for the second time today.
He’s on my front lawn, and he’s heaven and hell. Silver and blue, washed in moonlight. He’s wearing a white tank under a white shirt. The shirt is unbuttoned and hangs open, billowing out behind him as he moves. A black dog orbits slowly around him.
Buddy?
Buddy!
For a second, my heart lurches so hard that I almostcall out.
It’s madness. It’s madness and booze. That’s what it is. Buddy was sixteen when I left. He’s been gone for years. Of course it’s not Buddy.
I step back into the shadows and stop breathing, hiding, taking cover without taking my eyes off Romeo.
