I try to follow her instructions, to concentrate on what she’s asking me to do because it’s her day and it’s important, but my head is somewhere else, my thoughts are all focused on someone else—the last person they should be concerned with. I tell myself not to turn around, that I shouldn’t let myself be fooled and that it’s probably just a moment of total confusion and weakness on his part, that he was upset about something and I happened to be there and he happened to let me get close to him.
But there’s no need for me to turn around and look, there’s no need for me to verify his presence because I feel it, in my arms, as if his body were still there pressed against mine. As if that heat wasn’t able to leave me.
—
AARON
I went up to the table as soon as she left the pub. She stuck around for about an hour. She drank and chatted with the girls. She looked at me just one time and I wasn’t even able to nod at her.
What should I have done? Going to the table and talking with her would have seemed out of place. What should I have said to her? The other night was just a big misunderstanding. I was feeling strange, out of sorts… No, to be honest I was feeling like shit.
Maybe I just felt crushed by other people’s happiness and upset by the events and the fact that no one noticed my discomfort or my absence.
No one but her.
She came to me with those deep, sincere eyes of hers and I let myself go in her arms.
Her arms, for Christ’s sakes.
I am a colossal idiot.
When I found her in front of me like that I didn’t see Patrick’s little sister, the girl who used to enjoy herself finger-painting the walls at home, with braces on her teeth and her hands always stained with paint.
I just saw her and when our eyes met in the dark, I was able to start breathing normally again.
She was able to calm me down.
I sit on my bed and let myself be wrapped in the darkness and the silence.
For I am a rational, self-controlled man. I evaluate a problem and I find a solution for it without over-thinking it. I am the rock of Gibraltar, a safe harbor. For everyone.
I go on telling myself the same thing, but with the accident and all the shit that’s gone down over the last few years, I’ve felt that confidence waver and that sense of control diminish bit by bit. The other night was the epilogue to a shitty period of time.
It was nothing, just an episode. I am stressed out and exhausted. It’s just a moment when things are off track, a bad moment. And the idea of her took advantage of sneaking into my mind. Just a thought, something blurry and abstract that I need to cut to the quick. Bury it six feet under if necessary.
See, I don’t need these kinds of distractions.
I lost my parents when Rain was still at school, I did the cooking, the washing and even ironed her uniform. I did three jobs at the same time and in the evenings, after she went to bed, I was playing music with my friends. Despite the loss and the pain, I thought everything was going to be alright. Then the accident happened. Neil, one of my dearest friends, died. Another person to mourn. And Rain in a coma. I thought I had lost her too and if I had, I would have been lost as well because I would not have had any reason to go on living.
My family comes before everything else. Rain is the most important person, together with my friends. So, I put all of it on my back. Her therapy, the rehabilitation, her new life. I opened this pub along with my friends. I’m there for them when they need me and I try to take care of them, to protect them and not allow anything bad to happen.
This is my only objective in life. There is no time or space for anything else.
Years ago I put up a well-marked wall that’s impossible to get over. It excludes the rest of the world from me and eliminates other possibilities because that’s where the problem lies.
They fuck with your mind and your life.
And I cannot permit myself to let my guard down even for a second because there is always the unforeseen around the corner and you need to be ready to push back hard, even at the cost of giving yourself up.
