Maybe I needed a distraction, then I’d be ready to talk to Donovan?
Getting Louis off the bag was too easy. A shake of his treat bag and he was winding around my feet, yowling like he was starving.
“Charlie always said you trained me well,” I said to the cat and a bittersweet swell of grief slid into the tangled mass of emotions I was trying to hold back. In the nearly seven years I’d moved back in, not a day had gone by without him and I couldn’t get used to his absence. It was easier when Donovan stayed, but at times like this, I missed my best friend with a ferocity that stole my breath.
“I hope you’re driving all the angels crazy up there,” I murmured, pausing by the front window. He used to spend hours people-watching from here. He deserved whatever happiness I knew he had to have found.
Distraction. I desperately needed a distraction.
I grabbed the two bags before Louis, having gulped his treats, could nap on them again. Between Ori’s directions and Camille’s suggestions, I’d ended up with far more than intended. One small bag held nothing but various types of crystals, each in their own little mesh bag with a little card describing its attributes. Simple enough, even if I still didn’t quite believe in all that.
Because apparently, despite my own psychic abilities and Nate’s proven use of crystals to block Charlie, I remained skeptical that rocks could have some sort of mystical powers.
The second bag tested my limits to the breaking point. I’d ended up buying a book on psychometry, which was apparently the ability to find someone just by holding something of theirs. Camille gifted me a brand new tarot deck, because apparently it was good luck for your first deck to be a present? According to her, it would help me find answers, whatever that meant.
Incense, an evil eye necklace almost identical to Camille’s, and a few other things I’d already forgotten the name of made up the rest of the bag. At some point while I wasn’t looking, Ori had slipped in a slim book on meditation and visualization, hiding it beneath the other book like they knew how I felt about it.
“Maybe I should start with that? It seems pretty straightforward, right?”
Louis stopped licking his butt long enough to fix me with the kind of dry, judgmental look only a cat could give, then promptly went back to his bath.
I pulled out the book and pushed everything else to the side, out of the way. Surely meditation would be the easiest thing to start with. All I had to do was sit here, right? I flipped through the introduction, where the author talked about her journey to finding inner peace or whatever, and found the ‘how to’ section.
“Okay, sit somewhere comfortable. Easy.” I was already cross-legged on my living room floor with my back against the couch. “Unfocus my eyes and turn my mind inward. What the hell does that mean? Observe your breath and allow your mind to be set free.”
It went against my personal code as a bookseller to throw a book, but this one was testing my limits.
Still, I’d promised Camille I would at least try. I put the book aside, out of reach just in case, and closed my eyes. That seemed easier than trying to unfocus, whatever that meant. I’d learned how to breathe through panic attacks as a kid, so I tried that. In for four, hold for four, out for four.
After a few slow breaths, my heart rate slowed and the embarrassment faded, so I tried the next step. I had no idea how to set my mind free, so I just kind of drifted, trying not to pay attention to anything. So naturally, my mind had other plans.
This is so stupid. How do I not think about anything? I should stop thinking words, right? Okay, just drift. What was that sound? Probably Louis. Why have I never noticed all the background noise in my house? Is the fridge supposed to be that loud? Should I have Donovan look at it? Except he’s not here, is he? I screwed up, as always, and now he’s gone. Not surprising. I should have known I’d screw this up. I always do. I’m the common denominator here, after all.
“Oh my God, brain, shut up,” I groaned, opening my eyes to find myself under intense scrutiny. Louis was no stranger to my weird bullshit, but apparently this pushed the limits even for him, because my fat cat was staring at me like I was a complete idiot.
“You’re not allowed to judge me. You were literally just licking your own ass,” I reminded him. He flicked his tail and I’m pretty sure he would have rolled his eyes if he could. “This is a lot harder than it looks, okay?” Maybe I shouldn’t have attempted this while fighting with Donovan.
Still, it was this or sit and stare at the last message from him, so I reluctantly pulled the book closer, looking for some tips. In a later chapter, the author suggested picturing a flame and pushing any random thoughts that wandered into my brain into that flame.
“Okay, mental arson. That sounds a little easier.”
I took a few more breaths to calm down, then closed my eyes and pictured a flame. Well, I tried to, at least. I made it about five seconds before my asshole brain started changing it, because a disembodied flame is kind of weird. It should be at the end of a candle or something, right? Maybe a red candle, like at the restaurant we’d gone to for Valentine’s Day. Even though we’d only been together a few months at that point, Donovan had spoiled me and we’d gone to Denver for a nice dinner. We’d planned to watch a movie on the couch after we got back, but ended up spending the rest of the night in bed. I certainly didn’t mind that. Still, was it normal to know you loved someone in that short a time? Despite what Donovan’s mom had told me back in January, it sometimes still felt like it was too soon.
“Fucking fuck, I did it again!” I groaned, realizing the flame had long since disappeared from my mind and I’d wandered off on another tangent. “Why is this so hard?”
I sighed on instinct, waiting for a dirty joke in response, only to be met by silence. Charlie couldn’t deliver the jokes and innuendo I’d grown used to because Charlie was gone. Years of having him with me every single day, of groaning at his bad jokes and secretly enjoying his rants about dating shows, and now all I had were the memories.
Tears stung my eyes and I leaned back, staring up at the ceiling. “I miss you, Charlie,” I breathed into the silence. The grief grew easier to bear every day, but I didn’t think it would ever disappear. Charlie and Aunt Lizzie would share space in my heart for the rest of my life. Without them, I wouldn’t have this life that I loved. I wouldn’t have Raina and Camille and Will. Worst of all, I wouldn’t have Donovan. I took some comfort in the memory of Charlie’s wicked smile right before he’d passed on. Whatever had been waiting for him, whatever he’d seen, it delighted him, so I had to assume he was off causing more chaos in whatever came next for ghosts.
A heavy thud jarred me out of my thoughts. Louis, apparently sick of my angst, had jumped off the coffee table and now proceeded to clamber into my lap, his paws digging into my inner thighs and leaving me wincing. He didn’t lay down, because that would be far too easy. He stood on my left thigh and made biscuits on my right leg, reminding me (quite painfully) that he was overdue for a nail trim.
“Fuck, you need to go on a diet.” I was going to have paw print bruises on my legs at this rate. “Webothneed to go on a diet. Time to lay off the snacks, huh?”
That was a word he knew and he pushed off my legs, scrambling to get to the kitchen, because just saying the word was a contractual obligation to snack time.
“Might as well. This meditation thing clearly isn’t happening. Snack break, then we’ll try again later.” Or not. Probably not. There was only so much humiliation I could handle in a day, even if there was no one to see it but me.
I left my phone on the table, still open to the texts with Donovan, and pretended not to notice when the screen faded, then went to black, without a single new message between us.
