He takes my hands in his. “Not right now, no.”
“Why? What’s changed?”
“Blythe…” Sabin is clearly struggling with how to answer this. He starts and stops a few times before he just shakes his head.
“You just need me to accept that this is what’s happening. That moving to the fabulous city of San Diego and breaking my heart in the process is the perfect thing for you to do.”
He lifts my hand and makes me wipe the tear washing down my cheek. “Yes.”
“Okay.”
“Thank you. Thank you for pretending to understand.” He smiles. “It’s late. You should get some sleep. You have to get up early to say good-bye.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then, you don’t have to get up, sweetness. You don’t want some dramatic good-bye scene anyway. So boring and overdone, right? Oh, I know why. You didn’t have time to prepare the rhyming good-bye poem done in the style of Dr. Seuss?I do not like to basket weave. / I do not like when Sabin leaves. / I do not like—”
Now, I actually laugh. “No! I just mean, I don’t want to get up in the morning to say good-bye because I don’t want to go to sleep.”
His eyes brighten. “You want to stay up all night?”
“I do.”
“And make mischief and mayhem?”
“Yes.”
“And watch me wait until the very last minute to pack and then giggle unhelpfully while I throw some random shit into a suitcase and leave behind necessities, like underwear and pornographic coloring books?”
“Exactly.”
“We can do that.”
So, that’s what we do.
In the morning, the shuttle arrives to take away the people I love most in this world. I will miss the hell out of James, Estelle, and Eric, but I will especially ache for Sabin.
Fall on Frenchman Bay is permeated by silence. The lack of sibling chaos is not unbearable, but it is noticed very sharply by Chris and me. The everyday logistics remind us of everyone’s absence, like when I first went grocery shopping after the crew’s departure. I returned home with so much food that I had to turn all the extra meat and produce into a stew and freeze batches. I don’t have to wait in line to take a shower or deal with heaps of laundry. I’m not interrupted by shrieking laughter or screaming or giggling or racing footsteps tearing through the house at all hours.
Nearly three months with a full house created a new normal, and returning to just the two of us has been a relief and a shock to the system. Even Jonah has seemed restless and out of sorts since the first week, continually running to the door or checking bedrooms for his friends.
The late September air has a chill this evening, and it’s perfect for running. I retie my laces and lift myself up on my toes a few times to make sure my sneakers feel right. I’m fussy about how much wiggle room I have. Too loose or too tight, and I’ll be distracted throughout the entire run. I require perfection.
With my eyes closed, I inhale and raise my arms above my head, and then I exhale and drop them down. My usual stretches pass by in a blur because I’m so focused on the run ahead of me. I’m antsy and edgy, and I’m hoping that this workout will expel some of my mood and some of the emptiness plaguing me.
Music blasts into my earbuds, and I begin. Running over the hilly and often rocky terrain in this area has taken quite a bit of getting used to, and the side roads around here are not exactly paved to perfection. The slope on the main roads makes my legs burn and my lungs raw, but I like that. I have to run harder and stay stronger.
Running is part of how I saved myself, and even now that I am not the fragile mess I was a few years ago, I know that I will never stop. While running is a solitary sport, it’s not lonely for me. It never has been. It forces me to think, to examine, while it’s just me and the music and the road.
I leave the dusty dirt road and hit one of the main roads where there is actual concrete with painted lines, and I hold my pace while “Tennessee Whiskey” by Chris Stapleton starts in my ear. I smile. Chris made me a new playlist.
No one else in the world understands how I can run to such slow rhythms and melodies, but he knows that I run in contrast to what I’m hearing. The mood or lyrics or tone of a slower song propel me much more than pop or dance tracks ever could. He intrinsically knew this about me before I knew it about myself. The music he sends me is always right.
As I begin to work my way through this new song list and through my seven-mile goal, I’m already feeling more settled. Chris is at home right now, starting on dinner, and I’m looking forward to spending the evening with him. Of course, I feel this every day. I never tire of him, of us.
He is my home. The two of us together are peace and love after too much uncertainty and fearful instability.
The truth is, I like the quiet. After the fire that killed my parents and nearly destroyed James and me and even after the healing from that, I seek serenity. I like the cleanness and simplicity in my days—writing for the magazine from home, conducting interviews often by phone and the occasional outing to meet someone for a local piece, shopping in town, near daily runs, cooking in the evenings, weekends on Acadia’s trails or curled up at home. Together, Chris and I have created safety for ourselves, and we fall more deeply in love each day. To some, the idea of reliability and safety might sound boring. For us, they bring joy.
