Page 124 of Rock Me

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Noémie

My childhood bed in my childhood bedroom is small and creaky.

I can't turn over in it without waking the whole house, the decades-old mattress sagging under me, and the wooden bed frame moaning as the rusted screws hold on for dear life. It was a hand me down from my older cousin, and probably a hand me down from someone before him.

Except for the bed at the Bellagio, I've never known a more comfortable place in my life.

Paige and I spend the first day of our stay here holed up in my room, poring over the hilarious memorabilia of my teenage years. She recognizes some of the people from the pictures in my photo album but the rest is a strange phenomenon to her.

When we finally emerge at dinner time, my mom has conjured a feast with all the comfort foods of my heart. Tuna casserole, mac and (very orange) cheese, green beans and corn on the cob slathered in butter. I think Paige gains ten pounds just looking at it all. I watch as she digs in and I know she can tell the difference, when a meal is created out of love.

The kitchen table is quickly cleared after dinner and we bring out the games. A rowdy game of Cards Against Humanity has us howling with laughter deep into the night, my Mom waving away suggestions about her going to bed to rest for work the next day as she gleefully deals another round, talking trash.

The clock ticks over into another single digit hour of the early morning when Paige and I wish each other goodnight, her breath quickly becoming soft and steady.

I close my eyes, and all I can see is his face.

“Piss off, Jez,” I whisper, shaking my head etch-a-sketch style, but the screen in my head doesn’t clear. Those lines of his face that I drew with my mind in those first few days together at the hospital have burned themselves into my memory. He’s the background of everything I do, think, feel.

In those first few days, I was numb.

The band-aid had been ripped so fast, that I was still reeling from the shock.

But the saying shouldn’t be “time heals all wounds.” It should be “time heals and wounds.”

Because as the days ticked by, that numbness gave way to a crippling, breathtaking sense of loss.

I miss him so much. Sometimes I realize I’m holding my breath because I’ve forgotten how to breathe without him.

But there’s nothing I can do.

I’m what he hates most.

There’s nothing I can do.

Except love him and miss him from afar.

I pull my phone from under my pillow and open you tube, searching for the Rock Chamber Boys, something I only let myself do in the hardest moments.

I open an old interview video of his and watch on mute, watching him flick his fringe back off his face as he flirts with the interviewer, winking and grinning, his eyes bright and warm. Everything I’d come to take for granted in the short time we had together.

I wipe the single tear that falls as the video ends. I wish him goodnight, goodbye.

And let him go.

A few days later, Paige is on the porch with a cup of coffee when I join her after a sleep in.

"Hey," I say, taking the coffee from her and taking a sip, making a face when I realize it’s cold.

"You are so lucky," she sighs, ignoring my splutters from the coffee.

"Why do you say that?"

"You have all this," she says, waving her hand around.

I look around, she can't be pointing to the disheveled porch with the obligatory rusted bikes and dusty baby pools in the corner. Wilted plants on wobbly tables in someone's vain attempt to garden, rickety chairs salvaged from the side of the road.