Fisher's Light(55)

She laughs, stepping further into the room, and grabs the rag from my hand, shaking it out and holding it up in front of her.

“Right, so you just decided on a whim to use one of Fisher’s old tshirts to clean the toilets. A t-shirt I know damn well you were still wearing to bed up until a week ago,” she muses.

Reaching up, I snatch the shirt out of her hands angrily and go back to work. Dammit, I really loved this shirt, too. It was one of Fisher’s from boot camp, grey with the word Marines written across the front in black. The letters were so faded after years of washing that you could barely read them and the material was so soft I was afraid one more trip through the spin cycle would make it fall to pieces, but I still loved it. It hung down to middle of my thighs and made the best nightshirt. It also made it easier to think about Fisher and dream about Fisher and that had to stop.

I hear a retching sound followed by a little cough, and I turn around to see Ellie turned partially away from me with her hand over her mouth.

“Are you okay?” I ask, getting up from the floor and stepping to her side.

She holds up her free hand and shoos me away.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. That shirt just really smells right now. Like toilet water and….uuugghhh, toilet water. I shook that thing out and now the smell is everywhere.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about. I can’t smell anything but the bleach I was using. She rushes out of the bathroom and into the hall, taking a few deep breaths once she’s out there.

“You know, you’ve been acting kind of weird yourself lately. What the hell is going on with you?” I ask suspiciously as she bends over and puts her hands on her knees while she breathes.

I feel a little guilty that we haven’t had time to talk recently. I’ve been busy with the inn and Stanford and trying to avoid Fisher and she’s been busy with… What the hell HAS she been busy with? I know she’s been here working; the clean rooms and fresh food constantly coming out of the kitchen is proof of that, but what else has she been doing that this is the first time I’ve seen her in a week? Ellie and I see each other every day, even when we’re both busy.

She finally stands back up and shakes her head at me. “Nope, we’re not talking about me. There is nothing going on with me worth talking about when there is PLENTY going on with you. Lucy, your ex-husband and the love of your life has been back on the island for a little over three weeks and I can’t help but notice that you’ve been a lot more attentive to Stanford since that happened. You’ve been going out of your way to show everyone that the two of you are perfectly happy together, but I know you. I know this must be hard on you, seeing him again after all this time. You don’t have to put up a front for me. You know you can tell me anything.”

Leaning my back against the wall in the hallway, I close my eyes and let my head thump against the wall.

“This sucks. This really, really sucks,” I whisper.

I hear her feet shuffle and she moves to stand next to me, her arm pressing against mine as we both lean into the wall.

“I don’t know what is going on with me. I said good-bye to him in my mind and my heart. I let my anger take over where the love used to be and I’ve been fine. I’ve learned how to live without him. Forget three weeks, three MINUTES with him and suddenly I’m questioning everything,” I tell her as I lean my head to the side and rest it on her shoulder.

“Do you know what he did last week?” I ask, pulling the journal pages out of my back pocket that I’ve read so many times the papers are almost starting to fall apart. I hand them to Ellie and she unfolds them and starts to scan the pages.

“Those are some pages out of a journal he kept in high school. It was from the year I moved here and we first met and then when I tutored him in Chemistry. Everything he felt, everything in his heart, was poured out on those pages and it killed me, Ellie. The way he saw me and the way he opened up to me like he’d never done with anyone else before. I remembered every moment of that time with him and it hurt so much.”

I pause and squeeze my eyes closed even tighter, ashamed of the hundreds of times I’ve read those pages in the last week, alone in bed at night, after Stanford has kissed me good-bye and we’ve made plans for the following day.

“Wow,” Ellie says softly as she gets to the last page and hands them back to me.

“I know,” I tell her with a sigh as I refold them and shove them back into my back pocket.