Say the Word(21)

There was no food in the kitchen, with the exception of the Doritos I’d just purchased — and I obviously wasn’t about to share those babies with anyone, best friend or otherwise — and a few of those disgusting frozen microwavable “healthy” dinner alternatives that contained 300 calories worth of dried out veggies and cardboard-flavored pasta. Fae had convinced me to stock my freezer with them last January after informing me that we’d both be going on a post-holiday health kick. She’d only lasted about a week and a half — longer than the five hours I lasted — and I’m pretty sure the only time I’d touched the damn things since was when I threw half of them in the garbage to make room for my cartons of Ben and Jerry’s.

Thankfully, I had wine.

I’d have to clean up, now that Fae was coming over. And that meant no time for a long soak in my antique claw-footed tub. Slipping off my Louboutins, I flexed the cramped arches of my feet and reached up to remove the clip Fae had wound artfully into my hair earlier that afternoon. I laced my fingers through the strands and shook them loose, the silken locks falling heavily around my shoulders and down my back. For years Fae had been trying me to get me to cut it into one of the trendier pixies or even a bob, but I’d kept it long since I was a teenager.

Never cut it. It’s the first thing I noticed about you, Sebastian had once told me as we lay together on the sun-dappled grass at our spot beneath the oak tree on the edge of his property. That first day in Latin, you walked in like you wished you were invisible. You kept your head down – you thought if you didn’t make eye contact, no one would even notice you were there. But your hair was so bright, it shined like this crazy blonde beacon. Every guy in the class was watching. You were so beautiful, I couldn’t keep my eyes off you.

I closed my eyes at the memory. Sometimes I wished I could have my mind scrubbed clean of him — every touch, every trace permanently stripped from my thoughts, as though he’d never existed. But the days I wished for that were few and far between. Because, despite the pain and the bitterness that laced the edges of my time with Sebastian, for the most part I choose to live in the light.

I know a lot of people don’t. Most people, in fact. They gravitate toward the shadows – the grief, the loss, the heartbreak. They dwell in it, reveling in their personal darkness. Focusing on the things they can never get back — the broken promises, the shattered dreams — and living mired in demons of the past.

Not me, though.

Not when, in the twenty-five years I’d spent on this planet, I’d known more love than most know in a lifetime. Not when I’d felt it – that moment when a person you need more than air or water or sustenance steps into your orbit and everything subtly shifts, like a camera finally sliding into focus. That person, who used to mean less than nothing, enters your life and rearranges your entire atmosphere around them, as if every atom and cell that makes you you isn’t your property anymore. Suddenly, every part of you becomes theirs – your particles dissembled and rearranged to align perfectly with someone who you don’t even know or understand yet. You cease to exist as you once were, and that person who meant nothing is suddenly, overwhelmingly, everything.

I’d known it well, that all-consuming sense that every fiber in your being was crafted and created specifically for another human being. And so, even after that feeling – that ridiculous, head-over-heels, transient, life-shattering feeling – was eventually lost to me, I couldn’t step fully into the shadows. I couldn’t be broken or even too sad about the things I’d lost.

Because, for a brief span of time, I’d been complete. I’d been his, and he’d been mine, and nothing and everything made sense all at the same time. And once you’ve felt that joy of breathing, of being, entirely for someone else, you can’t ever really go back.

So I live in the light.

I dwell in the good memories. Revel in their happy, water-colored hues and fuzzy edges. I skim over the darkness – not out of denial or avoidance, but because in the grand scheme of things, isn’t it the light that matters more? I knew, at the end of the day, that even if I were living in some Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind universe where erasing someone from your mind was possible, I’d keep Sebastian where he belonged — etched into both my heart and my memories.





***


By the time the buzzer sounded, signaling Fae’s arrival, my messy apartment was somewhat in order and I was several glasses into a bottle of Merlot. My hair was still damp from my bath and I hadn’t bothered with makeup. The only place I was going tonight was to bed, preferably within the next two hours.

I hopped up from my couch — a sleek low-slung black IKEA unit I’d gotten for cheap from a furniture vendor at the flea market on 39th last fall — and buzzed Fae in. Her knuckles had barely grazed the door in a knock when I slid off the security chain and flipped the deadbolt.

“FAE! What’s goin’ on, guuuuurl?” I yelled, throwing open the door with enough force to send wine sloshing over the edge of the glass clutched in my free hand. Fae made no move to enter, staring at me from the threshold with a mix of amusement and concern.

“And how much wine have we consumed this evening?” she asked, one dark eyebrow quirked up.

“Don’t worry, there’s plenty left for you,” I said, grabbing her arm and hauling her inside with a giggle.