Unbreak My Heart(5)

But that’s one of the things no one teaches you about grief—it can wear you down so much you don’t have the energy to jerk off.



*

When I wake in the middle of the night, my dog is wedged against me, the noises from the pool are gone, and all my memories of Holland are blurry once more.

The Ziploc bag of a half dozen Vicodin sits on my nightstand. I’ll really need to dole them out carefully if I’m going to get through this endless summer.





3





Holland



The day I finished nursing school a year ago, I went to the discount store and picked up a new set of fitted sheets.

Do I know how to party or what?

But the store was having a kickass sale, and the bedding was 75 percent off. I had a small apartment to furnish, and by small, I mean the size of a drawer.

The next day, I started my first job.

The end of grad school wasn’t a big deal to me or to my family. But as I walk along the beach at dawn, listening to the churning surf, I picture Andrew getting ready for the dean’s reception all alone in his empty home. I imagine the echo he must hear as he walks from room to room, how the silence must hurt.

A simple moment, like getting ready for an event, is no longer easy for the guy I once loved madly. He doesn’t have the luxury of shopping for sheets like it’s the only thing that matters.

I’d do nearly anything to make sure sheet shopping, or errand running, was his top priority. My chest squeezes, since I can’t do that. I can’t do anything to take away his pain.

A pelican circles overhead, scanning the unforgiving Pacific Ocean for breakfast. Once he spots his prey, he executes a glorious dive bomb, spearing an unsuspecting fish in his big, purse-like bill.

A twinge of envy pierces my chest unexpectedly, and I stop in my tracks in the sand. I'm jealous of a pelican?

In some weird way, I suppose I am. The pelican knows what it wants and the pelican goes for it. Me? I have all kinds of stuff to sort out, but most of it isn't even my stuff.

Most of it involves waiting.

I’ve never been particularly good at waiting. I’m a doer, but I’ve had to learn that sometimes you have no choice – you have to wait.

For results. For answers. For the next thing to happen, even if you have no clue what the next thing might be.

Maybe even especially when you don’t know.

I desperately want to tell Andrew I may be leaving again soon. I want to ask him what he thinks of my plans. When my first job ended last month and I chose to return to California to care for Ian through his final days, my trip was open-ended. Since then, I’ve been looking for work anywhere and everywhere, including here. But the job I’ve found that suits me best is on another continent. Like a magnet, I’m drawn to the other side of the world.

If it happens, I’ll have to tell Andrew, no matter how hard it’ll be to say.

Right now though, I don’t think he’s ready to hear the details. Not when his eyes light up when I knock on his door. Not when he smiles when I bring him Chinese takeout.

He thinks I don’t know he misses us.

But I know.

And I miss us too, even after three years apart.

I miss us desperately.

That’s why I haven’t told him. Because I’m not ready to say goodbye either.



*

After the waves have done their job clearing my mind, I head to Andrew’s home, bracing myself for today’s act of restraint when I see him. Is it wrong that I thought about kissing him after his brother’s memorial service last month?

Yes, it’s so wrong.

But even so, I wanted to kiss the breath out of my former summer love when I found him alone on a bench, sunglasses on, staring at the sea. I sat with him, quietly.

I took his hand in mine, and our fingers linked together.

He met my gaze, his brown eyes brimming with sadness.

Sadness came over me too, but so did a potent desire to kiss him hard, to take on all his pain. I could do that for him. I’m strong, and I’m tough, and I could bear his burdens.

I want to take everything on for him – it’s my instinct, it’s my gut.

But that’d be the riskiest thing I could do.





4





Andrew



I have a front-row view of the tossing of caps and hugging of professors right here on Instagram. Look at all those smiling faces, happily celebrating and hashtagging the hell out of it.

I crush the can of Diet Coke in my hand and chuck it in the recycling bin as I scroll through the social media feeds of the law school graduation I’m not attending.

No one’s making me go.

No one really can.

Ian’s not here to give me that sharp, brotherly stare. “C’mon. Get a tie and get your ass to the dean’s reception now. I told you—the luncheon has the best shrimp cocktail in the free world.”

But hey, that’s what he’d say, so I head upstairs and find my lawyer costume, showing the tie options to Sandy. “Green with stripes or red?”

She doesn’t bark from her post on the tiled floor.

“Neither? Okay, I get it. Red is too much of a power-douche statement. That’s what you’re saying, right? Don’t be a power-douche.”