I started to stand and Aaron grabbed my arm. “You’re talking to someone about everything. Is it helping?”
“I’m over it,” I said. “I can’t stand it. I can’t change the past.”
“Do you talk about it with Amelia?”
“What the hell… why would…”
“Did you tell her about Delaney?” Aaron asked. “Or Delilah?”
“Hey, you’re drunk,” I said, swallowing hard. “This is where you need to just crash. It’s done.”
I shook Aaron away and he crashed down to the couch.
I walked up the basement steps and went into the kitchen. I got a glass of water and three ibuprofen ready in advance of the morning hangover..
When I turned, Rae stood in the kitchen.
She had black lines down her cheeks from crying. She tossed a pack of cigarettes and a lighter on the counter.
“Haven’t smoked since I found out I was pregnant,” she said. “Now look at me.”
“One smoke won’t hurt you,” I said.
“You would say that.”
“Want me to lie to you?”
“Where is he now?”
“Throwing up downstairs,” I said. I waved my hands to mimic Aaron’s motions.
Rae laughed. She wiped the corners of her eyes. “I look like hell.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“You know, fuck you, Josh,” she said.
“I’m sure whatever happened here tonight is my fault, right?”
“He wouldn’t tell me where he was earlier,” she said. “I know he met up with you. But before that. Something… something feels off.”
I thought about the ring.
“Rae,” I said. I walked to the island in the kitchen and put the water and the medicine down. “Do you really think he’d cheat on you?”
“Happened to me before.”
“Aaron is too desperate to cheat.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“I know,” I said. “But honestly, he wouldn’t do that. His father did that to his mother. Ruined a really good family. There is no way in hell he would do that to you. He loves you. Why? I don’t know.”
Rae put up her middle finger.
“I’m serious,” I said. “And if he was doing anything stupid, I’d know. And I’d handle it with him.”
“I held Toby over his head,” Rae admitted. “I said some stuff… I sounded like my mother. That got me more pissed off. And then he got pissed off.”
“So, you both are pissed at each other because of your pasts,” I said. “Want to know the best part of the past?”
“What?” she asked.
“It’s fucking over. So, tell him that, Rae. You two… you two remind me why I hate relationships. Why I like the one night together and then the next morning everyone moves on. You two need to talk to each other. You have a kid. I know how fast everything went. I warned Aaron. I warned you. I was the asshole for it. But you two… all you saw were rainbows and stars.”
“It’s not easy for me either,” Rae said. “When he and I…” She looked away and laughed. “I’m going to talk to Josh about relationships.”
“Yeah, you’d better not,” I said. “I might tell the truth and you’d really hate that.”
“Go home,” she said. She reached for the water and the pills. “I’ll take care of him.”
“You don’t need help with Toby or anything?”
“No.”
“I can carry Aaron upstairs if you want.”
“Just leave, Josh,” Rae said. “Just. Leave.”
She moved from the kitchen.
I wasted no time in leaving.
And I didn’t go home.
I went to Amelia’s.
I sat in the parking lot.
I thought about what to do.
And I figured out why Rae was so pissed at me.
Because I was a liar.
The past was gone, sure.
But it didn’t leave.
And there was a big difference.
And somewhere, caught in the middle of that was a feeling that was like love… the feeling I had for Amelia.
I sat up in the corner of my bed where Amelia had been sipping coffee and staring at me. Only I wasn’t reliving a good memory. I was chasing away something that resembled a nightmare. If I really wanted to get rid of the nightmare for the rest of the night, then hard liquor was the cure.
I skipped that and went for a notebook.
While the rest of my apartment was calm and quiet, my mind and my hand worked furiously. A new idea and concept had been working itself out for a little while and it was time to just go with it. I realized it had been over a month since I last took a picture with my camera. In some way I was distracted from the world around me. That distraction was Amelia. She had nudged the world out of the way and taken up all my attention. I wasn’t complaining. I wasn’t trying to change it.
My new concept came down to words.
Just like the way I would hide artwork within pictures, I decided to try something out where I’d hide words and stories within artwork. It was a very rough idea and the sketches I worked on looked very much like blobs instead of actual drawings, but that’s how it went.
Tucked away in the corner of my apartment, working until the pale light of the lamp on my nightstand was traded for the sunrise.
Two things went through my mind when I realized it was morning.
Aaron.
My best friend.
What he and Rae had was complicated and hard to navigate. He had done the one thing he never thought he could do. He bought an engagement ring. Yet he didn't propose and Rae thought he was cheating. A giant mess because they couldn’t be honest with each other.
And that took me to Amelia as the second thing running through my head.
Because it was the same with her.
We were both just floating around, bumping into each other. That part I didn’t mind. The smell of her hair, the taste of her skin, the way her smile seemed to be so casual, yet it was like a cosmic force. But between us there were so many words and stories left untold. Pieces of our past never told while the entire future hung in the balance.
I walked to
