Chapter 48
Lennon
Silly, secret smiles morph into laughter.
Loud, guttural bursts of joy bleed into each other, again and again, mingling into a soundtrack that’s accompanied by dancing blue-green irises, galaxies of freckles, and the dip of the sweetest dimple I’ve ever seen.
Days blur into each other and turn into weeks.
Halloween decorations go up and come down, and are replaced with Thanksgiving décor, and then Christmas wreaths.
In the daytime, when it’s light and I’m with Connor or thinking about him, everything is great. It’s wonderful. It’s perfect. Life is so good that the other day, Blake glared at me with disgust and sneered, “You look happier.”
It took everything I had not to reply, “Thanks, I’m banging the dude I’ve been stalking, and I’m pretty sure I’m in love with him.”
It took me by surprise. Not the realization that I’m in love with Connor.
That notion has been lurking beneath the surface for so long that hearing myself think it was validating more than anything else.
What surprised me was hearing myself thinking of Connor as “the dude I’ve been stalking.
” As weeks have turned into months, the reason I inserted myself into Connor’s life has become distant, so much so that it’s harder and harder to believe that it happened at all.
In the daytime, that part of my life hardly exists anymore.
In the daytime, all that exists is Connor and me.
All that exists is rushing home after work and finding him in the apartment, waiting for me.
All that exists is the sound of his voice and the things he says to me.
His smile in the morning. His hand in mine on the sofa at night.
The way sunlight hits the side of his face and bounces off it. The way our bodies arch when they join.
It’s only late, late at night, in the early hours, the haunting hours, when dreams are stripped away and layer upon layer of clarity edges its way to the surface. When Connor is deep asleep, the thing that dug its claws into me all those months ago digs them in deeper and twists them.
In the echoing silence of the dark hours, a small vintage tin whispers my name.
Some nights it gets so loud that my ears buzz, and I tiptoe to my closet and open the drawer to beg it to be quiet.
Sometimes, not all the time, I pick the tin up and hold it in my hands.
It’s icy to touch. Cold and lifeless. A tiny casket containing the ashes of my previous life.
Some nights I become frantic about it. Sleep deprivation does a number on me.
Things that happened, and things that didn’t, become jumbled.
My anxiety turns to liquid, a thick acidic concoction, injected directly into my eyeballs.
On those nights, the bad ones, I do crazy things.
I wake in a sweat and my heart pounds out of control.
I reach for Connor to make sure he’s real and put my head on his chest to check that his heart is still beating.
Sometimes, I get up and throw the tin in the trash can in the kitchen, convinced it will buy me some peace, only to remain awake, quaking in bed, until I retrieve it, wipe it down, and put it back in my drawer.
Last week, the tin was so loud that I got up during the night and left the apartment in my socks, fully intending to throw it into one of the big industrial bins along the side of our building.
I got there and couldn’t do it. I wanted to, believe me, I wanted to, but when I got there, my arm wouldn’t move.
I put the tin in the trunk of my car instead and tried to go back to sleep. I couldn’t. I tossed and turned for hours, and eventually, I got up, fetched the fucking tin, and put it back in my drawer.
The truth comes in and out of focus on nights like that. In the nighttime, I start thinking crazy things. I think about telling Connor that I knew him before we met.
On the bad nights, I rail desperately against reality.
I ache to tell Connor everything. To be as honest with him as he is with me.
I want to be honest with him. I do. I want him to know me.
All of me. I want to be something good in his life, not the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.
In the dark, I lie as still as I can and play out scenario after scenario, trying to convince myself that he’ll understand.
That he’ll forgive me. That he’ll keep me in his life.
No matter the night, good or bad, morning is always the same. Connor opens his eyes, and everything else ceases to exist. Goodness radiates out of him, and the acid eating me up is defused.
Every day is the same, no matter the night that came before it.
When it’s light, and I see Connor’s face, one thing exists brighter, clearer, and louder than anything else.
Every day, as the sun rises in his eyes, the darkness in me is expunged.
Every dawn, he blinks, and a singular conviction rises and takes hold of me.
I’d rather torch my old life, myself, and everything that came before Connor than lose him.