Chapter 53
Lennon
We lie in bed, facing each other but not touching, and talk for hours. I tell him the entire story again, from the night Havi and I went to Dorothy’s right up to this morning when he found the tin.
“I want honesty, Lennon,” he says. “From tonight onwards, that’s what I want.”
“That’s what you deserve,” I promise, “and it’s what I’ll give you from now on. I swear it, Connor. I won’t lie to you again.”
“I want you to show up for yourself. I need you to show up for yourself.”
“I will, Con. I’ll throw everything I have at getting better. I’ll do anything to be the man you deserve. Anything.”
We talk until I feel like I’ve been rubbed raw. Like three or four layers of my skin have been rubbed off. Like I’m the one whose chest has been cracked open.
I tell him everything, even the things that make me seem crazy. I go over them and over them until what really happened and what I wish had happened split into two separate things.
Two different things.
Mostly, though, I tell him about the vast, endless, cavernous hole that has been trying to consume me. The guilt. The regret. The remorse that Havi and I had the worst fight of our lives, and I never got a chance to make it right.
The first time I try to put it into words, it’s a garbled mess. A howl made by an animal that’s wounded. When it happens, Connor reaches across the space between us and takes my hand in his, gently containing me as I let it out.
The second time, he slides his arm under my neck and wraps his other arm around my waist, containing me more.
The third time, he crushes me into an embrace that finally feels big enough, safe enough, to secure me and hold me in place as I let the shattering pain I’ve been holding at bay have its way with me.
I cry and cry until the salt burns and I feel like there’s nothing left of me.
And then I cry some more.
I don’t notice it at first because it’s just a simple question. A random question. A seemingly insignificant question.
“What was his favorite old movie?”
I answer that and hardly notice the next one. Or the next one.
“Was he a night owl or a morning person?”
“What made him laugh?”
“What did his voice sound like?”
“What was his favorite kind of cake?”
“D’you mean actual or ass?” I answer with a wry smile.
It was Havi’s standard answer to that question.
“Actual,” Connor replies with a gentle scoff.
“Black forest, with whipped cream—freshly whipped only. None of that crap that comes out of a tin.”
I don’t notice the shift until it’s happened, and I don’t know if Connor meant to do it—if it was something he tried to do—or if he’s simply curious about Havi.
What I do know is that around four or five in the morning, I realize in a vague, quiet way that I’ve been doing it all wrong.
I’ve held everything that happened at bay so hard that I’ve robbed myself of this: remembering my friend.
Remembering good things and bad things. Small things that didn’t seem to matter, but do.
Remembering Havi hurts, but not remembering him is worse. Not remembering has made me unwell, and it’s dug a hole in my heart and trapped me in a bad place.
The events of the day finally catch up with me and exhaustion weighs me down. My eyelids become heavy, and every attempt to open them after blinking is a little harder than the one before.
“Tired?” says Connor.
“Mm,” I murmur.
He rolls over to turn out the light and then comes back to me, lying close and holding me as tightly as he did the first night he got into my bed with me. “Why don’t you get some sleep, baby?” he whispers. “I’ve got you.”
“But what about the sun? It’ll be up soon. If we stay awake a little longer, we can see it come up.”
“Sleep, Lennon.” He strokes my face gently. “There’ll be other sunrises.”
I hear his voice and his words, and something strange happens. Something warm and good radiates from my chest to the rest of my body. For the first time in a very, very long time, it seems plausible, possible even, that the sun will come up and a new day, a good day, will dawn.