11. Indie
INDIE
JANUARY
Idon’t know how long I stay in Ellie’s room—her bedside clock is gone too—but by the time I finally lift my head, the winter sun has long since set.
And it still hurts, but finally breaking after holding it together for too long felt… well, not good, exactly, but necessary.
“Honey?” Teddy’s voice comes softly from the hallway.
“In here,” I call back, my voice rough and scraped raw from crying.
He appears in the doorway a second later, his black jacket discarded somewhere downstairs, his tie loosened, his sleeves rolled up to his forearms. He squints into the dark until he finds me on the floor, and when he does, his whole face softens.
“Honey,” he murmurs, walking over and crouching in front of me. “I’ve been looking everywhere. What are you doing?”
“I just…” My voice catches, and I clear my throat. “I just needed air. I was getting a little overwhelmed.”
He nods like he understands exactly, and I glance around the room again, my throat tightening all over.
“Your mom packed up everything,” I say quietly.
He flinches.
Just a little, but enough for me to see it.
His face twists with something like pain before he nods.
“Yeah. She… she said it was too painful. That the room held bad memories, so…” he swallows.
The thought of all of Ellie’s treasures in that dark storage unit makes me sick. Her little antique store treasures—her pretty figurines, vintage records, treasured photos. Her life, boxed up, hidden away. Like it never happened.
That’s not entirely fair, I think to myself immediately. I do not get to tell someone how to grieve.
Ellie was not my mother, and it’s clear to me that I will never truly understand Dawn. Just as she will never truly understand me.
I may never be fully accepted by her, no matter how much I hope for it. Not because I’m seeking her approval, but because it would just be easier to have it.
And when I turn toward Teddy, I can’t help but wonder if that is going to become a real problem.
If it came down to it, who would he choose?
His mother or me?
I don’t like the answer my mind offers, so I shove the thought away as hard as I can.
Teddy lowers himself beside me on the floor. He lifts one arm and wraps it around my shoulders, tugging me into his side before burying his face in my hair. I curl into him automatically, fitting myself against his warmth, feeling like I can finally breathe again now that he’s here.
“I’m sorry, Indie,” he says, his voice so soft and sincere. “About Lily.”
“No, Teddy—”
He gently shushes me.
“No, baby. That was uncomfortable. I’m sorry about that downstairs.”
“You mean when she called me huge?” I ask dryly.
He pulls back just enough to look at me, already shaking his head.
“You’re not huge. You’re statuesque. No, regal.” His brow furrows in concentration, head tilted. “Amazonian—close, but not good enough. Willowy? No. Junoesque? No, closer. Majestic—”
My laugh slips out before I can stop it, and he pauses, a smile spreading across his face.
“Why do you know so many words for tall?”
“Because I couldn’t find a good enough one to properly describe how stunning you are, so I bought a thesaurus,” he says with a completely straight face.
He shrugs. “Still haven’t found the right word.
But, I love your height, I adore your mile-long legs, your long limbs, your gorgeous hands and fingers… ”
He lifts my hand and presses a kiss to each finger, one by one.
“You’re stunning. Height and all.”
Hearing that soothes the last little sting Lily’s words left behind, and I realize how much I needed to hear it. To confirm that the scene downstairs is not the reality.
The reality is that I love Teddy, and he loves me.
And that’s all that matters.
…right?
“If you say so,” I sigh, though I’m laughing now when he tickles my side.
After a few quiet minutes, the mood shifts again. Teddy sobers first, his smile fading, something heavier settling over his features.
“I promise, I didn’t know she was coming. I haven’t spoken to her in years, since—”
“High school. She’s your high school sweetheart, after all.” I say, and even to my own ears the words sound bitter. “You’ve just never really talked about her.”
“Because there’s nothing to talk about,” he snorts. “We dated through senior year and broke up before I left for college.”
“Hm,” I hum, twisting Ellie’s headwrap tighter in my hands.
He studies my face in the dark.
“You’re not…” he tilts his head. “Are you jealous?”
“I’m not jealous of her. I just don’t like being taken off guard, and I really don’t like the way your mother was talking about the two of you like it was still some kind of possibility.”
High school sweethearts.
Childhood best friends.
Reunited again.
“Wouldn’t happen. Not in a million years,” Teddy shakes his head.
The words make me feel a bit better.
“I just…” I look down at the cap twisting in my hands. “I’ve told you everything, Teddy. I’ve never told anyone about my parents but you. I’ve told you things I’m still deeply ashamed of. So I guess it feels strange that there’s this whole part of your past I didn’t know about.”
Teddy is quiet for a beat, then sighs.
“I just didn’t think it mattered,” he says. “She was my next-door neighbor and my best friend when we were kids, but that was mostly because there weren’t a lot of options. Our moms were best friends, so she was always at the house.”
“And then you dated in high school.”
“For, like, six months,” he says with a shrug, like it means nothing.
My mouth twists.
“Did you…”
“What?” he asks.
“Did you guys have sex?”
His face screws up immediately. “No. Ugh, God, no.”
Relief moves through me, but I still ask, “Why?”
“It didn’t feel right,” he says simply. “I didn’t want to.”
I study his face; even in the darkness, I can see that it’s honest and open. No hesitation in his answers, no deception.
“Okay,” I say softly.
Teddy lifts my hand again and presses a kiss to my knuckles.
“And any feelings I ever did have for her are a drop in the fucking ocean compared to what I feel for you, honey,” he says. “I love you so much.”
My smile comes easier this time.
“Okay,” I whisper. “I love you too, Teddy.”
And I let it go, reminding myself that Teddy is grieving. I shouldn’t be badgering him with questions about the past now, even if I’m feeling insecure.
We should be focusing on the future.
Ellie would want us to do that.
“I miss her so much,” I whisper, closing my eyes, wishing I could hear her voice.
Teddy’s eyes widen.
“Fuck. Oh, I’m a shit. God, I’m so sorry,” Teddy sighs, pressing kisses to my head. “I’ve been so up my own ass with my own grief, I haven’t even checked with you.”
“No, it’s okay, she was your Nana,” I shake my head, dismissively.
“But she loved you, Indie,” Teddy says, and I hear his breath shudder. I burrow deeper into his arms.
“The way she talked about you… like you were the missing piece of our family. Before I even met you, when she’d bring you up at dinner, I’d get this feeling right here.”
He presses a hand over his heart.
“This warmth I couldn’t figure out until I actually met you. It’s like she carried your warmth around with her.”
My throat clogs again, my nose stinging, but no new tears come.
“I loved her,” I say. Then I correct myself, "Love her. Love doesn’t disappear because someone’s gone; you just have nowhere to put it.”
I look back up at Teddy, and moonlight spills through the window, illuminating his face and giving me a glimpse of the tears in his eyes.
“I just hate how she died,” he says, his voice cracking. “On the floor—”
“She was dead before we got her to the floor,” I tell him, softly, but plainly.
Relief softens his face, his eyes closing as he takes a long, easier breath.
“For how long?” he whispers.
I shrug. “I think a couple of hours. She died in this comfortable bed. Wrapped in her blankets. She died with dignity, Teddy. We should all be so lucky.”
Teddy stares at me for a long moment before his eyes pool with more unshed tears.
"I miss her. I miss her so damn much. I hate thinking about the world without her. Just picturing it hurts. Remembering her that night—how she was, cold and stiff and... not Nana." His voice breaks. "She died right here. I just... I don't know if she was scared."
“I don’t think she was afraid, Teddy bear,” I say, more fiercely than before, my hand cupping his cheek, thumb chasing away his tears. I want him to feel my certainty, to know it in his bones. “She was ready.”
“Yeah?” he asks, his voice small and hopeful.
“I think she wanted to go to your Pop,” I say, nodding a little, my thumb stroking the skin above his beard.
The corner of his mouth quirks. “You really believe that?”
“I choose to believe it,” I say softly. “If… if it were me, eleven years without you would be too much.”
He looks at me for a long moment at that. Then he lets out a breath that sounds almost like a laugh and leans down to kiss me.
“Where you go, I go,” he murmurs against my mouth.
Just that little touch makes my chest stop hurting.
Grief is love with nowhere to put it, and maybe that means I can pour mine into Teddy.
Maybe that is what Ellie would want.
February
Death by a thousand papercuts was an understatement.
Death by a million papercuts is more accurate.
Teddy stays at his parents’ house two to three nights a week now, whenever Dawn has a meltdown or says, in that trembling, helpless voice she has perfected. “Mommy needs her son.”
And Lily just always seems to be there when he is. She has been folded neatly into the family unit, while I feel myself being pushed out.
Or did I ever really belong?
Lily has a crush on my boyfriend.
It’s clear as day in the way she brushes her hand against his bicep and laughs a little too loudly at something he’s said. She’ll try to pull him into a conversation about a childhood game, or a high school event that only they would remember, purposefully excluding me.
Teddy, to his credit, either never remembers what she passionately recounts or just brushes it off with a “oh, yeah, I remember,” and then moves on.