Chapter 5 #2
The inside of the house is different. The layout is the same, of course, but when I was twenty-two, this house felt like the most alive place I’d ever been with staff, guests, and music. Now it’s quieter, although not peaceful-quiet. More like careful-quiet. Like the house is holding its breath.
“I, um… I’m here to visit Tessa.”
Nora’s eyes soften as she gives me a gentle smile. “That is so nice of you. She’ll be so happy to see you.”
“Hopefully,” I laugh, but it’s wobbly. “I should’ve come sooner. It’s been way too long, for sure, but…” I trail off, because what am I supposed to say?
I haven’t found the time to visit in over a decade, but now my life has imploded, my mom died, my boyfriend turned out to be a coward, and I ran away to the middle of nowhere.
I kept telling myself I’d come visit when life settled down as if life had ever once done me that favor.
First, it was grief, then it was money, then work, then my mother, and after enough years, the shame of not coming got so big it started masquerading as logistics.
But I sent cards. And left voicemails for Tessa, Nora said she listens to from time to time.
I called Nora on holidays and sent flowers on their birthdays.
I told myself the dreams with her were the only thing I deserved after neglecting the only real true friend I’ve ever had.
Nora reaches out and squeezes my arm. “You’re here now, and I’m so glad you are.”
We start up the grand staircase, and no matter how much I try to soften my steps, my boots click too loudly on the wood.
“So what brings you to Oregon? Working somewhere close?”
“I’m just… here to see Tessa.” It’s the truth, but it feels like the tiniest sliver of it.
At the top of the stairs, Nora turns and studies me.
Ah, damn.
“Lennon, are you okay?”
My hands slide into the pockets of my skirt, and I dig my fixed thumbnail into the side of my index finger until it stings.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I chirp, plastering on the brightest smile I can muster, but it probably looks deranged.
Nora tilts her head, and I’m sure she’s going to call me out on it, but then she turns and keeps walking down the hallway.
“Tessa’s in her room, we’ve been getting ready for the morning tea,” she says over her shoulder.
“I was going to drink it with her in the sunroom, but you girls can talk in her room if you want more privacy.”
“That sounds nice,” I agree, and when she glances back, I make sure to smile for real this time.
We stop in front of the familiar white door, but instead of reaching for the handle, she turns and grabs my hand, squeezing once.
“We’ve made some great improvements over the last few years, thanks to her psychologist. He’s the best we’ve had yet. I’m a big fan of his work. He’ll be here in about thirty minutes for their daily session.”
“That’s… nice to hear. I’ll make sure I leave before he arrives.”
“You can stay if you want.” She squeezes again, softer. “And if you ever want to talk to someone, I can give you his number?” Before I can think of a response, she lets go of my hand and gives me another one of her gentle, sad smiles. “Just an offer, honey.”
Nora opens the door, and the first thing that hits me is how big the room feels.
It wasn’t this big when we were in our early twenties, or maybe it was, but back then, it was cluttered with Tessa’s mess, consisting of clothes, textbooks, color-coded sticky notes everywhere, her cocoa butter, and nail-polish-scented chaos.
There was a stack of journals on the nightstand, always, because she wrote the way other people breathed.
Now, it’s neat. Too neat.
The bed is perfectly made, the shelves are lined with books, but not stacked in messy little towers how Tessa used to have them.
The journals are gone from the nightstand, replaced with a tidiness that would be foreign to Tessa. Every surface is clean, every pillow is straight. It looks like a room waiting for someone to come back to, and something about that is the saddest thing I’ve seen since the hospital.
Nora steps toward two reading chairs by the big window, which are angled so we can only see the back of them, and I follow on autopilot. Leaves outside are swirling in the wind, a burst of color.
“Tessa, honey,” Nora says softly and reaches toward one of the chairs. “Lennon is here to visit you. She came all the way from Boston to see you. Can you believe that?”
Nora steps back to make room for me, and there she is, my best friend, slumped back in the chair, eyes pointed toward the window but not really seeing.
She looks the same. Same brown hair, just a little longer now. Though she’s thinner and paler, she’s still beautiful, still my Tessa, yet… not.
Not the Tessa who once talked me down from a panic attack in a bathroom stall before a practical exam, both of us sitting on the cold tile floor, her eating a granola bar and telling me I was going to pass because the universe owed us one.
This is not my Tessa, who cried at every wedding scene in every film, regardless of whether she liked the film.
This Tessa is present in all the ways a body can be and entirely absent in the only one that counts.
“Hey.” My smile feels shaky, but I brush the back of her hand with my fingers, where it rests limp against the chair. Her fingernails are bare, but she’s warm, which helps ease my worry. “Hey, girl.”
She doesn’t pull away or turn toward me with the fake glare how she might have when I’d startled her in the past. There’s nothing at all.
She’s nothing like the girl I’ve seen in the dreams I’ve had for the last decade.
I glide my thumb over her knuckles anyway. “I’ve missed you so much.”
When she doesn’t react, not even a twitch, my smile wobbles and dies.
Nora’s hand settles on my shoulder. “Hope is the cruelest kindness we’re given.” Her hand squeezes once before she pulls away. “I’ll tell Simon to bring the tea up to you both.”
“Thank you,” I whisper.
The click of the door behind her echoes through every part of me.
Suddenly, I feel stupid.
So unbelievably, painfully stupid.
“I’ve missed you like crazy, you know? Every.
Day. Since the day you just… disappeared.
” My knees give before my courage does, and I sink onto the chair next to hers.
“I mean, God, I showed up here because of a dream.” My laugh is shaky.
“A dream, Tessa. Who does that? Who crosses the country because their best friend invited them in a nightmare? But… it tracks. This is my life right now.”
I look over at her blank expression and cringe.
“Big of me to complain about my life while you’re… like this.”
What I wouldn’t do to hear her laugh again, even just once.
Tessa had the best laugh. It burst out of her whole body and turned into a snort if she got going.
I miss her dragging me out for midnight milkshakes, flirting with the wrong men like it was a sport, and how she was always filling journals with chaos and poetry.
Then her light started to dim. She slept more and talked less, but still wrote constantly in her journal, but she stopped sharing any of it with me, as if whatever she was putting on those pages was too heavy or private for even our friendship.
Then one morning, I woke up and found her lying exactly like this, eyes open, breathing steady, staring straight through the ceiling as if she were somewhere else entirely, and she never came back.
The school nurse didn’t know what it was, the paramedics didn’t, and neither did the hospital. Every specialist her mother dragged in left with the same answer.
Tessa is physically fine. But mentally…
I remember sitting alone in our dorm room, making tea at two in the morning because I couldn’t sleep, and I remember thinking, I should go be with her.
I should be there for her. And I thought about the tuition my dad worked so hard for, and the part of me that didn’t know how to be useful in a crisis, I couldn’t cook my way through, so I stayed where I was.
I’d told myself I’d visit.
I told myself Tessa would come back.
Twelve years. Twelve years of telling myself that.
“I’m here now,” I whisper, my throat tight as I place my hand over hers again. “Even if you can’t hear me. Even if this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, I know you wanted me here. I know you did, and I’m not leaving yet.”
Even if this is as hopeless as the rest of my life.
A few minutes pass in silence before a small, painful laugh breaks out of me.
“This is so not the future we planned, huh?” I draw in a shaky breath when I think back to the journal filled with plans for our restaurant.
“I didn’t exactly get to finish culinary school either.
A few months after you… after that day, Dad had a heart attack while making Mom French toast. We couldn’t afford tuition without his income, so I dropped out a year short of graduating and now my mom… ”
The words crumble before I can finish them, and because my brain hates me, it latches onto the one thought I’ve been avoiding since I walked into this room.
If the dreams with her were real, then she already knows all this.
Right?
“I’m so tired, Tess. I’m so fucking tired of losing people.”
There’s a soft knock, and before I can wipe the grief off my face, the door opens. It’s the guy from earlier, Simon, apparently, gliding in with a silver tray with two steaming mugs.
He sets the tray on the little side table between our chairs. “Your tea, ladies.”
The smell hits me immediately. Lemon honey, exactly how Tessa loves it.
My eyes sting as I reach out to grab it, enjoying the warmth on my fingertips. “Thank you.”
Simon gives me a polite, zero-personality smile. “If you don’t need anything else, I’ll be back in twenty minutes to collect your mug.” His eyes flick to Tessa’s untouched one, then he chuckles. “And the, uh… full one. Lights are on, nobody’s home, right?”
I stare at him.
Is he serious?
Is he actually serious?