Chapter Nine #3
Her lips parted as she remembered the way it felt to be in Dominic’s arms, so warm and safe.
“You gave me the talk about boys and all, and you know I had my flings, but this … this is so different. I wish you could have met him. I wish you could give me some kind of advice, because …” She huffed out a laugh when she remembered the thing about his golden eyes and looked up to the shady branches of the live oak tree.
“I feel like I’m going insane sometimes when I think about him.
It’s such a mess. I don’t know how to feel.
He’s so hot and seems almost too good to be true.
He’s so patient with me. You know I’ve got one of those faces that tells people to fuck off if I’m not in the mood, but he saw through that.
We’ve flirted, we’ve kissed … but I’m scared to let someone in again …
I’m scared he’ll just leave like Dad did, and it’ll all come crashing down.
I don’t want it to end, but I’m afraid to even start. ”
She swallowed and turned her gaze back to her mother’s name.
“We talked about the big things and the small things, laughed and cried together … But I feel like we never touched those big subjects like love. There are so many things I should have asked you. So many things we should have done. We always talked about going to Europe and a cruise to the Bahamas. I wish we didn’t have to … ”
Her voice trailed off as she became choked with such emotion that fell on her out of the clear blue sky above. “I wish we didn’t wait until you were gone to have everything we wanted.”
It was unfair to her mother that all of these wonderful things had to happen without her.
Erica could just see her mother leaning across the kitchen table, asking question after question about Dominic, the house, the town, and everything she planned to do.
She’d give tips on how to improve the landscaping and add in her own unneeded bits of advice on maintenance.
They were all things Erica already knew, but her mom would tell her anyway.
Erica could see her come up for a weekend visit, and they would have lunch at Lunar Lantern, then browse through Renewed Relics.
All the could-have-beens and should-have-beens mounted higher and higher until they came spilling forward in a wave of regrets that Erica couldn’t dam up anymore.
She pressed her sleeve to her lips and realized she was trembling. Tears pushed out from the corners of her eyes and blurred her vision until she couldn’t see the lettering on the gravestone anymore.
She couldn’t breathe for what seemed like an eternity, but when she took one heaving breath, the rest of her face twisted with anguish.
The last time she cried this hard was at her mother’s bedside as she slipped from this world.
The time before that was when Erica was told with firm but gentle conviction that her father was never coming back.
How many times could a heart break in one lifetime?
Words bubbled up through her sobs, and her shoulders shivered with the effort to catch her breath.
“You never told me how to do any of this. You never told me how to go on without you. You survived after Grandma passed, but you never told me how. How can anyone get through this alone? You were supposed to always be there for me. You promised.”
Erica gripped her knees to steady herself as the hollow in her chest seemed to deepen into a bottomless pit that could never be filled. Not while her mother was gone.
For a second, she thought coming here was a bad idea. What good could have come of it except a sore throat and a broken heart that couldn’t seem to stay mended for long anymore?
It took an immeasurable amount of time before the tears subsided and the lump in her throat cleared. When she seemed to be over the worst of her sobs, Erica lifted her head and wiped her eyes.
When she was a teenager, she thought crying would never do anyone any good.
Like her mother, she stayed strong and laughed off life’s troubles as they came.
As an adult, she found these tears emancipating.
This wasn’t the end of her grief. There would never be an end.
It had been over a year, and the wounds were still fresh, and there would be plenty of moments when she’d remember her mother and cry like this again.
Maybe, with time, she could think of all the good times and not regret what they never did.
Instead, she’d feel blessed for the time that they did have together, for those moments when they were driving in the old Mustang and laughed over nothing until they cried.
For those moments when they played pretend together and danced in the living room to their favorite songs.
One day, Erica would heal.
As the pain abated, she realized something stronger remained.
An urgency, a longing deep at the bottom of the hollow that came to swallow it up.
She thought of Dominic and how much she needed to be with him again.
Some secret whisper inside of her said that Dominic would make it hurt less, that he would make it all better.
As she sniffled back the last of her tears, she tried to laugh it off. What good could Dominic do?