Chapter 14 Remington
Remington
Lainey’s journal is like diving into her brain, seeing little glimpses of who she was, and how she felt throughout the year.
She mostly put down song lyrics, book quotes from things she was reading, or random stories.
But every once in a while she would write about her day or thoughts she needed to get out.
Those are the pieces that really get to me.
Sometimes the things she said made me laugh at her surprisingly sarcastic humor.
Other times my heart ached when I could feel her anxieties seeping into each word.
I wanted to reach into the pages and pull those worries away.
It was hard for me to sit here and rewrite all her doubts and insecurities, but it would be wrong to not give her what I promised.
I told Lainey I would copy what she wrote and give it back to her.
Feeling the rain soak my clothes when I ran today was just what I needed. These past few weeks have been a mix of emotions and overwhelming anxiety attacks that I don’t feel like looking at too closely. I’d rather let the water today sweep them away.
Raindrops on my skin . . . the only kind of water I love, or brings me some sort of comfort, well, bedsides a soak in a deep claw-foot tub of course.
I am also going to add my own improvements to her pages and hope she doesn’t kill me for it. With every transfer from the old journal, I add to the page, filling the blank space with my own drawings . . . of flowers.
Every single kind I can think of from memory, and when I run out of those I Google more images and work from there.
I told Lainey I would find a way to give her all of the flowers, and this is a great way to help accomplish just that.
Each one I draw, I add the name and a little description at the bottom of the page.
I want her to be able to name them and understand why I chose each one for that particular page or matched it with what memory she wrote.
I knew as soon as Lainey told me about her flower situation through our texting that I was going to not only fill her apartment with flowers but also figure out a way to give her something more permanent.
Not many people know that I love to draw.
It’s not something I intended to keep a close secret necessarily, but it definitely isn’t a talent that I openly like to broadcast. Cora had lots of nasty little quips about me “doodling” and after that, I kept to myself when I pulled out my artistic side.
When someone takes something that is so personal, so woven into who you are, which all forms of art seem to be, it’s impossible to disconnect yourself from a partner’s dismissive and demeaning attitude toward it, even years later.
Protecting myself from prying eyes and any kind of further persecution has just been easier than opening myself up again.
Normally I draw at home on my back deck or in my art space in my office to decompress.
So me sitting here at the fire station drawing flowers of all things has caught the attention of my friends.
Eli, of course, knows that I draw. More than half of my tattoos are based on the concepts I sketched, and my friend Keller Shore, in Norfolk who is part owner of a shop there and an amazing artist, inked them all for me.
“Hey, Rem, what are you doing?” Adrian Garcia asks me, as he sets down a huge pan of his mom’s famous enchiladas.
We all love it when it’s his night to cook because his mom passed on her chef genes to him, and he spoils us.
My mouth starts to water, and I close up the journal as the rest of the crew come to the table, drawn in by the aroma and the rumbles of impatient bellies.
“Oh, uh, I am just working on a project. Lainey needed help with an old journal, and I am transferring what she wrote into this new one,” I say quickly, rubbing my neck, hoping he doesn’t press, but of course he does.
“Why do you need to redo what she already wrote down?” Adrian asks.
All eight of us that are on shift, including Eli, have settled into the table and are grabbing plates, eyes on me, obviously ready for a story.
Most of them met Lainey, and they all are invested.
I look to Eli, and he gives me a nod, confirming that it’s a safe space to share this hidden part of myself with the guys.
Blowing out a deep lungful of air, I relent.
“Lainey has this tradition where she gets a journal on her birthday every year and writes things down that are important to her. Her asshole ex gave her this hideous one.” I hold up the old journal, watch the table full of grown men visibly flinch away from it, and laugh.
“Yeah, it’s awful. So, anyway, the night of the fire at her apartment?
She was burning a bunch of shit from him and their relationship, like a cleanse of her life from him, which would include this journal.
The problem is that it was more important to her than just a picture or some dumb shirt.
I could tell she didn’t really want to burn what was in the journal, just the actual journal. ”
Nods go around the table along with bites of food. Darius Jacobs says, “So you took it for her, so she didn’t have to burn it but doesn’t have to look at the nightmare?”
“Exactly.” I add, “I didn’t want that idiot to take away something that important to her.”
“But what were you drawing?” Adrian asks. “Did she draw things in there, too?”
I glance at him, clearing my throat. “No, I uh, I am adding to it.”
Eli grins and claps his hands. “Our boy is finally using his hidden talent to lock down his dream girl, making Daddy proud.” He winks at me, leaning into his nickname and making me groan.
A chorus of questions rumble across the table, and I hold up my hands. “Yes, I can draw. I don’t talk about it because it has always been just something I do for myself. But I am trying to get this done for Lainey and don’t want it to take a year, so I’m working on it here in our down time.”
“So what are you drawing?” Chief asks from the doorway. We collectively turn to look at him, not realizing that he was late to dinner.
There was no way around any of this now that the cat was out of the bag. Nobody was making fun of me for being able to draw and all had genuine curiosity, but how were they going to react once I told them I was drawing flowers?
Running my hands nervously though my already tousled hair I say, “Flowers.”
“Why flowers?” Eli asks, already knowing the answer.
Rolling my eyes at him, I say, “Because Lainey deserves as many as I can give her.”
Adrian, Jacobs, Eli and the rest of the table all have shit-eating grins, and Chief says smoothly, “Yes, she sure does. That girl is special, Rem.”
“I know she is, sir.” The guys all nod, and look at me, knowing that me taking a chance on someone is not something I would do lightly. If I am making a grand, time-consuming gesture, one that also exposed a hidden part of myself to all of them, she must be really important to me.
“So, can we see them?” Adrian asks.
“No,” I snarl at him. “Nobody. Nobody sees Lainey’s journal but me.
She trusted me with it, I’m not about to sit here and pass it around like it’s show-and-tell.
” Adrian’s face pales as he realizes what he asked for, and I feel bad for snapping at him.
That is definitely out of character for me, but Lainey makes me feel fiercely protective. I look at Adrian and say, “Sorry, man.”
“No, no I should have clarified, I don’t want to see her journal, Rem! That is a major invasion of privacy. I was asking if we could see some of your drawings?” He glances around the table, and the guys chirp in with agreement and excitement.
I rub my jaw and say, “Well you actually see some of them all the time.” Sticking out my arm, I show them my sleeve of tattoos on my left arm, pointing to the ones I sketched out for Keller.
The details of the American flag wrapping my forearm with a Celtic cross on the inner side, the mountain scene with the eagle flying across the top of my shoulder, and few other details of the ink on my skin that have become as much a part of me as my eye color, height, or hair.
“Damn, Rem!” Ryan Banks, one of our rookies says, “I knew you said you could draw, but this is next-level talent. Can you draw up something for me?” His eyes shine with excitement.
“I don’t know, Banks, I have only ever drawn for myself.
” The idea that someone else thinks my drawings are good enough to want me customizing something for them is kind of baffling.
I mean, Keller told me before that he could take me on as an apprentice and have me tattooing like a pro in no time, but I always thought he was messing around.
The ideas I gave him he had improved on, and I made sure that everyone knew that when I explained them.
“Please think about it.” Banks smiles at me and goes back to his dinner as conversation turns to other things. I look over to Eli, and that fucker just gives me another confident wink.
Later that night, I’m working on the journal in the common area of the fire station.
There are lounge chairs, couches, and a big TV.
The guys are all occupying themselves doing different things—napping, reading, and a few are playing cards at the dining table in the kitchen.
I grin when I flip to a page from mid-spring of last year, her perfect pie day . . .
I did it! I did it!! I did IT! Finally after 109 tries I did it, I made the perfect apple pie.
I didn’t give up. I wanted to. I wanted to so many times.
I cried, ruined so many, burned so many—burned MYSELF (see the scar on the back of my wrist for proof) but I didn’t give up.
I never would have been allowed to make so many messes or mistakes in my parent’s kitchen—in my father’s home.
This pie is for me, my heart, my healing.
Nothing has tasted better.
I am not going to make this pie for anyone else until I know they will really appreciate it as much as I do, it is too important. This is my perfect pie.
I read that entry over and over, swelling with pride and something else I’m not ready to name. She tried so hard, for so long to make that pie. Her excitement was palpable through the page, and then the last lines hit me right in my heart.
She made me her perfect pie. She felt that I was worthy?
I did appreciate it, but more importantly—I appreciate her. Lainey is so special, exactly like Chief said. I want to work every day to be included in all of her important moments.
I write down her journal entry.
Then I fill the entire page with an explosion of apple blossoms.