I wake up in Jax’s bedroom again.
That guilt creeps in again.
Jesus. What’s happening?
We went from trying to avoid one another to hating each other to sleeping in the same bed. He saw me cry, heard me tell him why I didn’t want to sleep in my bedroom, and instead of giving me hell like I’d thought he would, he helped me.
But it’s a bad idea.
We can’t continue this.
Can’t get any closer.
What Jax said to me repeats in my head as I lie in his bed, looking around his room. I inhale the scent of his sheets—a signature smell of his lingering cologne, my perfume, and the scent of whiskey.
How would people react if they found out where I was right now?
I have to get out of here.
I slowly slide off the bed, and he groans, sleepily grabbing for me.
I hold my breath, waiting to see if he wakes up, but his eyes don’t open.
Then, I find my keys and leave.
“You’re scared to read the letter.”
I stare at Cindy, my therapist, sitting across from me, and chew on my inner lip while struggling with the best response.
When my mother first suggested therapy, I told her she was crazy. I couldn’t talk about my loss with my family, so there was no way I could do it with a stranger. I also thought people doubted my pain, that they didn’t think it was real or that it was deserved.
When you think of a grieving woman, you think gray hair and wrinkles, someone with grandchildren, a woman who spent decades with a man and then lost him.
That isn’t me.
I’m a twenty-six-year-old woman.
People don’t see my loss as painful.
Then, there’s that oh, she’ll easily find another love mentality.
Don’t believe me?
Watch romance movies.
Read romance novels.
There’s always that second love after your first.
But when you’re eighty and grieving, people’s automatic thought is, You’ll live alone for the rest of your years because too much time has passed to find someone else. Your heart is too old for you to hand over to another.
Christopher and I weren’t married, hadn’t spent decades together, but that doesn’t mean the hurt didn’t shatter as hard. Losing someone young might be harder because it’s the only love you’ve ever known. You haven’t experienced the love of children, of grandchildren, of seeing friends and family grow old. I was only learning how to love and share a life with someone. We were merging into the real world together, leaning on each other as we matured, and then in the blink of an eye, it was all gone.
When you’re old and in love, you know your time will eventually run out.
When you’re naive, young, and in love, you believe you have all the time in the world.
What idiots.
It was a reality check I hadn’t been prepared for.
I loved Christopher, and maybe I wasn’t as experienced in love, but that didn’t make the hurt any less devastating. Just like who and how we love, grief is always different for everyone.
“I am,” I croak out, playing with my hands in my lap. “Is that wrong of me … to not want to open it?”
“If you’re not ready, then don’t.” Cindy crosses her legs in her black pencil skirt, and her tone is soothing. “Maybe you should write him your own letter. Write what you’d say to him if you were to have one last conversation. What do you think you’d ask him?”
“I’d …” I try—and fail—to keep my voice strong and steady. “I’d ask him why he didn’t come to me.” I peer up at Cindy, my eyes filled with unshed tears. “If he had come to me, I could’ve helped him. I could’ve saved him.” I use the backs of my palms to wipe my eyes. “Then, I’d ask myself how I could’ve been so blind.”
Depression is an easy disease to hide. One that can be masked with as little as a forced smile and a simple lie. To know Christopher was silently struggling kills me the most.
“Amelia,” Cindy says, handing me a box of tissues, “his death wasn’t your fault.”
I nod, snag a tissue from the box, and tightly grip it. People tell me that all the time, but sometimes, guilt is harder to beat than reality. Than the truth.
“You and Chris, you grew up differently, right?” Cindy asks.
I nod, my shoulders sagging.
“You came from a loving home with caring parents. Chris grew up in an abusive one,” Cindy continues. “You said he never discussed his childhood, but most children who grow up in dysfunctional homes have trauma—most times, suppressed trauma. If they don’t get help for it, it gets worse over time and follows them into adulthood. And you and your friends were happy most of the time. Sometimes, it can become difficult for sad people to relay their feelings to those they think might not understand their pain—like you couldn’t relate and would see him differently. And at times, it can be even harder for them to be around happy people they see as stable. He could’ve felt as if he didn’t belong.”
He didn’t belong?
Sadness clutches at my heart as if it were in Christopher’s fist, and my throat throbs, making my words come out scratchy. “He belonged with me,” I cry out. “My family and our friends never made him feel as if he were the odd one out. He was one of us.” I stab my finger into my chest as my voice shakes. “Jax’s parents took him in as their own. He was my family. My partner. My parents, they loved him. I loved him.”
Heartbreak claws through me, and my shoulders move as tears—tears I wanted to hide—slide down my cheeks.
I want to heal from this, to stop blaming myself, to feel whole again, but it’s so damn hard.
I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping to block out more tears but they break through. I bow my head and sob. Cindy silently sits there, allowing me the space to break down in peace. To absorb her words, the possible reasons for Christopher’s death, and I feel as if my heart, my body, everything that is me is crumbling.
I jump when Cindy reaches forward to clasp her hand over mine.
“I know you did. But maybe Christopher couldn’t grasp that, and that was not your fault. He was sick.”
Or maybe I was too blind, too selfish, to see the pain in his eyes.
Did my happiness break Christopher’s?
And just as Christopher did, I’m hiding my own pain from the world—from my family and friends. I’m suffering in silence, and Jax is suffering too.
We understand each other.
But just like Christopher buried his sadness, I need to bury any thoughts of Jax and me.