I still can’t quite piece together how I went from staring myself down in the bathroom to tangled up with Adrian in the hard queen-size bed.
The chain of events is clear enough. It’s not that I don’t remember anything. It’s just hard to comprehend how it happened. How Adrian wasn’t put off by my mini breakdown and in fact had dragged me to bed.
“Seeing you like this doesn’t turn me on or anything, but I kind of want to take you into the other room. Like now.”
“Why’s that?”
“So we can fuck until you understand how much I want you to stay alive.”
Nothing about it felt like a pity fuck. Or like he just wanted to have sex so I’d forget about my depressing crap and stop being such a downer. I don’t know that I’ve ever been in bed with someone who seemed that eager to be there with me.
He’s dozing on my shoulder now. Some of his long hair has tumbled down, and it’s cool against my skin. His breath is soft, warm, and steady.
As relaxed as he is, I can’t help noticing that the arm he’s got draped over me isn’t exactly a wet noodle. There’s some strength there. Some tension. Like he’s holding on.
I press my lips to his forehead. I’m not going anywhere, Adrian.
Except that isn’t entirely true. I’m in no rush to get out of this bed, and I’m certainly in no hurry for us to go back to living our lives in separate cities. I hope we’ll stay in contact, of course, but this is a finite thing. The sex is fun, but I can’t imagine he’s really onboard with saddling himself with someone who’s just starting to scrape himself up off rock bottom. The novelty of fucking at every opportunity wears thin real quick when you’re dating a loser.
So I’m in no rush to leave, but I also don’t have any illusions that this thing has legs. He’ll stay with me for a few days while I get my shit together, and we’ll probably have some spectacular goodbye sex right before he leaves, and that’ll be it.
But you’re here tonight. Thank God, you’re here tonight.
He stirs a little, and his arm loosens. “Shit, did I fall asleep?”
“Probably.” I trail my fingers up and down his other arm. “It’s okay.”
He rubs his face as he lifts himself up onto his elbow. “How long was I out?”
“Eh.” I shrug. “A few minutes, maybe?”
“Damn. Sorry about that.”
“Don’t worry about it. I was comfortable, and you seemed to be too.” With a grin, I add, “Plus it just means I wore you out. Mission accomplished.”
Adrian laughs. He cranes his neck a little to kiss me. “I might get a second wind, though. So, you know—be ready to wear me out again.”
“I’m pretty sure I can do that.”
We both laugh. He rests in his hand in the middle of my chest, and under the covers, his foot slides over my shin. With some guys in the past, this kind of thing has felt clingy, but it doesn’t with him. It’s actually really nice. I like being next to someone who wants to touch me when we’re not actually fooling around.
It’s mutual, too. In fact, it’s hard to keep my hands off him. He doesn’t seem to mind either, though. Whenever I brush his hair back, he presses against my hand like a cat. In bed, when I’ve got my arm around him, he cuddles closer. I could really get used to this, and I probably will even though I know I shouldn’t.
I run the backs of my fingers along the smooth edge of his jaw. “I’m, uh, sorry about earlier. In the bathroom.”
“Sorry?” He cocks his head. “Why?”
“I…guess I was…” Well shit. Now I feel like an idiot.
Adrian slides a hand up onto my shoulder and rests it there. “With everything that’s happened recently, I’m not surprised. To be honest, I’m amazed that anyone could get that low and still pull themselves back up.”
Heat rushes into my cheeks. “Let’s not put the cart before the horse here. I haven’t pulled myself up yet.”
“Compared to when I found you on the street? Or when you almost took the pills?”
I swallow. I can’t bring myself to tell him there was no “almost” about it. But he does have a point. “I hadn’t looked at it that way.”
He’s watching me now. Intently. I’ve gotten used to that look—where he’s trying to read me but doesn’t seem like he’s judging me or silently shaming me. After a moment, he says, “Are you going to be okay? I mean, between now and when you’re really back on your feet?”
“I think so. I’m… It wasn’t like I was prone to depression or anything before this. One of my colleagues was. He had to take meds and see a therapist a couple of times a week, and even then, he’d go through suicidal phases sometimes. I don’t think this is that kind of thing. I just had my whole life pulled out from under me, and kind of…caved in, I guess.”
“So you’ve never been suicidal before?”
I shake my head. “No. Never. And I don’t…” I stare up at the ceiling as I try to gather my thoughts. “I don’t think I ever actually wanted to die.”
“What do you mean?”
It takes a moment to pull the right words from my brain. “I mean, I felt more like I was already dead. My life literally seemed like it was over, and I guess I was just…finishing the job.” I close my eyes and sigh. “It wasn’t until I was standing on the metaphorical ledge that I realized just how much I didn’t want to die. And I still don’t. I’m not sure how the future is going to play out, but dying is…” I shake my head before I turn to him again. “I think it’s safe to say I got close enough to the edge to know I have no desire to go back.”
His brow pinches and he gnaws his lip. He doesn’t look convinced.
“I’m serious.” I smooth his hair. I love how it feels between my fingers. “I’m not going back to that.”
“I believe you, but…” He searches my eyes. “Can I… I guess it’s not really my place to ask you to promise anything.”
“Try me.”
Adrian swallows. “Will you at least talk to someone? Like a therapist?”
I hadn’t thought about it, and if anyone had suggested it to me before, I probably would’ve told them to fuck off. Now that he’s put it out there, though, it really doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. I don’t see how I could ever go back to that dark place. On the other hand, I never saw myself going there to begin with, and look at me now.
“Okay.” I trace his cheekbone with the pad of my thumb. “When I’ve got health insurance or something, I’ll look into it.”
That eases some of the tension in his expression, and he smiles. “Okay. I just, you know, want you to be all right.”
I smile back. “I will be.”
And little by little, I’m starting to believe it.
Adrian has all the DVDs listed on eBay by the end of the night, and the next morning, we go back to the storage unit to continue sifting through what’s left of my belongings.
By mid-afternoon, he’s photographed the things we think will pull in some decent money. Mostly furniture—the mahogany sleigh bed I had for six months before everything went to shit. The gorgeous hardwood dining room set that used to look spectacular in my sunny condo. A hallway table with a marble top and hand-carved legs.
It’s a relief to have this much that can potentially bring in money, but it’s kind of depressing too. Mostly because I pulled out the occasional thing that I can’t part with for sentimental reasons, and that amounts to…very little. A shoebox of photos, plus two albums. My framed degrees. A mix CD I’ve had since high school—it’s a memorial a friend put together after one of our other friends was killed in a car accident. Aside from a few other odds and ends, that’s pretty much it. Everything worth carrying from my past life fits into a single box that used to be full of mismatched Tupperware.
Back in our motel room, the mountain of boxes is huge, but it’s mostly smaller things we’re listing on eBay and craigslist. Adrian’s ridiculously efficient at this, and he types so fast his fingers blur over the keyboard of the laptop he’s balancing on his knee.
Clickety-clickety-clickety.
I’m not quite as fast as he is, but I’m making progress. I found my laptop in the mix this morning, and after it went through a few thousand updates, it’s connected to the Wi-Fi so I can put up some listings too. And respond to messages we’ve already gotten about a few things. Somebody went through and clicked Buy It Now on a dozen DVD listings, so that’s almost a hundred bucks I didn’t have before. I have some old vinyl albums that are apparently worth something too—there’s a bidding war going on one of them, and the others have some nibbles too.
As we list the furniture and everything else, my gaze keeps drifting toward the stack of boxes we’ve kept aside from all the rest. This stack is much smaller—just a medium sized cardboard box with NOT FOR SALE scrawled on the side and an old wooden one about the size of a tackle box sitting on top.
Inside the cardboard one are the photos and other things I couldn’t part with.
It’s the wooden box that keeps pulling my attention, though. That came from my mother. Inside are some letters and postcards I still can’t make myself read and a few pieces of jewelry she inherited from my grandmother.
It’s kind of ironic that in the end, all she really had left was that little box of mementos and keepsakes. Like me, she had to sell off most of what she owned in a desperate bid to survive. The difference was she was trying to pay for cancer treatment.
I absently run my thumb along the edge of the laptop I’m balancing on my leg and stare at that box. To this day, I wish I’d been paying closer attention to my mom’s deterioration. As with everything in my life, I’d been too swallowed up by work to be anything but oblivious. And as she’d always been, Mom was too stubborn and proud to ask for help while that help might’ve actually made a difference.
I’d known she was sick. Of course I had. I just hadn’t realized how sick, or how little her insurance had been covering. I’ll never know if I could have contributed enough to pay for treatment that might’ve really helped or if the cancer was just too aggressive, but at least she could have focused on her health instead of selling everything she owned and sweating over the bills she still couldn’t pay. As it was, I didn’t find out how bad things really were until I went home for Christmas and realized she didn’t even have heat.
By then, there wasn’t much the doctors could do. It’s cold comfort knowing that at least I was able to help her get enough pain medication to make her last few weeks more bearable.
And in the end, she was gone, and all she left behind was that little wooden box and about twenty thousand dollars of debt.
There’s a lesson to be learned in there, I’m sure. Something about not waiting until shit’s out of control before asking for help. Maybe. I don’t know. My mother’s gone, a handful of her things are still here, and by the time the dust settles, I won’t have many more of my own possessions left.
It’s not that I’m materialistic. I’m okay with not having a ton of things. It’s just weird to imagine dying and leaving nothing behind. Not having anything that a person can take with them to remember me by. Like that CD from when my friend was killed. I’ve never forgotten her, but something about the CD makes her feel a little less gone. Like there’s a tangible thing to reassure me that she really was here. Touching it and looking at the photo on the cover makes her memory more vivid. Even now, twenty years later, hearing one of the songs still makes my breath catch.
I don’t need some big fancy grave marker when I die—I’ll probably ask for my ashes to be scattered somewhere just like my mother did. I just hope there’s someone, somewhere who might touch something or hear a song and remember I was here at all.
“Hey.” Adrian nudges me. “You timed out.”
“Huh?” I look at the screen. Sure enough, the ad I was writing has disappeared, replaced by a login screen. How long was I staring into space?
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” I shake myself and log back in. “I’m good.”
He watches me for a moment, and I’m almost certain he’s going to ask me to explain it.
He doesn’t, though. He just goes back to listing the bed frame on craigslist.
Clickety-clickety-clickety.