“Alex is hurting. I don’t even know him and I could see it, plain as day. It looks to me like he wants someone to blame – and because there isn’t anyone, he’s frustrated and angry and he’s lashing out at you, because he can see that you feel guilty about it. He’s homed in on that.”
She sounded like Vinnie. “Maybe he’s right.”
“He’s not,” she insisted. “You can’t blame yourself for something like that. Sometimes, things just happen. You can unpack them and repack them and twist and turn them around all you want, but sometimes there just isn’t an answer. Sometimes there isn’t anyone to blame.”
I willed her words to take seed in my heart and grow there, choking out all the doubts. I wanted to let go of the guilt and the pain and the regret. I wanted to believe her. She spoke so surely, so positively, with no inkling of doubt. As if this was the way it was, and there was no use wishing it was anything else. God, I hoped she was right.
“It hurts, but sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is to move on,” she said. “Life is so fragile, so fleeting. You don’t want to live with regret. It’ll eat you up and destroy any chance you have of ever being happy.”
I could see she believed that with the whole of her heart. It made me wonder how she got to be so wise. Wisdom like that was born of loss, heartbreak, the almost unbearable burden of grief.
Wisdom like that came from experience.
THAT NIGHT, I WAS MORE restless than usual. I couldn’t keep my brain, or my body, still. Maia wasn’t the only one suffering from sleep deprivation. This bullshit, having her down the hall, was killing me. I wanted her. More than that, I needed her, especially now.
I stared at the ceiling, having given up long ago on counting sheep as my brain rehashed the day’s events for the thousandth time, a movie playing over and over in my head.
Who had she lost? No one spoke the way she did about moving on unless they had personally had to do it. That kind of advice comes only from hindsight. Was her own grief causing this sleeplessness, which in turn was possibly causing the hallucinations, or whatever the hell they were? How was I supposed to help her with that if she didn’t tell me about it? Besides that, I barely had a handle on my own grief – tonight was evidence of that.
I shifted in my bed, rolling over onto my stomach and burying my head face-first in the pillow. My brain was wide awake, my body twitchy. I couldn’t get comfortable. I was too hot. I needed air.
I threw the covers off and got out of bed, creeping out into the hall. Maia was probably asleep, and if she was, I didn’t want to wake her, despite my own selfish need to have her close to me.
As I turned the corner into the living room, the moonlit view of the harbour came into view. The French doors that led out to the balcony stood wide open, which was odd. Maybe I forgot to close them? My head was all over the place after we got home, so it was a definite possibility. I walked over and was about to do just that, when I saw a Maia-shaped figure sitting out on the end of the jetty.
The image had the same pull over me as she herself did, and before I knew what I was doing, I was padding barefoot across the balcony, down the stairs and over the lawn towards her.
She looked like a vision, a classic painting by one of the masters. Hauntingly beautiful, a study in solitude. The moonlight cast an ethereal glow over her white t-shirt and bare legs, making her hair look silver. She sat near the end of the jetty, her knees pulled up, hugging them tight. I had begun to notice little things about her, like the fact that this was her favourite sitting position. It made me feel closer to her somehow. As if she had shared something with me, even if it was unintentionally. Hot on the heels of that realisation was the flip side – that I still knew precious little about her.
She looked up as I got closer, walking off the damp grass and onto the smooth wooden planks towards her. She didn’t look surprised to see me.
“Hi,” she said softly, as I sat down beside her with a sigh, dangling my legs over the edge.
The breeze was cool and minimal, but it was enough. I finally felt like I could breathe again. Maybe it had nothing to do with the fresh air and everything to do with the fact that I was beside her.
“Hi,” I said. “Couldn’t sleep huh?”
“Apparently I’m not the only one.”
We were close enough to touch, and it felt as if there was a current of electricity arcing between us.
She gave a small laugh, like a puff of air escaping. “What do you have against shoes?”
I looked down at my bare feet, suspended above the water, and wiggled my toes.
“The first time I met you, you were shoeless. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen you wear any kind of footwear since.”
She had a point. It gave me a little thrill that she’d noticed. “Hate them. They make me feel claustrophobic.”