I prop the door open with the rubber stopper sitting just inside the room and let the salty breeze drift in with me. Like I’ve done on my last two stops, I drop my things on the floor at the foot of my bed and think carefully about taking a little nap. I could use one. I’m supposed to meet Alexander McBride, the heart guy, in the morning, and since I don’t usually show my face to the world until after noon, this morning meeting is going to be extra unpleasant for me.
I haven’t spoken to this guy on the phone, we’ve only communicated via emails that left me curious and drawn to meet him. I know his name is Alexander McBride, he’s twenty-nine years old, and he’s the person that’s walking around with Jake’s heart in his chest. I dislike him already. I hate him for the most irrational reason. He isn’t my Jake. Jake is gone but this guy gets to live—thanks to Jake’s heart—I’m just so pissed at the world for it.
The door to my room is still open, allowing the sea breeze to drift in. It feels nice and smells like my childhood. It brings me back to a time before my world was turned upside down.
I was a little girl without a single care in the world. I miss those days. I didn’t know it then, but I was drunk on simplicity. The loss of that freedom, that carelessness, has me grieving for more than just Jake. I grieve for a past that was bittersweet and far too short. It seems like it zipped right by, putting me in the fast lane towards sobering tragedy. Had I known then what I know now, I think I would have done my best to slow way down, to take in every day that I spent with Jake as a kid. I’d take it in. I’d soak it up. I’d breathe it. I’d shoot it directly into my veins in hopes that somehow, once he was gone and life was no longer simple, there would be some residue of our short life together to maintain me. I’d ration it out in hopes of having just a morsel of that perfect simplicity every day for the rest of my life. Even just a morsel would be enough. It would have to be. I think I’d be grateful for it.
The burden of my private lamenting is just…stifling. I can’t breathe. I can’t even think about anything beyond Jake and the simple times that seemed to vanish overnight.
The distant sound of the water coaxes me from any napping that I’d been planning on and the dangerous train of thought that could only leave me dropping anxiety meds on my tongue and hiding beneath the covers.
Dawn said the water was just “that way” when she pointed across the street to a worn path that I assume leads to the ocean.
I look from the bed to the door then back to the bed. “It isn’t going anywhere, Sade,” I say to myself, knowing that I can nap after I check out the water and if I still feel like torturing myself with more reminiscing, I could do that on the spot.
I’d become good at punishing myself. I’d become skilled at allowing myself to disappear into memories that were sure to leave me curled up into a ball in the shower, crying until my eyes burned and my head ached.
Looking to my purse, I decide to skip on the anxiety medication too. I don’t need it. Not right now that is. Maybe when I get back. In the morning, before I meet Alexander McBride, I more than likely will. I had barely survived my meeting with Terry and Ellen and that was with the medication streaming through my system. I cringe, imagining what I would’ve felt like without it.
It’s late April and it’s warm here in Georgia, but I’m sure the water hasn’t gotten up to comfortable swimming temperatures. Either way, it would be nice to just go see it, to walk on the sand and try hard to remember a time in my life when I was carefree and unaware of the devastation that adulthood would bring.
I step outside to just beyond the awning that covers the sidewalk in front of the motel room doors and look up at the sky. I close my eyes and listen to the chirping birds. The scent of Dawn’s flowers scattered about the property inundate my nose with their soft floral essence and I can’t even breathe. Everything around me is a testament to life and how it goes on in spite of my loss and I hate it. A dismal feeling washes over me and I feel nothing but hatred for the blue sky above me, the flowers growing, the green grass, and the oblivious little birds singing from their perches in the trees. I can’t imagine living the rest of my life feeling like this, but at this point I can’t honestly say what would be worse—living like this, or moving on.
The sea air beckons me forward and I shove aside my misery for the time being. I hurry across the street, holding on to the hem of my white sundress as I go. The sea breeze caresses my exposed legs the nearer I get to the water. I make my way past a few buildings until the pavement has been replaced by the sand.
Twenty, maybe thirty yards ahead of me is a wooden planked walkway jutting straight out towards the beach. It’s heavily flanked by brush, other indigenous trees, and bushes. Brown stalks that look similar to bamboo reach skyward, five, six, seven feet tall. I can’t see the water yet for the greenery and the high mound of sand blocking it, but I can hear it. My pace increases and I make my way up the small incline of the wooden boardwalk.