So instead, I take a step forward, my fingertips running over the woven bags and childish trinkets on the table, my eyes searching for any sign that Stella existed here. I know it’s stupid and that it won’t prove anything, but I feel like I need something to be here, to validate my grief in order to help lay it to rest. I begin rifling through the bags hanging off the canopy in front of the crumbling walls of the storefront. I tell myself I need a bag like this for Beaux’s surprise, but there’s no denying I’m reaching for an excuse until I find what I’m looking for.
Then I move closer and lean over the table, my hand reaching out so that my fingertip fits in the bullet hole that’s been left unrepaired in the store’s facade. My finger stays frozen there, the nightmares of that night colliding at a ferocious pace with the good memories of the ten years Stella was in my life until they crumble to pieces, falling with the guilt laid at my feet.
I inhale deeply through a clenched jaw and face all the emotion that’s overwhelming me right now, good, bad, and irrevocable. I shake my head softly, a soft smile on my face as I remember our last full night together. Our kiss. Our promise. That smile of hers and the friendship we had for so long.
“Good-bye, Stella,” I whisper, my words carried away in the sounds of the streets around me and the music coming through the store’s window before me. I hang my head for a moment and close my eyes. I’d be your once-in-a-lifetime, your goddamn everything if you’d come back.
But I know she can’t.
And I know that she was one of the most incredible people I’ll ever meet. I know that I’d live the lie if given the chance to make her happy even though I know now that she wasn’t my once-in-a-lifetime in return. I’d have been cheating the both of us of that chance to find it. Our friendship was the strongest one I’ve ever had the fortune to experience, but that sexual chemistry wasn’t strong like it should be.
Not like the way it is between Beaux and me.
So maybe that’s why I’m here. Maybe I’m saying good-bye to one woman so that I can give myself completely to another. And yes, Stella and I were more like siblings than a romantic couple, but when you’re that close to someone for so long, you still feel like you are cheating on them in a sense when you start to move on with someone new, sharing a friendship, your confessions, your laughter, your comfortable silence.
Once I’ve had my moment with her memory, holding on to the image in my mind of Stella laughing from behind her camera and shedding the horrible ones of that night as best as I can, I’m determined to leave the pain here and move forward with the happy memories.
With my head still angled down, I open my eyes, and something about the sight in front of me makes me smile. There is a bowl on the table filled with small bottles of bubbles. Although it’s amongst a hodgepodge of items, it’s such a welcome sight nonetheless because it brings up memories of Rylee and me growing up. Her theory at eight years old that blowing bubbles makes everything better because you can’t say the word bubble without smiling. How when the bullies in third grade picked on her when I was home sick from school one day, I brought out a bottle of bubbles to where she sat sniffling on the swings in the backyard and made her blow bubbles until she smiled. And then of course I went to school the next day and earned some detention for persuading them with my fists to not pick on my little sister again.
Or how, years later, after her eighth grade formal when she came home upset that no one had asked her to dance, I brought out a bottle of bubbles, again to the swings that hadn’t been used in years, and made her blow them until she laughed.
With a huge smile on my face, I immediately know that even though Beaux doesn’t know the significance of bubbles to me, she’d love them and the small piece of normality that they represent.
Besides, who doesn’t love bubbles?