“This isn’t over, Charlie,” he whispered, and if I’d been coherent, I might have felt his lips on my hair.
Heavy footfalls moved away from me towards the door, and then nothing.
Emptiness.
The only noise in my apartment was the sound of the Charleston as I knew her being slaughtered in my gut.
“Charlie? Are you in there?”
I heard the sound of Henry’s voice from the other side of my bedroom door, but I couldn’t speak. I had nothing left but to feel sorry for myself.
I just lay there with my head on the floor, hoping to God that any minute now my broken heart would sever in two and the shards would numb any feeling I had left in my chest.
I was pretty sure this is what dying felt like.
Maybe dying would have been better.
“Charlie?” The silhouette of my brother came into view when he opened the door, bathed in the light of the hall, only to disappear in the dark as he closed it behind him. “What’s wrong?”
The sobbing coming from my throat sounded like I was being strangled every time I tried to breathe. “He… He…”
“Shhh.” I felt him lay his head down beside mine.
“Dean… He… He’s gone.”
My boyfriend was gone.
Vanished.
“What do you mean he’s gone?”
I couldn’t find the words to tell him. I couldn’t find the words to tell anyone that the boy I’d loved since I was seven years old and he’d loved me back—or I thought he had—had left me. Not only that, he’d left me without warning in the middle of the night like a thief on the devil’s back.
It had been three months.
I hadn’t told anyone for three months, hoping he’d come back.
He didn’t.
He didn’t show up for work.
His apartment was empty.
He had no family.
He was just…gone.
Gone like he’d never existed in the first place.
Gone like he’d been something I’d imagined for all these years.
“He’s gone and he’s never coming back,” I whispered. “Not ever.”
There was a growl in the room. He was sober, I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew, I always knew, and thus, he schooled his temper quickly.
“You’ll be okay,” Henry promised.
That was the thing about my brother. He never needed as many words as other people. He never listened to wait for his own chance to speak; he just listened and he always understood, and he never judged.
Lifting my cheek from my bedroom floor, I shook my head. “What if it never heals?”
“What if what never heals, Charlie?” He sat up and pulled my teenage self into his lap.
“My heart.”
Sweeping the hair from my face, he whispered, “The only person who doesn’t know how strong your heart is, Charlie, is you.”
I sobbed into his neck. “Please don’t leave.”
“I’d never leave you alone,” he swore like an oath.
“I’m scared you’ll go too.” I clung to him with everything I had left. “I can’t lose you.”
“I know it feels like I have let you down, but I’m still around.”
“Always?”
He held me tightly. “Always, Charlie bear.”
“Where did you go just now?” Doctor Colby asked, as her upper body leaned forward in the black armchair.
I was sitting on the windowsill in her office, looking down at the sea of people returning to work from their lunch hour. Everybody in a hurry to get somewhere.
“I was thinking of Henry,” I told her honestly.
I’d learned to become more transparent with her as the years had passed. She always got it out of me regardless, so it was easier this way.
Doctor Colby had moved her practice from the university campus to downtown Vancouver roughly six years ago. The move had garnered her more clients, or so I imagined it did, and I still continued to see her a few times a year. Usually, it was on a need-be basis, and well, Dean’s arrival had been somewhat of an emotional emergency of sorts.
I was distraught, a wrecking ball of sentimentality, but I was no longer ashamed by that notion. I took pride in the fact that I managed to leave the house at all, let alone clean and clothed like an almost functioning member of society.
“What made you think of him?”
Distractedly, I watched a road construction crew on the corner. More so, I found a black hardhat and burned my suffering into the surrogate unbeknownst to him.
I was angry, still so fucking angry, but that was okay. Time had passed, but still, I found anger was an emotion I was capable of managing. Sadness, however, could still cut me off at the knees.
“Charleston, focus please.”
I stood from the window, walking over to the navy blue couch adjacent to her, and sat down. “I always think of Henry.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “But what about today made you think of him?”
She spun her pen around with her fingers; it was a habit of hers, and I watched the ballpoint move in circles.
“He was there when…” My voice dropped off and she sighed.
“Go on.”
I crossed and uncrossed my legs, picking at a nonexistent piece of fluff on my jeans. “He was there when Dean left.” His name felt like a traitor on my tongue and came out on a snarl. “He promised he wouldn’t leave me.”
“Henry?”