“Theo was accommodating that way,” I say.
I can picture it, you and Jackson sitting on one of these boulders watching traffic, or even just standing and holding each other. I really wish I knew how to be truly happy for you when you were alive. When you brought Jackson to New York, I should’ve been more open to meeting him.
“You drive by here a lot, right? Do you think you’re going to pull over all the time? Save it for anniversary days? Or change your route completely?”
“I’m sure I’ll come on random days too.”
“Even when you’re dating someone new?”
Jackson’s face scrunches up and his hands raise, like he’s carrying sand and letting it slip between his fingers, and ultimately shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m not thinking about dating anyone else right now. Are you?”
“Hell no. But I haven’t been thinking about that for a while now. I know everyone keeps reminding us that we’re young and we have the rest of our lives ahead of us, which I always thought was stupid. Someone could drop an anchor off this cliff and kill us right now.”
“Maybe if we were living in a cartoon,” Jackson says.
“I’m seventeen and you’re nineteen. I’m not saying we have to go on dates right now, but we should be open to someone new eventually, right? Theo is gone and more than anything, I want someone to tell me when it’s okay for us to let someone else in.”
Jackson shakes his head. “I’m not thinking about moving on right now,” he says. There’s something in his voice that I can’t interpret, but both guesses make me feel shitty. The first is that he’s judging me for throwing this out there, for trying to have this conversation. The last is he believes I should’ve moved on a while ago because you and I weren’t even dating when you died. I hope that’s not what he’s thinking. Love doesn’t begin and end with some online status.
I drop it.
I let him know I’ll wait for him in the car so he can have a minute alone out here in the space you shared. In the backseat, I rest my arm on one of your boxes and observe Jackson from the window. He’s not crying, and, what’s more notable to me, he’s not talking to himself, which means he’s not talking to you, either. I wonder when that will start.
Jackson returns to the car after a few minutes. “I’m ready to head back. You cool with that?”
“Yeah.”
We drive in an awkward silence. I know I should fill these silences with explanations instead of letting them drag on, but I don’t have the energy to explain where I was coming from when I said we’d eventually have to move on. All I know is you wouldn’t want us crying over you forever. Right?
I hang up with my mom just as we pull into Jackson’s garage. I assure her for the fourth time that once I get home, I’ll honor my promise and go to therapy.
I gained three hours today—I wish it were four, of course—but it’s been so draining that I’m paying the price for it now. I’m exhausted. But I have no regrets, other than wishing I’d documented our day on Instagram or Facebook. I haven’t touched those accounts since a couple of days after you died.
Jackson must’ve trained Chloe right, because she isn’t barking when we enter the house, just wagging her tail with tired enthusiasm; she’s already over my newness. He immediately throws all the clothes off his bed and onto the floor, including the shirts we folded and socks we balled up.
“You’re more than welcome to sleep in the bed with me. It’s big enough, obviously.” He gestures at his king-size mattress. It’s definitely big enough so that we wouldn’t touch. Maybe he even played a game with you, rolling over to you, bumping into you and laughing until your lips found each other’s . . . and I’ll black out everything from there.
This is making me feel a way.
I don’t know how Jackson truly feels about this. He’s probably being nice but might actually prefer if I slept on the floor with Chloe, which is pretty much the treatment he received at my house. To take it to another level, I don’t know how you’ll feel about this, if you’ll see it as some sort of betrayal. It only makes me think about how all our families would react to this, and whether or not they would be happy to see my friendship with Jackson has grown so much that I would feel comfortable sleeping in a bed with him, or if they would mistake it for something it’s not.
To top it off and even it out, I don’t know if I’m feeling okay with this idea because I trust Jackson is a good guy who won’t pull anything that’ll make this uncomfortable, because I trust Jackson doesn’t have any feelings in him to make me suspicious of this simple invitation, or if I’m feeling okay with this because I’m truly lonely and miss sleeping in a bed with someone—because I missing sleeping in a bed with you. Sleeping in a bed you’ve slept in next to someone you’ve slept with might be the next best thing for both Jackson and me.