Page 55 of Between Now & Heartbreak

“You would like Carter. He’s kind of…sensitive and tortured. Like me…you can see he’s got demons he fights, but who doesn’t, and I like how hard he’s trying to make sure they don’t win. I’m so glad I got the courage to ask him over to use the piano. That was another inspired moment after I moved in. I can tell he needs it.” I close my eyes for a moment to focus on the picture of Carter sitting at that piano before I go on.

“He’s less grouchy every day.” I chuckle when I think of how he’d glowered at me when I approached him in the church parking lot.

That feels so long ago. When I get home, we usually say a quick hello, I change and then join him in the room where we work.

We work in silence mostly, but there are moments punctuated by great conversations and fantastic dinners that we usually prepare together in my kitchen.

Neither one of us a big meat eaters and he’s get these great vegetarian recipes from his mother. One night we even FaceTimed her together to get her chickpea avocado salad recipe. She acted like she was seeing a long lost friend when she spoke to me.

His family, their goodness and closeness, was one of the things that appealed the night I met him. And it was nice to get a taste of that again.

We’re both night owls, and it’s in those hours where we tell the truths that we can only manage to articulate through our artistic expression.

It’s heaven. There’s a decadence and peace in our collective creativity that’s never been part of my life’s framework.

“James, it’s amazing. I go to sleep feeling accomplished. I wake up feeling capable. I’m not saying it’s because of him, but being with someone that I align so easily with has taken my art to the next level. And I’m…dreaming of art school again. Even though I shouldn’t. Oh, if you could see Cameron, you’d understand. She’s seriously the cutest baby ever. Not that what she looks like matters, of course. She could be green and covered in scales and I’d think she was beautiful. Oh, she’d just love you. And you’d love her. The way you loved me.” I hate that he’s never going to hold her.

She’ll never know the healing magic of his hugs.

Or his wisdom.

Except for whatever I manage to remember and share with her.

“God, I want you back. I would do anything to have you back. Did I trade you for Carter? I’m so afraid that I can’t have more than one good thing at a time. I know it’s silly. But it’s always been true,” These fears, all heavy and constant on my heart, spill uselessly from my lips and fall on the deaf, dead ears of the no one.

I turn away from the sky, press my face to the ground. And tears, which in the last year have gone from rainbows to raindrops - rare to abundant – soak the grass that grows above the place where my brother and parts of my heart are buried.

I don’t know how long I’ve been lying there when my phone buzzes with a text from Dina.

“Happy Birthday beautiful.”

I get up. The sun is starting to set and I’m hungry and tired.

My phone buzzes again.

“Hope you’re doing something to celebrate. I’m sorry I couldn’t get away to visit. I’ll call you later.”

I turn my phone off. I won’t ever celebrate this day again. It would feel like dancing on James’ grave.

When I get back to his house, for the first time in a week, Carter isn’t there waiting for me.

I tell myself it’s for the best, even though the thought of being alone tonight makes my stomach hurt. I sit down at my drafting table and try to work on my sketch. But, without Carter here, I grow restless and put down my pencil after a few minutes spent erasing everything I managed to put on paper.

I walk out to the back porch.

I gaze out at the gigantic garden maze we called The Labyrinth when we were kids. It’s modeled after Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. I spent hours getting lost in the hedgerows. There was a spot inside that got really good light in the afternoon. It was our happy place. I haven’t been there in so long. I wonder if I could find it.

Somehow, it looks bigger than I remember. But, as the setting sun gives way to the bruised purple velvet sky of the approaching twilight, I’m drawn to the dark escape of it.

I want to find that place within it where I was happy. Today, when I am so alone and my loss feels like a bottomless lagoon, Ineedto find it.

I slip my shoes off and step onto the grass and relish the way it pricks the soles of my feet as I make my way into the labyrinth garden. I run my hands along the ivy covered walls until I find the light switch.

The dark green bushes that line the entrance of the path are wrapped in strings of flickering fairy lights that make them look like miniature constellations. I pass through enclosed archways that are lit with chandeliers and find myself awash in twinkling lights that dance on my skin.

I reach an opening that’s cut into a wall of hedges that form a ten feet tall ringed enclosure right at the center of the gardens and my heart starts to beat a little fast.

This is it.

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