Page 26 of Crash & Burn

He looks down and shakes his head, making me notice his dark hair, the strands damp like he just got out of the shower. He looks up at me, a few strands just above his eyes, contrasting with the green in them. “It didn’t seem like you were into it. You won’t learn anything if you aren’t interested.”

That confuses me, and I’m learning that confusion is something that comes with every interaction I have with Eddie.

“What made you think I wasn’t interested?” I ask as I trace the water droplets on my iced coffee, so I have something other than green eyes framed with dark hair to look at.

“It just seemed like your mind was elsewhere, and you looked uncomfortable with the guitar.”

I looked uncomfortable with the guitar.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise. I had an inkling I wasn’t hiding my discomfort well, but I didn’t think Eddie would care enough to notice. Holding Nico’s guitar for the first time since he died sent grief through my body at a moment I should have expected.

I’m making progress with how I’m dealing with the grief, which is growth for me after not dealing with it properly over the last few years, but I know the work isn’t linear. I also know that grief will always be a shock to my system, ranging in intensity, coming whenever it feels like it.

But I don’t even recognize myself anymore.

I’m the broken girl who needs her older brother to swoop in and make everything better.

The broken girl who won’t let herself heal.

The broken girl who can’t move on.

Losing a loved one, especially your partner, is impossible. The pain never completely goes away, and you never reallyget over it. Time continues to pass. Life continues to happen, and you’re forced to keep moving forward because it’s all you can do.

I know this. I know this in my heart and soul. It’s been almost three years since Nico died. He would want me to be happy, and he wouldn’t want me to feel guilty for trying to live.

I’m in a good place for the first time in what feels like forever. I’m in a place that doesn’t make me feel broken. These past two weeks have shown me that I can move forward, but not without acknowledging what broke me in the first place.

I’m coping. I’m becoming stronger. I want to wake up from my dreams and let them hurt for a moment, but I want to keep moving forward. I want to be able to look back at my time with Nico and smile. I want to share his memory, not replace it.

And I don’t want to feel guilty for doing so.

“It was my boyfriend’s guitar.” The wind is knocked out of me as the words leave my lips, but in a way that feels like a release rather than a punch. Words I have never spoken out loud, aside from within the safe walls of my therapist’s office, but it is as if the sentence had been on the tip of my tongue for years and rushed out in a moment of weakness, a moment I wasn’t trying to hold it in and bury it deep inside me.

I take a few more sips of my coffee, uneasiness filling my chest at the realization that this is a conversation Eddie was most likely not expecting when he asked to stop by.

Eddie doesn’t say anything, so I lift my eyes to see he’s looking at me in a way I don’t know what to make of.

Curiosity is glazed all over his face, a look I am getting all-too used to, and I can almost see the questions forming in his brain. His eyes are soft and his mouth is slightly open, his hands are still on the counter but he’s leaned in more towards me.

“Did he get a new one?”

“Who?”

“Your boyfriend.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“But you just said it was your boyfriend’s guitar.”

That is when I realize my statement may have been unclear and does prompt an explanation, so I simply clarify, “It was. When he died, his mom gave it to me.”

The words came out so easily, I almost don’t realize I said them. I haven’t talked about Nico this seamlessly in . . .ever. And, now that I have, I realize I should have never tried to keep my memory of him hidden.

“He was a guitar player for a band that he and his friends started in high school. We started dating our sophomore year and were together until he died during my junior year of college.”

A few weeks after Nico’s funeral, his mom called me asking if I would come over. I almost said no, but I had already declined her invitation to help her go through his things. The memory of driving over there and her hugging me at their front door is a blur, as if it was someone else going through the motions as I watched from afar. I’m thankful she didn’t invite me in, whether it was for her benefit or mine. Instead, after she let go of me, she handed me the black guitar case that I had seen Nico hold so many times.

I remember thinking Nico would be wondering where it was until reality set in and reminded me that he was gone. After taking it from her, I went to my car and cried in their driveway until it got dark. And I was thankful his mom didn’t come out to check on me, whether it was for her benefit or mine.

---