Page 96 of A World Without You
“Do you feel better today?” Colin asks. I wince as I blink against the frosted panes of our bedroom windows, my eyes adjusting to the light and my mind adjusting to my first thought of the day.
My throat is scratchy and my bones ache from my shoulder blades down to my legs. I feel terrible, and it’s hard to tell if I’m exhausted, emotionally spent, or actually getting sick. But this is a dream. I can’t get sick in a dream...Right?
“I think I’ll feel better if my life starts making more sense,” I respond, barely opening my eyes.
“What?” Colin says, concern on his face and misunderstanding underwritten in every verbiage he uses.
“Colin, I love you.” I sit up and immediately regret it as my brain hammers against my skull, so I flop back on the bed.
“Thanks,” he states slowly.
“So much,” I continue, and he nods, silent.
The quiet December morning is cloaked in hesitation. Our preemptive goodbye is staring us in the face. Our scheduled breakup. My impending departure from this life and this relationship.
It doesn’t make sense.
“How can I have everything I want and it still not be enough?” I ask him.
“Because you don’t,” he replies. I stare at him, wishing the bed would swallow me whole. “What you have is good—” he clears the emotion clogging his voice. “What we have is good. But you and I both know it isn’t forever.”
“Then why has it lasted so long?” I’m crying now. My tears falling down my cheeks and running into my ears.
“Because we haven’t had a real solid reason to end it.”
“Until now,” I say and he nods, agreeing. “What if, after this year, we just get back together? What if you plan to see me when I’m in London?”
He laughs, but it’s more of a tisk. “We talked about that, but you know we agreed to not make plans anymore. We’ve spent the last eight years in this relationship making plans and canceling them. We love each other, but we want different things. I can’t give you what you want. You can’t give me what I want.”
My gaze follows the sorrow in his blue eyes, the sadness on his lips, and the tightening of his sharp jaw line until I reach out and cup my hand around his warm cheek and rake my fingers through his hair.
“I wish it didn’t end like this,” I whisper.
His gaze finds mine, and he just holds on to me, wordless, with aching eyes and a broken heart beating too close to mine. “But sometimes that happens. Sometimes, nobody cheats or hates the other in the end. Sometimes, we just need to recognize when love runs its course, and it doesn’t mean it goes away. It just means it’s time to let it go.” He presses a hand on my chest where my heart is bleeding for him. Then, finally, he kisses my forehead and stands. “I’ll be back with some meds.”
After he leaves the room, I pull out my phone and scroll mindlessly. I have most of the same apps, though my profile picture is of me at the top of the Space Needle with a glass of rosé, the sky painted in a sunset. I look so chic. So sophisticated. So sure of the life I’m creating. I realize I can be this woman if I try. If I find my foothold and find the meaning in these stupid dreams.
I think of my profile picture in my real life. I’m sitting on top of the Tolmie Peak lookout, watching the sunset over the mountain range. My back is to the camera, and my auburn hair is piled on top of my head. There’s a hole in my black tank top from getting stuck on a branch on the way up, and my shins are dusted in dirt from the trail. Graham actually snapped the picture of me with his cellphone, even though we brought my camera up. I realize the girl I am—the girl I’ve been—in my real life is constantly searching and contemplating every choice I’ve made in the past instead of what choices I need to make for my future.
A tear drips off my chin and onto the screen right next to the notifications tab. I have a new follow: Graham Stewart. I click on his profile and scan the pictures. He is exactly who he is in this world as he is in mine. I stare at the picture of him holding up a king salmon in his olive green waders next to Cooper River. That exact picture exists in my real world. Bile rises in my throat as I realize, yet again, Graham had no problem being himself. He is who he is, and that’s just fine. I was the one trying to conform to his life, and it did me the biggest disservice in the long run.
I like the picture, but to be petty, I don’t follow him back. Instead, I start scrolling. Video after video until ‘Seattle Ice Storm’ footage starts popping up on my feed. The snow that fell last night only covered the wet ground beneath, so when freezing temperatures hit, a sheath of ice covered all the sidewalks and streets, causing cars and humans alike to just slide around the city. Play a sped-up version of virtually any pop song over the footage and we have a real-life slap-stick comedy on our hands.
Despite my aching bones and sore throat, I let out a long, hysterical laugh and make my way to the window, revealing the city street below. Like much of Seattle, this building is planted on a hill, and when my eyes adjust to the sidewalk below, I see a man holding on to a streetlight as he drops a box of donuts that’s now tumbling down the icy sidewalk until it comes to a stop on the crosswalk. He’s gesturing up the hill for someone to stop—warning them until he’s red in the face, but they don’t listen. The two women land on their tailbones and slide, arms flailing and reaching for whatever they can get their mitts on.
Which is nothing. They just keep sliding until one is holding on to a building wall, and the other gives up and enjoys the ride to the bottom, where a man and a woman are contemplating how to get up the hill—I presume. My laughter shakes in my chest until tears spill from my eyes, and I’m silently wheezing.
“You good?” Colin says behind me with concern in his voice. It isn’t until he moves closer that his worried expression morphs into amusement, and he realizes I’m laughing, not crying.
“W-w-ha-ha-watch!” I heave out the word through wheezing laughter, and he looks out the window at the spectacle of human behavior during an ice storm. Soon, he’s keeled over in laughter, too, and we’re recording video after video, narrating as we go.
The two women are still at the bottom of the hill, staring at the hill like a difficult math problem. The woman in the black peacoat is speaking angrily to the man in the red knit cap, who flails his arms in response.
“Well, how else are we going to get home, Todd?” I mimic them.
“I don’t know, Margot! Maybe we shouldn’t have left the house like I told you!” Colin adds, and I wheeze again.
The woman takes a step and pauses. “Don’t be a coward, Todd!” The woman raises a fist. “Onward!”
