Page 123 of Bad at Love
Storms off around the pool, through the gate, and then he’s gone.
Laz is gone.
He’s gone.
My heart has gone with him.
I fall to my knees, crying, then to all fours, then to the grass below.
I cry and I sob and I scream and I don’t care about anything else right now except the pain inside me. This horrible, sickening pain that eats away at me like I’ve been doused in acid, burning from the inside.
I don’t know how long I cry like that, in my bee suit, on the lawn, the hum of bees occasionally going past.
I think about Laz. I think about my mother. I think about my father. I think about pain.
I’ve lost my best friend.
How will I ever be whole again? How will I ever bemeagain?
The emptiness inside me expands. Sobs shake my body to the blackened core.
Pickles, my father’s cat, my new cat, comes over to me, rubbing up along my shoulders.
Then a shadow looms over me from up above and forone painless second I think it’s Laz. It’s Laz and he’s come back to tell me that he was wrong. That he loves me and was too stupid to realize it.
“No man is worth this kind of sorrow, sweetheart,” Barbara’s croaky voice says.
I glance up to see her standing in a black silk pajama suit. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen her outside in the sunshine like this. It’s like she lives in a black and white world.
“Come on,” she says, offering a bony hand covered in shining rhinestones and costume jewelry rings. “Get to your feet. Act like a lady.”
Barbara is thin and ancient but she’s stronger than she looks. She helps me to my feet and then looks over me with what seems like disdain. Her penciled brow is raised, her red painted mouth pursed, her gaunt face layered with pale foundation. Her ash blonde hair is pulled back, covered by a red, silk head wrap.
“Sometimes there’s nothing a good cup of tea won’t fix,” she says eventually. She pats me on the cheek then grabs me by the arm and leads me off to her house.
But tea won’t fix this. Nothing will.
Time hasa funny relationship with the heart.
After my mother died, there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think about her, didn’t miss her. Not just missing her but aching for her. The love she gave, the space she filled in my life. My mother was everything to me and she continued to be everything afterward, even though she was no longer with us. My heart bled and burned with the same kind of intensity as it loved.
I honestly never thought I would move past it. I didn’t think there would be a day where I wasn’t crying, where I wasn’t praying for her to come back, calling for her in the middle of the night. I didn’t think my future had any peace, any places for my heart to finally be at rest.
But slowly, little by little, things changed. The heart adapted. I never got used to the actual pain of losing her but I got used to the fact that it was a part of my life. It lived with me, became not quite a friend, but a companion. It was dependable. And as time went on, I learned to manage it.
It still hasn’t gone away, that pain. There’s still a place inside me that’s carved out and hollow, the space she filled when she was alive. That companion of mine, the pain of loss, lives there, dependable as always. Some days I pay attention to it, some days I don’t but it’s always there. I guess that’s what people mean when they say the ones you love and lose are always with you because they are. If not their spirit and soul, then it’s the constant reminder that you aren’t quite whole.
But while I learned to live with that, learned to adapt and cope and somehow come out the other side as a functioning human being, I’m not sure how to deal with the blow Laz has dealt me.
I’ve lost my best friend.
And the more that time goes by, the more my heart hurts.
The more it weeps for him.
The more I feel like this is something I will never get used to, never learn to live with, never look at as a companion.
I am angry.
