Losing Liam Page 3

  Maybe I don’t want them to pass.

  She doesn’t relent in her badgering; not till she gets me in a shower and watches me push the meal that she brought around the plate. I chew two mouthfuls before my body protests the intrusion and I shove the plate away, getting up. I want to go back to sleep, but she won’t let me. Instead, we go for a walk. And it’s excruciating. Everything around me reminds me of him. The streets, the corner shop where we’d buy ice cream on Sunday mornings, the fucking brick wall that he kissed me against one time. And then there is everything else. Everything I see that I want to share with him. The things I think he’d laugh at or appreciate. These feelings I have, I want to tell him everything, but every time I turn around, he’s not there. When Liam vanished, he didn’t just disappear, he stole my joy. He took happiness away. He stole all the colours, leaving behind only grey.

  “I think you should move back in with your dad and me.”

  When I don’t answer she keeps going.

  “You can help around the house instead of sitting at home all day. Now you’ve deferred your studies for six months, you have plenty of free time.”

  “I’m not moving out.” My voice sounds foreign even to me; hoarse and lame and empty.

  She gives me a long look before continuing, “Well your dad and I aren’t going to help pay the rent on that place. You know how much your dad costs every month.” Of course I do, she throws it in my face every chance she gets. “How do you intend to keep it?”

  I clear my throat. “I’ll get a job.”

  “You used to have goals and dreams. You’ll let them all be swallowed up by this boy?” When I say nothing, she scoffs and remains blissfully silent as she drags me into the grocery shop and fills a basket with toiletries and ready-made meals.

  We walk back in silence, and she potters around, putting the food away and making a point of showing me the soap and shampoo she’s just purchased. Apparently, it’s the same one she uses and it smells great. When she leaves, I pour it down the sink. I don’t want her smell contaminating our flat and covering up the lingering few nuances left by Liam.

  Her visit did nothing for my mood, but it did light a fire under my arse. She is right about one thing; if I don’t get work, I’ll have to give up the flat, and the thought cuts right through me. I make myself a fresh cup of coffee and sit down at my laptop. Half an hour later I have a dozen potential jobs to apply for.

  Summer turns into autumn, autumn turns to winter, and winter turns to spring.

  I stroke Rabbit as he purrs under my touch before jumping off the chair and threading himself between my legs. Doctor Marshall said I should get a pet to keep me company and keep me busy. I’m sure she meant a dog, but that would mean leaving the house for walks, and I couldn’t leave. What if Liam came back? I settled on a rabbit, but they didn’t have any at the pet store, so I picked a cat instead. My mother has questioned my name choice. I think it irks her and that alone makes him worth keeping around because her annoyance makes me smile. I scratch the back of his ears, and he gifts me with a loud purr before he stalks off to his food bowl.

  I adjust my uniform, taking one last look at the mirror before heading out. The dark blue circles under my eyes have faded slightly, and my face has regained most of its colour and some of its roundness. I look less like the living dead and more like someone who grapples with an eating disorder. Doctor Marshall said it’s a process, that it will get better. I choose to believe her, while still clinging to my doubts.

  The job at the cafe isn’t the realisation of a lifelong dream, but it pays enough for me to keep the flat. But more so, it fills my days. I’m busy making coffees and sandwiches, I clean tables and wash dishes, and it helps. Over the past few months, I’ve noticed myself reacting less to the sound of the bell at the door. My heart doesn’t smash against my spine each time someone walks in and I study their face in hopeful desperation. It’s not him.

  It’s never him.

  After a while, the sharp pain begins to fade and, in its place, everything I look at is stained with longing instead.

  Tracey has been amazing. She owns the cafe and gave me the job despite me looking like I’d climbed out of a grave the day I came to apply for it. Her empathetic and caring nature was nurturing. She’s allowed me my time to grieve, never once asking me if I was still going on about ‘that boy’. She never once put a ticking clock on how long I was allowed to wallow in my misery or made me feel that the great epic love I felt for Liam was nothing more than a romanticised teenage crush. She hugged me in the storeroom and told me to sit till my tears dried. She told me to take a sandwich home at the end of every shift, and she bought Rabbit cat food. Not once did she tell me it will be okay and I’ll move on. She just let me be. I appreciated that more than anything else.

  Yesterday I was distracted enough that I didn’t think about him for two whole hours. Until I did. I’ve noticed I’ve been able to do that now. Document the passage of time without him. I don’t know if it means I’m accepting things. Though on very dark days I find myself wishing that I knew he was dead. I find no comfort in the thought or in the notion, but at least then I’ll have closure. I’ll have answers. I’ll have… something.

  My mother has been at me again. School starts in a few weeks, and I’ll have to let the job go. The prospect of having to leave the flat looms over me like a thundering black cloud. Doctor Marshall thinks moving in with my mum and going back to school is a good idea—I think she needs her head examined.

  Life has taken on a routine. I get up and go to work, end my shift and get back home where I curl into our bed and glare at the door, waiting, always waiting. Rabbit curls up by my body, and I still seek to find Liam’s smell on anything, but my tears have washed him away. Doctor Marshall keeps telling me I should make new friends, get out more, but I can’t—not just yet. Not while there’s still hope Liam will walk through the door.

  Tracey paid me an extra month’s wage. She didn’t have to, but she told me she wanted me to use the money for something fun. Fun. I don’t remember what that feels like anymore. I spent too long packing up our small apartment, shedding tears over every T-shirt and pair of jeans I threw into a box. Packing away our memories. The poetry book he read to me before bed, his toothbrush, the snow globe he bought from the Blue Haven souvenir shop.

  Moving back into my mother’s house with my tail tucked between my legs is like walking into a mausoleum. After living in our warm apartment for so long, these bleak white walls and ramps around every corner drive a wedge into my soul. The house smells sterile like impending death—my father’s.

  Still, I skulk into my old room. In true fashion, my mother has redecorated it in her ‘modern’ style, rendering everything white and lifeless. She likes to call it a clean look, but it just feels barren.

  School resumes, and I have no choice but to return to the land of the living. Despite her sharp tongue and useless hurtful remarks, I know my mother loves me—somewhere. She drives me to campus every day, ensuring I have lunch, and she drills me about my classes. I don’t think she particularly cares about medical terms to describe the human body or its movements, I just think she is making sure I actually attend class.

  Over time I settle into a new routine. One that involves school and looking after my father, who is more like a ghost living in her home. But it doesn’t matter how much time passes, it hasn’t healed anything—not like they say it will in all the songs but rather, it diluted everything—pain, memories, perceptions. It takes time but my heart rebuilds—but it never feels the same—it sits lopsided in my chest, never really beating in the same way.

  I met Trent in my third year of Uni. He was studying to be an actuary. He was reserved and quiet. Our story wasn’t a romantic one. No fireworks or marching bands. But love is sometimes silent; it’s calm and beautiful. He was reliable, solid, constant. Like a river. He never ran dry. He was a great provider, a source of comfort, and he always let me hold the remote.

  After the
first time he made love to me I locked myself in the bathroom and cried, despite telling myself I had moved on and that I was okay—I wasn’t. Liam’s hold was too strong, unbreakable. My stomach cramped and vomit crawled up my throat as I admonished myself for cheating on him. Of course, it made no sense, he was gone, and I was with Trent. Trent who was sweet and caring and lovely, but he wasn’t Liam. Liam was gone, but I hadn’t let him go. I just didn’t know how to.

  Maybe a part of me, that huge pathetic part that kept hoping, didn’t want to hurt Liam, to let him down. Everyone has let him down, but not me. I was the girl who was going to stick around. I wasn’t going anywhere… until I did.

  When Trent got his diagnosis, he was stoic. Like I knew he would be. He reassured me like he’d always done and promised that I’d be okay after he was gone. Till the very end, he was predictable, reliable and solid. Till he was nothing more than a gaunt corpse and a collection of bitter-sweet memories.

  I cried for a solid week. I cried while the funeral director assured me everything would be taken care of. I cried when they put him in the ground. I cried when I walked into our empty bedroom and smelt him everywhere. I cried when I held the damn remote.

  The truth is, I wasn’t lamenting our love. I didn’t miss him in that deep endless way I still sometimes ache for Liam. I missed his companionship and his presence but not much else. That realisation stabs at me. Or maybe it’s the renewed thoughts of Liam. A name I’ve buried so far down, the mere thought of it evokes an avalanche of fresh pain that has nothing to do with my recent loss and everything to do with an alternate life I never got to have.

  “You look awful, dear,” she says as she places her bag on the counter and makes a beeline for the coffee machine.

  “Thanks, Mum.” She’s always had a way with words. Not good ones but words, nonetheless.

  “You should go down to Blue Haven. Have a break. You were always happy there.” She’s oblivious to the knife she just twisted in my already weeping heart.

  “I don’t think so.” I haven’t been to a beach in over ten years. The idea of it makes my skin itch and my chest squeeze. My eyes water again and my mum sighs. The aroma of her steaming coffee wafts through the dim kitchen.

  “Just go to the property. Take a few days to yourself. Regroup.”

  The property. I hate when she calls it that. She’s taken Grandad’s house and ripped its insides out, erasing its small-town charm and any signs that we ever spent any time there. She painted over the height chart in the kitchen and ripped away the shed in the back that housed the fishing gear. She wiped away our childhood smells and covered it up with paint thinners and fake backsplash.

  “I’m fine,” I say and watch as she potters around my kitchen putting away food I won’t eat and setting the dirty dishes in my overloaded dishwasher. She turns it on, and the chugging drowns away a little of our silence. She’ll be back tomorrow to put the clean dishes away.

  “Trent has been gone for a month. You need to start moving forward.”

  The words come easily to her; she’s never experienced this kind of loss.

  “I’ll think about it.” I won’t.

  “You won’t.”

  I shrug, not knowing what else there is to say.

  “Moping around here won’t bring him back.”

  “Mum.”

  “No. I’m not going to sit back and watch you throw your life away. He’s gone, you’re not. Life is for the living.”

  “I know.”

  “Good, then it’s settled. The property will be vacant for the next week. Michael will have a key for you.”

  I nod knowing there is no point in arguing. If I do, she might offer to drive me down there herself and that would be a disaster all on its own.

  She downs the rest of her coffee, probably scalding her throat in the process, but she doesn’t flinch as she rinses the cup and puts it on the dish rack to dry. “I’ll see you when you get back.”

  She comes around the counter for an awkward hug before she breezes out the door as if all this death and desperation might stink up her clothes. I watch her drive away before I breathe again.

  There is still too much left of the day, and the hot summer sun keeps threatening to push its way in through my drawn curtains.

  I tiptoe up the stairs. I’m not really sure why; I can’t wake the dead even if I tried, but this house feels more like a mausoleum than a home, and the silence here feels deep and ancient and all too familiar.

  In our room I stare at the walk-in closet, the door shut. It’s white and embossed with a decorative rectangular frame. I’ve often imagined what it would feel like if Trent fucked me against it. He never did. He was too reliable, too stable; just like that door. And though he was a kind lover, he didn’t understand passion. I never burned for him, never ached for his touch, never missed it like the dry earth that demands the rain. He always made sure I came, always a practised perfect lash of his tongue or rolling of his thumb over my clit. Always in our bed just before bedtime, always after the late news bulletin. It was never romantic, just a release. It was always just nice and soft and safe.

  I sigh and reach under my bed, grabbing my rucksack. It’s been stuffed down there for years. It smells of disuse and abandonment. Trent wanted us to use the suitcases, the ones he bought with his adult money from his adult job; the one that bought us this house and afforded us the life we lived. But the bag reminds me of a past I never really let go of, of a girl that went looking for her future and came home to find a new one.

  I stuff a few things into it—a handful of shirts and shorts, a bikini I don’t plan on wearing, and a few other bits. I’m not paying as much attention as I should. Trent’s side of the closet is just as he left it. Meticulous. My eyes drift over the collection of suits and shoes, the ties all hanging up like a limp rainbow. I step out—I’ll deal with this later.

  I sink onto the bed and tears sting my eyes. Trent and his stupid perfect plans have left me alone to face the world, and the reality is, that my heart is remembering an older pain, a much sadder and deep-seated pain I thought I’d buried. Trent’s loss is dredging up the past, and I don’t want to remember the shattered girl I was back then.

  I drag in a long breath and push the rising tide back down then crawl under the blanket. Rabbit jumps onto the bed and nestles himself along the curve of my back, just letting me know he is there. I scratch the back of his ear before pulling the blanket over my head. If I sleep, I can pretend none of this exists, that this life belongs to someone else and maybe, just maybe, this pain will belong to someone else.

  The single-lane road is now a two-lane motorway. The idyllic scenery that once was part of the anticipation as we left the city is all but gone, replaced by a treacherous tar serpent full of noisy cars that look like scuttling beetles as they zoom by me. Still, there is a familiarity in the way the road meanders and the houses fall away and concrete gives way to nature. Rabbit sits in his box and reminds me of his presence every few kilometres. I keep lying to him and telling him we are almost there. I think he believes me.

  As I pull into Blue Haven, the glaring differences slap me in the face. It seems the values of the older generation did not pump in the veins of their children, and greed and exploitation of seaside properties became the norm. The old skeleton hotel has been built, refurbished and modernised. It overflows with guests who no doubt will flood the beautiful sand bar this place has to offer. Homes have been turned into B&Bs and a string of new fish and chip shops and ice creameries line the once quiet main street. Capitalism always wins. It’s a little melancholy, but I can’t blame people for trying to earn more while working less.

  I stop outside the grocery shop that also doubles as the town’s post office. Like the rest of the place, it’s lost its seaside charm and doubled in size. Mr. Daily must be happy; he’s as much an institution here as the ocean, and I find him behind the counter serving a crew of teenagers who think they look cool with their pants hanging halfway up their arse
s and their ice creams melting on their hands. I cringe thinking of my own teenage days, that time when you’re not a kid anymore and trying to be an adult having no real idea what that really means or who you are.

  They depart in a bout of laughter, and Mr. Daily spots me. His crystal-clear blue eyes fall on me and his face beams in a beautiful smile. “Evangeline Miller, is that you?”

  I can’t help but smile back at the old man. His thick white hair springs around his head in a haphazard way as if it’s been brushed by the wind. “Yes. Well, it’s Walker now.”

  I get closer to the counter, and his smile fades a little. “I heard about Trent. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Everyone always is. “Thank you, Mr. Daily.” My smile thins. “Mum said you’d have the key for me?”

  “I sure do, and it’s Michael; we’re too old for niceties.” He opens a cupboard door full of jangling keys and finds the one I need. “It sure is good to see your face after so many years.” He hands me my key.

  If he wants me to say that it’s good to be back or that I missed this place, I won’t. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t hesitate to call me if you need anything. I’ll drive it out to you myself.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Daily, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  He tips his head, and the warmth returns to his face even if the pity doesn’t leave his eyes. “Welcome back.”

  I get out of the shop and back into mye car, my breath suddenly short and my palms clammy. Why the hell did I come back here? Rabbit mewls impatiently, like he agrees. I scan the street; it’s full of revellers and tourists buying souvenirs. It eases my mind, this place, like this. It’s almost foreign. I draw in a few settling breaths before I start the car and drive the last stretch to the house.