Chapter Twenty-Nine
Harrison
I woke up the on the couch the next morning. I could smell bacon in the air as a blanket was draped over my body. When I reached for my phone, I saw that it was almost 9 am. I couldn’t remember the last time I slept past 5 am. When I removed the blanket, I saw that I was still naked. I hopped up and got into the shower to wash myself off, then came back downstairs just in time to see Caroline placing breakfast on the table. “Hey, sweetie,” she said as one of my T-shirts hung loosely from her body. “I was just about to wake you up so you could get breakfast.”
I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her closer to me. “I don’t know about you, but I think my breakfast is right here in my arms.”
She laughed, then pressed her lips against mine. “Maybe later, and trust me, we will have nothing but time today since we will just be lounging around the house.” She placed a bottle of syrup on the table, “and you barely had anything in here for me to cook. I thought I was going to have to run to the store and grab some things, but I found a couple of eggs in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator and a little bit of that boxed pancake batter on the shelf in your pantry. A few more months and that box would’ve been expired.”
“Yeah,” I said, embarrassed, “I don’t usually cook much. I tend to eat out more than anything.”
“Eat out?” she said with a devilish grin. “Yeah, I bet you do.”
I grabbed her and pulled her onto my lap. Her curly hair dangled down beyond her shoulders. Her skin was silky soft, just like her touch. “So, do you have any movies in mind today?”
She stood up, “I’m glad you asked. I scanned through your On Demand section and saw a few of them. The Notebook.” I sighed. She laughed soon after. “No, sir, don’t you give me that. We are not going to sit in this house all day just to watch all of your favorite movies. I figured we could trade off. I’ll sit through one of your godforsaken movies, and then you can sit through one of mine. Maybe we can find something we both enjoy after that. Deal?”
“As long as you are here with me, we can watch whatever you want to. I just appreciate the time spent. That’s all.”
“Aww, really? Well, in that case, we can watch all of my movies today.”
“Um,” I interrupted as she grabbed her plate and sat down at the table, “don’t get carried away. I don’t want to become sedated while I’m with you.”
She laughed and sprinkled salt and pepper over her eggs. I glanced at the kitchen. She cleaned up everything from last night and the only dishes left were the ones we were eating from. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a woman around the house to help me take care of it. I laughed when I thought about the times I told Sarah to clean up. Her version of washing dishes was stuffing everything in the washing machine, just to forget to turn it on when she was done. She hated to clean up, but so did I. I couldn’t deny the fact that she got that trait honestly.
“So, you don’t have any popcorn or anything like that,” she continued, “so I think I will have to go to the store and pick some things up to snack on. I know you said you wanted to lounge around the house today, but what are movies without snacks?”
I took a bite of the crunchy bacon she slid onto my plate. “Well, I don’t know about you, but my snack is already here.” I winked at her. A Kool-Aid smile sprouted onto her face as she rolled her eyes.
“Oh, my goodness, Harrison. You are such a horn ball. You know, Sarah used to tell me that you would bang her elementary school teachers on a regular. Now, I can see that.”
“You couldn’t before?”
“Well, I could, but it is just different when you can see it firsthand, you know? But I guess I should’ve never doubted her.” I glanced at my phone as it rested on the table beside me. I usually listened to one of Sarah’s messages whenever I had downtime like this, but I decided against it this time. I only listened to help myself deal with her death, but with Caroline here, she was all the help I needed. “Oh,” she said, “that reminds me.” She got up and poured a cup of coffee into one of my mugs, then grabbed the cream from the refrigerator. “You always have a cup of coffee with you in the morning when you get to work, so I figured that it was just one of your morning routines.”
She placed the steaming hot cup of coffee in front of me as the smoke billowed out of the mug. “Thank you, Caroline. You know, I just want to tell you that I think you are a diamond.”
She blushed. “Just for a cup of coffee?”
“No, not just the coffee. Everything. The way you are able to calm me down when I am angry. The way you seem to know exactly what I need without me having to say one word. I mean, that goes a long way with me, and I just want to tell you that I appreciate that. I appreciate you.”
She winked at me. “Thank you, Harrison. Whenever there needs to be something done, I tend to just take care of it. I consider that to be taking the initiative.” I took a bite of eggs as she spoke up again. “Oh, and that reminds me again. When we are finished, I want to show you something, OK?”
“Alright.”
After we had finished eating breakfast, she took our plates and washed them off in the sink. “OK,” she said as she grabbed my hand, “follow me.” I smiled, stood up, and followed her with my eyes closed as she led me down the hall. “Now,” she continued, “I know that I said I would help you with this a while ago and… knowing that I like to take the initiative, I figured I’d go ahead and surprise you.”
“Surprise me?” I said, anticipating what she was going to show me. “Alright, I’m sure I am going to love it, whatever it is.”
We came to an abrupt stop a few seconds later. “Keep your eyes closed, Harrison! No peeking.”
I chuckled, “Alright, alright. I got them closed tight.”
She fidgeted around with a few things, and suddenly, she yelled, “OK, open them!” I opened my eyes to an empty room. Everything was removed from Sarah’s desk and shoved into a box just outside her room. The pictures, the plaques, the trophies. Things that I hadn’t touched since the day she passed away. It felt like a part of my heart had been ripped out of my chest and discarded into a box just like the rest of her things. She smiled as she put her hands on her hips like she had just made my day. “Surprise! Now, I know I said I would help you, but I figured I’d just take care of it all for you since you work so hard doing everything else. I just figured you didn’t have enough time to take care of it.”
She walked to the closet. “Now, I didn’t touch her clothes.” She pulled a dress from the hook, “Well, I might want this one. It is so good that we were the same size. We used to wear each other’s clothes all the time. But anyway,” she said, tossing the dress on the bed, “I didn’t touch her clothes because I didn’t know if you had another family member or something that you wanted to give them to, so I was going to let you sort through that. So, I was thinking–”
“What did you do?” I asked, sternly, glaring right into her eyes.
She furrowed her eyebrows and looked in my direction. “Huh? I was… I was just trying to help you out. I said I would–”
“What gives you the right to come into my home and do ANYTHING like this?! What gives you the right to touch anything in this room?! Nothing in here belongs to you. Nothing!”
Her eyes wandered around the room as if she was looking for something that could help her understand why I was so upset. My breathing picked up rapidly as she stood in front of me, not knowing what to do next. “Harrison… Harrison, I–”
“You came in here and touched everything! You fucking ruined everything! And then you just took her things and shoved them into a fucking box, just like her dead body! This shit will not be buried, do you hear me! This shit will not be buried! It was enough when they put her in a box; now you are placing the rest of her things in a box!? What gives you the right!? Answer me?!”
Her bottom lip trembled. She fixed her mouth to respond, but no words escaped. I grabbed the box of her belongings and slammed them onto Sarah’s bed. “Get out,” I said as calmly as I could. “Get out. Now.”
“Harrison…”
“Get the fuck out of my house, Caroline! Now!”
She covered her mouth and ran out of the room as her cries bounced off the walls. I kneeled and began removing her things from the box, crying each time I placed one of her trophies on the bed. She was gone, and I didn’t want to accept it, but now, it felt like I had to. I pulled out the third-grade ribbon she received for coming in second place in her spelling contest. I crushed it in my hand, then pressed it against my forehead as I cried out loud. This was the first time I had ever shown this type of emotion after her death. In my mind, she was still alive. The voicemails. The way she kept her room. That was all my way of keeping her alive, but in reality, I was yet to grieve for my loss.
Instead, I bottled it up inside of my mind, hoping that one day, she would magically appear and walk through the front door like she had never left. As I pulled more things out of her box, I heard the front door open and slam shut. Moments later, Caroline’s car revved up and then she was gone. I didn’t care that she left. I didn’t care that I yelled at her because she had no business inside of this room, no matter if she was just trying to help out. With tears in my eyes, I slowly began placing all of Sarah’s items back on her desk.
I hung pictures back on their hooks and repositioned trophies as they were before Caroline came into her room. I’m sorry, Sarah, I said, sniffling. I’m sorry. I still blamed myself for her death, and that was one of the reasons that I couldn’t cope with the fact that she was gone. It was all my fault, and even though what Caroline told me a while ago helped out, I still had a hard time removing the guilt from my heart. Picture after picture, torrents of tears fell down my cheeks until I could barely see anything in front of me. In the middle of it all, I stopped, bowled over onto my knees and cried out loud, begging for her forgiveness. I ended up laying on the floor, facing the ceiling as my body convulsed from tears. I would never forgive myself. Ever.