Chapter 27
It felt like he wasn’t there anymore.
She couldn’t explain it. Before, she could feel him around, sense it was him and not the breeze that tickled the back of her neck. That she wasn’t going crazy when the edge of the bed seemed to dip when she was half asleep, but now…the silence was more silent. The house seemed more empty. It really was as if his energy was gone. The sense that she was really alone started to hit her. She sat on the edge of the bed, wondering what she should do. She had the guys, she knew she did, but talking to them about stuff like this just didn’t seem right somehow. She didn’t want them to think she was crazy, that she was grasping at crazy ideas to keep herself sane.
Her hand skimmed the top of the comforter, her gaze landing on the row of framed photos. She really needed to get rid of those. Not all, just a few. Change things up a little. Give herself room to breathe and not feel like she was holding her breath waiting for him to come back. Because he wasn’t, he couldn’t.
The realization she was in a holding pattern hurt, like she’d frozen herself in time at the moment Josh had left that morning, and no one managed to hit the play button. Life around her continued, but she was stuck there, waiting.
She rubbed the back of her neck anxiously. Things needed to change. She needed a chance to change things in her own way, in her own time. And maybe it was about to become the time.
She hated to admit it, but she’d come to a decision.
She pushed herself out of bed and headed inside the closet. She pulled Josh’s favorite football jersey down off its hanger and slipped it on over her black tank top. His faint familiar scent surrounded her. She resisted the urge to bury her face in the fabric. It almost made her want to change her mind, to not do what she was thinking of, but she had to do what was right for her, didn’t she?
She’d resisted the idea when it first came to her. She’d overheard one of the guys whisper it to the other, the question of how she could live with all of his things around her all the time. A constant reminder. Frozen in time as if everything, including her, was just waiting for him to walk right back through that door.
But she’d come to the realization she couldn’t live like that. Not anymore. Not with the baby coming. He deserved more from her than that. He deserved to have a mother who wasn’t lost in the past, caught in a moment that was no longer possible.
She stood there for a long moment, her mind swirling with thoughts as images from the past came to mind. Josh so real, so vivid she could reach out and touch him. Feel his warm skin beneath her fingertips. Hear his laugh as she cracked a stupid joke. Watch the fire in his eyes when she made him mad. The way the corner of his mouth always lifted up when he pulled back from a kiss.
She walked back into the bedroom, her gaze landing on her favorite picture of them. She took a deep breath, and Austin kicked hard. She wished she knew what it was supposed to mean, whether he was agreeing with her decision or trying to talk her out of it in the only way he knew how.
“I’m going to say goodbye today, Josh. As much as I don’t want to, something’s telling me I have to. For me, and especially for our little boy. He’s going to need a mom who doesn’t burst out in tears at the drop of a hat.” She took another deep breath and turned around. The empty laundry basket sat at the foot of the bed. The idea, the urge, really, had come in the middle of the night when she’d been in another post nightmare walk around the house. Suddenly it hit her she shouldn’t leave his things everywhere exactly where he’d left them. He wasn’t coming back, she had to realize that and accept it, and having his things there where he kept them was like part of her left them there so he could find everything when he returned.
She went down to the office and grabbed his camcorder out of the desk drawer. She checked the battery, happy to see it still fully charged. The SD card showed space remaining on it. She was good to go. Now if only she could make herself go through with this.
She’d already decided she was going to take a walk through the house first with all of his stuff still where it was and put it on film. That way Austin would have something to see when he was old enough, and she’d have something so she wouldn’t forget. Her biggest fear was that he’d start to fade away on her. That the man she’d love would disappear on her piece by piece.
She secured the strap for the camera around her hand and turned it on as she headed to the front door. She took a moment to lean against it, the coolness seeping through the thin fabric of her clothing, composing herself, as she bit her lip in a futile effort to keep the burning tears from her eyes. She took a deep breath as she lifted the camera and watched it autofocus. She needed to find a way to do this. She could do this.
Finally feeling calm enough, her hand no longer shaking so much it made the camera try to readjust its focus every few seconds, she started her walk through the house. She tried to stay silent, afraid her voice would betray her emotions and make it too hard to ever watch the footage again later.
Fifteen minutes later she’d walked through the entire first floor, including the office they'd shared, and she was standing outside her bedroom. She didn’t need to push herself to do everything in one day. She’d done good, more than she’d thought she could manage. But it would probably be wise, smart, to do everything at once and get it over with, similar to ripping a bandage off. Once the initial sting and hurt went away, things would get easier without the constant reminders.
She flipped the viewer back out and saw the battery still had life to it. With a deep breath, she hit the touch screen for record and walked into the room. She cleared her throat. “And this…” Her voice wavered. “This is our bedroom. It’s almost divided into my side, his side.” She pointed out the differences. Her side had her framed photos, her tray of perfumes, the few stuffed animals he’d given her during their relationship lined up along the window seat. She zoomed in on the glass shelf on the wall with its few small framed photos and a couple of candles.
She zoomed back out and moved to his side of the room. His side was completely different. It consisted of his sketchbooks, his digital camera and cases, his magazines still in a lopsided pile on the nightstand. He’d stuck a photo of the two of them he’d printed off his cell phone to his side of the mirror.
“There’s his stuff. He always said he could find anything in that pile and I believed him. Once I thought he’d lost our front row concert tickets. I was about to change clothes and give up on going when he walked over there all cool and calm, lifted a couple magazines and waved the tickets in the air like he’d won the lottery. Sometimes I wondered if he hadn’t set me up that night.”
Gabriel had arrived earlier, unsure of what she was up to. He’d simply meant to pop in and check up on her like he’d promised he would if Josh kept his distance a little more and used his time to recharge. He knew Josh would want to be there when the baby was born and he didn’t want to risk not having the energy or the ability to be there with her the whole time.
Once Gabriel had figured out what she was doing as he followed her around, what she meant to do, box everything up and store it in the attic as if Josh had simply vanished overnight, he realized that wasn’t the answer either. She wasn’t ready for it, and Josh wouldn’t be either. He needed to do something, to step in. By doing so, he’d have to cross a boundary, a safeguard, something that meant he wasn’t ever supposed to interfere in someone’s free will, but was this really her free will? He knew she’d regret it in a few weeks if not days, and the pain of putting everything back wasn’t going to be easy.
He moved closer to her as she shut the camcorder off and lowered it in her hand. “You’re not going to do this.”
She didn’t hear him, he knew that, but he hoped somehow she’d pick up on the message, and a doubt would appear in her mind that she’d listen to. This was a giant step out of nowhere, one that didn’t need to be taken quite yet. She was still too fragile, too hormonal, too reckless to do something this drastic without thinking it through.
Avery tried to find more to highlight as she stood by the bed, looking around objectively. What would Austin need to see to get an understanding of his father? She lifted the camera up and panned slowly around the room, trying to see what she was missing. Probably she should video his books and then move toward the videogames he had crammed in the small bookshelf in the corner with his other old sketchbooks. Those would probably be the hardest things to put away. She put the camera back down on the bed and trailed her fingers over the top of the coils on one of the sketchbooks, the metal cool against her fingertips.
Every sketch he’d done was in there. She’d skimmed her fingers above the pages so many times, hesitant to actually touch the pages themselves. Afraid that touching the sketches would somehow make them disappear. Like they were nothing more than a figment of her imagination.
Maybe they had been for how suddenly they’d started and then stopped out of nowhere, without any explanation. Without a goodbye or a final I love you. Just one day the sketches had stopped being added.
She trailed her fingers over the cover one last time. Maybe one last look before she put them away. Get the sketches on camera so she’d have another record of them.
She tried to lift the book up off the nightstand, but it was like it was suddenly being held down by an unseen force. “What the…?” She set the camcorder down on the bed before going back and giving the book a yank. It wouldn’t budge in the slightest. Shaking her head, she went over to his collection of baseball caps that lined the top of his bookshelf. She reached for his old faded UCLA one, but it stayed still, unmoving.
She stretched up on her tiptoes, her fingers reaching under the edge of the brim, trying to get enough of the fabric to push it forward and have it fall toward her, but nothing happened. Just like the sketchbook, it wouldn’t move at all. It was like it, too, was being held down, refusing to let her take it away.
Gabriel blocked her attempts at moving everything in the room. He didn’t know what else to do. He drained the camcorder battery as well just to give her some sort of sign, a hint, a clue that she wasn’t alone, that someone was there with her. Also as a sign to stop the madness, at least for a while. If she couldn’t keep her recording going, it would hopefully stop her from packing anything up before she had the chance to record it.
He hated when the first tear crept its way down her cheek. That first tear was quickly followed by another and yet another until a steady stream was running down her face as she cried silently. Her fingers ran over the fabric of the hat under the emblem. “Josh, let me go,” she pleaded softly. “For the baby’s sake, please.” She lifted her tear streaked face and scanned the bedroom. “I can’t do this. Not with everything of yours where you left it. It’s all waiting for you like I was…like I still am.” She shook her head in frustration, like she wanted to rid herself of that thought. That need. “Every morning I wake up, I still wait for you to walk into the room. I keep listening to hear you downstairs, or hear you pull up in the driveway, but it never happens, Josh. It never will. My mind still thinks there was some mistake, but there isn’t. You’re gone.” Her voice faltered. “Gone, and I can’t do this. I can’t be strong anymore. I can’t pretend. It isn’t working.” She broke down in a sob, her emotions overtaking her. “And it hurts…so much. It hurts to breathe some days, Josh. And I can’t, I just can’t.” Her strangled breath came out as she looked around her room, a helpless look on her face. “I can’t,” she whispered.
Gabriel went straight to Josh after leaving her. There was no choice but to go tell him what was going on so he wouldn’t be blindsided if he went to visit on his own and found her in the midst of boxing things up.
Gabriel needed to reconsider himself what was going on. What it meant. He found Josh easily, sitting on a bench at the beach, eyes closed with his head tilted back toward the sun. For a moment his friend seemed actually peaceful, and Gabriel hated that he was about to shatter that peace with a few carefully chosen words.
“Josh…”
His friend’s eyes opened, and Josh blinked a few times, raising his hand to shield his eyes from the sun as he looked toward him. “Hi, G.”
“We need to talk.”
Josh instantly tensed. “What do you mean? What is it? Is it Avery? The baby?”
Gabriel waved his hand, dismissing the questions as quickly as he could before Josh could start to imagine the worst, although the reality wasn’t that great either. “It’s nothing like that, but it has to do with Avery.”
“What?”
“She decided to try and put your things away. I blocked her attempts.”
Josh blinked, his face showing no trace of emotion. “She doesn’t think I’m—”
“Josh, you’re dead to everyone down there. There’s no way to bring you back.”
Josh’s shoulders fell as the realization that Gabriel was right sank in. “She’s right.”
Gabriel shook his head. But the more he thought about it, the more something was pulling him to the conclusion it wasn’t. He was about to risk everything to change the panel’s mind. “I think you should go to her.”
“No way, not right now.”
Gabriel pressed his lips together, trying to keep his own temper in check. He’d never imagined the day when Josh wouldn’t leap at the chance to be with Avery. Something was definitely off in the grand scheme of things. “You’re being stubborn and hardheaded.”
“No, stubborn and hardheaded is that damn panel. Stubborn was me bugging Avery to move in with me. This is me, hurt that she’s…” He bit his lip, unable to vocalize the rest of his thoughts, but Gabriel knew. He could sense what was on his friend’s mind and, to be honest, he didn’t like the thoughts that were there lately. That someday, somehow, things were getting too out of hand. “I need to be mature, G. If this is what Avery thinks is best, if this is what is truly in her heart, then I need to let her do it.”
Gabriel sat down beside him. “She’s doing what she thinks is best for her and your son. She has no idea that you’re up here fighting to get back to her, to reverse time, to set things right. For her, life goes on, Josh, there’s no holding pattern. No pause button that stopped things until a decision is made one way or the other.”
“How would she know? I wasn’t allowed to tell her there was a chance when we were together.”
Gabriel sighed, wishing he could knock some sense into his friend. “Just go to her, Josh. Please.”
Josh growled in frustration, as if he thought Gabriel couldn’t understand what he was going through, being separated from everything, from his life, without the real chance of being listened to. “I can’t, Gabriel. If she’s putting my things away, I don’t want to watch her do that. Watch her trying to get rid of me.”
“That isn’t what she’s trying to do. You know that in your heart. All she’s trying to do is keep her sanity. To keep from being reminded every waking moment of what she lost.”
“By letting me go.” Josh shook his head, eyes brimming with tears. He reached up and wiped his eyes, a determined set to his jaw. “If she moves on, what do I have to try and go back for? What if what she finds is better than what we had?”
“You can’t think like that. You don’t know the future.”
“No, but I know the past and I know the present.”
“You don’t know the present until you go down there and witness it for yourself. If you love her like you say you do, like you’ve always claimed, you’ll go there right now.”
Josh’s eyes lifted in surprise as if he hadn’t expected Gabriel to challenge his words. “What are you saying, that you doubt I love her?”
Gabriel shook his head. “That’s not what I’m saying, but you need to go.”
***
Josh reached up to the top of the bookshelf. He pulled down one of the hats, an old Marlins one she’d bought him when they’d first started dating. He wasn’t amazed anymore that he was able to pick it up. He looked back at her sleeping in the bed, her tear stained face visible to him even in the darkness of the room. He went to his side of the bed and sat on the edge, listening as she mumbled softly in her sleep. His chest tightened as he recognized his name in her murmurings.
As much as it killed him inside, if he had to let her go for her own sake, if she had to let him go in order to go on, he’d find a way to deal with it. He just wasn’t ready to let go yet. He couldn’t. He was afraid of what would happen if he started to let go. What if one day he didn’t care anymore? What if he forgot the way she looked, how her smile could change his entire day? Or that making her laugh was one of his favorite things in the world.
“You do what you have to do, baby,” he whispered as he laid his hat on his pillow. “Whatever, okay? I understand.” He kissed his fingertips and pressed them against her lips before he faded away.