Nicola
Ava won’t stop crying.
I should have lied. I should have told her we were just going away for a short time. I should have told her we would see Bram again.
But I couldn’t. The lie would hurt me to say, to even thinking about, and over time it would ruin her.
It was best for us both to be ruined up front.
After I returned home from the Lion, my heart was a bleeding mess in my hands - condemned, unsafe, unstable. The sight of my own apartment – of Bram’s charity – was enough to make me sick, so I immediately began packing.
I packed all through the night, with music blaring. I never answered the calls or the knocks at my door. If Bram was yelling at me, I didn’t hear it. If he was reunited with the woman and his son – his son – I didn’t know it. I went on like a demon, until dawn broke the cityscape and my entire apartment was packed in every spare box, suitcase and garbage bag I had.
There were a lot of garbage bags.
What I really wanted to do was find a place to move into while Ava was gone. I was delusional. I don’t know why I thought that would happen, why I had the idea that maybe my mother could drop her off in a whole new life. She would never have to see our old place again.
But I had everything packed, no place to go and no car to get me there even if I did.
I called my mom. I explained what happened.
I did it without crying. I thought I was so brave.
My mother came over and the minute I saw Ava’s face, I realized I wasn’t brave at all.
I was a mess.
She looked around the apartment in confusion. She didn’t understand and no matter how I tried to explain it, there was no right answer to what was happening.
I didn’t want to blame it all on Bram. I didn’t want her to hate him even though I was starting to believe that I did.
Ava doesn’t hate. She doesn’t have it in her. She just gets broken, like a porcelain doll.
To make matters worse, all the emotions she was feeling, the rejection, the discomfort and the pain of losing the things she loved, made her feel dizzy.
Sick.
She threw up and her blood glucose levels were all over the place.
I’d never felt so alone, even with my mother there, trying to get the proper food into her, water, insulin, balance. I knew Bram was next door. I could hear him, but I would never ask for his help again.
Luckily, just as we were about to take her to the hospital, she pulled out of it.
Then the tears came.
They haven’t stopped.
I’m at my mother’s house, sitting on her sofa with my legs curled up under me, sipping tea. It’s picture perfect but I’m a raging torrent inside.
Ava is beside me sniffling, wiping her nose on her arm, on me.
I can only hold her. I can only tell her it will be all right, even if I don’t believe it. It feels so futile, so useless, yet I keep saying it anyway.
Kayla has offered her apartment to the both of us. So has my mother. But I still have a job – and a promotion – so I’m going to stay with Kayla in the city. Ava and I will be squished into Kayla’s den, but it’s just temporary and I think Kayla needs some help with her rising rent costs herself. Linden and Steph offered their place too, but I can’t look at Linden right now. He reminds me too much of his brother. He has offered to move my furniture out of the apartment and put it right into storage until we find a place of our own and get started. That generous act, well, that reminds me of his brother also.
Ava shifts in my arms and looks up at me with big wet eyes and there’s so much hope in them that it makes me want to cry. Because I pray that the hope isn’t misleading.
She lost Bram who had become her father figure whether I wanted it that way or not.
I lost my heart.
I loved Bram.
I loved him.
His smile, his jokes, his generosity. His lips, his eyes, his jaw. His attitude, his good nature, his humor. His ease, his height, his body. His ambition. His adoration. His devotion.
He looked at me like I was magic.
I started to believe it.
We were magic together.
And I still loved him.
After everything, how can I not?
How can I stop?
But this love is what’s making me collapse inside.
Second by empty second.
Brick by heavy brick.