Chapter 35: A Deal With The Devil: Chapter 35

When Matt and I lived in New York City, I used to dream of home, awake and asleep. I dreamed of heat lightning on summer nights, and the way the sky would turn still and yellow before tornadoes rolled in. I dreamed of huge snowfalls in winter, balmy air rolling in through my windows in late spring. Even those fucking box elder beetles that came through every crevice of the house in the summer…I missed them too.

Now I’m back, and it’s no longer home. Everything has remained the same—same time-worn carpets and scratched oak table, same beaten-up couch in the family room—but there’s no meaning attached to any of it.

There isn’t a ton to do, other than taking my mother to see an attorney and getting the house ready for Charlotte’s return, yet I feel overwhelmed. So, I ignore Jonathan’s texts, and Drew’s. I avoid the calls—from old friends who’ve heard I’m home, from Fairfield, claiming there’s a billing issue, from my agent, wanting those last few chapters of a book I can’t seem to finish. Most of all, I don’t read the gossip blogs. Not a single one of them.

Hayes has texted a few times, asking how it’s going. Nothing personal. Nothing indicating we are anything other than distant friends. From the sound of it, his life has gone on as it was. I guess that’s for the best, even if I can’t claim the same.

Everyone—from neighbors to cashiers to the librarian—asks me if it’s good to be back. I have to lie, because I can’t tell anyone that home, for me, is no longer a place. It’s the sound of Hayes’s laugh, and the sight of him brushing his hair out of his eyes, or reluctantly drinking a smoothie he hates solely because I made it for him. It’s the way he struggles not to smile when I imitate his accent, his singular willingness to always say the worst possible thing.

Home is Hayes, and I am going to miss him every minute of the day for a long, long time.

I lie in bed on the morning of my mother’s first AA meeting—her lawyer’s suggestion, though it’s me she seems to resent for it—wishing I could just remain here. Eventually, I force myself to get up, to shower and take out the trash and collect the paper and feed the cat. I even make my mother a smoothie, the way I once did for Hayes.

“What’s this?” she asks, pushing it away before I’ve even answered.

“It’s good for you,” I reply. “Six kinds of vegetables. It’ll help your leg heal.”

Her eyes narrow. “Don’t patronize me.”

I roll my eyes and walk away. It’s only when I’m out of sight that I feel tears come. Hayes had every reason to refuse the smoothies, and the vitamins, and the vacation. Instead, he took every single thing I was willing to give. Who’s going to make sure he’s okay if I’m not there? Who’s going to force him to take a day off? Who’s going to love him with her entire heart, the way he deserves to be loved?

I grab my phone. It would be pointless, and embarrassing, to ask him these questions. To show all my pathetic cards when nothing can come of it.

So, I ask him in my own Tali way—caustically and with little emotion.

Me: The olives in your martini don’t count as vegetables. Just wanted to mention before you revert to your old ways.

I wait breathlessly for his response, watching those three dots swirl as he types.

And then it comes. A single line that fills me and destroys me at once.

I miss you.

Tears drip down my face as I stare at those words. And they continue to fall as I sit, helpless, wanting to say a thousand things in response. I want to tell him I love him, that I wish I’d never left, that I’d give anything to be back there.

I want to ask if there’s any chance he’d be willing to wait for me, but I’m not brave enough.

Instead, I just write I miss you too.

I see the three dots again. They disappear and come back. They disappear entirely, and I sit with my head to my knees on the bedroom floor and weep like a kid.

I really wanted him to say something, anything, more. But he can’t be here, and I can’t be there, so what else was there to say?

At least I know how the story ends.