And now it’s all gone.Poof. And here I am, yet again, where I always am, sitting in yet another hotel room, another drink in my hand, looking out at yet another lonely cityscape.
I turn on the TV and flip the channels. Sports. Local news. I flip around and around and finally land on a music station. Lenny Kravitz is singing “Fly Away.” Hey, at least something’s going right for me tonight.
I sit down in an armchair in the corner, lean back with my whiskey, and listen to the song. Yeah, Lenny, I agree: let’s fly away to anywhere but here—you and me, bro—to a place without stress and responsibility and worry. A place where I won’t have this thousand-pound weight on my chest at all times—a place where I won’t feel so fuckinglonelyall the time. And so fuckingguilty. To a place where I’m not constantly being crushed by shit I can’t control and feelings I can’t express and memories that haunt me.
I run my hands through my hair. I’ve never thought of this song as sad before, but, motherfucker, it’s making me wanna cry. Fuck this shit. I turn the channel to the next music station, only to run smack into “Little Lion Man” by Mumford & Sons. They’re in the midst of singing the chorus and it’s like they’ve written the words for me. Kat told me her heart is on the line tonight, didn’t she?—and I really,reallyfucked it up.
Jesus.
I take another huge guzzle of my whiskey and stare at the Space Needle.
The torturous song ends, thank God—but there ain’t no rest for the wicked: the next song is Adele. She’s wailing her heart out in “Someone Like You.” And kicking me square in the balls.
I take a gigantic gulp of my whiskey.
No, Adele, I’ll never find another woman like Kat. Fuck you. She’s a fucking unicorn, Adele. One of a kind.
I rub my forehead and look out the window with burning eyes.
Goddammit, I fucked up—maybe even irreversibly. I didn’t realize it at the time, but tonight was a fork in the road for Kat and me and I took the wrong path. I should have told Kat about my move to Seattle in the first place, for sure, but even more than that, I should have handled things differently tonight when the shit hit the fan. I should have said all the right things—the things Kat was dying to hear.
But I didn’t.
I imagine myself saying, “My heart’s on the line, too, Kat.” Damn, I should have said that to her. Or, at the very least, “Mine, too.”
But who am I kidding? Kat didn’t want to hear me say my heart’s on the line—she wanted more than that. She wanted the magic words—the whole nine yards. And I let her down.
I drain the rest of my drink and pour myself another tall one.
Jesus. Adele’s voice is cutting me like a thousand razors dragged across my heart.
Kat wanted a promise of forever from me tonight. It was written all over her face. But what she doesn’t understand is there’s no such thing as forever—I mean, shit, there’s no such thing asnext week. Anything could happen. Nothing’s guaranteed. A guys’ life can change in a single afternoon. I mean, hell, a guy might go out to a football game with his dad in the morning and come back later that day to find out no one will ever sing “You Are My Sunshine” to him again. Or call him Little Fishy. Or, worst of all, say the words, “I love you.”
I take a long swig of my drink.
“No, son, they don’t let kids go to the morgue,” my father said. “You’ll just have to say goodbye to her in your prayers, son.”
“But I wanna say goodbye to her face and kiss her lips and tell her I love her. Not like in a prayer. For real.”
“You can’t do it to her face—you have to do it in a prayer.”
“But I wanna see her face when I say it. Not like talking on the phone.”
“Fine. Shit. I dunno. Then say it to her photo, then.”
“But I don’t have a photo of her.”
“Well, Jesus Fucking Christ, Joshua William. Fine... Take this one. Your mother always loved this photo of the three of you. Sayeverything to her face in the photo and stop talking about it. I’ve got my own goodbyes to say, son—we’re all hurting, not just you. I’m sorry but I can’t talk about this anymore.”
My eyes are stinging. I rub them and take another long gulp of my whiskey.
Kat wants me to promise her fifty-two days? Shit. I can’t even promise her tomorrow.
Because a guy might go to school one morning and then return home that afternoon to find out his dad had shipped his brother off to a “treatment center” without even letting him say goodbye. And just to add insult to injury, the guy’s dad might even say his brother will “never come home again” because “that boy’s fucking crazy” and “we’re better off without him” and “you need to stop crying about him like a little fucking baby.”
Motherfucker.
I drain the last of my drink, refill my glass, and settle into my chair again.
