No matter how many times I’ve looked back on this night—on that exact moment—I’ve never been able to pinpoint when things changed, when the air shifted. But it did. And I guess, given our history, I really shouldn’t be surprised. We’d suppressed our feelings for too long, but they wouldn’t hide forever.
One minute, I was holding my niece’s boyfriend up, letting him cry on my shoulder, and the next, he was peering into my soul, confused and lost, looking for comfort. I had always been good at keeping my emotions in check.Especially with him.The only exception being on her birthday, when he kissed me in the back of my truck. But that night… be it the stress of Lana and the doctor working on her inside, or the look of sadness in his eyes, keeping them in check wasn’t possible.
It seemed to happen in slow motion, but also in the blink of an eye. It was out of body, like I was watching it happen from above, unable to do anything other than wait. His gaze dipped down to my mouth before landing on my eyes again. Before I even knew what I was doing, I leaned forward, pressing my lips to his, bringing our bodies flush.
The kiss started out slow; nothing more than a featherlight brush of lips, an attempt to calm him. Ground him. His lips parted, allowing my tongue to slip inside and taste his need and desperation. It was as if the kiss stole all his anxiety, his body melting into me, giving himself over fully. The moment wasn’t long, only a minute at most, but when the back door opened and the doctor stepped out, dissolving the bubble we put ourselves in, it was like a bucket of ice water was dumped over our heads. The reality of what we had just done—again—came crashing down like a ton of bricks.
The doctor didn’t see anything, and he told us that Lana would be okay. She just needed some fluids and to rest, but that night has haunted me ever since. It’s a night I try not to think about for that reason, but also because it was a night that should’ve told me everything I needed to know about Lana and her troubles. She swore the next morning it was an accident, and it wouldn’t happen again, and I believed her. Foolishly.
The funeral was the first time I’d seen Segan since that night. And the last.
12
SEGAN
You always hear about the five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Healing from grief comes in a cycle. It’s supposed to help process change and protect us while adapting to a new reality. It seems to me like I skipped over denial, parked right in anger, and never left.
It’s been an entire fucking year since Lana took her last breath. Funny enough, it’s also been a year since I came to terms with how she wasn’t who I thought she was after all. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to let go of this toxic anger that’s had me in a chokehold since she left. She’s the only person I had in my corner. The only one who seemed to get me, to root for me. We had each other, and we protected each other from this fucked-up world we were raised in.
When her dad got too high on his horse and decided to beat on her, it was me who came to her rescue. It was my bed she hid away in, night after night. We were supposed to have each other’s backs, no matter what. But instead, she stabbed me in mine.
Lana had been addicted to heroin for the better part of a year before she died. It was the one thing we’d never done together. We’d always gotten high together, but that was one thing I wanted no part of. Kind of hypocritical of me, since I was popping pills like they were tic-tacs at the time.
She was sleeping with her dealer, a fact I didn’t learn until about a week before she died. We were each other’s firsts, and to my knowledge, we were each other’s onlys.
Putting my car in park, I grab the brown paper bag off my passenger seat as I get out. It’s overcast, kind of perfect for the occasion, if you ask me. I’ve fought back and forth for over a week about whether I was even going to come here today. A very large part of me didn’t want to, and still doesn’t want to, because I’m still so angry with her. But above all, Lana was my girlfriend. She was my first love, and that needs to mean something. Even if it doesn’t seem like it right now.
It's empty here, the only car in the lot belonging to me. Her headstone is toward the back, next to her grandmother’s. This isn’t my first time here, so finding it isn’t hard. About a month after the funeral, I came here in the middle of the night, when the insomnia had its hold on me. I sat in front of her stone, unable to say or do anything. I drank myself into oblivion and passed out. That was my one and only time visiting her.
Until now.
Working the paper bag down, I unscrew the cap, bringing the bottle to my lips. The vodka burns, but it’s a burn that’s welcome. Need, even. While I stopped popping pills after Lana died, I never gave up the drinking. I need something to numb the anger, or set fire to it, depending on the day. I wince as I down another mouthful. My sore throat hasn’t let up any. If anything, it’s only worsened. Same with the body aches… and the headaches.
It's been over a week, and I can’t seem to kick whatever the hell this is.
I slide down the granite headstone with my back against it. With one knee propped up and the other kicked wide, I rest my head back and stare up at the gray sky like it holds all the answers.
Taking one more swig, I swallow down the distaste I feel for being here before speaking whatever truth I can muster up. “Some days I miss you, Lana. So goddamn much, it feels debilitating. Other days, I’m happy you’re fucking gone. How fucked up is that?”
The bitter truth rolls off my tongue with ease, and I know I should feel like an asshole speaking them out loud, but I don’t. I need to get it all off my chest if I’m ever going to learn to move past this. This loud, ugly anger is eating me up. Hell, it’s probably why I’ve felt so sick lately. It’s been a year, and I haven’t voiced any of this. It’s time.
“Why’d you have to go and fuck everything up, Lan? Why?” I down another mouthful of the vodka, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “We could’ve gotten out of here, you and me. We had a plan. We could’ve been fucking better than this, but you had to go and choose yourself.”
Memories float through my mind like a projector.
The first time we ever stole a bottle of liquor from the grocery mart. It was that whipped vodka, and we drank it straight from the bottle, chasing it with orange soda that we also stole. It was so nasty, we both gagged, but we got it down. We stayed up all night talking about our hopes and dreams. Lana wanted to be a veterinarian. She always had a soft spot for the animals. And me, I wanted to be a musician. Perform in Nashville for thousands of other lost souls. Tour the world and change people’s lives with a few chords on an instrument and the lyrics flowing out of me.
That night under the oak tree was when we decided to one day leave this place. The hope we felt for the future we promised ourselves felt like enough to hold on to.
Then my mind drifts to the time we lost our virginities to each other. How I tried like hell to make it romantic for her by lighting dozens of tealight candles all around my bedroom. We ended up catching the curtain on fire mid-act, and I panicked, trying to put it out. There’s a burn scar on the inside of my left upper arm from that night.
Memories like this make me miss her. Make me miss what we once were… before the drugs and before life got in the way.
After Josiah left, I really did try to make it work with her. I tried to stick it out, tried to hold on to what I once felt toward her.
But then… well, then I remember the time I got home early from work and found her nodded off on our bed, my belt still strapped to her arm and the needle beside the bed where it had fallen. Her breathing was so shallow, for a minute I thought she was dead. And then when she finally came to, she had the nerve to deny it at all, as if I hadn’t seen everything with my own eyes.
She’d sneak out in the middle of the night when she thought I was sleeping, coming back smelling like another man. When I confronted her and told her I couldn’t do any of this anymore—not the drugs, not the other men—she swore up and down she’d cut it all out. That she didn’t need it.
