I sat on the floor, with her tangled about me, as my heart stammered to a stop before it crashed back into a pattern of beats that felt like stutter steps. She’d made him a song? “He’s with Cassidy, but I’m sure he’d love to hear it when he gets a chance.”
Stacy’s eyes met mine over the top of my daughter’s hatless head. We’d lost the top hat in our battle with gravity and Hulk-ness.
“Hey, Han, why don’t you go make sure Jin doesn’t sneak any chocolate chips into the granola bars we’re making while I talk to your mom.”
“We can have a few chocolate chips, but not too many,” Hannah said and then took off at her normal scamper for the kitchen.
My heart tried to lift with the realization that Hannah was allowing herself to have a few unhealthy things mixed in with the strict diet she’d been observing. But because my heart was already so low, the lift barely made a dent. Instead of getting up off the floor where we’d landed next to the sofa, I just pulled myself into a cross-legged position and rested my head against the cushions.
Stacy joined me, our knees and shoulders touching.
“What happened?”
I couldn’t repeat it again. It was just too harsh and painful.
“Reality,” I said.
“You looked so upset in the video,” she said. “What did they say?”
“Nothing that wasn’t true,” I told her.
“Tristan. Talk to me,” she said.
“I can’t right now. I just…need some time to process it.”
She hugged me tightly. The very best kind of friend. Knowing when to be there and when to back off, and knowing I’d tell her when I was ready. I was lucky. More than lucky, I was truly blessed. The universe had brought a whole group of beautiful people into my life. People I wasn’t sure I’d ever deserved.
I just wanted, for once, to not be the one they were having to pick up off the ground. Not that I wished anything bad on them, I just wanted to be the person providing the shoulder instead of the one taking it.
???
I didn’t sleep Thursday night after several nights in a row of deep rest. Instead, I spent the night scrolling mercilessly through social media about Brady. Waiting for the shoe to drop. Waiting for someone to talk about Darren and me, and how I was the shittiest person ever to exist for moving on so quickly after he’d barely been buried.
But nothing ever showed up.
I didn’t know if that was because something had changed, and the man had decided not to post it, or if I just wasn’t looking in the right places.
I gave up on sleep and social media at about four in the morning. I made a cup of coffee and gave Molly way too many treats. Then, I sat down at the table and started writing names on the metal bunny baskets Hannah had picked out to give to her friends at her party.
Hannah joined me at around six thirty, her favorite shawl of Grams wrapped around her. I hugged her tightly, breathing in the scent of her, allowing my focus to switch back to the most important thing in my life. My daughter.
She was turning five tomorrow. In so many ways, it seemed impossible while also like it had flown by in a blink of an eye. I was afraid if I blinked again, she’d be graduating high school, and with another blink, she’d be out of college, and then another, she’d have a family of her own.
We’d just finished the baskets and moved on to prepping party platters when my mom and dad arrived. My mom looked so little like me it was sometimes surprising to people that we were related. She was short and dark-haired and curvy. My dad was tall and broad-shouldered and once had hair as blond as mine but now was just a barely-there shade of gray.
“Papa! Grammie!” Hannah cried out with a smile and hugged them. She was such a good hugger. Her enthusiasm was contagious, and I found my smile finding its way back to my face.
My mom turned from her hug of Hannah to me, wrapping me in her arms and holding on. No matter the tension that had sprung between us since the funeral, I knew they loved me. That their first concern was always going to be the well-being of their daughters and their grandchildren.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Tears hit my eyes because every time I was asked that damn question I couldn’t say yes. I wanted so badly just to scream to the world that I was happy and good and fulfilled. I didn’t want to be whiny and sad and hurt. So, I forced the smile to stay in place and gave my mother a lie. “I am.”
“You looked really upset in that video,” she said, pulling back to search my face. I was surprised she’d seen the clip as much as I’d been surprised she’d seen the one of Brady and me dancing, because my mom wasn’t one to spend hours trolling social media.
“It’s been a little overwhelming, but it’s all okay,” I said.
She didn’t believe me much more than Stacy had the day before. But I was determined not to need more of their shoulders to cry on.
