Chapter 3 - JayceNamidJayceNamid

Chapter 3

Jayce

I can't do this.

How can I be expected to change spark plugs and replace alternators as if life is the same in this moment as it was three weeks ago, as if my heart and soul haven't been torn to shreds? How am I supposed to go to the front counter a dozen times a day and smile and take payments and return keys and say things like, "I'm hanging in there"? How am I supposed to magically know how to make numbers balance in the shop's checkbook when, a month ago, I wasn't even sure we had a checkbook?

I fight through every minute of every day at the shop. I cling to reality by my fingernails as I watch the clock, counting every minute and every breath and every heartbeat until I can leave my fake, painful smile in my toolbox with the rest of the heavy metal things I can barely remember how to use. I force the angst and the black and the despair into the pit of my stomach until I can get in my car and somehow make it home.

I don't know how I manage that either. I don't ever remember driving, only that there are trees and snow flying past the window and the sound of the tires on asphalt, and then I am in my driveway. I must be remembering to do laundry on occasion; I've only had to put on a shirt I've plucked from the floor a handful of times. I must be remembering to shower, as no one has told me that I smell or cringed and backed away when I've approached them at the counter. I must be remembering to eat; I'd probably have joined Jordyn by now if I weren't.

I don't want to do this. I don't want to live with only half of my soul. I don't want to try to fill in the gaps. I don't want to walk into rooms that are populated only by memories. I don't want to hear the voice of a ghost echoing in my head.

I do what I'm supposed to, what they tell me will help me move on. I go back to my routine, and I eat and I shower and I breathe…and I'm lost. I don't want to fall into the abyss, but I'm standing at the edge and I don't know how to find my way back. I don't know how to move on. I don't know if I deserve to.

Maybe I deserve this. Maybe I deserve to spend my nights with tears and pain and misery filling me until there is nothing else. It's my fault after all.

I've watched it all on repeat in my head for weeks now. I've listened to every word I screamed in anger, every word that was screamed back. I fight the memories and try to lock them away. I try to use logic and reason as I clutch tightly to the words offered to me in calming tones by the doctors, and the officer who had come to my door. "Wrong place at the wrong time." "There was nothing he could have done to avoid it." "He wasn't speeding." "The semi blew a tire and rolled before he could swerve out of the way." It doesn't help.

We were supposed to spend the afternoon together with beers and the game on my TV as I listened to him ramble about the demise of his most recent disaster of a relationship, just like I always did. I was mad at the world, not at him. I was mad at the storm that had raged for over a week, even though that's normal in March. I was mad that the shipment of parts I'd been waiting for had finally come in after a three-week delay, only to find that they'd sent the wrong things. I was mad at the fact the diner had gotten my lunch order wrong twice and that I'd ripped my favorite old T-shirt. I was mad at everything and nothing, but not him.

He was frustrated, but not with me. He was frustrated with himself and with his newest ex. He was discouraged that he wanted so desperately to fall in love and get married and start a family, and yet here he was, on my couch, crying again. He was frustrated with the world, but not with me.

It didn't matter. We took our anger out on one another. Isn't that what happens sometimes, even though it never should? We take things out on those we love the most.

We bickered over the television volume and what to have for dinner and whether to give Daniel a discount the next time he brought his plow in to be serviced. In the end, he'd left. He'd planned to spend the evening, but he'd left at 5:08. He'd left, and he'd never made it home. What if I hadn't yelled at him? What if he'd stayed? What if it wasn't just me now, desperately and hopelessly trying to keep myself together, if only to preserve our business - the only part of him I still have?

What if…