4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Rory

It's harder to wait for the information than trying to get it on my own and failing.

Being escorted away from a property by the police, booked, and given a restraining order should have been enough clues to stop me from asking around. But every time I try to refrain, images of John fill my mind and my restless heart pushes me to keep going, to keep searching, and to keep praying, so one day I'll finally be able to say goodbye.

However, hope is something I'm not used to after having too many doors slammed in my face. But now that the seed has been planted, I'm eager and nearly delirious at the thought of what's going to happen next. I'm not sure why, but I trust Samuel to come through, find what I need, and bring it to me. Even if it's only one name. One person I can touch as if I'm again touching John. Tears spring to my eyes. A mix of pain, hope of finding closure, having a chance to tell him I'll be strong and make him proud, and that I still miss him every day.

From what I read in Samuel's rigid body language, perceptive glances and pain, I knew I had to be sincere. No hiding between half-truths or concealing what looking for peace has done to me. I'd been sure it'd be painful; instead, it was liberating. Having someone listen to me, and not judging, it eased something inside of me—all the tension I'd lived with since losing John, and finding out I couldn't see him one last time. For the first time in nearly two years, I can finally have a resolution to all my problems. Seeing him in others and knowing he'll be live on, even if not in the form I'd known him in, makes his loss less painful.

Samuel's offer is unbelievable. His presence, such as it is, in my life, makes everything real, and his generosity makes my heart a lighter place.

Sitting and waiting for my phone to ring is no use, so I stand up and look around, noticing for the first time in months—years, really—the floor flooded with dirty clothes, half-eaten plates of food, random boxes and bags. And for the first time, how far-flung I am from my life hits me.

I pushed the pause button on my life when I woke up from my coma, unable to function and unable to do anything more than breathe because the loss was too much to bear. Even now I'm lost, but I'm fighting to get answers.

With renewed interest in the world around me, I collect, clean, and set everything as it was in the beginning. Dirty clothes in the basket, then into the washing machine, and for a while I watch the drum going round and round. While I do that, I think of how many months I spent trying to get rid of this loneliness and crying at the need to be part of something, at the need to belong. I've watched my life going round and round while wallowing in the same emptiness, with no place to call home and no one to call mine.

Now I'm finally moving again. I have focus, and maybe one day this place will go back to feeling like a home.

I concentrate on cleaning the kitchen, sorting between what needs to be washed and what needs to be thrown away. And with each piece of us I remove from my life, a piece of memory comes to mind, making me even lonelier than before. However, the good memories make my heart feel less heavy, as if they're mending the cracks John's death has created in me.

I'm not sure how many hours I spend cleaning, and when I'm done, I'm bone tired, but the kitchen and the living room are back to being liveable. I crash on the sofa, trying to relax all my knotted muscles while I look at the ceiling. How many times had I been in this position, with John on top of me, making me dream, pant, and come over and over?

I jump up from my supine position and sit with my back pressed to the cushions, trying to swat away visions of us. Visions of his beautiful, strong face, forest-green eyes and lips, with the bottom one slightly bigger than the top. The taste of his last kiss and his smiling mouth against mine.

I stand and walk to the fridge for a bottle of water. I've stopped buying alcohol as I was using it as a crutch to drown the pain and push my guilt away, living in an intoxicated state.

While there, I look at my phone, as the bone-deep desire to make that call becomes stronger. And like so many times before, I'm powerless to resist.

I pick up my phone from the counter, press two, and wait, with my heart thumping against my rib cage and my eyes watering, until the call engages. One, two, three, and on the fourth ring what I'm waiting for happens . . .

"Hi, Rory and John are doing better things than waiting for the phone to ring. If you want, leave a message. Kisses." I close my eyes when John's voice floods the room, and I furiously wipe my eyes, over and over.

I don't want to cry anymore.

I want to be doing something, so I can move forward from this crippling pain. I want to find whatever is left of him on Earth, so I can ask for forgiveness, and maybe be able to find peace. Or think about what we had together with joy and not with regret for what we lost.

When the answering machine beeps, taking away John's voice, I press the red button, ending the call. Then, in my need to do something, I pick it up again.

This urgency to be doing something is too much to suffocate, but then defeat fills me and I put the phone down because I don't have Samuel's phone number, and there is nothing I can do.

Pushed by a curiosity I can't stop, I sit on the sofa and pick up my laptop. Then when it's running, I enter his name in the search bar, just to be left with my heart pounding and my mouth open, when his face appears on the page. A younger version of the man I met, but still him. I click to open the article and read through it. And now I understand his offer to help a little more.

He's a fucking hero.

I'm left mesmerised by the difference between the man I met and the picture on the page. He seems to have aged a little, and the smile shining through the screen is a sparkling version of the one he gave me at the coffee shop. However, the light in his eyes is the same. The hunger to move, do, and be is exactly the same.

I look at his picture until a growl breaks the silence and the emptiness of my stomach surprises me. It's been a long time since I felt the need to eat or have my body remind me about needing food to survive.

Something is changing in me, and I'll take this as another sign. I follow my stomach to the kitchen to find an empty fridge. The decision to go out and buy something is another sign.

In need of a shower, I grab some of the freshly cleaned towels and head for the bathroom. I walk past our room, the door closed since the day I returned home from the hospital.

I spent that day crying and smelling everything John had left behind.

Since that day, the door hasn't been opened. I took whatever I thought I needed and moved it to the chair in the living room. Then, at some point, I stopped caring. I only washed what I needed to go to the hospital to beg them to give me something. I did nothing to avoid making my world spiral down into the darkness. No one ever helped—until Samuel.

My need to run away from my life hits me hard, so I put on a jumper, take my wallet and keys, and open the door. A dark shadow in front of it has me stumbling backwards and looking up.

Samuel?

My heart beats way too fast, and my head feels dizzy, nearly making me fall to my knees. Confused about him being here, I just look at him, wondering if he's really in front of me. Lost in thought, I don't move, breathe, or talk, until he clears his throat and places a hand on my elbow.

"Are you okay?"

I shake my head, feeling waves of awareness up and down my body, making me take a step back.

Why is he having this effect on me?

No one should have that effect on me but John.

I shake my head again to make my brain work, and concentrate on the overwhelming feeling of hope invading my body instead of the sensations his touch had on me.

"Hi." My voice comes out croaky because of the emotions clogging my throat.

"We need to talk," he says, taking a step towards me, and then another, until he's inside.

My mind is so focused on what he has to say, that I don't realise what's happened until I hear the click of the main door closing behind his back.

I move further inside the apartment. My body and mind are undecided about the reasons he's here. Is it a good or bad sign? Whatever it is, I'm ready. Or I'll have to be.

I can only hope he's not here to rescind his offer, because that'd kill me.