18. A Picture-Perfect Introspection

18

A PICTURE-PERFECT INTROSPECTION

brISTOL

E ven though hours have passed since Lila left, the crying has continued like a positive feedback loop, and I’ve done nothing but ruminate until night has smeared itself across the bleak sky. I can’t feel anything anymore. I thought that talking things through with Lila would make me feel better, but all it’s done is left me more confused than I was before. How could I have been so worried that she wouldn’t understand? What does that say about how I see her? She was so understanding, so supportive. And I…I feel like the biggest idiot on the planet.

My lungs are nothing but prunes from dehydration, and my throat buckles underneath the unspoken weight of remorse, no longer fighting to produce the sobs that were probably heard from blocks away. I brush my thumb over the faded polaroid pinched between my fingers, staring down at the little square that epitomizes my fondest memory of Summit—a picture frozen in time, with her as the centerpiece as I kiss her on the cheek.

It was the moment I asked her to move in with me because Hayes was moving out. It was the moment I knew that our future together was going to be promised. She was at the point of tears, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at the picture. She’s—it’s inexplicable, but she’s glowing. The full beam splitting her lips should provide a similar kind of warmth in my heart, but it doesn’t. No, the photo is…uncanny. I want to remember her like this—unflawed and unapologetic—but the only way I remember her is her cold, lifeless body in rigor mortis on the mortuary table.

Now, instead of joy glimmering in her eyes, she stares back at me like a blurry creature on a trail camera, curdling my meager breakfast in my nauseated stomach. She haunts me. This picture haunts me. I should feel comforted by the memories I have of her, but I don’t. All I can remember is how untimely her demise was.

I’m sorry I let you down. I’m so sorry, Summit. It was my job to protect you. You would still be here if it wasn’t for me. Please forgive me.

I know that Lila said it wasn’t my fault, but I think a little part of me will always believe that it was.

It feels like I’m tainting this polaroid with my mere touch, like how one would dirty a flower’s petals with the oil from their fingertips. With a plateauing breath, I let the picture fall from my hand, watching as it flutters to the floor under the guise of darkness. Strobes of moonlight feed through the slats of my blinds, playing with shadows to sculpt her countenance in a monochrome of blacks and whites. My eyes are clouded with an overflowing well of tears, and as my panic begins to ripen, I fumble around for my phone, needing respite more than I need my next dose of oxygen.

When I finally manage to open it, I navigate to my photos, immediately clicking on an album that’s titled LILA. Even though we parted ways a year ago, I kept every picture I took of her. I couldn’t force myself to delete them, much like I’ve been unable to force myself to get rid of Summit’s engagement ring. Call me sentimental or a dumbass, but erasing a piece of them is like erasing their memory completely.

My photos of Lila range from hilarious to downright gorgeous, with her fashioning a floor-length dress in one to her fashioning adorable bedhead and a drool-stained nighttime shirt in another. She’s so goddamn photogenic, even when she swears she’s not.

I don’t…I’m not replacing Summit, am I? Fuck, it feels like that. That’s not my intention. They’re two different girls. I want to start this new chapter with Lila, but I’m not ready to move on from the cliffhanger of my previous life.

The longer I scroll through Lila’s photo album, the further my heart seems to burrow into the chrysalis that’s formed in the very pit of my chest. A transitional period where lethargic beats should be able to heal, but it feels like a dismal purgatory more than anything.

There’s a sudden knock on my door that sounds eerily loud in my ears, and it breaks the trance I was in.

“Bri? It’s Hayes,” a voice says quietly, tone colored with poorly veiled worry.

I turn my phone off and throw it somewhere to the side, groaning as I mentally prepare myself for whatever motivational speech my best friend is about to give me. I appreciate his concern, I do, but talking about my problems is the last thing I want to do right now. What’s the harm in ignoring them until they go away?

“Yeah, come in,” I mumble, wiping away the slow drying, still-wet evidence on my cheeks.

Hayes pushes the partition open slightly, leaving some distance while he leans against the doorframe, the breadth of his shoulders blocking most of the hallway’s light. “You’ve been in here a long time. Me and the guys were just worried about you.”

“I’m fine. I was just…”

“Reminiscing?”

I can barely look at him. “Something like that, I guess.”

Out of the margin of my eyesight, I can faintly see Hayes’ lips swerve into a frown, and I can tell that he’s holding back whatever it is he really wants to say to me. For fuck’s sake, he’s toying with his words like a cat batting around a ball of yarn. When I inhale, brimstone fills my nostrils.

“What do you want, Hayes?” I ask a little more forcefully than I intended, discreetly shuffling my foot over the polaroid and sweeping it beneath my bed. I’m not sure how much illumination the moon offers, but I hope it’s not enough for him to pick up on the rather pathetic state of my appearance. The week-old food rotting in my room and the unwashed pile of clothes towering in my closet is already enough to warrant a full team inspection.

“I, um, I just wanted to know how it went with Lila.”

What am I supposed to say to him? It went great, Hayes. She kind of ended things with me but also didn’t? She was obviously upset that I kept this whole thing a secret from her, and now I’m somehow more lost about what I want to do with my life. Moving on with Lila seems like a slap in Summit’s face, but hanging on to Summit seems like a slap in Lila’s. I know I should’ve brought the ring up, but I didn’t think it was necessary because it would’ve only hurt her more.

I trust Hayes with my life. I wouldn’t be able to function without his constant stream of support, but to admit that I somehow managed to fuck up again? It’s embarrassing. It’s ridiculous. Why can’t I just solve things myself without dragging everyone I care about down with me?

God, I feel like I’m about to puke. “Uh, she was very understanding” is all I disclose, staring down at the worn floorboards that groan beneath my weight.

Hayes cocks his head in confusion. “That’s good news, right? So why are you…sulking in the darkness?”

I scrub a hand down my weary face, expelling an agitated sigh from between my cracked lips. I wish I could blame my hushed register on the taste of battery acid in my mouth, but it’s more due to the shame that sunders me like an axe through a stock of firewood. “I didn’t tell her the full story.”

“Bristol,” he begins to chide.

“I know, I know. It slipped my mind, alright? So much was going on, and I couldn’t think straight.”

“What didn’t you tell her?”

I don’t want to replay the talk Lila and I just had. It’s all I’ve been doing for the past three hours. In fact, I actually don’t want to think about this anymore. I want to find the closest handle of alcohol, drown my mistakes with enough liquor to hospitalize a damn cow, then go into a subsequent hibernation for an entire week so I can pretend my problems don’t have any consequences.

“That I…that I still have Summit’s engagement ring,” I whisper beneath my breath, though I don’t know why because a confession like that is loud enough to break the sound barrier.

Hayes chooses to step into the room, slams the door behind him to give us some privacy, and flicks on the lights all in one go. “Dude, that’s a huge thing to forget!”

I squint my eyes. “Thanks, Hayes. I’m aware.”

“Sorry, I just—don’t you think she’ll be understanding of this too? If she was so understanding about your past?” he asks, slowly making his way over to me.

“I don’t know. I mean, I want to tell her. She deserves to know. But it’ll…it’ll destroy her if she finds out.”

And I’ve already shattered this girl beyond repair .

I scoot over a bit to make some room, wishing I had at least spot-cleaned before allowing someone to get this close to the, um, danger zone .

With the freed-up space, Hayes sits down next to me, lightly bumping his shoulder with mine. “The ring doesn’t mean anything to you still, does it?”

The ring used to be a coping mechanism for me whenever things got hard, but…I don’t use it for that purpose anymore. Now it’s just a piece of jewelry from my past, collecting dust in a dresser at my parents’ log cabin. I don’t need to rely on the ring anymore because—well, because I found someone who strengthens and stabilizes me in a way that some cheap gold never could.

If I want Lila to be my future, then I have to start treating her like it. I have to stop bringing up the past. I need to…I need to show her that what we have goes way beyond fake dating.

I shake my head, blinking through the burn in my eyes—a burn not brought on by the lighting. “Not as much as Lila. Fuck, Hayes. This girl means everything to me. I can’t lose her again. I don’t even know if I have her right now.”

“Then let the truth come out naturally, but let her hear it from you, okay? If you’ve moved on from Summit, keeping her ring out of memory is better than you keeping it out of necessity. It’s a souvenir from the past, not an invitation to reopen it. Lila’s a great girl. She’ll understand.”

Tell her when she’s ready, Bristol. Let her deal with this huge truth bomb you just dropped. Be there for her when she has questions. And be there for her even if she doesn’t, or if she ultimately chooses to walk away. It’s your turn to show her the same grace that she’s shown you.

“Yeah, I hope so.”

Hayes and I sit in comforting silence for a bit—grateful for the one-on-one time amidst our two very busy schedules—and I eventually end up changing the subject in a more than obvious manner. “So…you’re really married now, huh?”

Just a few months ago, Hayes proposed to Aeris on their third-year anniversary, and their celebration prompted the headline HOCKEY HERO TO THE RESCUE AS INNOCENT GIRL CHOKES ON ENGAGEMENT RING. I told him he should’ve just given it to her the old-fashioned way, but he took a page from one of those over-the-top rom-coms to give her the most memorable night he could. He always goes above and beyond for Aeris.

A smile drifts over Hayes’ face, and he gets this dazed look in his eyes that tells me he’s currently thinking about his future wife. “I didn’t think she’d say yes,” he admits, a chuckle brimming in his throat.

“Dude, of course she’d say yes. You two are perfect for each other.”

“Did you ever expect me to get married?”

Honestly? Not at all. But saying “I actually expected you to become a sperm donor, parent hundreds of kids, then become a cave-dwelling hobo and live off the grid” isn’t really what I think he’s looking for.

“I thought for sure you were going to die before choosing monogamy,” I joke.

“I mean, I probably would have if it wasn’t for Aeris. I didn’t see a future before her. I was just…filling my emptiness with meaningless sex.”

I know about emptiness. And even though mine differs from Hayes’, I can still feel the hole in my chest that prays for something to fill it, afflicted by a new strain of heartache with a hundred percent fatality rate.

“I don’t feel as empty when I’m with Lila,” I murmur above the dissonance of night—above the chirp of crickets and a timid susurrus .

Hayes nods. “I know. I can see it in your eyes when you’re with her.”

“See what?”

“Life.”

Ever since the night of December twentieth, sorrow’s spread through my bloodstream like rot, and all those terrible, gut-wrenching thoughts popped open a hatch in my skull and wormed their way into my brain tissue. I’d given up on life. I’d given up on love. I couldn’t escape myself, I couldn’t escape Summit, and I couldn’t escape the blame that burbled sickly in my stomach. But Lila…she annuls the grief and the guilt if only for a split second of time, and I want to feel that peace for as long as I can.

“You know, you can have a life like that again,” Hayes says quietly, his gaze straying to my face, and his eyes catching a glint of light from the buzzing bulb above.

Hope’s a fickle thing, but for once, I welcome it like an old friend. “You think?”

Hayes places a gentle hand on my back. “I know . There’s a girl out there, right now, who’s still fighting for you. You still have another chance to live the life you’ve always wanted,” he consoles. “You deserve to find love, Bri. You deserve to be happy again. Don’t be scared to let go of the grief, because if you continue to hold on to it, you’ll never allow yourself the chance to heal.”