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I told myself over and over again this was a bad idea but I can't seem to stop myself from coming back to the scene of the crime. A day. A whole freakin' day since the wedding that wasn't and the country club still smells like Mom's flowers - the blue hydrangea, blue delphinium, sunflowers like the celebration went on without us.
People are eating brunch in the dining room like this place isn't a graveyard. I'm still in yesterday's clothes, past the double doors where we were supposed to line up for photos, past the ballroom that won't shut up in my head picturing our first dance.
I can still see the tables with white cloth and bouquets sweating in glass vases, and I put my hand against the wall just to feel it, cold and solid and real.
I'm just stuck here, right where she left me.
The chandeliers blur and I close my eyes and let the memory in anyway.
Sometimes I still hear it, that soft thump-thump on the wall between our rooms at Cousins, our own language where one knock meant you up? and two knocks meant goodnight and three knocks meant come over. I'd lie there grinning at drywall like an idiot, tapping back until we ran out of ways to say I'm here, and we didn't need words, just proof someone was on the other side.
Some nights three knocks turned into the creak of floorboards, her steps in the hall, her crawling in beside me, and the house would breathe around us with the ocean timing our lungs.
These walls are thick and expensive, empty enough that I could knock until my knuckles split and nothing would answer.
I walk the perimeter because dizzy is kinder when you make it on purpose, and if I look at the far corner just right I can see the band that never set up, the mic stand, the setlist that never got taped to the wood. I practiced swaying in the kitchen for a song that didn't get to live and burned the eggs while I was at it.
Elbows on my knees, hands hanging, I sit in the corner chair. Sometimes I still try the knock, just once, more memory than sound, and the wall pretends it didn't hear.
The echo brings things I didn't ask for: blue light and chlorine and the pool at Cousins, a Jeep ride with her lip caught between her teeth and the charm swinging from the mirror and my hand over hers on the wheel whispering breathe and she did because I asked. Crickets and water and she was treading water looking at me like I was a cliff she was ready to jump from, and I had asked "Do you think you could ever?" and her yes cracked me wide open, arms around my neck with water folding us close and finally running through my head on repeat.
For once I wasn't second choice, for once I felt like the sun landed in my hands and didn't burn.
I don't remember getting out of the pool, just the walk back to the house, longest ten feet of my life with porch lights too bright and my grin giving me away and everything feeling like it could slide off the table if I moved wrong. I wanted to bottle that feeling, hide it where no one could find it.
Conrad was gravity, always waiting, but I was the sun.
We made rituals out of nothing: the wall knocks, chasing sandcrabs until our knees were scraped with her pockets full of shells, the first beach run when the ocean was still cold and we went in. If I could tattoo a sound it'd be her knuckles on my wall at midnight, soft and certain, like she knew I'd answer.
Sometimes it felt like a test, like someone was thinking give him little joys and see if he notices, and I noticed, I did.
There was this night after the pool, before everything went to shit, and we were on the living room floor because the couch felt like too big a decision. Our shoulders touched and she told me some story about nothing and I laughed like it meant everything, and when she got up to go she turned back like she had forgotten and said my name like she was deciding whether to keep it. I put that version of my name in my pocket with the rest of the seashells.
Somewhere in those early days I learned her tells: her mouth tilted before she laughed, the hitch in her breath when she was scared but trying not to show it. I learned that if I said breathe she would, that my hand over hers could steady anything.
If you had asked me what I wanted then I would have just said everything and it would've been true, but I meant smaller: the daily stuff, the repeated stuff, the boring stuff. I wanted to be there so consistently she could tell what time it was by the sound of my keys in the bowl.
We were kids acting like we had invented summer and maybe we did.
Back in this ballroom the air doesn't smell like coffee or strawberries or the lobster rolls we used to get, and I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth trying to taste July but get steel instead.
Palm to the wall, I imagine the knocks traveling through wood: one, two, three, but the wall stays quiet, and because I'm smarter now but no different, I wait too.
Thin walls and a rattling AC in some motel off the highway where even the rain sounded tired, neon leaking under cheap curtains, and she's on the bed with knees to her chest and hair damp from running across the parking lot. We're both pretending the storm's out there, not in here, and I keep my voice low so I don't make it worse.
"You have to talk to him," I say and the words stick. "And if you still want me after, I'm yours."
Feels stupid saying it out loud but it's true, and I don't say how long I've been waiting because that part's obvious.
The next day her hand finds my chest, warm and steady. "You don't have to think like that, Jere," she says. "I'm not going anywhere."
By morning the storm's gone and left everything gray, puddles turning the parking lot into mirrors, and she kisses me in daylight. I hang everything on that kiss and call it chosen.
Spring came like it had been saving up knives and Cabo was bright and loud and I was pretending not to bleed. We fought like people who needed the fight more than the win because I just wanted her to tell me the truth about Christmas, and my mouth ran ahead of me while hers picked around the edges, and somewhere in the middle we broke.
That night I let someone touch me because I thought it was over: Lacey with cinnamon gum and bad tequila in a hallway with ugly carpet and a mirror that made me taller if I stood right, and after, the ceiling looked like a page I didn't deserve.
I want to say I fixed it, that I texted I'm sorry, I'm scared, I'm stupid and she said I know, but I was twenty and I didn't know how, and I'm me and I still don't.
Next morning I brought Lacey burnt coffee and told her straight: "I'm sorry, this was a mistake, I don't, I don't know how to be in my own skin right now." She pulled the blanket to her chin, and that was mercy enough.
I don't like the version of me who begs to be chosen and then tests if it's real, that's not the guy Mom raised, and I know I'm better than that.
Prom was proof once: Belly's senior prom when I showed up with the white box and corsage ribbon tied and untied so many times the satin knew my fingerprints. "You actually remembered," she said with her smile tucked in like a secret, and I said "Of course" while trying to look casual, like I wasn't holding my breath under the tux.
Photos by the mantle with Laurel telling us to stand closer and Steven giving me shit from the stairs. Belly stepped in and fixed my crooked tie with careful fingers and said "There" and I had to breathe through it.
At the gym the floor was sticky and lights were harsh and music was too loud but she was perfect, everyone else looked washed out but she glowed, and I pinned the flower to her wrist without fumbling, miracle, and she laughed into my shoulder when the DJ played a terrible song.
I kept the ribbon after, in my glovebox, like it could protect me, and I thought I'd always have that look, the one she gave me when she forgot to be careful, like I was the whole light.
That night Mom pulled me aside and told me she was excited about one of her boys being with Belly, made me promise not to let anything come between me and Conrad, and I promised because how could I say no to Mom, how could I know that promise would become impossible to keep.
Finch was whistles too sharp when she went down and sneakers too loud, and she looked for me, always me. I slid in with ice and a grin saying "You're fine, next time I'll sub in, I'd kill it in spandex" and she tried not to laugh and I called it medicine.
Her dorm was tiny with bad light but good intentions, and I brought the blanket she liked and tea she said she didn't like and smoothies that tasted like summer: peaches, strawberries, almond milk, honey. "Doctor's orders?" she asked and I said "Jeremiah's orders, you're not healing on chicken fingers."
On her whiteboard I wrote YOU ARE THE MILK TO MY SHAKE, forever and ever, Love J and when I came back later someone had drawn hearts around it and she had added underneath you're my one and I took a picture before anyone could erase it.
Between classes I turned into delivery service with snacks and dumb notes and drawings of volleyballs on crutches, and on another whiteboard I wrote PT at 3, don't flake or I'll carry you, and she called them threats while I called them promises.
In the locker room I called Laurel and kept my voice down saying "She's frustrated but she's trying, I just, I want her to remember she's still her," and Laurel said "You're good to her, Jeremiah," which is maybe the nicest thing she's ever said to me and it still hurts because I don't get many like it.
And it brought up Mom's voice, how she used to brush my hair back and say you're my beautiful sunshine boy, and Belly and Mom are the only two people who ever said it like that, and I wanted to believe them both forever.
After Cabo we called the fight a break and the break a misunderstanding and the misunderstanding a bad week, but I should've told her about Cabo, should've brought up Christmas, and it fucking haunts me.
Everyone's got a drawer where they shove shit so the room looks clean, and we put Cabo in that drawer with his name too, ate dinner over it and kissed over it and slept over it.
I didn't keep track of the worst days because I wanted a collection of ordinary shit instead: her stealing my toast with me pretending to be mad and she would bump my hip at the sink, the morning she pulled my face to the light and called me beautiful like she was quoting Mom. Those are the things I can hold.
Our second try found a rhythm and I heard it when I counted her breaths with the frat screaming downstairs, heard it when she texted you up? and I was already at the door, heard it when she fell asleep with her knee over my hip and for a few hours I could believe boats don't drift if you love them enough.
But I heard it too when the door closed and the hallway got long.
There was this night at the country club when everyone was gone and we snuck in, and we made shadow puppets on the wall with our drinks and almost kissed but didn't, just sat there with all that unsaid shit between us, and she was so close I could count her breaths but Conrad's name sat between us like furniture we had to walk around.
The chandeliers burn and the room drags me back to the moment everything broke.
"I love you," she said, desperate.
"That's not what I asked."
Her eyes were red and wet. "I'll always love him a little, but I choose you."
"That's not enough, Bells."
My whole life bent around loving her and it still wasn't enough.
I gripped the chair until my knuckles hurt and said "You can't marry me to erase him" and it cracked out of me, and I kissed her hand, and everything after is just noise.
First thing through the static is the motel, thin walls and rain and her hand on my chest saying I'm not going anywhere while I said stupid and certain if you still want me after, I'm yours, and it was supposed to be enough.
Now she's a ghost in a dress reminding me he never left.
I don't know how not to love you.
Conrad doesn't have to be here to take it because he's gravity. He's Christmas at Cousins I never got. He's the letter in my mother's handwriting that burned my palms because it wasn't mine.
The letter that was supposed to be for me on my wedding day except the envelopes got mixed up and it was addressed to Conrad the whole time, Mom's handwriting telling him she knew he would end up with Belly, that she had always known, and I had to read it and hand it to him like I was delivering my own death sentence.
I told him we were done: brothers and rivals and summer kids made of salt, and it scraped coming out until it sounded true. Finished. He didn't flinch or I missed it, and his shadow still stretched across Mom's rug, and I can't decide if cutting him loose would save me or kill me. Some days it's both.
All the versions of me line up: the boy who knocked on walls, the kid who pressed the charm in her palm whispering breathe, the teenager in blue water with his heart screaming finally, the guy who counted her breaths, the fiancé who begged not to be an eraser, the one who said I don't know how not to love you, and always there's his shadow at the edge, and I can't edit him out.
Library stacks with lights buzzing and nobody around, dust in my throat and her laugh against my mouth with my back on books and her fingers in my hair.
Sundays we invented: Stay-in-Bed Day and Cereal-for-Dinner Day, with gold stars on our wrists that she'd peel off with her teeth later. Red lights for kisses and green for hold my hand and yellow for truth or quiet, our system with the car humming underneath.
Burnt pancakes and smoke alarm yelling while she stood on my toes laughing into my shirt. Closet Sundays where she'd wear my sweatshirt and crawl over piles to kiss me, and I'd think be there, be there, be there.
And Finch, always Finch: lamp posts and cicadas and shadows on pavement through August and October and spring rain and winter cold until she tucked my fingers in her sleeves. Four years and sixteen seasons, life built from mornings and midnights, bad singing and her face in my neck when it got cold.
Four years and I'm the only one left carrying it.
I press where her wrist should be and there's nothing, and the nothing's louder than I thought.
"I'm here," I whisper to the wall-knock boy and the groom who didn't get to speak his vows and all four years that don't know where to go.
"Still here."
My knuckles lift and tap the wall once, automatic, but nothing taps back.
I could call Steven and he'd answer but what do I say? Hey man, sitting in a ballroom having a breakdown? He'd just worry and everyone worries already.
I stand because stillness makes me feel like furniture, and I think about things I didn't get to do: first dance and bad toasts and salmon I'd have eaten smiling, the long playlist I made at 2 a.m. that I never showed her because I wanted to surprise her, I would've carried her shoes when they hurt.
Worst part's the daily stuff like crumbs in the sink and jacket on a chair and two toothbrushes. Would've been great at ordinary because we were great at it once, built a life from small things until small things started sounding wrong, like someone else in the room you can't see.
Hand on my chest, my heartbeat's stubborn and won't quit.
"Okay," I tell the empty room.
"Okay."
The ballroom doesn't move but I do.