Without
It’s not fair.
I hit my toe against the leg of the table, feel the pain vibrate up my leg. Bouncing it against the wood until the pain becomes a constant din.
Paul and Ethan sit down. Like me, their eyes are red. Like me, they have been left hollow. In different ways. I lost a friend, and I guess they lost a son. But the results are the same: emptiness, anger, hopelessness.
I could tell them that he loved them. Because he did. But it doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t matter how much they helped, or how much he loved them, or how much they loved him. None of it was enough. And it would never have been enough. Because I didn’t love him enough. I couldn’t love him enough.
Aunt Tracy doesn’t know what to say. She seems uncomfortable. Maybe I shouldn’t have let them in. But I think I needed to.
They didn’t see him, though, not like I did. They didn’t see the yellow eyes or his frozen grin. That memory is mine. All mine. But even that is not what I see when I think of him. I think of punching him in the face. Of the fear in his eyes. The desperation. All the moments where I could’ve said something different, done something different. All the moments that led up to his decision. All the things I should’ve done instead.
That’s not fair, either, though. None of this is fair. There was no way to win. This is just one loss out of a million possible losses. A million ways this could’ve gone wrong and none where it goes right. No happy ending.
I wish Andee could see us. His revenge wasn’t on me. It was on everyone. It was a nuclear bomb dropped on a military base. Maybe it hit its target. But it destroyed everything around it along the way.
I don’t want to miss him. I want to keep being pissed at him, want to revel in my anger. I want to believe that this is karma.
But most likely it’s nothing. Andee’s dice got rolled and came up blank. The end.
He won. He got out. But my dice are still rolling. Paul and Ethan’s dice, they’re still rolling. And we keep getting the worst numbers.
“I guess we should go,” Ethan says.
Aunt Tracy shrugs, but she wants them gone.
“You can stay as long as you’d like.”
Ethan’s smile is tight.
“Thank you. But we should at least pretend to get some rest, right?”
Aunt Tracy’s laugh is nervous, quiet, short.
I want them to stay. I want to know that I’m not alone. Sharing my agony, even sharing it in awkward silence and coffee mugs that leave rings on our table, is better than knowing I’m alone in it.
But they get up. They leave. Aunt Tracy runs the dishwasher even though it only has three cups in it. I listen to it whir, listen to the almost soothing hum of machinery, the rush of hot water from behind a stainless steel wall. Cleaning away the evidence of tonight.