Her arms tightened further, but I kept talking, like I had this compulsion to share everything with her.
My mom wasn’t in denial about Greg’s death so much as she was engrained in a habit she couldn’t bring herself to break. That, and she lived for those moments when she’d see his things exactly as he’d left them and the lie that he was still alive would almost fit, like an old coat. For a second or two.
Sometimes I had those moments, too. When my heart would surface and float along a memory before that suffocating, can’t-breathe-can’t-move-can’t-anything, gaping maw drowned me all over again.
It wasn’t a trade-off I sought. Dad and I were alike in that. He’d resorted to using the back stairs so that he wouldn’t have to walk by Greg’s room. Whenever Mom accidentally—right?—set an extra plate at the table, he’d get up and leave. All night sometimes.
Sometimes even when she set the right number of plates.
Jeremy was the only one who seemed surprised when those all-night absences stretched to two nights, then three, then... Yeah.
“It was better and worse when my dad moved out,” I told her. “Better in that there was one less emotional bomb to circumvent. Worse in that, with him gone, Mom started vacuuming Greg’s room twice a week.”
I felt Jolene flinch.
Greg would have known what to say to Mom, how to find her smile. Jeremy simply took up Dad’s practice of leaving the room whenever she did something uncomfortable, like bake Greg a birthday cake.
Or nearly drown herself after passing out in the bathtub with an empty bottle of brandy later that night.
When something wet seeped through the front of my shirt, I realized Jolene was crying silently.
“Jeremy couldn’t even nut up enough to help me get her out of the tub. All he kept saying was that maybe we should call Dad. He didn’t understand or wouldn’t understand that Dad had moved out to get away from exactly that kind of thing. Calling wasn’t going to help, but he did it anyway, and my dad moved back home. For a month.
“When he moved out the second time, Jeremy and I got packed up with the rest of his stuff. Here. Every other weekend.”
Jolene
On Sunday, I chewed on my lip and watched Adam open my gift. Of course, he would be the kind of person who carefully peeled off the tape and literally unwrapped the gift instead of tearing into it.
We had decided to exchange Christmas gifts early, because we weren’t going to see each other on December 25. At this rate the weekend would be over before his was half-opened.
“Adam,” I said, trying not to grit my teeth as he unfolded one end of the box and then turned his attention to the other side. “It’s gonna die before you get it out of the box.”
Adam paused his surgical gift unwrapping and stared at me. “You better be talking about a plant.”
I grinned at him, putting the gap between my front teeth on full display. He always seemed to like that. “It’s not a plant, but seriously.” I nodded at the gift. “Before we’re dead.”
Eyeing me, Adam carefully slid his thumb under a taped edge.
“Oh my gosh, just give it to me.” I lunged for the gift but all Adam had to do was raise his arms above his head and I couldn’t get to it.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you patience is a virtue?” He kept leaning one way or another to avoid my leaping grabs.
“What do you—” I made another attempt and failed “—think?”
Adam took pity on me, and I didn’t even mind, because he finally ripped off the rest of the wrapping paper and let it fall to the ground of the top-floor stairway. And then he was holding it. For some reason, I felt like looking away when he lifted the lid.
It wasn’t a huge deal. It hadn’t even cost me anything, but I was nervous and I desperately wanted him to like it.
The flash drive spilled onto his palm, and I pushed my laptop toward him.
“What is it?” he asked, but with a kind of wonder and anticipation that made me take a step back as soon as he opened the laptop.
“Just...” I nodded at the computer.
He inserted the drive, and then his eyes widened. Tugging at my braid, I watched him smile, softly at first. “Jo, did you—” He pointed at the screen but I shushed him.
“Just watch.”
And he did; we both did. He watched the movie I’d made, and I watched him.
His smiles—there were a lot of those, and laughs that seemed to catch him unaware—gave me the courage to draw closer to him instead of backing away. Even the moments when his smile dimmed, his eyes never did.
I was still staring at his face several minutes later when he looked up at me.
“You made that.”
“What gave it away, my name or—” I broke off when I felt his hand slide into mine, fingers threading together.
True, I’d held his hand before and leaped on his back a time or two, but those were always moments that I’d initiated and he’d just sort of...gone with.
This time it was all him. His warm skin against mine, the gentle squeeze that I somehow felt in my heart. I could swear I even felt his pulse echoing the rapid beat of my own.
“It’s still a rough cut but...you like it?” I asked, in a voice that almost came out timid except I knew my body wasn’t capable of being timid.
Adam’s hand increased its pressure and sent tingling waves rippling through me. “It’s the best thing anyone ever gave me.”
I told myself that he was just being nice, kind in the way he always was without even trying, but his hand and his eyes and his voice all said it was more than that.
“This is what you’ve been filming, but how did you do it? I mean, with the pictures...?”
The film—and I was using the term loosely—had been a compilation of the pictures we’d taken together and all the footage I had shot of us taking the pictures. Plus, some random footage of us. I’d started with the footage and then inserted the still photos at the exact same angle—they’d been a huge pain to match. I’d layered the still images on top of each other, using some of our outtakes to blend the transitions between moving images and the final still photos, letting the background movie continue so that there was always movement.
Like us.
There wasn’t a story exactly from just the photos, but I’d created one from the additional pictures and videos I’d taken that he hadn’t known about. Thanks to a kindly janitor who happily opened a door for me, I’d even gotten some of the security footage from the recently installed cameras outside so I’d have footage of both of us arriving and leaving the apartment complex over and over again, showing unguarded expressions with each other and the opposite with everyone else.