Sean shifted from one foot to the other. “Can I come in?”
The question shook loose a little of my mental abilities, and I unlocked my legs and dropped my hand from the door before turning around and walking back into the house. I couldn’t invite him in. But I couldn’t shut the door on him either.
I crossed to the kitchen, looking for something to keep my hands busy. It was pristine—a side effect of only having to clean up after myself. The single plate and glass that I’d used for dinner were drying beside the sink. The stark reminder of Jonas’s absence was enough to pull me out of the shock of seeing Sean after five years.
Five years. My father’s death. My marriage. My husband’s death. Sean had been there for none of it. That was my doing, yes. Still, what made him think that he could show up at this moment?
The front door shut and heavy footsteps crossed the short distance between him and me. “Libby,” was all he said. It was a question and a sigh of relief all rolled into one.
I spun to face him, crossing my arms over my stomach, and waited. He could speak. He could say whatever it was he came here for, but I wasn’t going to make it easy.
He didn’t talk right away, and that gave me a chance to take him in. Unlike the last time I’d seen him in person, he looked healthy—more like he’d been in high school, but with the maturity that came with years. Energy rolled off of him as he clenched and unclenched his left hand—nervous. Nervous and so, so familiar. The kind of familiar that made my throat ache and my heart hurt.
“I wanted,” he started slowly and carefully, “I wanted to see how you were…”
I stayed silent. If he wanted to see how I was, all he had to do was look.
“My mom,” he started again with an awkward roll of his hand. “She told me…about Jonas.”
My mask of anger and stubbornness cracked at the mention of my husband. Cracked. Shattered. Splintered and cut into my skin. It wasn’t just the ever-present pain of losing Jonas that pressed in on me; it was the fact that Sean—my friend, my confidant, the boy I’d abandoned for my own good five years ago—was standing in my kitchen because he thought I might need him.
And though I still harbored a tremendous amount of anger and resentment toward him, in that moment, all I cared about was that he was there for me. He was there as my face tightened and my shoulders started to shake.
As I stood, alone in my kitchen, he took those few remaining steps and wrapped his arms around me as sobs shook my frame. He held me and stroked my hair, and after a few minutes and no end in sight, he awkwardly maneuvered me to the couch and stuck several tissues into my fists. Then he sat beside me, a hand pressed to my back as I leaned into my knees and cried into my hands.
Eventually I stopped, and as my crying quieted, the room filled with an undeniable awkwardness. He didn’t know what to do with me, and I couldn’t bring myself to even look at him because there was a great expanse of history that sat between us, murky and turbulent and ready to suck us both under if we made the wrong move. So I stared at the fireplace in front of me and said the only thing I could think of.
“My husband died, Sean.” I spoke with the numbness that had become so familiar to me.
“Yeah. I know.”
“And you’re here.” The numbness slipped out of place as I stated this new reality. “Why are you here?” Confusion pitched my voice higher.
“I just…I wasn’t sure that anyone was taking care of you.”
“I don’t need to be taken care of.”
“Okay.” He acquiesced far too easily, and I figured he was only saying that to placate me.
“Besides,” I said, picking up a piece of my anger and using it as a shield. “I can’t imagine you’d volunteer for the job.”
“I can be strong for you, if you’ll let me.” His offer was quiet but oddly firm.
I finally turned to him, my gaze harsh and unforgiving. “Like you were strong for me all those times before?”
“No,” he answered, his eyes clear and steady. “I was never there for you before. But a lot has happened since then.”
“Your life is still the same. Same record label. Same manager. Same fans. Same music.”
“Yes, but I’ve made a lot of other changes—”
He stopped when a scoff escaped my lips. “You don’t have to catch me up on your life, Sean.” I sniffed back to residual tears. “I stand in check-out aisles. I see the headlines. Just because I wasn’t there doesn’t mean I could keep myself from knowing what was going on in your life and worrying all over again.” I shook my head as my lower jaw jutted out, trying to make room in my mouth to contain the hurt. “Three thousand miles between us and it still put a pit in my stomach every time I saw a photo of you with a drink in your hand.”
My quiet words sat in the silence because he didn’t fill it with his own voice. He didn’t argue, didn’t defend himself.
“Jonas watched me for a week after you announced your tour, terrified that I’d call you and beg you not to do it.”
“Was that a rule of his, or something? Not calling me?”
My teeth clacked shut as I turned on him.
“No, Sean.” My voice was hard. “It was my rule. He knew as well as I did that talking to you would be toxic,” I spat out as just a small portion of my frustration, anger, and yes, guilt spilled over. “I made him promise that he’d never let me contact you out of worry. Do you have any idea how messed up that is? I let you get your claws dug into me so deep that my marriage required that I have rules about you.”
I glared at him, daring him to argue with me. Wanting him to argue with me so that I could have an excuse to keep yelling. Instead he just gazed back at me, his eyes steady but filled with regret. I stood, unable to sit there while he was so calm and collected. I started to walk away but then turned back on him. “And another thing. If you ever insinuate that my husband was anything other than wonderful and understanding, I will happily show you the door. He wasn’t perfect and I won’t pretend that he was, but you have no right to say anything negative about him.” I turned once again and headed for my front door. I needed to walk, to burn calories and hopefully burn up my anger as well.
I walked out into the evening light and glanced behind me to be sure that Sean wasn’t following me. Good thing for him, he wasn’t.
As my feet ate up square after square of sidewalk, I tried desperately to get my thoughts to line up and make some sort of sense. Sean’s appearance was…unexpected.
It was wonderful.
And it was awful.
I was relieved.
And I was furious.
I wanted him to leave.
But I desperately hoped he would stay.
I had been surviving. Over the past two months I had come to the point where I was surviving, making it from one day to another, acting almost like a normal person. I had bottled and boxed and fenced in my emotions so that they were contained and manageable.
Now, though? Now.
The bottles were broken, the boxes were torn, and the fences demolished. There was no keeping it in. My emotions once again felt huge—too overwhelming to tame or name or contain. They were in chaos, running through my body, one second filling my head, the next second spilling over the bounds of my heart and then making my hands shake and my eyes burn and my knees tremble.