“I want to stop hurting you,” he started, and I opened my eyes then, catching his. “I never meant to, and I guess I can’t really prove that, but I never meant to play all the games. I never wanted to hurt…” He swallowed, clearing the thickness from his throat with a small shake of his head. His eyes were on his feet then. “I want you to know that I love you, in every sense of the word.” My heart fell to my feet and my hand clutched at the fabric of my sweater, twisting, holding on, bracing for the storm. “Things are and always have been very real between us.”
My breaths came harder then, because I knew he was right. No matter how fucked up it all had been, it was also real. It was all so, so real.
“You’re my best friend,” he choked. I was so numb, like my head was submerged in an ice bath, and I couldn’t even look at him any longer, so I fixed my gaze on the window again. Jamie stood straighter then. “And I’ll always be somewhere for you, no matter the time, place, or circumstance.”
A tear rolled swiftly and silently down the side of my face that Jamie couldn’t see. I didn’t wipe at it for fear I’d give it away.
He crossed the room, stepping into me, and I smelled the honey and oak I’d always loved. I closed my eyes and inhaled a breath I didn’t let go of. Not when he kissed my forehead, not when he pressed a small box into my hand, not when he whispered, “Happy birthday,” and not when he pushed back again, scent leaving me in a whoosh.
He walked slowly to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob. “I feel like goodbye isn’t the right term, so I’ll just say until the timing is right…”
I kept my eyes on the window, and only when he closed the door behind him did I breathe again.
I looked down at the small package in my hand, wrapped in brown paper and twine, and I cried.
• • •
I was officially twenty-eight.
It was such a strange birthday. I felt like I should have my shit together, and I clearly didn’t. My career was about the only thing I had a handle on, and even that was questionable. I’d lost the man I loved my whole life, fucked up with Mr. Right and the guy who wanted to spend his life with me, and I lived in a small one-bedroom apartment alone.
Luckily, Jenna had showed up less than an hour after Jamie left.
“I don’t care what you say, we’re going to this stupid, cheesy eighties bar crawl. And you’re going to wear this absurd dress with me and we’re going to get totally wasted and bring in your twenty-eighth year in style.”
Jenna was holding out a fluffy, lavender dress on a hanger to me, puffy shoulders and all. She sat heavy on one hip, typing away on her phone in her other hand, probably to her boyfriend, Dylan. They’d been dating almost since the exact day I started dating Brad. Their relationship proved to be stronger than ours, though, and I had a feeling he would be asking her a big question soon enough. It was sweet that she was here to celebrate my birthday, but celebrating was the last thing I felt like doing.
“I’d much rather opt for ice cream and wine in my pajamas.”
Jenna scoffed. “Nope. Not happening. This is going to be your year, B. We have to kick it off the right way so the rest of the year follows suit.”
“And an eighties bar crawl is the ‘right way?’”
“Duh.”
I chuckled, snatching the hideous dress from her hand as she smirked and waved me into my bedroom to change.
In her defense, we did end up having a pretty decent time. We danced and laughed and drank. We drank a lot. But by the end of the night, we ended up right back in my apartment. In fact, we ended up in my favorite place in the apartment — my bathtub. Still in our Sixteen Candles-ish dresses, tulle fluffed up all around us, and a bottle of Makers Mark that we passed back and forth. Jenna’s playlist on her phone echoed off the walls of the bathroom and Jamie’s gift sat unwrapped, cradled in the mess of our dresses between us.
“Okay, so are you drunk enough to open it yet?” Jenna finally asked around three in the morning.
I took another swig from the bottle, eyes a little hazy, and laughed. “I don’t think that’s a reachable point.”
“What are you so afraid of?”
I shrugged, kicking the heels off my feet that hung out of the tub. Jenna followed suit, and we swung our bare feet as I passed the bottle back to her. “It’s not that I’m scared. I just don’t know what good it will do opening it.”
“You’re not curious?”
“Of course I am.”
Jenna huffed. “So open the damn thing. I’m dying over here.”
She tossed the box into my lap and I picked it up with shaking fingers, thumbing at the twine and wondering what it could be. It was light, and it rattled with each move of my hands. “I don’t know how I’ll feel after I open this,” I admitted, turning to Jenna then. Jamie had only ever given me one gift before then, and it was a funny one, an inside joke, but this felt heavier.
“Well that’s why I’m here,” Jenna said with a smile. “To help you figure it out.”
She squeezed my leg through the puffy fabric of my dress and my hands gripped the box tighter. I chewed my lip, unsure, but my fingers were already peeling away at the twine and paper. It was strange, the way my heart raced the same way it always had in the presence of Whiskey. Maybe it was the Makers, maybe it was the unknown gift, or maybe it was my body waking up, realizing before even I did that twenty-eight really would be a year of change.
When the paper was shed, I let it fall beside us, popping open the lid of a small, navy blue box. There was tissue paper inside, wrapped around something, and I was still shaking slightly as I peeled it back.
“Oh my God,” I whispered when the tissue was gone. Jenna leaned in closer as I rubbed the cool metal of a simple charm keychain.
There were six charms, and one small note.
Even if you must move on, please don’t ever let us go.
I read the note over and over, eyes misting before I thumbed through the charms. There was no explanation needed for them.
It was a keychain, which reminded me of our drives, so many of them over the years. The nights we laughed, nights we hurt, nights we just existed as a boy and a girl. His passenger seat would always be mine, and this keychain proved it.
The first charm I noticed was a music note. Classical music, our rare and kind of weird relatable preference. I thought of the playlists we’d had over the years, of The Piano Guys, of music that didn’t need words the same way Jamie and I never did.
Next was a surfboard, followed by a cat. I laughed at that one, wondering if that story had really meant more to him than I ever knew. Then, there was a bottle of whiskey. It looked similar to Jack Daniel’s, and memories of the bon fire at Alder flooded my mind at first before I realized it was also our first shot together. In my kitchen, all those years ago, when the addiction hadn’t yet been discovered and yet we had both felt it playing just below the surface.
So many times we’d been burned, and yet every time we wanted more.
The last two I focused on made my chest ache. One was a simple silver airplane, and I thought about the distance between us over the last several years. Between Florida and California, and then Florida and Pennsylvania, and always in our minds. Distance and time had always dictated so much for us, and for the first time in my life, I was starting to wonder why I let it. The very last charm was a flat, rose gold heart. I didn’t have to think hard on that one. His heart belonged to me, just like mine would always belong to him.