Didn't hurt to try, though.
I worked my way through half the next beer, then picked up a stone and threw it at Mr. Guillard's trailer. It sailed through the front window, the glass long shattered by kids more ornery than me.
I snorted. “The memories are so hit or miss. More pain than happiness. I been working through the pain slowly. I thought if I could come back and see it, relive the pain, I could replace it with something better. And now I can't.”
“Why not?”
“Because it's gone. My little purple shed. The broken down porch.”
“Davey and Jane fixed all that up a long time ago. And the shed's still here.”
I looked at the sad little purple building, wondering how I ever thought it was special, but clinging to the feeling of how special it really was.
“That's not the point!” I cried out, tears finally taking over, my mind and mouth turning into nothing but emotional butter.
“Then what is?” Joe asked gently, sweetly, with a tenderness that just made me cry even harder.
“I never fit in when I lived here. Oh, sure I fit in well enough. People knew me. Liked me. Or if they didn't like me, they whispered about it behind my back and tolerated me to my face. I spent the first twenty-two years of my life living in this tiny town, trying so hard to hang onto an inner life that was bigger than my body could hold.”
The sob grew like a bubble being inflated in my throat, exploding out of me before I could stop it. Joe just rubbed my shoulders and watched me, Trevor squeezing my hand.
“And – and then I met you, Trevor. I don't know why in the hell I picked you up that night. I truly don't. Over the years, people have asked. Chided me for being unsafe. Chewed me out for being stupid. But that stupid decision was the best damn one I ever made, even if it was reckless. And I think I did it because I felt like I didn't have good choices, you know?”
They both sighed. I took that as a yes.
“And then Mama urged me to go with you, and look at us now. But I don't fit in back in Boston, either.”
“You're the glue that keeps the band together, Darla. We'd be nothing without you. Of course you fit in.”
“In the band? Sure. But not with your family. Or yours. Or Boston culture itself. I'm – I straddle two worlds, and I'm never one hundred percent in either of them. I'm lonely, guys. I'm so lonely deep inside, because I don't have a place that is me. Only when I'm with you do I get to be me, but that's it. And god, I want it to be enough. I really do. But then my mama goes and has a baby and I suddenly have a baby brother and what I thought was enough isn't, because I want to fit in in his life, and I can't.”
That last word came out with my teeth aching from gritting them so hard.
“Can't,” I repeated, panting so hard I felt like I was gonna pass out. “I am so heartbroken.”
“Oh, honey,” Joe said, sitting on the ground, pulling me into his lap as I sobbed into his chest. “I never knew you felt like that.”
“Me, either,” Trevor said, his voice muted by Joe's arm across my shoulders. All I could feel was Joe's shirt against my mouth, the salty taste of my own pain leaking out my eyes, the way my ears filled with sadness that rushed like waves on a rocky shore during a storm. I was all pain and conflict, torn in two directions, needing a cloning machine to give me at least some hope that I could do it all, be it all, feel it all.
And get it right.
“You know why you'll never fit in, Darla?” Trevor said, slow and sad. “Because you're genuine. The world expects people to fit their mold. They cram their whole, beautiful selves into a hundred tiny boxes with check marks on them. As long as the rest of us keep doing that, there will never be a place where people like – like us – can go to fit in. You shine, Darla. You dance your true dance and sing your true self while everyone hides in the shadows of their tiny boxes.”
I just looked at him, transfixed, his face glowing as he spoke, my cheek still pressed into Joe's chest.
“And these tiny boxes we're supposed to live in? The truth is, they're way more cramped, way more lonely, and harder to fit into than anyone will ever admit. Your power hasn't been filed off, extinguished, or buried. You still have power and you feel lonely because you're real. The world unfairly expects you to choose: smother yourself and fit in, or shine on and breathe free.” He touched my shoulder, the steady pressure of his solid form making me feel less lonely.
More seen.
Joe pulled my face back and looked at me, his deep brown eyes glistening bright, like he was taking on some of my sadness for me and feeling it so I didn't have to.
“I don't know what you're feeling, but I felt something like it when you broke up with us. There was the Joe my parents expected me to be, and the Joe I am with you and Trevor, and I didn't know how to be both. I thought I had to pick. It felt so stark. So unfair. Like being asked to choose which arm I wanted most, and to cut the other one off.”
“This feels impossible!” I sobbed.
“Yeah. And when something feels impossible, it's time to shatter it,” Joe said somberly.
“Huh?”
“The fact that it feels impossible, that you can only see two choices, is a sign, Darla. Screw only having two choices. You don't. You have an infinite number.”
“That's a nice theory, Joe, but it ain't true.”
A tendril of hope cracked the outer shell of my despair-coated seed, though.
“Yes, it is. You don't have to choose between a life in Ohio where you're close to your family and a life in Boston on the road with us in the band. It's a false dichotomy.”
“Then the alternative is to do both things half-assed, and that won't feel good, either.”
“You're assuming those are your choices, but at least you're up to three now. See? You have more than two. Shatter the assumptions even more.”
“Joe's right,” Trevor said, interrupting. “It doesn't have to be just those three.”
“I can't see an alternative! We come and visit every few months? I squeeze in time between tours with the band? RAOC is growing by leaps and bounds. We're so close to being huge, and I can't be the reason you don't make it big. I would hate myself for holding you back. And you – you would hate me.”
I let out a low moan, fear making its nastyass entrance, strutting in like my heart was a red carpet and it was wearing seven inch stiletto heels that poked holes in it for my blood to spurt.
“We could never, ever hate you,” Trevor assured me, but those were just words, right? Reality was a whole different thing.
“Listen,” Joe said. “I have an idea. You were really happy making brunch today, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Really, really happy.”
“Mmm hmmm. Other than Trevor having that eggsturbation incident, yeah.”
“What made you happy?”
“All of it.”
“But you said you liked hosting.”
“Mmm hmm.”
“How about we always rent an AirBnB when we come into town?” Trevor piped up. “Just not, uh, Old Doc Oglethorpe's place.”
I sniffled. “It would help to be able to host.”