20 Million Tiny Particles

8. Crying

The night I met Bryce the Great, I had been crying.

We were at a bonfire party after the year's first football game. Our senior year. I stepped away from the hubbub to take a call from my dad. "Curfew?" Mariah inquired as the iPhone screen lit up with his cheesy contact photo in the glow of the ten PM moonlight.

I told her I didn't know what it was about and scurried toward the porchlight, but I knew. I knew I didn't have to be home 'til one on weekends, and that neither of my parents seemed to care much anyway. I was the easy kid. I did what I was told, which meant I could get away with doing anything.

I knew from his voice too, after I mumbled "What's up?" I knew what was coming.

"Hey, Jule," he started, low. "Need you to get home when you can, okay?"

It was our code -- when Mom is in a bad way, we had a silent pact. We didn't say it, but we knew it. The elephant in the room, so to speak.

I let out a sigh, petulant, not wanting to deal with this. "Dad, Mariah drove me."

"Just need you to get here when you can, Jule."

He was quiet but firm, half of his sentence muffled by the sound of some of the boys hollering by the fire a hundred meters away.

I pressed a finger to my ear and protested, "All of my friends are here." He said my name again, warning me not to make him say it. "What's wrong?" I demanded. Say it, I wanted to yell. Say your wife is drunk and threatening to kill herself again.

He never said it. He wouldn't. I wouldn't either, not the first time she did it and not a single time since.

But we both knew it was happening, and that nothing would stop it except me showing up to grab her tight like I can't see her tears or smell the vodka and say, "Mom, we won the game tonight. Are you okay? Let's watch a movie."

I heard Dad say, "Just come on home when you can, Jule."

Then came the rush of heat to my cheeks, the stinging underneath my eyes. My throat tightened. Fuck. Not here. I forced my feet to find a path to the backdoor, slipping into the empty kitchen of the house party. I could see everyone outside through the window, the phone still pressed to my ear though both of us were silent. The air conditioner hit my face hard, cooling me off only momentarily.

"Jule?"

An exhale. "I don't want to," came the words through gritted teeth. He started to speak again but I cut him off, a tear escaping toward my temple. Through a cramped throat I pushed out the words, "You do it this time."

And then I hung up.

I found a water bottle in the fridge, remembering my mother's words as I twisted the cap with shaking hands. We were at my grandmother's funeral. I must've been eight or nine. She pushed a mini paper cup at me in the funeral parlor lobby. "You can't cry while you're drinking something."

On my way back out, Bryce greeted me under the blue light of the bug zapper on the porch. I pulled at my eye to stop any remaining tears from seeping out. I knew who he was, but we'd never spoken.

"Good?" he asked.

One word, a sentence in and of itself. Sometimes things end when they begin.

I half-nodded, knowing I would never explain this to anyone. Not Mariah, even. Certainly not Bryce the Stranger standing alone at a party.

He held out a half-drunk bottle of Bud Light. "Beer?"

I held up my water, still quiet. Barely two words between us.

He led me back toward the bonfire, and we began to talk. I don't remember what about, but I knew he was there.

I thought about that night a lot, especially when I felt like crying. When that dry ache crept up in my throat, my body returned right there, the smell of wooded smoke sneaking into my pores, my hair hot from the humid night, my school t-shirt sticking to my back. What would've happened if I'd gone home? If I'd never met Bryce? If I'd rushed to the house, pounded up the stairs, my sneakers snapping Mom out of whatever she was in, sing-songing, "We won the game!" with tears caged behind my smeared eyeliner?

But it wasn't that night, of course. It was so much later that it all happened.

Anyone would be haunted by it -- how could you not be? How could you not wrack your brain thinking back to every moment that might've been the moment that changed it all? How could you not wonder, what if you had known?

But you can't go back Before when you are stuck so deep in After.

So these days, distraction is key.

Sleeping is hard, so late night talk shows help. Alone in the shop, I turn on NPR. Sunday mornings Dad sleeps in, and I slip out to church to watch Bryce play and pretend that we're somewhere far back in the Before. Stalking around the back porch of some guy's house deep in the woods, a bonfire outlining his dark hair in an orange-red silhouette.

One night I was up late thinking about it all, and I wondered if he remembered any of it. The first time we kissed, the last time we spoke. Any of the in between. Did it matter if he did?

Eventually, I'd cave and do the things I always did when it was late and I was crying. The process started methodically, just dipping my toes into memories I knew would cut at my sides until I was up at four, bleeding out on the bed. Bryce's Instagram. Old photos on my phone. Songs we used to listen to in his Ford, fighting to roll the windows down with their sticky old-time handles. Then, Christmas photos with Mom and Ava. The last string of texts with Mom. Facebook messages I'd sent out robotically when friends asked what happened. "It was a car accident. There was a drunk driver. Someone ran a redlight." Say it over and over until it's branded on your brain in thick lettering. Then, her last voicemail -- something benign, asking me to put out the clothes we were donating to the Salvation Army so she could grab them on her way to the Y, she'd be going right by it.

And then, the tears. Somewhere toward the beginning sometimes, but tonight not 'til the end. Wishing someone would come in the door, humming about the football game or saying "Good?" with a nod and a beer toast in the porchlight.

Eventually it ended. I fell asleep or I woke up, one or the other. Told myself once again that this time it wasn't a dream.

And then I got back to going, knowing the dry ache in my throat was right around the corner waiting for me.

And she wasn't.

And neither was he.

Which was worse?