Minnesota Goodbyes

Entry #36

Lacy lights into me after she finds out about the conversation with Nick. She's pissed, saying I should've just told him she was at the gym (which I didn't know) and at least feign civility until he left. She didn't use those words exactly, but the sentiment was the same. A little louder, a little more forceful, but the same message.

"Couldn't you just be nice to him? For my sake?" she asks me from the kitchen before returning to the living room with two bowls of soup. She sets one in front of me and places the other on a side table.

"Why are you taking his side?"

"I'm not. Promise."

"Then why are you defending him?" My fingers curl before I quickly pry them back open. Start picking at my nails. Biting the edges of them. Anything to keep from fighting with Lacy, to keep from isolating everyone I know. Breathe.

Lacy rubs at her right eye, and sweeps away an eyelash. (It bothers me because I can't help but wonder if she made a wish on it. Probably not. She didn't when she blew out the candles on her birthday cake last year. I make a wish on it for her. Patience. A wish for both of us. My stomach knots.)

She sighs. "M., I understand what you're saying, but Nick isn't having a good year, either. No one is, really. I don't want to get in the middle of this, but it wouldn't hurt if you both tried to see it from the other person's perspective."

My eyes sting. Nick isn't having a good year? No tears come out, but my hands shake.

Why did he have to come here, and why did he have to leave? Couldn't we let our pain sit between us, unanswered, until he realized that he couldn't help me? Until he realized that his presence was a reminder, digging into an open wound? But he didn't, and we couldn't.

It spills out. A trickle to a flood, and I've unleashed everything I've been holding in for so long, not even knowing I was holding it in. "He's having a bad year? You're having a bad year? You didn't... You don't know what it's like, Lacy. And I'm sorry, I really am, that you lost a friend. But don't act like she meant the same thing to you guys, or that you..." I crush my eyes closed, trying to hold everything in. It doesn't work. "Whatever. I'm leaving."

"M.!"

The door swings shut behind me, and the cold is biting. It grips me by my shoulders, shaking me, and jostling everything inside me into different positions. And the teardrops come. Again. (I can never stop them, not anymore. I didn't used to cry before this. I didn't used to be like this.)

But I am now.

The city lights blur before me, spun into thick smudges of color. It would be pretty, almost, if I could actually admire it. But my eyes keep filling up (and though I close them to try and clear them, it only works momentarily), and I can only see the broken path behind me and the lonely night stretching before me.

Clair leaving is a mortal wound, and now it festers, poisoning everything, infecting everything. I'm breaking everything around me, and I thought I didn't have anything else left to break. I can't even go back yet because I'll have to apologize to Lacy, and I can't face her. I can't look her in the eyes, knowing that I shoved her away when I didn't want to, and why did I? Why did I?

What's wrong with me?

The night prowls around me, darkness drawing close, and the wind snarls in my ears. (It growls low, a wolf. The night is a wolf, a wild animal, gnawing me to the bone. Fleshless and skeletal, that's what I am. Until I'm gone.)

I'm going to be sick. There's nothing I can do for her, but Lacy. (Here. I need to be anchored here, I can't go back. I can't think about Clair.)