Kiss Me Goodbye

El Fin (Day 15)

 Monday, July 10

The car is quiet as it zooms along the highway. This early in the morning, there is almost no traffic, and everything, including the sun, seems to be asleep. Uncle Jeff helps me unload my lugagge and envelops me in a giant bear hug.

"I'll miss you," he yawns.

"You too," I say. "Thanks so much. You don't know how much you've helped me." And it's true. Just by being here, I've found myself again.

I turn to Renee. "Call me," I say.

She nods and squeezes me tight in a hug. "You should come again next year."

Then, before I know it, we've already taken off and the plane soars into the air, leaving California and Luke behind. When the flight attendant comes around to give us snacks, I pretend to be asleep, for I don't think I can talk right now. Something is lodged in my throat, and it takes all my willpower to squeeze my eyes shut and will the tears not to flow. When I get home, I tell myself, when I get home, I'll let myself cry myself to sleep.

So when I step off the plane, I compose my face into a smile that seems more like a grimace and scan the crowd for my mom. When I see her smiling, I dash towards her and bury myself in her embrace, inhaling her smell of apples and cinnamon and sugar.

It takes me awhile to notice the man beside her, a middle-aged, balding man who smiles down kindly at me. "Alli, honey, this is John," says my mom, and as I look into John's kind eyes, I know that try as I might, I cannot hate him.

Instead, I smile tightly and wrench my hands away from my mom's grasp. Her face falls slightly, but she says nothing.

The whole car ride is rather awkward and silent, and when we pull up into the driveway of our cozy house, I dash into it wordlessly and sprint upstairs before flinging the door shut. There, I finally let go, sobbing and sinking to the ground.

I check my phone for any calls or messages from Luke, but he's sent none. Although I know that breaking up with him was for the best, it still doesn't stop the hurt. What is he doing now?, I wonder. Has he possibly already moved on?

But I mustn't be so obsessed like this, so I fling my phone across the room, where it hits the wall and cracks, falling to the floor. It joins the mess on the ground that I'd left before I went to California.

"You okay?" yells my mom, but I don't respond.

And her! How dare she flaunt John in my face the day we come back? What happened to Dad? I want her to be happy, but I can't help but feel that she's tearing our memories of Dad apart at the seams. A new wave of sobs overwhelm me at the betrayal I feel.

I don't know how long it is that I lie on my bed- maybe a few minutes or maybe a few hours- but the next thing I register is a soft knocking at our door. "Alli?" my mom says.

I fling a pillow at the door. "Go away. I don't want to talk."

"This is important," she insists, and I realize that her voice sounds strangely grim. When I open the door, I'm surprised to see tears rolling down her face. She holds her phone out to me silently and then disappears.

I press the phone cautiously to my ear, dreading what I'm about to hear. "Hello?" I ask.

"It's Luke," someone sniffles.

"Renee?" I ask. "What's wrong? What's wrong with Luke?"

She whispers something unintelligible, and for some reason, my heart thumps with dread. "I can't hear you," I say.

"He's in the intensive care unit," she says through her sobs. "In a coma- car accident- severed leg." She disappears into a fit of hysterics, and my whole world seems to fly away. It can't be, no, it can't be, and before I know it, I'm back on a plane to California.

And this time, I don't even bother to stop the tears. Everyone gives me a wide berth as I sit in a numb silence. The plane can't seem to go fast enough, and all I can think is "no, please, no."

And then I'm running through the artificially white hallways, down to the ICU, but no one will let me in. "He's in critical condition," they say. "You can't see him."

Footsteps resound behind me, and I whisk around to see the tall, imposing figure of Mr. Davis. "I'm sorry," I sob. "I'm sorry, I'm, sorry, I'm sorry. I love him! I really do!" And for the first time, he doesn't glare at me.

His smile is tight, but weary as he takes my hand. "I know," he says, giving it a squeeze. "Calm down."

"I can't," I sob. "This is my fault, all my fault!"

"It's mine, not yours" he says firmly. "I told him to go after you."

"You did?" I ask, my tears momentarily forgotten in my disbelief.

He nods slowly, sadly. "I told him that if he loved you so much, he should go after you. Here," he holds out a crumpled piece of paper. "They found this in his car. He stayed up all last night writing this."

I unfold the paper with shaky hands. It's a song Luke wrote, with notes scribbled here and scratched out there. I take a deep breath and shudder as I read his apologies, his heart, and his love.

"...You shook my world with just one look, you taught me how to fly. So who would have thought, who would have known, I'd never kiss you goodbye?"

My tears splash onto the paper as I read the last sentence, smudging the words, and I look up at Mr. Davis. "Thank you," I whisper. "Thank you."

--

AND THIS IS OVER i think, THANK THE LORD