The Lonely Hearts Club [On Hold]

Chapter Two: I Saw Her Standing There

I hadn’t realized how much I missed being in Maple Valley until I came home. It was like a dam broke in my mind and memories kept steadily flooding out—good memories, might I add, of the past when things were a whole lot simpler.

   The last time I had been here was when I was on leave, when returning home was a luxury. It felt like an eternity, but it only was a few months ago. More than a few, since I was in a coma. Sometimes I forgot about that. I wondered where all the time went and how I could’ve been spending it under different circumstances. It seemed like a bit of a waste of time, but at least it taught me to savour all the days I had left.

   It was the beginning of December, and for a small town in Ontario—Canada; that should give you an indication of how the winter weather was—that meant there was snow everywhere. I loved it. I relished the familiarity of it: the crunch of snow under my shoes, the harshly cold climate I found much better than frying in the heat all day long, the way the whole town was painted white and all ready for Christmas. Hell, I even enjoyed getting up in the early hours of the morning before the sun even began to make its daily ascent into the sky, to shovel the driveway. Just because I was alive and well and capable. And I didn’t even have to wake up that early to do the grueling task; I was unemployed until tomorrow, I could do it whenever I wanted to. But there was just some kind of unspoken unity when all the neighbours were out, jackets thrown on over their pajamas, shoveling just enough snow for their cars to get out of the driveway and onto the street. And it wasn’t like Jesse minded at all. In fact, he encouraged it, grumbling about how crazy I was and then ushering me outside with the promise that there’d be coffee—decaf, with milk and sugar—ready for me when I was done. That was only because if I wasn’t shoveling snow out there, it’d have to be him. (I didn’t think that would be too easy, though, with the foot thing and all. He wasn’t confined to a wheelchair, now able to choose between using it or crutches, but that wouldn’t be any better.)

   I fumbled to get the front door open, partially because it was still pretty dark outside and partially because my hands were shaking from the cold, but I finally managed to unlock it after a minute. After grabbing the newspaper lying on the doorstep, I stepped inside, letting the front door slam shut behind me to let Jesse know I was back and in desperate need of a cup of steaming hot coffee. He seemed to have gotten the message because a moment later, as I was discarding my boots by the door, he appeared.

   “So I heard there’s going to be a ‘slight chill’ for the rest of the day,” Jesse said, one hand nursing a mug and using the other to wheel himself towards me.

   I thanked him and gratefully accepted it. “Understatement,” I said, letting the mug warm my hands. “Don’t believe the weatherman.”

   “I never do.”

   I wandered into the kitchen and placed my mug and the newspaper down, leaning against the island. On the polished counter was a neat stack of mail so I picked it up and skimmed through it, only to find bills and ads.

   Glancing around the kitchen, I noticed just how orderly it was. The whole house, actually. Usually there’d be dirty dishes on the counter and piling up in the sink, but everything was spotless. I made a mental note to thank Liam the next time I saw him.

   Jesse and I asked one of our good friends, Liam Nichols, to house-sit for us while we were away overseas. We even offered to pay him, but he said it was no problem and he’d do it for free. We came back to find that he had cleaned and tidied up on a regular basis so we didn’t have to return to a townhouse, and everything in it, covered in dust.

   Jesse and I had bought this place the year we started college and had been living here ever since. It wasn’t particularly big or anything, but there was just enough room for the both of us. It was an average townhouse with two bedrooms, since that was all we could afford at the time (even now we hardly made enough money to move, not that we wanted to). Both bedrooms were on the second floor, Jesse’s the larger of the two and the one located beside the bathroom because I had lost a fateful round of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Downstairs, on the first floor, there was a small kitchen connected to a dining room and a living room. Through the dining room was the den, where we kept our record player and the—rather impressive, if I say so myself—collection of vinyl we owned. We also had a pool table in there that the previous owner of the property gave to us because he couldn’t find a way to fit it through the front door without breaking it apart.