We Are Tidal

Chapter Four - Aftermath

Chapter Four

Aftermath

I walk away from dance practice, my skin still tingling from the sight of Arthur leaning against his car. When it starts to rain, I am a further thirty minutes from home and have started crying. But I don't want to drive - I want to feel myself moving.

I have perfected this - a crying stomp that takes me halfway home fueled on anger rather than what I know lurks underneath. It was too much. Seeing Gabriel and Arthur after nearly a year, a year where I had lost so much. A loss that I knew they both understood.

Before I know it, I turn my feet and change direction.

I am soaked, my yoga pants darkened with rain and my hair slick against my skull as I enter the graveyard. It wasn't like this was my first visit, far from it, but nevertheless, a wave of nausea rocks me as I walk through the neatly kept paths. Once or twice I pass others visiters, who nod at me. We share this nod, this little secret. As if we are all part of a horrible club of grieving, silently wounded people.

When I reach my parents' plot, I drop my dance bag on the marshy ground and perch on the marble edge of the grave. If my mother was actually here, she would scold me for risking a kidney infection from sitting on the cold surface.

I debate whether I'll do that thing where I talk out loud. My therapist thinks it would help me, but I can't help but feel stupid whenever I try. But God, I need to talk to someone about this. About him. And this seems like the kind of conversation that would have made my Dad uncomfortable. 

If there is life beyond death, I want Dad to take me clearing my throat as a cue to leave. This is a mother-daughter thing.

"Mom," I begin, "This is a mess, I'm a mess..."

So, I tell her. I tell her that I loved Art so much once that seeing him again has thrown me. Has changed me as much as losing him has. I can almost hear her telling me to chase after him. 

Mom always loved Art so much it was sickening and delightful all at once. I'm on your side in all things, she would say, but would not hesitate to remind me how wonderful he was. Of course, I agreed. 

When I am done telling her all of my news, I get up and stride out of the graveyard knowing what I should do and what I will do are two different things. As if he's psychic, my phone buzzes again with Damien's number.

When I answer, he mentions that he's having a casual get together tonight and wants me there. Wants me, in general. His words don't give me a thill they once did. The magic spell of distraction is over, apparently. 

Still, wiping my eyes, I agree without thinking. I get off the phone with him and message the girls swiftly. I add smiley faces for good measure.

*

"You have monstrous feet for a dancer," Willow says, as I trip over my doc martins as I climb the steel stairs outside of Damien's apartment building. I turn around and stick out my tongue, our giggles filling the stairwell.

"You were always my least favourite," I say, turning back to the stairs. "Ava, Nicole, come along my true friends!"

The girls had arrived at my house earlier to find me in the bath with my puppies snuggled against the bath's warm side - they each had a key to the house as my unofficial, but chosen, next-of-kin. They had come with both vodka and jelly snakes in hand. 

Without knowing entirely what I needed, Willow had slipped her hand in mine and given me a little squeeze. She always knew when the days had been rougher. Or she'd heard from Gabriel who she shared a lot of her classes with.