Page 45 of The Embrace of Evergreen

“I know that. I know that he needs time, I just wish he’d let me sit with him. I’d do anything for him, but he won’t even let me see him. I don’t know how to help him if he won’t let me in.” Blue’s rough and cracked voice is harder to hear through the wall.

A part of me is grateful for that. I haven’t spoken more than a few words in nearly a week. I think. Maybe it’s been hours or months. Time doesn’t really make sense anymore. If Jordyn has been gone for almost two years, what sense does anything make anymore? The whole time I’ve been in Seattle, the whole time I’ve known Blue, the fundamental and unshakable fact that a part of my heart will always belong to Jordyn has been…wrong. What else has my heart been wrong about?

I know how worried Blue is, but I don’t have the strength to do anything about it. I’m barely managing to pick at enough food from the trays that appear on my nightstand a few times a day to convince them I’m not going to starve to death so that they’ll leave me alone in my silent bedroom again. They bring soup and toast and try to tempt me with cheese and pastries and small pieces of chocolate. They bring glasses of water and hot espressos and sports drinks, setting them down next to me with whispered words and soft palms rubbing my back or shoulders before I shrug them off and curl tighter under my blankets. Even such careful, tender touches feel like knives against my skin. I don’t know why Jayce and Namid seem to have been here the whole time; surely they have better things to do than to worry about a man they barely know. I don’t know why they care. I wish they would go home. I wish I didn’t have to hear Blue beg me to let him hold me or talk to me or help me. I wish I knew how to tell him that I’m breaking in a way that I don’t understand and that having him here is somehow making it worse. That having him with me is just a reminder of how easy it is for life to change. How quickly I could lose him as well.

I know that I shouldn’t feel this way. I didn’t lose Jordyn last week; I didn’t even lose him to a car accident two years ago. I lost him when I was a scared eighteen-year-old kid who ran away after his heart was broken. Hiding in bed and burying my face in my pillows in a futile attempt to stop the flow of tears or soothe the ache in my chest doesn’t make sense. At the very least, I should be able to find comfort in the arms of the man Ilove, but I don’t. I don’t know how to trust that he won’t be ripped away from me as well. I’ve locked myself away, too vulnerable and helplessly lost as all of the grief that overwhelmed me in my youth and forced me to run swarms back tenfold and threatens to pull me into the abyss along with it. Maybe it’s better if I lose Blue now too. Maybe it’s better if all of the pain comes at once.

Blue

I don’t know how to help Ethan. I don’t know how to help myself. He’s lost in his grief, and I’m losing him, and I don’t know how to get him back. I don’t know how to show him that I’m still here and that I’ll give him anything he needs. That I’ll wait for him forever. That I’ll sit by his side in silence if he doesn’t know what he needs just so he doesn’t have to go through this alone. I don't want him to give up his love for Jordyn, and I don't expect him to give up his grief. I just want to be with him. I want to hold him up, to carry him and comfort him when the weight of it all threatens to crush him until he can't move. I just want him.

Jayce and Namid helped me get Ethan home the night he fell apart, and at least one of them has been here ever since. We don’t talk much because I’m not capable of talking about art or the weather while the man I love is nearly catatonic on the other side of a thin grey wall. I’m sure they’re nice people, but right now, I don’t care who they are. I don’t want to get to know them while my heart is falling apart twenty feet away from me. Even though Ican barely function well enough to tell them hello from time to time, I’m grateful that they’ve stayed so Ethan never has to be truly alone. One of us is always in his apartment, just in case. If he manages to break away from the darkness for a moment - when he manages to break away from the darkness - I want him to know that he doesn’t have to go back to it on his own. He has people who love him and who will happily share his pain.

We take food and drinks and beg him to eat, to shower, to talk, to move. I sit on the side of his bed and trail my fingertips along the strong curve of his shoulder until he shivers and cries and begs me to leave him alone. I sit on the floor in his hallway with my back against his door, trying my best to hide the tears that I know are so noticeable in the sound of my voice as I talk. I talk about nothing and everything. I tell him stories of my youthful adventures. I talk about the gallery and the studio. I tell him I love him. I tell him I love him until my throat is sore and my voice is barely able to scratch out sounds. I tell him I love him until he comes to the door, but he doesn’t invite me in. His eyes are blank, and his words are hollow as he politely asks me to go home. As he tells me he just needs time.

He doesn’t tell me he loves me.

Gabriel is with me at Ethan’s sometimes. He brings cups of good espresso and leaves pizzas on the kitchen table and forces boxes of Thai food into my hands. I mumble my thanks, and we eat crowded together on Ethan’s small sofa in near silence. The samesofa Ethan and I used to curl up on together in a messy tangle of limbs as we tried our best not to fall off while we watched nature documentaries and laughed together during old nineties movies. Gabriel calls the restaurant to tell them I need more time off when I’m too broken to remember that one day, I’ll still need my job. He sits on the hard floor of Ethan’s hall with me and lets me bury my sobs in his shoulder so that Ethan can't hear them.

There are moments when Max is here too. She floats around - the very embodiment of grace and kindness - as she settles fruit and soup into the refrigerator and offers words of comfort that I only half hear while her delicate hand rests on my shoulder.

I think I see Evie once or twice. Some other friends too. I don't really knowwho hovers in the periphery of our lives while we’re stuck in this void, or how long they stay. I don’t blame them if it’s not for very long. I know Ethan is breaking and that I am breaking with him. Ethan doesn't talk to any of them either. He doesn't let them touch him or comfort him or dry his tears. He tolerates them for moments and then asks them to leave. I suppose at least it's not just me who he doesn’t want around.

The exhibition at Emerald City Arts was a success, I’m told. All eight of my pieces sold, and other collectors asked about my additional work. Apparently, I made a name for myself in the Seattle art world overnight. I don't have it in me to care.I didn’t attend the exhibition. I sat on the floor of Ethan’s bedroom while hecried until he fell asleep and then I sat next to him in bed with my hand on his shoulder, watching over him until morning. I watched his chest expand and his eyelashes flutter as I bit my screams back into silence and begged everyone and no one to help him through this. To help us through this.

For so long, I’ve told myself that love isn't real. That people who say their heart belongs to another have studied too much poetry, watched too many movies, read too many romance novels.I don't feel that way anymore. Although, some small part of me wishes I did. Ethan won’t let me in. He won’t talk to me. He won't let me wipe his tears or hold him as he sleeps.I know that he’ll get through this; grief doesn’t last forever. I know that one day, it will hurt just a bit less than the day before. One day, he’ll smile and laugh his shy, quiet laugh and realize there is still just as much beauty in the world as there was before the moment everything fell apart. But we’ve only known one another for a few months. What if the person he is after this loss doesn’t want me anymore? I don’t want to have to learn to live without his light in my life. Of all the ways I’ve ended up hurt after falling in love, this is the one that would finally break me.

I've tried to understand, tried to give Ethan space. I’ve called in sick for days on end to sleep on his floor, just in case. So that I’ll be waiting just in case he decides to let me in. I’ve numbly fumbled my way through shifts at work, arriving back at Ethan’s door with no real memory of how I got to the restaurant or back home or what I did while I was away. I’ve tried to hold on to hopeas the days slip past and I stand in front of a raging furnace, trying to harness the turmoil coursing through my veins by throwing my pain and confusion and pieces of my soul into art. For years, I've been content with my life, so sure that I didn't need anything else. Happy to place small fragments of my soul into to glass for safekeeping while hiding the rest of it away. It doesn't work anymore because my soul isn't my own. There isn’t even one minuscule piece left for me to sculpt into beauty. The entire thing is sitting in a dark bedroom with the man I love.

It’s been three weeks since Ethan climbed into bed. Three weeks since anyone has been able to coax him out other than to shower briefly every few days. Even that he does alone and simply to appease us when he feels he has no other choice.

I’m trying yet again to convince a piece of my soul to find its way into the glass. It’s the only thing that’s ever soothed me when I’ve been hurt or lost or alone. It doesn’t work this time. Just like it hasn’t worked for three weeks now.

“Fuck!”

My scream echoes around the nearly empty shop. No one here has ever cared about something as minor as swearing, but I’m glad the place isn’t full of artists to witness my hand slip and my fingers searing on hot metal. The quickly cooling glass on the end of my pipe hits the corner of the steel shaping table, shattering tothe floor in a million pieces.Finally, I think as I sink to the floor and scream obscenities into the sweltering industrial room.Finally,I’ve managed to create something that reflects my heart and soul.

Cam finds me and presses an ice pack to my hand as he walks me to his car and drives me to the urgent care. He must call Gabriel on the way because now he’s here, guiding me into a borrowed car I don't recognize. If I cared whether I live or die without Ethan by my side, I'd wonder how sane it is to allow Gabriel to drive us home. I don't have it in me to care anymore. I'm drifting through a haze of loss and regret, and if Ethan is going to lie in the darkness until it consumes him, all I want to do is lie by his side and disappear right along with him.

Ethan

It’s been weeks - I think - when I finally drag myself out of bed, pull on clothes from my bedroom floor, and drag myself into my front room. I don’t remember the last time I showered, the last time I ate, the last time I talked other than to mumble an “I’m okay” or “I just need some time” or a “Please, just leave me alone for a while.” I don’t know why I’ve managed to pull myself out of bed in this moment when I haven’t been able to for so many others. Namid is sitting on my couch with a book, hope and concern and confusion battling in his expression when I appear in the hallway only to simply walk past him toward my front door.

“Ethan, do you…”

I shake my head. “Not yet.”

He doesn’t say anything else before I close the door quietly behind me, and he doesn’t follow me out.

I drive without thinking. I roll the windows down to help clear the light coating of frost that’s built uparound the edges of my windshield, then I leave them down. The cold air cuts through my lungs like little shards of glass, and the sun is too bright for eyes so used to darkness. My mind and my heart and my soul are struggling to break through the thick fog of loss and confusion that have settled around me and seeped into my bones, and somehow, the pain helps. It reminds me that I have lungs and eyes and fingertips that are starting to tingle as they dangle out the window in the cold rushing air. It reminds me that even though my world has been knocked off its axis, the universe still exists. People still laugh and cry. They still go to work and celebrate birthdays. Birds still sing and soar through the clouds and come to rest on the limbs of evergreens as they sway in the breeze. Life goes on, even if the first man I ever loved will never again exist in mine.

I know the parking lot I pull into well; it’s become a haven for me over the past few months, and I have never been so desperately in need of the peace the forest has always offered me. Damp leaves stick to my shoes, and low-hanging branches, heavy under their load of wet moss, brush my chest and cheeks as I make my way down the overgrown trail toward the fallen log that has so often offered me a place to rest and regroup. My muscles burn from weeks of neglect, and my body aches as I lower myself to the ground, choosing to use the tree as a backrest instead of a chair. I don’t know if I can be trusted to sit upright for very long without its help. I ignore the squish of icy mud that soaks into my pants and the bark that scratches the skin of my lower back where my shirt pulls up during my descent. I don’t know howlong I sit in the mud waiting for answers to appear. I sit anyway. I sit, and I sit, and I breathe, and I just want this to end. I just want things to go back to the way they were. I want to laugh and to smile and to feel like the world is filled with hope and joy and possibilities. I’ve spent so much of my life feeling lost and alone, and even though I know that I don’t have to be those things anymore, I don’t know how to pull myself out of this. I don’t know how to cling to the good that I’ve found. I don’t want to hurt anymore. I want Blue.

The sound of leaves crunching underfoot draws my attention, and I glance toward the trail, expecting to see a hiker or tourist, only to see the face I can’t seem to escape even in my dreams.

“Namid was worried about you. Blue is at work, but when Namid called him to let him know you’d left the house, he said that if you weren’t at the gallery, you might be here, that it’s one of your favorite places. It makes sense, I guess; you and Jordyn were always running around the woods like hooligans, even when we got older. If you two were ever lost, it’s always where we’d find you.”

He pauses, and the way he watches me with both caution and hope before he continues tears at what’s left of my heart.

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