Page 74 of Aftersome
But I promised myself I wouldn’t make the first move. I was tired of getting my hopes up for nothing, and ending up with a crushed ego.
More than just that, I felt like I was letting everyone down every time I failed. One step forward and two steps back. That’s what it felt like with him.
As I laid in bed, with my mind racing and the time well past when I should have been asleep, I heard the faint sound of my phone vibrating. I barely had the energy to reach for it, let alone answer it, but I somehow did.
“Wren?” Shelia said, and instinctively, my eyes closed.
I should have known it was her calling, but my head was elsewhere at the moment. I tried my best to hold it off, but it was preparing itself for a day of heartache and endless tears.
Every year was the same. A tradition we created. A few hours before midnight hit, Shelia would call me. Checking in, seeing how I was. It was her way of telling me that she was here for me.
“Hey,” I responded, my throat suddenly hardening.
“Hey, sweetie. I’ve been missing you.”
Shit.
Already, I could feel the oncoming of tears.
“I’ve been missing you guys too,” I admitted as my eyes closed shut.
“Are you doing okay?”
I sighed.
“Overall, yes, but today, not really.”
I heard a soft sniffle and realized that she was already crying. Every year for the past ten years I had been with her on the anniversary of Hayes’s passing, but not this year.
This year I was here, and I felt desperate to hop into my car and go to her.
“Have you eaten at all today?” she asked as I couldn’t help but laugh as her typical mom-like question.
“A little, but don’t worry. I have my day all planned out.”
“Okay, good,” she responded but little did she know my day involved laying in bed all day as I cried for the man I lost and dreamed of a life where he never left me.
“Promise me that you’ll be okay? Both you and Greg?”
She chuckled on a broken sob.
“We’ll be okay, Wren. We’re just going to stay in today and go through some of Hayes’s old pictures.”
God, I wished that I was there.
I loved all their family photos and every moment that they had captured of him on camera. It made me feel even more close to him.
“That sounds perfect.” I let out a sob.
“Oh, Wren…” Shelia joined me in tears and soon we were both crying.
“It’s been eleven years and I still miss him like crazy,” I confessed. “I swear, it never gets any easier.”
“It does, baby. You just don’t realize how much you’ve grown and overcome after all these years.”
I knew she was right, but it just didn’t seem that things were any easier. If anything, as I got older, I realized just how badly I wished that Hayes was here to experience life with me.
To get married. To have babies. Something that he and I would never have.
