Page 20 of Born to Run Back
Part Three
Born to Run Back
Chapter Nine
When the World Stills
Theo
Friday,7:56p.m.,threeweeks after the coffee shop
The lyrics had been pounding in my head for days now, that one line from “Born to Run” playing on repeat like my brain was stuck on the world’s most depressing broken record. Something about living with sadness, loving with madness—the exact words always escaped me, but the sentiment carved itself deeper into my chest each time I remembered it.
And her name. Jesus Christ, her name was Wendy. Of all the names in the world, it had to be Wendy? Almost as if Springsteen had somehow written that song specifically for us, for the particular brand of insanity I’d been drowning in for months now.
The bourbon bottle sat empty on my kitchen table, but I couldn’t even remember when I’d finished it. Couldn’t remember most of yesterday, actually. The school week blurred into late night stretches of drinking and thinking about vanilla-scented hair and sound she’d made when I’d—
The front door burst open without warning.
“Theodore Michael Garner, what the hell is wrong with you?”
Andie. My sister’s voice cut through the haze like a blade, sharp with that particular fury that only close and immediate family could manage. She stood in my doorway, holding a spare key I’d forgotten I’d given her. Cool platinum-blonde hair framed a face masking something between concern and disgust, her blue eyes frosty and—angry.
“Andie.” I blinked at her, my tongue suddenly thick and uncooperative. “What are you doing here?”
“Staging an intervention, apparently.” She stepped into my kitchen, taking in the empty bourbon bottle, the stack of ungraded papers that had been sitting there for over a week, and the general disaster zone my life had become. “When’s the last time you showered? Or ate an actual meal?”
I couldn’t remember. The days had started melding together somewhere around the time the coffee shop disappointment had curdled into something darker.
“I’m fine, Andie.”
“Bullshit.” She pulled out a chair and sat across from me, her expression shifting from anger to something that looked dangerously close to pity. “You missed Dad’s birthday dinner last week. You haven’t returned any of my calls. And according to Jessica—yes, I Facebook messaged your colleague—you’ve been barely functional at work for months.”
“Jessica had no right to—”
“She’s worried about you, Theo. We all are.” Andie leaned forward, her tone softening. “Talk to me, dude. What happened to you?”
The question hung in the air between us, landed with months and months of accumulated damage. What had happened to me? Where did I even start? The accident? The woman whose name matched a song lyric I couldn’t get out of my fucking head? The elaborate shrine we’d built in our shared madness?
“There was this woman,” I finally said, the words tasting foreign in my mouth.
“Okay.” Andie’s expression didn’t change. “Tell me about her.”
So I did. I told her about the accident, about holding a stranger while she’d sobbed, about months of midnight drives and stone offerings and the desperate conviction that thirty-seven minutes of shared trauma meant something eternal. I told her about the frantic sex against her car and the coffee shop afterward, about the crushing realization that fantasy and reality sometimes had nothing at all to do with each other.
“Jesus, Theo.” Andie was quiet for a long moment after I’d finished. “You know this isn’t about her, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“This obsession, this elaborate ritual—it’s not about loving some stranger. It’s about avoiding everything else.” She gestured around my kitchen, at the evidence of my slow-motion descent into madness. “When’s the last time you dealt with Mom’s death? Really dealt with it?”
Her words hit like a physical blow. Four years since the cancer had taken her, and I’d thrown myself into work, into routine, into anything that didn’t require me to acknowledge the vast emptiness Mom had left behind.
“You used that woman as an escape,” Andie continued, her voice gentle but unrelenting. “Just like you’re using alcohol now. But you know what, Theo? You can’t keep running from grief forever.”
I stared at my hands, at the wedding ring I still wore on my right pinky—Mom’s last gift before the morphine had taken her ability to speak.
Andie was right. The shrine, the obsession, the desperate need to make Wendy into something sacred… it had all been easier than admitting I was still that lost thirty-year-old overgrown kid who’d watched his mother waste away in a hospital bed.
