Page 20 of Bed of Roses

The timer on my phone went off. Bear looked absolutely panicked. I turned it off and threw my phone in my purse.

“Please, sit down. Just, I need to clear my head.”

He stomped towards the back of his house—my assumption of the kitchen was confirmed when I heard his freezer door open and ice hit a glass.

“You weren’t a conquest. I enjoyed every second that we spent together, and I don’t just mean in bed. I mean at dinner, chatting, going to that ridiculous tourist trap. It was the first time in ages I felt, light. Like there was joy, in my heart.”

He stopped and took a long drink from his snifter before continuing.

“Raven thinks I push people away. That all of these times that I’ve been abandoned have made me afraid. I just… I didn’t mean to make you feel bad on Saturday. I was angry at myself for potentially ruining this.” He signaled between the two of us from where he stood at his fireplace mantle. “Then I had to go on the air and these stupid Carol the Square things are just a powder keg waiting to fucking explode, and the night got away from me and pissed me off, and I didn’t want you to misunderstand my ire at the show producers as anything directed towards you. But that obviously didn’t work.”

He paused, and I wasn’t sure if it was a pause so I could comment, or just because he was thinking about what to say.

“Raven said something about Jen?”

“Fuck,” he muttered into his glass, throwing back the last of his whiskey. He stomped back into his kitchen, I heard him pull the cork on the bottle again, the telltale glugging sound announcing his second round. He also returned with a goblet of red wine, for me. After handing off the glass, he slumped into the chair in the corner, took a bracing breath and began.

“I’m a rock guy, you know. On top of that I’m a rock DJ. My life was never about settling down or taking that sappy path to the altar. Jen and I were low key, you know? Like we’d hang out, we’d fuck, a good time was had by all, and it was that way for a long time.

“Somewhere around the time my career started to nosedive I realized that aside from Raven, who is my best friend and like a little sister in one single human, Jen was it for me. She was there for the rise, and I thought she’d be there for the fall. She wasn’t ever a hearts and flowers kind of person, but she loved Christmas. Was obsessed with it. Sat around in flannel pants and T-shirts every weekend watching those cheesy Christmas movies, you know the ones. Cute small town cupcake maker meets like a wall street stockbroker and they hate each other but then it snows, and all is right in the world?

“Bear Tucker the DJ was sitting on a pyre as the flames of my career smoldered and began to burn. I had this moment of clarity one day after our show. I was like holy shit, Jen! She’s the one. I come home and she lets me vent and tell her about all of the bullshit I’m dealing with. I remember thinking how comforting it was to be able to tell her how scared I was about my career nosediving and thinking how great it was she listened to me. At least I thought she was listening to me. I understood her lack of response to be her way of giving me space to you know, be like vulnerable or whatever.

“So, I figure if my career is going down, at least I’ll have her. The day I read in the newspaper they weren’t renewing my contract I stopped at a jewelry store and bought her a ring. She and I were on the couch watchingLove Actuallyand I kept trying to find a good time to stop the movie and propose. She beat me to it though.”

He stopped, midstory. He was eyeing the bottom of his glass, a weird half grin on his face, shaking his head as he shook the ice and took a long gulp. I wanted to be like, “Beat you to what?” but I thought better of it. I took a drink too, hoping he would understand my mimic of his action was a way to give him the space to process.

“All the sudden she went ghost white and asked me if I had ever had a ‘totally meta’ moment. She said was watching herself on screen—that chick who was in all the Pirates of the Caribbean movies? Her character. The one that cheats on her new husband. Jen felt like that character was crying for help in the movie. That she was, and I quote ‘yoked by a sense of obligation.’ And she just couldn’t do it anymore. She couldn’t be that person. There were no tears, or apologies, she just unfolded herself from the couch, packed a few things in a bag, and walked out.”

Mariah Carey.That is why he hates that song. That young girl from the movie, she had made that song popular again. As quickly as the realization dawned on me so did the guilt over my twenty-dollars’ worth of alcohol rubbing into that wound.

I didn’t know what to do, or what to say. Everything spinning through my head sounded so trite. I could feel it though, the pain he mentioned. It didn’t ooze, it gushed. I did the only thing I could think of. I pushed to the end of the sofa. Close enough that I could reach out to him. I grabbed his hand and squeezed hoping it transmitted my feelings appropriately.

His hand slipped just enough that his tattoo showed. He watched me looking at it and splayed his fingers wide enough I could read it.

“The loudest quiet.” I whispered the words.

He nodded. “The shattering of a heart when being broken is the loudest quiet.

I got that inked after Jen. We cleaned out our high rise, divvied up all the crap, and I was alone in a Residence Inn in Jersey trying to figure out what the fuck to do with my life. And I hurt. Marley, it hurt so bad. Everywhere. I had lost everything. But most of all I hurt deep in my heart. Do you know where there is a vein that goes directly to your heart?”

He twisted his thumb and pointed at the line of script.

“Right here. That’s why we wear wedding rings on the left hand. Closest to the heart.”

I had goosebumps. Like from my spine all the way out across my chest, down my arms and my thighs. I had no words. Speechless didn’t even fit the description because that would imply shock, and it wasn’t shock I felt. I was drowning in empathy and that empathy kept me quiet and respected the space he had made sacred by unburdening his soul.

“There is something else though, that is the loudest quiet. These past two weeks Marley, I feel at peace. When I’m with you, I don’t feel that weight of sadness inside. I realized its because there is something else that comes in and settles itself deep in the places that hurt. Where those broken places once writhed and screamed in agony, they lay quiet because something came along, gathered them up, held them in their warmth so they could be at peace. It’s compassion, and friendship, and love.”

My eyes must have gone saucer wide because he laughed, grabbing my hand and kissing it.

“I’m not saying this is love…yet. We just met. But this feels like nothing I’ve ever felt before. When I’m with you, all of the hurt that I was holding inside it goes quiet. And I want more of that. I want to feel it every day.”

My mom used to tell me I could charm a song out of a mute. That I had something to say from the age of one and never stopped having opinions. But at that very moment, my brain was just a vast white space. Just existing. He had unpacked so much. I was stuck between wanting to ask so many questions, but also not wanting to overwhelm him. I wanted to kiss him but also to comfort him. To take him upstairs and slowly comfort him with my body, but also curl up on the couch with him next to the fireplace and just—be.

“When my mom died,” it hurt to talk about still, but we were the same, cut from our pain, “I felt, untethered. My life for so long has been taking care of her. Making sure she had her meds, keeping an eye on her while she ate so she didn’t choke, worrying about whether she could actually walk in the park or if she was just being stubborn and refusing to cope with her declining body. And then, one day she just floated away in the middle of the night. It wasn’t even a bad day. We had laughed and gone to town. There was nothing out of the ordinary that suggested she was going to die that day. And then she did. Since then, I’ve just been coasting, with no direction. Coming into the holidays actually made me petrified. I didn’t know how to exist around the holidays without my north star. And then you came charging, literally into my life. And suddenly, Carol the Square didn’t hurt as much as I feared it would. Visiting the shops, going to Santa’s Workshop, all of the activities that are sewn into my heartstrings with memories of my mom, didn’t burn like I feared they would. Because you were here, and it gave me a built-in reason to see Christmas with someone else’s eyes, and I needed that.”

He wrapped his arm around my shoulders tucking me in tight.

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