A Different Kind of Beauty (3 page)

"You know what the worst part is?" He whispers; "I tried so hard. It just didn't happen. And now no one believes me. No one ever believes how hard I tried."

For a time, there is silence. I don't know what to say.

“Jesse?”

“Hm?”

“Why don’t you ever tell me that you love me?”

He turned his eyes to me, perplexed. “I didn't think I was supposed to. Not anymore.”

“I still say it. Why shouldn't you?”

“I don't know. It doesn't seem right. Even if I don't say it, you know it's true.”

I shake my head. “That’s not the same. Why can’t you just say ‘I love you, Lindsay’?”

“I love you
, Lindsay.”

“You’re just repeating me now.”

“I love you.”

“Do you?”

“I love you.”

Closing my eyes, finally satisfied, I whisper, “I love you too, Jesse.”

There is more silence, but we don’t need conversation. My eyelids are getting heavy, sleep is creeping in on the edges of my vision. But I don’t want the night to end yet.

I know that he’ll be gone soon, but I'm sure that it won
’t be tonight. The doctors have told us that he doesn’t have much longer, but I know that he has tonight. And tomorrow, I’ll be sure that he has one more day. And the next. The fact of death is a blade between us, worn dull by now. It’s always there, but it can do no harm. It will always threaten, but there is no real danger. At least, that is what I think.

“Everything will be fine,” he says to me, as if he can read my mind. And maybe he can, I’m not sure anymore.

“I know.”

He pauses. “You’ll be fine too.”

I nod, because I know that I can’t speak.

I love him. That is all that matters. I will be fine. I love him.

***

I left at midnight. Sometime after that, Jesse ran a bath. He stripped off his clothes and brought a bottle of sleeping pills with him. His mother found him in the morning, floating, dead, peaceful.

There is no funeral. His mother and I take his ashes to a forest where we used to play as children. We navigate through the trees together, the way that Jesse and I used to, thorns and branches catching my sweater and her skirt. I feel insects skittering across my toes, and I try to identify them by the feel of their tiny feet. I run my hands over the trees, pressing my fingers into the grooves of the bark, trying to remember all the things that he taught me.

I expect to cry. I do not.

We take handfuls of ash and spread them where we wander. We leave him on the path, amongst an untamed tangle of nettles, rubbed into trees, dusting leaves. When it rains, I tell her, the ashes will be carried into the earth. They will bind with seeds and grow into new life. They will be eaten and passed on, nourishing the world. They will be the start of some perfect cycle, something that he would have appreciated. Something he could have loved.

My hands starting to shake, I reach into the bottom of the plain urn. I run my fingertips along the smooth sides, brushin
g the bottom clean, making sure no part of him is left behind. I hold this last handful above my head and let the wind steal it away, bit by bit, carried on a breeze. His mother locks her arm around my waist, leaning her head onto my shoulder.

I open my hand
. I spread my fingers wide as the zephyr kisses my palm, until the last trace of him is gone. I expect to feel something, some part of him. Something that says he is still here with us. I feel the hollow in my chest that he has left behind, and nothing more. The memories are all that Jesse has left for us.

He is not here.

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