Losing Her (7 page)

He talked and I listened until Jameson arrived home, and then the three of us sat at the table with shot glasses and a deck of cards and drowned all of the emotions we had dredged up with a fifth of Jack Daniels.

It was over a year later when we mutually decided to get the hell out of Alaska after we endured another long winter. It didn’t stay dark all day in Sitka like it did further north, but the days were still too short. It was Landon that suggested we move to California, and before I could voice my reluctance at leaving, he placed a hand on my shoulder and said, “Sometimes you have to stop looking for something you already have.”

We started submitting transfer requests within a week, and the plans to move were completed within a month. It all went smoothly, like returning to California with Landon and Jameson was what I had come to Alaska for.

I
hadn’t realized I’d drifted off to sleep with my thoughts. Lately, I’m so consumed by them that I spend too much of the night trying to figure out what in the hell happened. I’m not in the habit of receiving many late night phone calls these days. Apparently being in a relationship ended those late night invitations. Plus, I’ve been shutting my phone off at night to avoid the temptation to call Ace since I kicked her out of my living room.

I need some time. I need to figure out what in the hell happened. She knows I have trust issues, and right now I don’t know how to make things go back to the way they were. I roll over to grab my phone as it continues ringing, and my mind starts running in every direction as I try to make a decision about whether I should answer it or not. I need to stop ignoring her. Avoiding her is no better than her running.

I look at the screen and sigh in disappointment when I see it’s Jameson calling, realizing how much I had been hoping it was her. I consider ignoring it. He and Landon are out at a local bar, watching a baseball game that I had refused to attend because I am still swimming in self-pity that’s quickly transforming into self loathing.

“Yeah,” I answer, putting the phone to my ear.

“Max, you’ve got to head to Ace’s man.”

I sit up, hearing the stress in Jameson’s voice. “What’s going on?” I flip the covers off and pull on the same jeans I’d worn earlier.

“David Bosse, he just died … he’s dead.”

I hear him repeat my name a few times before I realize I’m no longer standing. “Shit.” I attempt to process this information while trying to recall the last time I saw David. I’ve been avoiding going home since my fight with Ace. It’s been a couple of weeks now, and the guilt over how things ended ties my stomach in knots.

“How? When? Where is she?” The questions race out of my mouth, and my skin prickles with fear. I feel the foreign sting of tears cloud my vision, and my throat constricts.
This can’t be real.

I’ve been so wrapped up in my fears that Ace was getting ready to leave, and now this? David is the second father figure in my life to leave without warning.

“I don’t know, man. Kendall just called. I could barely understand her, but she’s going to Ace’s. Her phone was off or something. Max, you should go, she’s going to need you. Whatever’s going on between you guys … tonight … she needs you.”

“I’m leaving now.” I hang up and grab a T-shirt from my closet and slide on some flip flops before rushing out to my Jeep, still trying to make sense of the situation.
What am I going to do? How is she going to react to me?

I pull into her apartment complex as a flash of images race through my head: memories of David starting from the first day I met him until our last visit. He was friendly, compassionate, and had a great sense of humor, the complete opposite of what I allow myself to remember of my own father. David had a love for life and his daughters that was contagious. I found myself falling more in love with Ace, seeing and learning how much he loved her.
This is going to kill her.

Taking a few deep breaths, I open my car door and hear her crying over the sounds of the street before I can even see her. I know it’s her cry, just like I could pick out her blond hair in a sea of other blondes, know her touch while blindfolded, or the sound of her breaths in a crowded room. Everything about her speaks in volumes to me.

I race toward the apartment stairs and see her hunched on the second landing and briefly wonder what she’s doing out here and where she’s trying to go.
Was she coming to me?
Guilt floods me as I climb the stairs two at a time.

I expected her to be upset. I expected tears, sobbing in fact, and incoherent curses for losing him, but the magnitude of her pain terrifies me. She’s not hunched, she’s crumpled on a stair, holding her knees to her chest with her face buried as pain wracks her body. She looks broken. Absolutely, horrifyingly, broken.

“Oh, babe,” I cry softly, feeling the tears returning to my eyes. I don’t know what hurts me more: the pain of losing David or seeing her like this.

She doesn’t make any effort to move. I’m not even certain she’s heard me over her own cries. As I lift her up and awkwardly work to cradle her against me, something that is a hell of a lot easier to do when it’s a fireman’s hold, I see Landon descending the stairs, stopping when he’s just a few feet from us. His face is distorted with a look I haven’t seen him wear in over a year—the same one he used to have when I knew he was thinking about war and loss.

He allows me to pass him and I hear his footsteps on the stairs as he follows me back up to her apartment.

She doesn’t fight me at all as I carry her, as though she isn’t even aware she’s being moved. Ace has always been strong, fiercely so at times. She has such a presence to her, but tonight she looks so small and fragile it terrifies me.

I carry her through the living room where I see Jameson holding Kendall on his lap. Her face is buried in his neck, but Jameson looks up to see me and grimaces as he sees us. I watch his nostrils flare and his head shake. His eyes are rimmed with tears that slowly start to fall, and I know he feels the same magnitude of pain and loss that I am.

When I reach Ace’s room I gently lay her on the bed, and move her bare feet so I can lift the covers over her. All I want to do is hold her and somehow absorb some of this pain from her. I wish I could take it all, every last ounce, but I know I can’t. I may be able to help dull it, but time and acceptance are the only things that are going to allow this pain to ease.

I sit beside her with my back propped against the headboard and pull her against my chest, holding her so tightly I have to consciously loosen my grip a few times out of fear I’m hurting her. Ace loses all of her composure and lets out gut wrenching sobs that dampen my shirt. I cry my own tears, pressing my lips to the top of her head. It’s been weeks since I’ve kissed her, and I hate that this is how we’re reconnecting. Trying to offer her comfort, I brush her hair back and softly run my hands through it until I lean my face closer to smell her sweet scent that fades as my nose starts to run from tears.

I have no idea what to say. Telling her that everything will be alright feels cold and untrue. Everything isn’t going to be alright. She just lost her father. Nothing is ever going to be the same. When Keith died, I recall so many people mentioning he was in a “better place.” I loathed hearing it; it seemed so dismissive. And who in the hell knows if they’re in a better place? I know that it’s one of Ace’s fears, so I quickly force away my thoughts and hold her tighter.

“I’m so sorry, Ace. I’m so sorry,” is all I can manage to say.

The night somehow turns to morning, and I wake up to find Ace curled up next to me, my arms wrapped around her and my leg thrown between hers like we’ve always slept. But this time, she’s facing away from me, something that in nearly a year of sleeping next to her has never happened. The foreignness causes a shadow of something dark and crippling to creep through me. I can’t place it. I have no idea what causes my heart to stammer and my lungs to begin shrinking.

It takes me a few moments of confusion to realize it’s fear. What has my body on alert, ready to spring? I sit up so I can see her face and take my time looking over every inch of Ace as she lies beside me, still asleep. I hardly ever wake before she does, and on the rare occasions that I have, I’ve spent them lying beside her, marveling the fact that she’s mine.

This morning the peacefulness that usually exists on her face while she sleeps is completely absent. She somehow looks distraught, haunted. Knowing Ace and how much she fears death, I know this is going to be the most difficult experience she’s had to face yet. It’s never easy to lose someone. I still have a difficult time with swallowing the loss of my own dad, and he’s been gone more years than he was in my life.

The mental home video starts playing again, recapping the past eleven months that I’ve had with Bosse family. Laughter and splashing, David’s advice and Ace’s carefully thought-out words fill my ears, while smiles and hugs, Clementine, and blond heads fill my visions. The flood of memories makes my chest ache in a spot that I’ve become too accustomed with over the last few weeks of not speaking or being around Ace. It’s dark, consuming, and impenetrable.

I lie quietly beside her as my own tears slowly fall again at the loss of the man that was my mentor, my friend, and the closest thing I had to a father in the past thirteen years.

An hour or so must pass when there’s a knock on her bedroom door. I can’t see a clock and refuse to move in case it disturbs her. Kendall appears in the doorway looking haggard. Her whole frame is slouched forward, not showing any signs of her usual confidence. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Kendall in her pajamas, or without makeup, and the reality of what we’re about to experience sends a wave of chills through me.

“We should go home. The others will be there soon.”

“I can bring her when she’s up,” I whisper as Kendall wipes her fingers across her cheeks as more tears begin to fall.

“I’m up,” Ace mumbles groggily. “Let me grab a few things.”

She rolls off the bed and grabs a bag from her closet and begins shoving it full of clothes. I’m familiar enough with her obsessive organizing to know she’s grabbing her ‘comfortable’ clothes. She pulls on her Converse sneakers, not bothering to change, instead staying in the short cotton shorts and T-shirt I found her in last night.

Her fingers shake as she lifts the laces, making each of the white threads look like they weigh an excessive amount as she works to tie them. I focus on her face and see the concentration in her eyes, the tightness in her jaw and neck. The shaking is from something far more powerful than a lack of sleep; it’s from heartache.

I stand from the bed and kneel beside her. My hands reach out to take the laces from her, and she jerks away without even looking at me. She’s struggling for control. I understand this feeling well.

Pulling back to allow her some space, I watch as she ties her shoes with a look of contempt. She stands and dusts off her ass. Ace is possibly the cleanest person I’ve ever met, especially when something is bothering her, and after the past couple of weeks, I’m sure her apartment has been scrubbed over many times. I can smell the faint traces of bleach in the air as proof.

Jameson drives Kendall’s car with Ace and me in the backseat. She sits with her hands knotted together in her lap and stares out the window. I consider reaching over to touch her, but she looks so closed off I don’t want to push her. Instead, I closely watch her out of the corner of my eye.

The car ride is silent, except for Kendall occasionally crying into a tissue or blowing her nose. I catch Jameson glancing at me periodically as we make the quiet trip. He’s nervous and twitchy, making his driving even worse, but neither of the girls says a thing. They’re lost in their own worlds, worlds that Jameson and I don’t fully understand the language, customs, or expectations of. As we get closer, Ace begins fidgeting, a telltale sign that she’s nervous, which makes it that much more difficult for me to not reach out and try to comfort her.