Losing Her (21 page)

“She’s right,” Mindi says, returning to the room. She takes a deep breath as she walks to the front of the table. “Ace knows we’re trying to find her, and she’s made it very clear that at this time she doesn’t want us to. I think we should give her some time, see what she does. If she starts pulling away more, then we’ll try again—”

“What?” Kyle’s eyes narrow and his forehead creases in a look that doesn’t even attempt to hide his anger.

“No more,” she replies quietly.

Kyle shakes his head a few times before gathering Sawyer and leaving the room. All I can do is continue to stare at the hallway where he disappeared. I can’t hear the conversations stirring around me or the movements. I don’t know how to move forward.

“Max …” I feel my jaw clench as Abby’s voice breaks my slumber of blankness. She’s been the most persistent about seeing me. While I was at my mom’s for the summer, she came over nearly every week, though generally my foul mood didn’t have her ever staying long. Jesse accompanied her occasionally, but he was doing summer classes, as well as a new job because he refused to take any money from Abby’s family.

I know what Abby sees this morning; last night I’d been working to drown my memories with gin—a liquor I had chosen simply because I knew Ace hated it.

I’d begun throwing shit away, things that reminded me of her, which only led to an onslaught of memories that I’d worked ferociously to tame by drinking directly from the bottle.

My eyes feel inoperable, as do the rest of my muscles, as I slowly look around. I don’t bother moving, she’s seen me worse, and I wouldn’t give a shit regardless.

“Let’s go get some breakfast,” she offers, taking a couple of steps closer to me. My eyes close in response. It’s too hard to keep them open right now, and we both know I have no desire to go to breakfast.

“You can’t do this, Max. You can’t just give up on everything. She wouldn’t want you to be acting like this.”

My mind churns for a retaliation because she’s thrown
her
in my face, but my head feels like it’s about to explode. I don’t have the energy to fight her this morning. She realizes this and continues. “You guys love each other. I know things are a mess right now—”

“Shut up, Abby,” I growl, reaching my limits.

“I know how you feel, Max. Ace was born my best friend. Prior to all of this, I’ve never gone more than a day without talking to her. I know how your heart physically hurts with her absence and you feel a sense of loneliness, regardless of how many people are around. She’s the best kind of person there is.” Kendall’s familiar voice fills the room at one of the softest volumes I’ve ever heard, which must be why I’m not screaming at her to shut up, because I don’t need to be reminded of what her loss is doing to me; it’s evident to everyone that looks at me.

“Ace didn’t make you a better person though, Max. You’re still the same person.”

I thought she understood. This solidifies that she doesn’t have a fucking clue.

As the comforter falls to the bottom of the stairs in a heap, Landon growls a quiet curse at me before I start throwing more things over the banister. I want to get rid of it all. Some are things Ace had given me, like the watch she gave me for my birthday or the Easter basket she and Lilly made for me that she had always kept stocked and would rummage through after we slept together, claiming that chocolate was her version of a cigarette.

Other items are my own possessions that just remind me too much of her, like my gray Angels T-shirt; she’d slept in nothing but that shirt countless times. I throw out my pillows and blankets because they all smell of her. I throw out clothes I can recall her commenting on and a book that my mom had given me years ago because I know she read it once. We’d never discussed it, but it was stained. Everything is stained by her.

I have a ton of pictures of her and the two of us together. Jenny, being a photographer, had made us her focal point on numerous occasions. I try to avoid looking at the prints as I take the frames off the surfaces they cover, and down from the walls, leaving random nails sticking out along the now bare space. I open the bottom drawer of my nightstand then begin peeling the frames open and dropping the pictures in the drawer and the frames in the trash can, watching with satisfaction as they shatter against one another.

I drop a final lingering photo in the drawer and notice a ticket stub that’s stuck to the side of the drawer. This drawer was hers. She’d filled it with pamphlets and ticket stubs from everywhere we’d gone. It also contains every note she ever left me. I used to love waking up and finding them beside me. Sometimes she would just cover the sheet in x’s and o’s, other times she’d leave me something more suggestive, like: You. Me. Shower. 4:30. Don’t be late! Once in a while she’d leave a message that I was sure she knew drove me wild like: Last night was amazing! You are my sex God! Your tongue is ridiculously talented! Tonight it’s your turn :) She always signed them the same: Love, your Ace. How had I ever believed her? Had she ever really been
mine
?

I grab the letter I’d received from David after the will had been read. I’ve read it so many times I don’t need to look at it to know what it says. It didn’t make sense to me then, and it sure as hell doesn’t make any sense to me now. My eyes fall to the image below the letter, and I see a picture of Ace in a maroon dress from Billy and Molly’s wedding last November. Slamming the drawer shut, I go back in search of more gin.

Y
ou would have thought I was telling my mom I had been elected president with her reaction to learning that I’d asked you to Billy’s wedding. She tried to hide her excitement initially by trying to act surprised, but I swear it didn’t last more than a minute. Then she was hugging me and clapping—a similar reaction to the one that I’d received after she’d casually confronted me about you earlier that summer. I could tell from her leading questions that she already knew but wanted to see if I’d confirm that I liked you as much as I did. When I did, she simply gave me a knowing look and then threw her arms around me in a tight hug.

Later, after the shock had worn off, she approached me again. I could have sworn I was talking to Kyle rather than my mom—the one that was supposed to be telling me I’d do great with this whole commitment gig that I’d never really attempted, that I wouldn’t screw things up, because my drive for achieving things and seeing them through will outweigh all of my flaws. Maybe she knew then that I’d fuck things up, because she warned me to take my time and reminded me that you needed support as well as fun.

Remember the girl that was already seated in our aisle when we boarded? She couldn’t have been much older than twelve, she was tiny. I was so grateful you offered to take the middle seat because even though the flight to Phoenix was pretty quick, she was continuously alternating between flipping through a book on her lap and shuffling through the bag at her feet. Her nerves had me on edge before we even took off.

I always knew you were smart, but I’ll never forget when you pointed at the shark book the girl had closed for the hundredth time and asked her if she liked sharks. God, there’s something about you, Ace, because that girl looked at you and I could sense her relief. I couldn’t see you, you were turned to face her still, but I’m sure you were smiling because she was smiling a grin that only you can evoke from people. She told us she was a self-proclaimed Shark Week addict.

“A lot of people are really afraid of sharks. I’m sure you know this, but the chances of getting killed by a shark are really rare. One in 3.7 million or something crazy. That’s more than three times the population of the entire state of Montana.” The girl giggled, but my eyebrows were in my hairline. I had no idea how you knew the statistic on shark attacks, let alone the population of Montana. The girl joined in, talking about how ridiculous it was for people to fear sharks while I still tried to wrap my head around facts you were sharing with her.

“That’s good. If you like your chances with sharks, you’ll feel really good to know that your chances of dying in a plane crash are one in 11 million.” You knew about regulations and statistics that I doubt the flight attendants would have known. I don’t know who was more impressed, the twelve-year-old that stared at you like you were Wonder Woman, or me.

We’d been dating for four months at that point and it still would take me by surprise to learn how much I still didn’t know. What shocked me more was how much I wanted to know it all. I found myself always wanting to be around you. Sometimes I tried to distract myself and make plans with friends. I didn’t want to come off as controlling, or as obsessed as I was. It never worked out all that well, and the times I did follow through with plans, I always found myself texting you to see how you were doing and making plans to see you at the end of the night.

Phoenix was our first vacation together, if you can consider attending a family wedding a vacation, especially when it seemed destined to be dramatic based upon my mom’s reaction to the news. I hadn’t met my future sister-in-law, Molly. She and Billy had only been dating a month. My mom met her on her last trip out there and described her as “a phase.” I knew she wasn’t very excited about her, but she didn’t really seem opposed either. However, when Billy called to announce their engagement, she went a little bat-shit crazy.

You were calm the entire drive there, revealing to me how much you watched my brothers and me when we were younger, and the nicknames you’d given my two older brothers. Your recollections spurred me to telling you about what jack holes my brothers could be at times, and transgressed into stories about some of the cool things we’d done together, like when they taught me to drive at fourteen.

I parked our rental car in front of the restaurant and reluctantly pulled my key from the ignition. For the first time in my life, I felt afraid to do something: introduce you as my girlfriend to my entire family.

I think I felt a little more nervous at seeing how calm you were as you released your seatbelt and reached for the door, prompting me to place a hand on your knee. “Hang on. Let me get it.”

You looked reluctant, but complied.

“You look so beautiful.” The words fell from my mouth before I fully intended for them to. I was planning to say something slightly more original, but my head was in so many places it was difficult for me to focus.

You smiled and ran a hand across your midsection as if to press out an invisible crease, revealing your own nerves. “Thanks, it’s sort of a Jackie. Proper and feminine with a bit of flair.”

“Jackie?”

“Kennedy.”

I laughed and placed a hand to the small of your back as we traveled across the parking lot. “Is flair a synonym for sexy?” I was rewarded with a smile that was as genuine as your lack of knowing how incredibly beautiful you are.