Authors: Fiona Knightingale
But the past was truly behind her. Those bears, those wonderful angelic creatures had reached out to her again. This night was also a peaceful one, conspicuously silent even with all the commotion of a werebear on the prowl. With nothing left to fear, and with the disappointments of regular civilization firmly in mind, The Wild was the only adventure Abigail craved.
THE END
I think it would be stupid of me to pretend like I can explain that grief to you. That raw, painful feeling of losing the person you’ve been in love with for years.
I spent months after Jake’s death waiting for the memories off him to drift out of my life, even as I tried to hold on to them. The lingering scent of his skin on his clothes, which I held to my nose and inhaled until they were all but gone. Notes he’d made that had ended up lost down the back of desks and drawers, drifting out months and months later. The way I would wake up in bed, expecting him there, only to find him gone. You can imagine it, sure, but it’s hard to actually understand how grief of that level feels, unless you’ve been through it.
And I suppose the worst part was that I should have been somewhat prepared for it. It wasn’t like Jake worked in an office building or a bank- he was stationed in the Middle East with his regiment. With the Navy SEALs, no less. He was a Special Forces soldier, an elite member of an elite squad who usually seemed invincible to me. His job went hand-in-hand with danger, and I had always known, somewhere, at the back of my head, that he could be dead at that very moment and I wouldn’t know anything about it. But those were the kind of thoughts I pushed to the back of my head, because they were far too painful and tiresome to expend all my energy on. I would just happily count down the days till he came home on the calendar, and then we’d be together again and I wouldn’t have to think about worrying any more.
We’d met eight years previously, when we were both fresh out of high school, a couple of fresh-faced teenagers heading to the big city at the same time. We ended up in Chicago- me for a degree in journalism, him for basic training, and met at a bar before our respective commitments began. While everyone else around us had these amazing flings and romantic adventures, we were too busy being wrapped up in our love for each other to notice. We moved in, and got engaged just before he was deployed for the first time. For the rebellious teenager I was, I’d delighted my traditional mother by choosing to marry a nice, mid-Western soldier. We bought a small home just outside the city, and I spent the time that he was away turning the place into a perfect love-nest for the two of us. As I pursued my career at local art zines, we would Skype and send letters to each other all the time. It just made my heart grow needier for him, and when he arrived back and promised to marry me before he left again, I couldn’t have been happier. There was something so instantly comforting about his warm presence, something that made me feel safe and warm. He introduced me to a couple of his Navy buddies, both of whom served in the SEALs too- Frank, a guy who’d grown up only a few miles from Jake, and Tate, a tall African-American guy who stayed in the area when he was on leave. I grew close with them, and they both served as best men for our wedding, when we picked up a wedding license and tied the knot at a local court two days before he flew back out.
And so that’s how we stayed- married, happy, in love, even if we were the whole world apart. I felt envious of my friends, and the fact that they got to hang out with their hippy-dippy stoner boyfriends whenever they wanted, but I knew that Jake was worth waiting for. Even so, I felt the nagging sensation that I would have to put my life on hold for him, and wait till he’d finished with his career abroad before I could start mine back here. But I was resigned to waiting, and knew it would be worth it when I got to come home to my husband at the end of every long day spent wrangling interviews and pitching article ideas to every magazine in the city.
So when the news came, my entire world shifting under me, throwing me to the ground and leaving me off-balance. It was Tate who delivered the news, freshly back from deployment himself. Just seeing him at the door in front of me, his face tense with fear and grief, I knew what had happened. I collapsed into his arms, and he tried to comfort me as best I could as I tried to get the logistics of Jake’s death in order.
The funeral was organised for me, by the military, and I allowed the grief to numb me throughout the entire process. It wasn’t just the raw, real fact that I’d lost my husband, it was the knowledge that everyone was watching me, keen to see how I would react, if I was perceived to be grieving in the “right” way. Despite their kind words, most of Jake’s family eventually peeled away from my social circle, and I felt more disconnected from him than ever. In fact, a lot of my own friends found the stress of dealing with my vulnerable self too difficult, so I found myself getting invited out less and less as they tried to avoid me.
So I threw myself into work, focusing on pitching edgy, raw articles about military families and their place in society. I got picked up by a couple of local, weekly magazines, and ended up getting some quotes featured in a thinkpiece about the subject that came out in the Chicago Daily Tribune a couple of months later. I slowly built up another group of friends- less artsy, more focused, like me- and found myself looking out over my twenty-seventh year- my second without him- with more optimism than I’d had for a long time. My love life was beginning to take some wobbly steps towards well,
something
, recently, and I’d managed to rid myself of almost all the trappings of my old life with Jake. I got a new apartment in the centre of the city, I adopted a gorgeous kitten, Scoop, and I felt like I had been lucky-lucky enough that I could start over. I still missed him and thought about him every day, but he wouldn’t have wanted me to sit at home grieving for him for the rest of my life. These were topics we’d touched on during the longer, colder nights apart, and he’d made it clear that he wouldn’t want me losing the rest of my like to someone who couldn’t give anything back in return.
So, I started again. The only person left over from that part of my life, in fact, was Tate. Initially, it had been too tough to even think about spending time with him, considering his closeness and his ties with Jake. But we’d been sure to keep in touch- sharing the emotions we were going through as we grieved the loss of the same man. It sometimes helped just to talk to someone who understood my jokes about the tics in Jake’s speech, or the way his voice cracked when he got excited. He had been given an honourable discharge after what had happened to the rest of his regiment, and he’d found it difficult adjusting back to the city, too.
Tate was a reformed bad boy, or so I’d heard from Jake- he’d been caught up in a lot of trouble in high school, and his parents had all but strongarmed him into the Navy. He was resistant to it a first, but he starting bonding with his regiment, and they became like a family to him. By the time he came back from his first deployment, he still had all his swagger, but it was punctuated by moments of surprising vulnerability and maturity. He’d worked a bunch of low-paid jobs since he’d come back from the Middle East, but he’d quit to focus on doing something good for the veteran community. He’d revealed more and more of himself to me every time we met, till I felt like I understood him from the ground up. He was precociously smart, had a quick but rare temper, and wanted more than anything to try and get his life going. At the time we came together, we were at the same place in our lives, and I think that’s what really bonded us to each other at first.
He hadn’t really dated much before he’d gone in to the Navy, and he would occasionally text me looking for frantic “women advice”, as he titled it. He didn’t know many women in the city, and we’d been able to talk pretty openly before, so I was happy to lend him an ear when he needed it. Honestly, I was surprised at his apparent ineptitude with women-despite his imposing six-foot frame, he was actually a very sweet guy with a warm, fuzzy sense of humour that caught you off-guard. I guessed it was just because he was uncomfortable around them, too uncomfortable to show his real self off, but I did sometimes wonder what it would be like out on a date with Tate. Would he be sweet? Shy? Charming? Sleazy? I had no idea. I had only ever seen him as a friend.
This particular night, Tate and me were spending a couple of hours together over a bottle of wine for a catch-up. I was looking forward to it; deadlines had been shifted around for my freelancing work, and Tate had just started training as a counsellor to help other veterans. We both had a lot to talk about, but never enough time to say it in. I heard a knock on my door, and sprang to my feet- there he was!
Throwing open the latch, I opened the door and welcomed him with a big smile. “Tate! I can’t believe it’s been so long.”
“Me neither, Erica. What, has it been a month, a month and a half?”
“Something like that, “ I pulled a face. “Anyway, come in, we have wine, and lots of stuff to catch up on.
“We do!” He beamed, pulling out a bottle of cheap red from his bag. “Shall I get the glasses?”
I nodded, gesturing to the kitchen. “Help yourself. I have the bottle opener through here, though.”
“Always have it close to hand, eh?”
“Precisely.”
He walked back into the room, brandishing a couple of wine glasses. Reaching for the bottle opener, he plonked himself down on the seat next to me and uncorked the wine, pouring two full-to-brimming glasses. He held his up to mine.
“Cheers?”
“Cheers,” I replied, clinking my bottle against his. “So, tell me, how’s the training for the counselling going?”
He took a look sip of his wine, and then replied. “Well. Tougher than I thought, but I think it’s going to be worth it, and it’ll help me work through some of my own issues. You know me-if I’m not actively helping someone else I feel like I’m doing nothing at all.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of
course
I know that. Do you remember when I moved in here, and you carried boxes from the street to my flat all day because you were worried my arms might crumple under, I don’t know, a box of cardigans?”
“Hey, I still have my own questions about that. Namely, how does someone like you own enough cardigans to fill a box?” He pointed out.
“Someone like
me?
What on earth do you mean by that?” I realized that I had tilted my body to face his, so that our knees were nearly brushing against each other. I re-adjusted my position immediately. Huh. That felt…weird.
“You know. Just one of those fast-living women who doesn’t see the need to own lots of cardigans, because she’s either going full trenchcoat in summer or tiny t-shirts in winter.” He shrugged.
“Come on, you know I had to do those pictures for a fashion journalism thing. You know, for that blog I worked for last year?” I exclaimed.
“I remember, but it doesn’t make it any less weird. Who’s going to be shopping for big jackets in the summer?”
I sighed, resigned. “I’m not going to debate fashion with you,
again.
Not when you have so little of it yourself.”
He laughed, a strong, deep sound that filled me with instant joy. “I’m not going to argue with you on that one, okay? Speaking of your writing, what have you been doing recently? Any interesting stories I should know about?”
“I’m following up at a couple of sites to do that 30-day beauty challenge thing, but I don’t think they’re interested. I’ll probably need to borrow your photography skills for that one if I do get it, though.” Tate had photographed my articles for the last six months or so, ever since he revealed some of his old photography from high school- he got a handful of cash from the magazine I was publishing in, and we got to hang out and mess around while I messed with my hair and wore silly outfits. It also meant that Tate was the first person to know about whatever my new work was, which made him feel as much as a colleague as he was a friend. It was a good mix. I probably couldn’t invite many of my other colleagues over to drink wine and talk smack on a Friday night.
So the night wore on, and we put away all of his wine plus a bottle I’d had kicking around the back of my cupboards for a suspiciously long time. I was beginning to allow that warm, fuzzy feeling of tipsiness pass over me, letting it sink down into my bones and relax my spine. I leant into the couch, my hand locked in an iron grip around my glass, turning to face him again. I consciously pulled my legs up to my chest, making sure that we weren’t touching. It wasn’t that the thought repulsed me-in fact, it was quite the opposite. The thought made my brain do strange and serious things, and I didn’t want to focus on those feelings right now.
Okay, full disclosure: I hadn’t had sex with anyone since Jake at that point. I’d been on a few dates, shared a few kisses, but nothing had ever really felt…right the way it did with him. I wondered if it would ever feel right again, but I mostly tried to distract myself from those thoughts by promising myself that when the right guy came along, my body would let me know it. Sure, I’d been missing feeling that closeness with someone, but the wounds that Jake left had always felt a little two raw and dangerous. I didn’t want to open myself up to the guilt I would feel, no matter how much I knew no-one- least of all Jake- would have begrudged me for the effort. But sitting here, on this couch, only a few inches away from Tate, I had started to feel something that was unlike anything I’d had with the men I’d dated over the last few months.