“I’m sorry, I didn’t want that… I didn’t know where you were. I tried to find you, but I couldn’t. You vanished. You disappeared. It left me in a real mess. I didn’t know what to do.” I feel panicked as I say this, I really need her to understand what I mean. “If Luci hadn’t told me to leave you alone, I don’t think I ever would have stopped trying to find you. But she told me that I was hurting you and that I needed to let you go.”
I can’t help but wonder if Luci really does like me after all, maybe she always wanted us apart and that’s why she lied. Or perhaps I’m just spiraling now, trying to find holes in everything to make it not my fault. It is my fault in a way, I can’t really deny that, but I didn’t do what she thought.
I shoot myself back into that time period, when I lost her, to really recall the depths of how lost I felt. I’d tried my hardest to just blow passed it, to move on with my life, but now I really needed to get back there to really feel it all so that Addie could see it. I needed her to fully understand…
“Why isn’t she picking up the phone?” I complained to Jed. “I’ve been trying to call her for ages.”
“Dunno, dude,” he replied, clearly not caring. “Busy, probably. Like us.”
I knew that Addie took her work far more seriously than the rest of us, but she hadn’t ever ignored me like this before. It had been ages, almost a week, and I was about to lose my mind.
“I think I’m going to go, Jed. See if she’s in her room.”
“You can’t. Emma is meeting us here in a minute.”
I checked my watch. “She’s late already. I won’t be long;
I just need some time. Andrew and Gary will be here soon anyway so she won’t miss me if I’m a tiny bit late.”
Jed sighed and shook his head. “Okay, whatever. Just be quick. Okay? Don’t miss Emma.”
I raced off, putting the band behind me for just a minute to see what was going on with my relationship. I hadn’t done enough of that recently, which might have been what Addie was trying to teach me. If so then I would vow to be so much better in the future. I would somehow make it work.
But as I got to her room, it was empty. She wasn’t there either, and according to the girl who lived in the next room, Moira, I think her name was, she hadn’t been there for a while. Of course, that worried me, how could it not, but I tried to calm down. I gave myself a million reasons why it might have been the case, eventually settling on a family emergency that she just needed to get back for and she hadn’t had the chance to tell me yet.
But days continued to go passed and nothing changed. She wouldn’t answer my calls and she didn’t reappear. I grew increasingly worried by the minute, checking in with everyone I came across that I knew was in her life. But I didn’t get anything. Not until I finally ran in to Luci one day.
“She’s gone, Jace, okay?” she said wearily, her head shaking at me. “She’s left us all.”
“But… why?” Those words didn’t even make any sense.
She cocked an eyebrow at me, as if I should already know the answer to that. “For a fresh start.”
“But why didn’t she tell me?” My heart hurt. I clutched onto the pain in my chest, willing it to go away. It wasn’t helping me, it made my brain ache and right now I needed my thoughts clearer than ever.
“I don’t know.” Luci shrugged. “She didn’t tell anyone. One minute she was there, the next her side of the room was empty. She’s had a change of heart, clearly.”
“And you haven’t spoken to her since?” This was starting to get weird, like a missing person’s case. I was starting to think that I might need to contact the police.
“I’ve spoken to her, but she doesn’t want to be disturbed anymore. She just wants us all to let her move on.”
“Move on?” I didn’t know how to take those words. “Just forget about her?”
Luci patted me on the arm reassuringly, we were in this together. “Yep. All of us. Move on.”
“I don’t know how to move on,” I said to Luci. “I don’t know how to be without her.”
Her tone turned sharp then, I didn’t even realize it at the time. I was just too consumed by the sadness that was encasing me. “Well, we’re all just going to have to cope, aren’t we?”
“Is she ever going to come back?”
“I don’t know,” Luci replied morosely. “I don’t know what’s going to happen now. We just need to focus on getting through college with our heads above water. We can work something else out later.”
I wasn’t even sure what was going on the months that followed. I moved on autopilot, existing, doing merely what was expected of me. I just about managed to keep things going with the band which was something, it gave me a purpose when I had nothing, but I never recovered. Even as I came out of the fog of depression, I didn’t let go. I still hung onto the idea that she would eventually come back.
But then college ended, and real life began, and it was easier to throw myself into other women for the distraction. I don’t think I ever quite pulled out of the hole that she put me in…
Until now. Now that I’m here with her, I’m pulling out a little bit. I can see the light at the top of the hole, but I don’t know if she’s going to kick me back down and leave me there to rot.