Chapter Text
Anxiety crackles like lightning through every limb in my body. It trails down my fingers and rests behind my eyes as I look at the screen in front of me. His body was never found . The anxiety settles in my chest, coating every other emotion like a layer of dust. But beneath that, deep in the cob webbed corners of my heart, a glimmer of hope shines.
For the first time since Filippa told me he was gone, the world begins to feel solid beneath my feet, and that scares me. Hope is dangerous. James might not be gone and, again, I’m sure of nothing.
The logical part of my brain fights this. Of course he’s gone. The police investigated and came to a conclusion. The case is closed. (But that hope is still there).
When Meredith gets home she notices a change in me right away.
“You seem different,” she says to me. It’s not a question, so I don’t answer.
We look at each other for a few moments, and for the first time, I see the ways she’s aged. She’s beautiful, of course, that will never change. There are creases in the corners of her eyes and lips, and she seems tired. For a moment, I feel an overwhelming sadness for her, but it fades. She’s made the best of her life, and she deserves every ounce of success she’s gotten.
“I have to go.” The words slip out before my mind can catch up with them.
Her brow creases. “You have to go?”
“I…” what do I say? How do I explain this? I haven’t even grappled with my own feelings, how am I supposed to tell her what I feel?
“I have to go,” I start. “To where he died.”
The look on her face turns from confusion to suspicion to what I think is disappointment. It’s a look I’ve seen before. She made that face any time she questioned my relationship with James, and the same feelings come rushing back. My instinct is to deny any accusation, but it’s pointless. She knows the truth now. I loved him. I love him.
“Meredith…”
“I’ll never be enough, will I?” her eyes look misty and I want to comfort her, but I fear she’ll push me away.
“You’ve always been enough,” I breathe out. “Always.”
“I can’t compete with a dead man, Oliver.”
She goes into her bathroom and closes the door. As I pack my bag, I get the sense that if I choose to leave this apartment today, I won’t be welcomed back in. It’s almost a surprise that I’m more afraid of not leaving than I am of leaving. Almost, but not quite. Somehow this feels like the easiest decision I’ve ever made.
If he’s still out there, I’ll find him. That burning ache, the cathartic nostalgia that bleeds into my soul whenever I think of his beautiful face and smile and perfect hands and lips… it hits me like a ton of bricks, and I feel like the young twenty-something at Dellecher again. The one who felt lucky to simply be in his presence.
I get the first train ticket I can. I had considered leaving a note for Meredith, but what would I say? I had already disappointed her enough. I call Filippa an hour into my train ride. I need to hear a familiar voice; I need someone to tell me I’m not crazy.
“They never found his body, Pip.”
“Oliver.” There’s a muffled voice in the background and I wonder if it’s Camilo. Have I interrupted them? “I don’t want you to get hurt even more. Grief is… grief is strange.”
“If I don’t find out for sure, I don’t know what I’ll do,” I tell her, the note of desperation in my voice frustrating me. I feel like I need her approval. Filippa was there for me. Every two weeks for ten years she was there.
“Then go,” she says softly. “Get the answers you need.”
She hangs up without saying anything else, but that’s okay. Even if I’m setting myself up for disappointment, at least I’ll know for sure.
I sleep through the rest of the train ride, waking only to snack on a bag of chips and sip some water. Being in Berkeley is unfamiliar, and I’m overwhelmed. Where do I begin? What have I gotten myself into? I turn to the only comfort I’ve known the last ten years.
I pull a photo out of my wallet. It’s from our first year at Dellecher. James has his arm around my shoulder, and he’s looking at something above the camera, a wide, careless smile on his face. I’m leaning against him, my hand on the front of his green sweater, and I’m looking up at him with so much love in my eyes I wonder how I ever could have denied it for a second. It calms me and tells me I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Filippa had given me the details to the small apartment he’d lived in, and that’s the first place I go.
It’s in a series of old, tall buildings, and it seems as if most of the tenants are elderly. There’s a smaller building off to the side, and I go there first. Inside, there’s a fan blowing and a middle aged woman sitting at the front desk eating pork rinds. A radio is playing what I recognize to be a Beatles song. The woman doesn’t look at me when I walk up to the desk. She’s busy typing away on a computer.
“Excuse me,” I say.
“Hm?” she glances at me but goes back to her typing.
“I have some questions about an apartment.”
Without looking, she slides a pamphlet toward me. Sunny Dreams Apartments .
“There’s a waiting list right now, but I can take your information,” she explains.
I shake my head. “No, I don’t want to live here.”
She finally stops and turns toward me, looking at me with confusion in her eyes. I can see that she’s wearing a name tag that says Lucy .
“My friend used to live here a while ago,” I tell her. “I was wondering if I could see his old apartment.”
“We have a pretty fast turnover rate,” she says. “But I’ve worked here for a long time, honey. If your friend lived here, there’s a chance I probably knew him.”
I reach for the picture in my wallet and slide it across the counter toward her. “James Farrow.”
“ Ah !” she snatches the picture up and holds it inches from her face. “You knew James?”
“ You knew James?” I gape at her. In all of the dreams and memories of him, I had never considered the fact that he would meet other people outside of our group at Dellecher. I’d never imagined him with other friends or in relationships with other people. I never knew a life after Dellecher, but that didn’t mean that James was the same. In this moment, I feel naive.
“Oh…” Lucy sets the picture down and wipes at her eyes. “He was a good kid. Sad as all hell, but such a good kid. He used to help me put out the Christmas decorations, and he loved my sugar cookies. I always made an extra batch just for him.”
“We, uh, we went to college together,” I tell her. It feels stupidly simple, but how to I explain the depth of our relationship? How do I explain that I would have died for him had he asked me to?
“When I heard what he’d done,” she says, getting up from the desk. “I was sad but not surprised. That kid had a weight on him. Follow me; I have something for you.”
She leads me down a dusty hallway and I get the sense that not many people come back here. She grabs a keyring from her pocket and opens what appears to be a supply closet. Brooms, mops, and buckets are strewn haphazardly around inside. She pushes aside a box of old rags and picks up a shoebox labeled JF.
“His family didn’t want it,” she says. “And it didn’t feel right to throw it away. It’s all that was left after the cops got in there.”
I thank her profusely before I leave. I’m afraid to open the box in public, so I wait until I can get into a small motel room. I don’t have a lot of money, but I have enough to keep me here for a few days. Hopefully that’s all I’ll need, regardless of the answers I get.
I sit on the bed with the box in my hands and just stare at it. There was so much to James that can hardly be put into words, how could everything that he is be reduced to this box? It seems disrespectful in a way, and before I realize it, tears are streaming down my cheeks. He deserves more and better than this. Despite the ugly things he’s done, he did them because he loved too fully. When I think of Richard (my brain stutters on his name), I think of someone who wouldn’t have stopped until he snuffed all of us out like cigarettes. James is the flint that kept us all lit, and he doesn’t deserve to be forgotten.
I can’t stall anymore, so I open the box. On top is a pair of leather gloves he used to wear in the winter. They perfectly hugged his slender hands. I run my fingers over them before setting them aside.
There are a few odds and ends: expired debit cards, an old wallet, some change, but underneath it all is a picture and a folded piece of paper.
The picture is of me, and when I realize that I almost drop it. I’m lying on my bed in the castle at Dellecher. James must be standing over me to take the picture, and I’m looking at him with an expression I can only describe as lustful. My cheeks burn in embarrassment. How could I ever have thought he was only a friend to me. On the back of the picture, it reads “ The course of true love never did run smooth ,” from A Midsummer’s Night Dream. And, again, my cheeks burn.
I unfold the piece of paper.
Dear Oliver,
If I ever have the pleasure of seeing you again, I will hold you like glass. I often dream of the days where I’d wake in the night and see you a few feet away. My guilt haunts me like a specter for the years that have been stolen from you because of me. My Oliver, when I see you again, I will not let you go. You only need come find me.
Love, James
By the end of it, I’m crying again. My chest burns with the pain of not having him, and I’m experiencing that grief over again like it was just told to me. I almost don’t notice the date written in the corner. It stops my crying in its tracks, and my blood runs cold. It’s dated three days after his supposed suicide.