HE SHOWED ME THE SCARS that remained from the cutting.
The one year Klarise and I had spent in Molokai, I left Mason alone. I could see my selfishness then as my fingers ran along the rough marks on the pale and soft skin of his arms. He desperately needed me after Cameron's death, yet I wasn't there. I hated him for leaving us for so many years without leaving any trace of contact or opportunity to reach him. But leaving him alone and telling him that it was all his fault; I was worse. His scars reflected my crime.
I looked up to meet his eyes, which was a shallow brown of sorrow.
"Promise me something?" I asked, brushing his sleeves back down and pulling him closer to me on the couch.
He nodded, settling into my embrace. Inhaling his laundry smell after Sarah gave him a fresh pair of clothes that were Jackson's, I rub his back the way Klarise once had for me.
"Don't hurt yourself again."
The whimpers then came, and I could feel him nodding again and again. I exhaled, holding him tightly while I thought about my own promise with Klarise.
"I miss him so much, everyday."
"Me too, Mason. Me too."
—————
Time moves, not caring whether or not you're ready for it. It never cared, because that's all time knows how to do and be. Move on, small seconds that breaths are taken into days and months where lives are lived.
It was obvious that Mason and I may never exactly recover from our lovers' deaths. But our existence for each other made us promise them and ourselves however secretly to get our lives together again.
We spent the first month with Jackson and Sarah, but after that, Mason proposed the idea of getting a place in LA and leaving New York. Jackson was reluctant to let his father figure go, and more or so unable to keep a watchful eye over me everyday. But after persuasion from Sarah, he had no choice but to let us. Therefore—a good thing we were finally off his back—he can now work on the company he has been wanting to build which he'll name Kong Industry for his sister and the company his parents once had but in his words: "I'll do it the right way". All of Klarise's assets and money was left to Jackson, and he'll now use it to build this company and also a charity for cancer under the name of his sister.
Things were turning toward the brighter side, and it was time for Mason and I to be better too.
Leaving New York and Manhattan was the better for Mason—maybe for me too. The haunting memories of our apartment and houses there left us always thinking of the past. Going back to LA—though we've once lived there together long ago—it was a breath of nice air; relieving us from the city of the car accident.
Orange County was now merged into Los Angeles supposedly, no longer being a city or county in itself. The views were good enough there and the houses felt more homey. Mason and I decided to buy a place there after selling our places in Manhattan.
After attending Juno's wedding, Mason left most of the in-charge things to Juno. After those arrangements, I never saw Juno Gallapher again other than hearing about him from Mason. I suppose change also came with saying goodbye to old faces in our lives. New life, new people. Juno continued to do well with his life, perhaps the only one out of us who came alive again.
Both Mason and I lessened our workload to spend more time with each other. We didn't go out too much; since the cameras and people confronting us about whether we were dating gave Mason a headache and he lost his temper easily to outsiders recently when mentioned about Cameron-related things. I understood him and I didn't blame, the knowledge that these people held so little about and then to make big claims and falseness wasn't fair. But I was famous for way longer than Mason was, and so I had been used to it all. Mason? He'll never be used to it.
So we stayed mostly in our home. Played cards, drank martinis in our pool with sunglasses on our faces, binge watched shows and movies, talked about funny memories and walked on eggshells about those that pained us.
I took on some films during that time and he worked from home and had his calls. Although things were better, there were still a few other things we avoided and didn't mention; pretending it didn't exist. I don't talk about how he got up every night to drink until daylight where I'd find him completely hung over in the morning. And in return, he doesn't talk about how I played Klarise's voice and music—anything I could find of her—and how I looked longingly at her pictures and cried before going to sleep. We both didn't talk about these things, and somehow we thought that that was okay. Maybe if it isn't mentioned, we thought, we can pretend that we're happy and normal.
Two years after Klarise's death passed like this. It's a routine we both adored and hated, not knowing how to get out of it but also not wanting to leave. Even when Jackson and Sarah got married, we attended in each other's arms as if we had all healed. We went to a few parties here and there to show our faces to the world that we still existed. But behind all that, we were trapped in a made-up paradise.
That all sort of changed and twisted on a late night of December, 2051.
I remember Mason and I had come back from a special event and he was completely drunk; just thrown over.
"You drank way too much." I said while getting him in his bed and putting a bucket next to the side.
These days, he drank like an alcoholic. I looked over that, thinking he was just sad and needed the brewing thing to make him forget.
Laughing, he slumped his arms across the white sheets. "You worry so much. C'mon, it was just a party. You're supposed to drink at parties!"
I shook my head, tired and a headache was burning my brain like it was being grilled on a pan. "Just barf out whatever in the bucket and not the bed, or else I'll have to call the cleaner tomorrow and you hate having strangers come to our house. Your own consequences if you do that." I pinched the bridge of my nose to see him giggling without a sense left in him. Sighing, I help him take off his tie and loosen the buttons on his shirt at the very least, too lazy to shower him this time. "I'm gonna go to sleep now. You better not ruin the sheets." I warned before closing him in his room.
I took a hot shower, cleaning myself up and hoping for the refreshed mind that would come with a shower. Sadly, my headache still stayed. I checked the clock while drying my hair: it was somehow two in the morning already. I didn't drink as much as Mason had, but I knew I would feel sick tomorrow either way. Socializing these days brought on headaches.
Instead of going to bed like I had planned, I went downstairs in the wine cabinets and got out a bottle. It was bad, but I felt desperately in need of it. I was feeling shitty already, so it didn't really matter if I felt a little shittier tomorrow.
I found one of my pictures of Klarise somewhere around the house, the picture frame already almost worn from my often touching it. Klarise in this one has a cardigan wrapped around her slim body, sitting in her wheelchair while letting a child from Molokai put a flower-braided crown on the top of her head. She's smiling and looking at the kid with a tenderness that broke my heart.
I gulped ferociously on the wine. I quickly pour another glass after, clinking it to Klarise's glass frame picture.
"Cheers," I chunked down the strong taste of the alcohol. Forty something years ago, kid me would have thought drinking red wine in a large house was a fancy luxury. But I didn't feel fancy at all. Just sad and pathetic.
Thinking about how younger me had craved for this life, I started to sob quietly. The echoes of my whimpers and sniffs bounced around the big house; hollow, like me. The liquid burning down my throat, I cried with the companion of my lovers' photo.
I reached forward and grabbed for the picture, hugging it against my chest and squeezing my eyes tightly together as if that could make everything better. Right around the moment I did that, the doorbell rang.
I sniffed, quieting myself. Following my sudden silence, the ringing came three more times. By the tone of it and the rhythm of how it was rung, I sensed an impatience.
I set Klarise's picture down with my wine glass. I was wearing a rose colored robe and nothing else. The December weather in LA wasn't as cold as in New York or Beijing, but the breeze at night was still something. And plus, I remembered it being especially windy that day and the weather forecast had promised a storm. The house's sound proof was so good I hadn't noticed, but looking out the window that faced the garden, I saw the water and rain splashing violently against the glass and the tree branches that brewed. Even if there were paparazzis nosy enough to bug us tonight, the combination of this weather and the time it was, all conclusions pulled into the result of unlikeliness. So who was it?
I was half drunk, mind slurred but also sharp. I pulled my robe tighter around me and walked for the door.
The bell rang insanely again.
I took up pace in my steps, wondering if I should get a bat or something for protection in case if it was some creep or burglar. But didn't burglars break into houses instead of ringing doorbells? I thought as I approached the door without very good caution.
"Who is it?" I called, hesitant.
The response I got was—suddenly—a series of hard knocking on wood instead of using the bell. Whoever this was, they were in a hurry and probably not in a good mood. The way this was playing out started to concern me a little, my best instincts would have told me to leave and wake up Mason. I didn't do that.
Inhaling, my hands shaking a little from the wine or maybe fear, I turned the doorknob.
My mind played out scenarios of being stabbed to death, like I've seen in the news before of instances like these. You don't open doors to strangers at two a.m. unless you plan on dying. Almost, maybe millimeter of a second, I had hoped selfishly for the death to relieve me from my life.
But I was not greeted with a knife being stabbed into me a dozen times.
The door slammed open behind me before I could get a good hold of it. The wind blew and pushed, my hair flying all over my face. The shards of little dust from outside flew in, stinging my face along with the force of wind and rain.
"P-Please, you've got to help me," said the figure who I couldn't yet see.
With a lot of effort, I pushed my hair out of my way and got a good look of who was in front of me and knocking on my door at this hour.
A woman with a black head scarf covered almost her whole head, not leaving a trace of hair. She looked around my age but her wrinkles have settled in early, making her more mature. But her eyes were a hazy dark blue—or was it brown?—that at the same time made her look delicate and young.
I have half a hand up, trying to block the wind from my face. "Ma'am, do you need something?" I shouted over the roaring of the storm.
I noticed then in her hands was a bundle of blankets.
"Maeve Sun Lively, correct? You are her, right?" Her sharply cut voice brought my eyes to her face again. She was a beautiful woman, I could suddenly see with a second look. But it was worn away by stress that maybe it would take more than second looks to notice. Something about that information made me see her as me for just a moment.
I swallowed. "Yes, I am her." It wasn't surprising she found my address, I noted in my mind to tell Mason about securing our location better from the stalkers and paparazzis.
As I mentally made that note, I was suddenly pushed with the bundle of blankets in her hands.
No...this blanket wasn't just blankets. It was heavy.
"W-What—"
"You have money, food, a big fancy house. Everything. Please help me take good care of her." The woman's grasp on my wrist was so tight I gasped; shocked and not prepared. And in that instance, she took the chance to grope my arms around the heavy blankets. Her hand is on top of my fingers, making them wrap and secure hold of the object.
I felt half-attacked, almost dropping the thing she had put in my arms as I looked up to see her ghostly eyes laid upon the blankets just in time.
Maybe it was my alcohol's doing from being unable to utter a word as the woman came gently close to me—time slowing down, my heart (or was it hers?) beating loudly for all to hear—leaked the opening of the blankets a little more. She leaned down and kissed what was inside. Her tears dropped on it.
The cries then came.
A long, loud, wail.
"Take care of my baby girl."
A rush of wind blinded me and pushed me back then. The door behind me banged against the wall, the scream of the weather; chaos of noises everywhere made my mind spin. When I recovered from all these factors, brushing away the hair and water on my face; the woman was gone.
"What in the world..." My headache ran long, and as I finally got a good look down at the heavy blankets in my arms, a pair of capturing hazel eyes gazed back at me.
The blanket had fallen out of place and is disheveled a little, revealing her soft head of red hair. She cried out loudly into the storming night.
Perhaps she was crying for her mother, asking her to come back and take her fate out of my arms.