Atlas
Errol stayed much longer than I expected. I couldn't really map how I felt about it honestly.
He still got on my nerves with some of the things he'd say, but then again, getting to speak about Lia made those memories feel more real again. More tangible. Like I could finally grasp a bit of my past.
I felt for Errol, even though I didn't really want to. My life was just so much easier a few days ago, before I knew what I know now about everything. The tight feeling in my chest was familiar and sickening all in one go... it was me starting to care again.
Not saying I didn't care about Lia's son and her accident, but the healthy distance I thought I had put between her life and my own, had been closed within seconds.
There was hesitation with every question Errol asked. He also took long pauses before asking another, as if at any moment I'd just change my mind about sharing memories.
I wish I understood more about his relationship with Lia, so I could really convince him that his mother loved him to bits. That she didn't have a bone in her body that could hold any resentment...
But as I thought about that, I thought about us. Mine and Lia's friendship.
The way I left things.
I could only hope that I had known that miraculous women as well as I thought, because I couldn't stomach the thought of her resenting me in her last moments.
It made me physically sick to my stomach.
"Can- Can I ask you a question?" Errol asked, causing my hands to slow their work a moment.
"Just ask the question," I sort of snapped, startling even myself at how short I'd been. The room grew incredibly quiet, in a way that amplified that uncomfortable silence a trillion fold. "I mean- you're talking to me like you're walking on eggshells. I've already taken on the commission and I plan on finishing it regardless, so don't think you'll say something that can change my mind so easily," I tried to explain.
This had to have been the first time I ever told someone to be a bit more "rude" to me. The person asking these questions was timid and uncertain, nothing like the arrogant bastard who first waltzed in here last week.
At first I thought I wanted the timidness, but after a while, I couldn't stand the tone in his voice. He was the one who lost a mother, and yet he was almost trying to... comfort me?
"However irritating you've been previously, at least you were being honest," I added, turning my head in the direction I could hear his voice from. He had taken the seat in front of me, but only slightly to my left.
The sound of his body shifting echoed through the quiet studio. That wooden chair he sat in was old, and released suspecting cracks as Errol shifted his weight around in it.
It was the chair Nyra usually sat in, and complained about. Sometimes she just wanted to watch me work, but I couldn't stand her sitting right besides me. Or rather, hovering right over me.
She had asked me one day why I hated it, and that was difficult to explain. I essentially said that her being too close can be a sensory overload for me.
While I tried to focus on the art in front of me and what my hands were doing, any sound Nyra would make, broke my concentration completely. Instead, I would start thinking about her change in perfume, or whether she was still itching at that heat rash she got in Santa Fe a few months ago.
Her foot would lightly tap the floor which made this distinct sound, and boom- now I was thinking about the sole of her favourite boots and how worn they must've been. That would lead into thinking of a potential Christmas gift for Nyra, and by the time focus went back to my art, I was stuck molding a fucked up bowl.
Errol shifted again, still quiet as he thought of his response to that. It took him another minute or so, but he finally spoke.
"Did you and my mother have some sort of a falling out?"
The words finally made it past his lips. I half expected him to ask this as one of his first questions, but at the start of this conversation, he genuinely wanted to hear about more of the good his mother did. Hell, I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel good for me to.
To remember Lia.
"That's none of y-" my reflexes took over, but I stopped myself from finishing that question. Not even second ago I had asked the man to be frank with me, then here I was ready to shut him down the moment he was.
This particular direction he was starting to steer the conversation in, startled me. It was a discussion I truly hadn't had with anyone before. Not Nyra, or even Atticus.
What happened all those years ago was something I did my best to forget whenever I could. Speaking about it made everything more real, and in return, broke me all over again.
But I thought about what I told Errol. That I would try my best to put together some of those missing pieces for him.
It made me question at what expense though.
"I mean- it... It was complicated," I started. Honestly, I felt like ending it there too. That would've been the best most concise explanation for what my last year with Lia looked like. "I was young," I admitted, thinking back to when I first got my diagnosis. It was a little after my twenty-first birthday. "And I was dealing with something I didn't know how to deal with. Emotions I had never mapped before."
I thought back to one of the first appointments Lia accompanied me on. It was the first of thousands, and with each appointment, that hopeful smile she had had started to slip.
"I was a shit person to be around," I continued. "And at the time, I told myself that was okay." A sigh slipped past my lips as my hands slowed to a stop. This conversation wasn't something I could multitask with. "Have you ever loved something so intensely. So passionately. So heavily, that that thing becomes you... and you, it?" I asked Errol, but I didn't look up in his direction again.
Instead my fingers gently traced the edges of the wet clay, while more memories flooded my mind.
Of all the colorful memories that were first to leave me when I lost my sight, the memories of my last year with Lia was engraved there like a home video. Something I could pop in and watch with vivid detail whenever I felt like feeling like shit.
I expected Errol to take his time with a response, but he didn't. Moments later, I heard him say an almost inaudible "Yes."
That made my lips unintentionally twitch up into a small smile. As soon as I felt what I was doing, I quickly masked the smile with a cough. There was another pause before I continued my question.
"Now have you-" I caught myself a moment, rephrasing what I was about to say. "Have you ever had something you've felt that passionately about, ripped from you within moments? Ever had such small decisions snowball so quickly into something unrecognizable, where the only person you can blame for your pain in that moment, is yourself?"
The pause after this question was astronomical. And for good reason too. Errol couldn't have expected my line of questioning to take such a turn, but I needed him to understand this before he understood the relationship I had with his mother.
There was another shift in that chair, one that made a sound I hadn't heard before. From how loud those creaks were overall, Errol must've been a larger dude.
"Uh-" he sort of started to say something, but nothing else came out.
I was about to rush out a quick never mind, and put this now even more uncomfortable conversation behind us, but Errol's voice finally cut through before mine could backtrack.
"Yes." He said again, and this time I couldn't pinpoint the emotion in that word. "I know a thing or two about that."
My body had felt some sort of rush at his answer. The way he said that last bit, was haunting. He was honest, and yet that honestly felt like it hadn't been spoken before.
That was conflicting considering I knew for a fact that Errol had no issues opening his mouth when he felt like it.
That was when my head tilted up a bit at his, acknowledging his answer.
These moments of wanting to see again never left me. But every once in a while, there was a moment different than the others. A moment where I could've killed to see again, to peer into the soul of a persons eyes for a better understanding.
This was one of those moments.
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