Chapter Fifty-eight: Distance
My mother runs down the driveway with a smile on her face. When she embraces me in her arms it seems as if she’s about to tackle me on the football field, but when our bodies meet, she’s gentle and she seems happy to see me.
“You done?” I ask, giggling at how she acts like I’ve been gone forever. I have actually, so it would make sense.
“Sorry,” she says as she pulls out of the hug. “Let me help you with the bags.” We both try to grab as much as we can and head into the mansion.
When I step inside, it’s like I never left. The tile floor allows my mother’s high heels to echo throughout the house and I feel like everything in here is the same, except the pictures. Instead of my father, my mother, and I the photos are of my mother and Lipchits, and pictures of me. Beyond the hall of photographs is an open and large living room and on the side with a swinging door is a kitchen. As we get to the living room, Lipchits sits on the leather couch watching sports on the sixty inch flat screen television.
He nods his head and grins my way as I pass him, since he’s too interested in the game.
My mother and I head up the large stairway to go up into the hall full of bedrooms. We get to my old room and she sets the suitcases and bags down on the mattress. “Is there anything else?” she questions with a small grin, her eyes trailing all around me like she hasn’t been in here. She probably hasn’t since I’ve been gone, or she could have been in here a few times from missing me, depending on how empty she felt or if she was really sad and didn’t feel like coming in here to reminisce on memories.
“I’ll be good. Thank you so much mom,” I say.
She nods her head once with the smile on her lips as she leaves out the door and closes it behind her.
Gazing all around me, I realize how it’s the same I left it when I left. The purple wallpaper, the desk to the end of the room at the wall and window, the same queen sized bed that is naked with no sheets and the open closet with the remaining clothes I didn’t want to take with me.
I begin to start putting things away like bathroom products in the connecting bathroom or clothes in the dresser that is in front of the bed or in the closet. When I’m done, I put the bags and suitcases underneath the bed and put my hands on my hips and take a good look around, smiling at the success.
Heading back down the stairs, I catch my mother in the kitchen with her sitting at the long dinner table, a newspaper in hand. “Hello sweetie,” she says.
“What are you reading?” I ask, sitting in the chair next to hers.
“More like, ‘what are you doing?’ I’m doing a word search,” she explains. “You know how much I love these things.”
I nod and say, “Yup, I know.” With my elbows on the table, I try to think through what I want to do. “Hey, do you have a job thing in there?”
“No need to look for a job, Ray.” She stops looking for words and gazes at me. “I got you an interview with the publishing service in L.A., since I know how much you love doing it. Actually, how is your book coming?” She puts the newspaper aside and puts her palm under her chin with her elbow on the table as well, steadying her so her head doesn’t fall.
“It’s going good,” I say, nodding. “I have about nine pages left to do and I’m gonna be revising it a lot, and then send it over to well . . . a bunch of publishers in hopes someone takes it.”
“I’m very proud of you, Raven.” She puts her hand on top of mine and smiles some more.
“Thanks,” I reply.
“Anyways, your interview is tomorrow, so you should get some sleep.” She gets up and points toward the clock which says it is 9:50 P.M. “If you’re hungry, remember you can always snack on whatever is in the fridge.”
I chuckle at what she says, knowing how she used to do this a lot. If my father fed me without her because she’d be busy at work, she’d come home and say if we were hungry, we’ll have to put something together. Or for lunch or breakfast, I would have to whip something up for myself.
She leaves the room and I do too since I ate while on the road, and I get myself ready for bed.
*~*~*~*~*
I sit on my old swing that hangs from the tree in the backyard. I don’t exactly swing; I just lightly push myself with the top of my big toe and let the swing go back and forth. Hearing the sliding door open, I look up to see who it is and my mother walks over to me.
“Why are you out here?” she asks, crossing her arms as she gets closer.
“Eh, I just wanted to be out here. Get some fresh air, you know? Have you heard the good news?” I say, my lips curving upwards a little bit.
“Yes, that is very great that you got the job and you’re starting next week! I’m surprised you’re not celebrating!”
“Mother, how did you get my resume?” My smile fades once I say it. I don’t see how I didn’t see it before; where I get a new job right on the spot without even having a resume in hand. I haven’t had time to get all set up since it was completely early. And just to walk in and be thrown a job right then and there was just out of blue and something that never happens. Except when my mother is wealthy and pretty well known around since she’s a fashion designer; seems pretty fishy to me.
“I got it from your friends, but don’t worry. He loved your background and how you were superb at your job.” She puts her hands on my shoulders. “Accept it; don’t worry about what’ll come with your job or what’ll happen later on in the future for you.”
Hugging her, I say into her ear, “I did take the job.” I then kiss her on her cheek and leave the area to my bedroom to go write the last pages of the book.
Before I sit down at the desk, I look at my emails to reply to Jessie and Periwinkle and Freddy, but I notice no new ones from them. Instead, I find an email from Errik. My fingers tremble and I don’t know if I should press the “read” button or if I should delete the message. I want to keep my distance from him, but I don’t know if I should just read it and answer him back.
Maybe we could stay friends? No. We can’t be friends. If he wants nothing to do with me, then I don’t want anything to do with him. But what if he needs something? No, Raven. Don’t think like that! Or what if he wants to apologize to me? What if he wants to see me? But I’m not in New York anymore . . . I’m thousands of miles away from him. But what if he just doesn’t want to do any of that? What if all he wants to do is pick an argument with me?
I then remember the last time I saw him in the alley; his legs getting no balance, his eyes probably red from being intoxicated, his heart probably feeling empty and lonely and sad and heartbreak. I broke his heart; I did something terrible to him. I hurt him emotionally and even though I regret ever doing it, I just cannot think of how he feels. Sure, I felt broken when Kenton died, but this . . . this . . . I basically cheated on Errik and allowed him to see my body against someone else’s and probably, the sight of that wouldn’t be good.
Pushing the thought aside, I tell myself how I need to get a grip. I can’t be remorseful forever. I’ve said my sorry, and now I need to move on.
But with curiosity burning in the back of my mind, I open the email and read:
I heard you left . . . I came by Jessie’s house to see you, but apparently, you left before I could get there. I wanted to say goodbye and hope you well there in California.
I hope your book goes good and I’ll be watching carefully when it’ll be out in stores, because it deserves to be.
I know we had a bumpy road and even though I was extremely angry, I heard that you never meant to do it. I was told that you did it because since you thought I was dying, you tried to do it out of trying to forget that it was all happening. I want to say sorry for the way I’ve been acting and how I’m trying to cope with us and how you left so suddenly. I’m doing better than I once was, but I’m still out of it.
Even though we are apart, I want to let you know that I am saudade; it’s a Portuguese word that means a nostalgic longing to be near again to something or someone that is distant, or that has been loved and then lost; “the love that remains.” –Literally, I just took this from the internet! Ha ha, but it reminds me of us.
I hope you forgive me and the way I’ve been acting, but I know you that you’ve felt the same way.
Hope to hear from you soon. I love you very much, Raven.
Errik.
I want to answer him, but I need to make sure we are distant from each other. He’s not with me nor am I with him, so instead of getting excited or happy to be with each other, we cannot. He has a life and a future there in New York and the same with me here in California. I honestly think we have no future together if we cannot stay in the same place.
Clicking the exit button so I can go to writing, I begin my last chapter. I write the ending towards our love story. It’s not really a non-fictional book; it’s a story filled with differences but I make sure to get the events added inside, but I change everything else. It’s a fictional story based on my life.
I write how the ending to Errik and I is a lost cause, how it felt like it was meant to be in the beginning, but it truly wasn’t. I write how my life feels empty but starting somewhere new; how could lead me to new opportunities and emotions and feelings and memories, things that could make everything better.
By the time the story ends, I’m finding myself looking over the one hundred and seventy-five pages of manuscript I wrote and how I’m reading it over and over again, fixing it up and polishing it.
When I realize it’s very early in the morning, I see how long I’ve been doing this, which has been for the past ten hours. I yawn, saving the document to my desktop, and closing the laptop right before I crawl into bed, falling asleep not long afterwards.
*~*~*~*~*
For the next few days before I make sure the book is at its best. As far as I know, I’ve revised it thirteen times, and now fourteen as I end the last few pages.
I try to think it over; if it’s a good idea if I should send it over to a publisher. I know how harsh they can be or how they never accept a book because of how uninteresting it sounds or starts off. But by sending in the information for a publisher, I click send and hope to God that they accept even though it’s a long shot; knowing that it’s a one percent chance they can even say yes to it.
Heading downstairs to the kitchen, I grab a glass of lemonade and drink at least a little bit from the glass until the doorbell rings.
“Can someone get that?” I call over my shoulder, in hopes someone in the house can hear me.
The bell rings once more and I’m becoming annoyed with how no one is answering it. So I put the cup down and go towards the door, but when I open it, his precious smile melts me and I feel like my legs are trembling to the ground.
“Hi,” he says. “May I come in?”
I try to regain thoughts and things to say, but with Errik standing right here in front of me, just feels as if everything is caught in my throat.
“Sure, I guess you can come in?” I say.
I can hear footsteps behind me, in knowing that my mother and step-father is watching us, probably hiding behind the wall.
I ignore them and let Errik in as I shut the door behind us. “How come you’re here?” I ask, confused about why he’s here.
“Did ya read my email?” he asks, leaning his back against the hallway wall.
I nod.
He looks down and sighs. “Why did ya leave?” Crossing his arms, he continues. “They told me why, but I want to hear the explanation from you.”
I swallow, not knowing what to say. I left because of you. I left because of us. I left because I can’t take making more mistakes and being a horrible person. I left because . . . “I had nowhere to go,” I begin, my eyes becoming watery. “I had no job, no roof over my head, no money. I wasn’t going to allow my friends to take care of me. And with . . . with what was happening with us, I . . . I needed to get away and this was the place to go.”
“So you run to yer parents? You move away completely? Ya runaway? Do ya really think that is the way to go?”
I shake my head. “No. But it was my only option. I couldn’t deal with us being apart and I couldn’t deal with anything else that happened in New York. What else was I supposed to do, Errik?”
“Marry me!” he says quickly in frustration. “Ya would come back and ask me to marry you!” With a sigh, he kneels to the floor and holds out a box, showing me a beautiful ring inside. “I want you to marry me, Ray.”