CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CLOSURE
SOFIA
Back in Palo Alto, I picked up the pieces—everyone's, and then mine.
I wasn't surprised by how easy it was. I was used to it by now, knowing people needed me and depended on me, and I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice. If they needed me, I needed to be there—I wanted to be there.
Letting go of the fiasco that had been San Francisco wasn't easy for any of us. Even though things could have certainly taken a turn for the worse, a sharper turn than it actually was, it had still been pretty rough on everyone. I supposed part of it was my fault, considering I had been the one to hype it up and advertising it as the only way of finally getting some answers, and everyone had been disappointed.
I'd let them all down. That was a recurrent situation in my life, one I hadn't managed to break out of, and people were getting hurt over it.
I had already lost June.
By the time April rolled around and I was nineteen, I felt unbearably close to a meltdown. It started off quietly, a small rumble of thunder in the back of my head, something I learned and managed to ignore and push it even further back, and, for a while, it worked.
It culminated in me losing hours of sleep, struggling to keep up with schoolwork and meeting deadlines for the school newspaper. I struggled with focusing on class and with not being benched during volleyball practice. I struggled with not feeling like everything inside of me was crumbling down, slipping right through my fingers.
To put it simply, I'd failed miserably at going back to normal. I'd failed at not letting myself down.
"Got you a cappuccino," Felix said, pulling me out of my misery, and approached the table we were occupying. The cappuccino he'd brought was so hot the porcelain mug burned the palm of my hands as I accepted it, the waves of steam heating up my face. "You look like you need it."
I sighed. "Do I?"
"A little bit. I just wanted to be nice." He sat back down, opening his laptop. "Have you made any progress?"
"No, not really. I don't think I had ever felt this uninspired."
He pulled my laptop towards him, without waiting for my permission, and prepared himself to judge the pathetic excuse for an article I had spent the past hour and a half working on. During that same amount of time, he'd had time to finish his own article, edit another, and buy me a cappuccino. Needless to say, I wasn't feeling too positive.
"I can finish it, if you'd like," he offered. "I already finished everything I had to do, and I don't really mind helping you out."
I wanted to believe him, but I still hadn't forgotten that time around Thanksgiving when he had pretty much blackmailed me into writing something for June's memorial. Making me choose between her and Stanford had been a low blow, but the most bittersweet part of it all was how I had chosen Stanford without hesitation as soon as it was at stake.
I'd gotten into Stanford. It was one of the rare times when I had put myself first, put myself before June, and I had won. But why did I still feel so bad?
"It's okay," I eventually said, reaching out for my laptop. "I think people would notice the change in writing style."
"Sof, we've worked together for two years now. I think I'm quite familiar with your writing style." I scowled. If that was his way of saying he knew he could easily get away with plagiarism, I wasn't a fan. "Seriously, I don't mind—"
"Yeah, well, I do. This is my work, Felix, and my honor. I appreciate the thought, but this is something I have to finish myself."
"I get it." He dismissed the entire conversation with a relaxed flick of the wrist, and I shifted in my seat, fearing this wasn't really over. Felix wasn't the type of person who simply let things go—some would go as far as calling him petty—and I couldn't help but think I had screwed it up again. "I was just trying to help you out."
"Felix, I—"
"Hey, didn't you have somewhere to be?" He glanced at the silver watch on his wrist, as though I hadn't even spoken. I'd learned to quiet down, to not be so loud, to not push my presence on other people, to not take up a lot of space. It was easier for everyone. "I thought you had plans after school."
I instantly froze. Today was Thursday.
Thursdays meant therapy.
It hadn't been exactly my choice to start going to therapy. My parents hadn't forced me to go, either, but it still wasn't something I was particularly thrilled about. Paul had reached out to his friend Jeb, on the morning after a hellish night, in which I had to scream myself awake from a nightmare. We all decided it wasn't ideal.
I wanted to convince someone I could do it by myself. I wanted to heal myself, but no one really believed me—I hadn't even believed my own words. Naturally, that meant I had to be sent straight to therapy, thanks to Jeb and his network of psychotherapist friends.
In therapy, we talked about how San Francisco had broken my heart. We both knew it hadn't been San Francisco, though, as a city cannot possibly do such a thing. We also talked about my friends, volleyball, the newspaper, my family, Stanford, my future, my dreams, my fears.
We never talked about June.
We talked about me, but never about how I felt regarding anything that had to do with June. I knew that was the major thing that was holding me back and preventing me from making any progress in therapy, not to mention the source of the vast majority of my nightmares.
I didn't want to talk about June. She was dead and she'd been my best friend.
Until the day she wasn't.
"You're right," I said, quickly gathering my belongings and finishing my cappuccino. It was still hot enough to burn its way down my throat and my chest threatened to explode like a bomb, but I couldn't afford to be late. I had a track record to maintain, after all, and word would quickly get out to my parents. "Rain check? See you here tomorrow, same time?"
"No worries. I'll save you a seat."
I nodded, waved over my shoulder, and bolted out of the café. We'd made a habit of hanging out at the Stanford campus after school, in an attempt to prepare ourselves for college, even though he'd gotten into Columbia. I still knew what it was all about, though.
In a few months, we'd be going our separate ways. I was staying in California with Grace, Christina, and Courtney, and I still had Meridian. I didn't know what Leon wanted to do—if he wanted to stay connected while we stayed in the same state—and I didn't think he'd be willing to tell me. Xena was leaving for Rhode Island and Felix was going to New York.
We'd probably manage to hang out during holidays, sporadically, and then not at all. The inevitability of our friendships fading into oblivion at some point in our lives haunted me, and it had been doing so for a few months now.
My heart was moments away from pushing its way through my chest by the time I got to the waiting room. I pressed a hand against my side, struggling to breathe properly, and slumped over the reception counter to announce my presence, wondering how I had made it in time. The receptionist was kind enough to point me towards the water dispenser, even though I knew exactly where it was, and I watched my hands tremble as I tried to fill a Styrofoam cup.
I inhaled.
I exhaled.
Things weren't so bad. I was okay.
I was alive.
My therapist scared me a little bit. It probably had something to do with how he looked a little bit too young to be as successful as people insisted on reminding me he was—I expected him to be older and to have more experience—or maybe because he was intimidatingly good looking, someone I'd probably see on TV or in a movie. The diplomas in his office declared he was a Harvard graduate.
I felt so small, so inadequate as I occupied my regular seat in the office. I usually chose a burgundy armchair, hyper-aware that he could analyze that choice, as simple as it was, and I sat as still as a statue, not wanting to do anything to attract undesired attention towards myself.
"Good afternoon," he greeted. His family was Polish, even though he'd been born and raised in the US, and we'd spent the first ten minutes of my very first appointment learning how to pronounce his last name. Baczewski. "How have you been?"
I shrugged. "Okay, I guess." He tilted his head to the side, examining me, and I immediately straightened. "I mean, things aren't bad. They're just . . . not great."
"Have you been sleeping?"
"Not really. I keep having nightmares whenever I manage to fall asleep, and it takes forever to go back to sleep. It feels like . . . like I've taken a big dose of caffeine in the middle of the night. I just lie there, wide awake, and wait until I feel tired enough to sleep. Repeat cycle."
"What are those nightmares about?"
I knew he knew about June. I knew he knew about my history with her. If he knew Jeb, he probably knew Paul, too, and it was no secret to anyone that my friends and I had gone through hell ever since October. It wasn't hard to put two and two together, but he still needed—and wanted—me to say it myself.
"Stuff," I replied, tugging at a loose strand of my cardigan. "Past stuff. Stupid stuff, really."
"Must be pretty important if you keep dreaming about it every night and if it's enough to keep you awake for so long."
I didn't quite know where to begin. There was so much I could tell him, so many things that were hurting me, and we wouldn't be able to work through every single one of them in just forty-five minutes.
It felt so stupid, so simple, so petty, yet so unbearably complicated at the same time.
"I miss June," I confessed. "Not a day goes by without me missing her. There are times when I find myself reaching out for my phone to text her and I almost do, but then I remember she won't ever reply. I can handle missing her; it's everything else that is messing me up."
He crossed his legs, drumming his fingers against his chair. "What is everything else?"
I bit down on my bottom lip so hard I tasted blood. "Well . . . I went to San Francisco for Spring Break because she wanted us to go there. We never really found out why"—that was a half-lie; I knew why she had gone there, as Meridian had found a receipt for a bunch of alcoholic beverages she had bought there—"but we did. I realized a few things that changed the way I saw everything. They changed the way I looked back on our friendship."
"For better or for worse?"
"You tell me. How would you feel after finding out you spent years of your life being manipulated and used?" He simply nodded. I closed my hands into tight fists, wondering how he managed to stay so calm. "I can't help but think I'm insulting her memory or throwing away eighteen years of friendship, but I don't know how to not feel betrayed. I find myself thinking about how much of it was real and I shouldn't be doing that. She's dead. It won't change anything."
"I think you need closure, Sofia."
I didn't know what closure meant. June was dead, I'd attended her funeral, I'd gone to San Francisco to honor her final wish while not knowing why, I knew the truth about what had happened on the night she died. That should be enough—it felt like it had been enough for everyone else. Why wasn't it enough for me? What else did I need?
"I don't know," I retorted. "I don't know what else to do."
"Closure can be something different to different people. It'd mean a different thing to you than it would for her parents, for example. They were different relationships, and no two people mourn the same person the same way."
"Then what does closure mean for me?"
"I think you have to come to terms with everything you found out. Spring Break was only last month, after all. Everything is still fresh, not to mention it was quite a blow." I looked out of the window. The sky was so dark, so gray I feared the storm would crash down on my way home. "You don't have to forgive her, but you'll have to think about what those things meant to you at some point. The reason why you're having nightmares might be your lack of closure."
"I never told you what those nightmares were about."
He simply smiled. "You didn't have to. It's written all over your face."
Things were rough. I didn't know how to deal with heavy therapy sessions, week after week, and I had to add something else to my list of hard things. It was utterly frustrating; I had never seen myself be so damn useless, so damn powerless, and I'd always been the one to figure things out. I fixed things.
Why couldn't I fix myself?
Home was waiting. A last-minute decision made me switch my route.
Instead of driving straight home, I turned to another street, where I knew I'd find a florist. I was horribly allergic to some of the flowers they sold, and my eyes were watering by the time I reached out for a bouquet of zinnias, but I pushed through. Sneezing was only allowed outside, and I wasn't going to make a fool out of myself in public.
In the safety of my car, I allowed myself to weep quietly for at least ten minutes. My windows weren't tinted, and I knew passersby would be able to see me bawl my eyes out behind the steering wheel, which was a mortifying enough thought as it was, but I couldn't find the strength to drive away.
If June were still alive, she'd berate me for feeling this defeated. She'd argue it was so unlike me, so unnatural, and I needed to focus on what mattered. The problem was that she was what mattered, she'd always been all that mattered to me, and even that had come back to bite me in the ass.
The drive towards the cemetery was close to automatic. I'd been there countless times, knowing the path like the back of my hand, and had to spend close to fifteen minutes in the parking lot trying to gather enough courage to exit the vehicle.
When I got there, I wasn't alone.
Even with his back turned to me, I recognized him. I'd recognize him anywhere, in any crowd, in any country, in any lifetime.
"Mer?" I called, clutching the bouquet close to my chest. He briefly turned around, just enough to glance at me over his shoulder, and raised a hand to wave. "I didn't know you were here. If I did—"
"Don't worry," he replied, taking a deep breath, and shoving his hands back inside his pockets. "I didn't tell anyone I was coming here."
I carefully made my way towards him, allowing my feet to sink into the still damp ground. Autumn and winter were long gone, yet I still found myself missing the sound of crunchy leaves and cobblestone beneath my shoes. Stopping next to him was something akin to coming home.
I didn't dare touch him, though. He stared down at June's tombstone, lost in thought, and didn't utter a word as I kneeled to set down the flowers.
Breathing was hard. Living was harder.
"Do you think you'll ever forgive her?" Meridian asked, after what had seemed like an eternity, and I slowly rose back up to my feet, wiping the dirt from my knees. "Not now, but someday."
"I don't know," I admitted. "Hopefully."
"Hopefully," he echoed, nodding to himself. "I get it. You need time."
It was my time to nod, albeit with a lot less confidence than him. "Yeah."
I laced my fingers through his, sighing when he pulled me closer to him, close enough so I could rest my cheek against his shoulder.
I never let him go.
THE END
what a RIDE.
so, here's the deal: i'm aware this book needs a LOT of editing. like, a lot. I low key want to switch that vienna section to meridian's POV because like....what was the POINT of it being there y'know??
bleh. anyway. if you stuck around this long: THANK YOU SO MUCH. thank you for walking this journey with me. i couldn't have done it without you and your support—in whatever way it came.
there'll be no epilogue. i'm sorry. i changed my mind, but it's better this way.
see you on the flipside. see you in san francisco (once all of this is over).