Excerpt: All We Used to Be

Three days later I was stuck. It had been so long since I had stepped foot into David’s room. I could only remember with great pain in my heart the last time I had gone in there: Richard and Daniel had come over to collect nearly all of David’s things. I could only sit on the couch, trying so hard not to lose my composure as I watched them carry his things out one by one. I had to excuse myself to the bathroom when I saw Daniel walking out with David’s guitar; it was just too damn much to sit through. I had to walk in only once to help Richard with a large box of David’s CDs and after they left, I locked his door, never to enter it again.
I had to now. There were still a few things left in there that his family had meant to come by and get, but never did. I was trying my hardest to avoid any situation that would make me want to run back to a bottle; willingly walking into David’s old room seemed just like one of those situations.
Finally, I decided I could not do it. I just could not muster up the courage. And right as I was thinking of having Richard come and pick up the rest of David’s things himself, there was a knock at the front door.
Since my reemergence at the coffee shop, the majority of my friends had stopped by over those last few days to see how I was doing, and to see if they could help me pack. So when I opened the front door, I was expecting Jacob or another one of my friends to be standing there. What I was not expecting was to open the door and nearly have my heart stop when I realized who was standing behind it.
She was dressed casually in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. That was one of the things that I was most attracted to about Karen. She could have literally just woken up and thrown no makeup on, done nothing to her hair but put it in a ponytail, and yet she would still look like the most beautiful woman in the world to me.
And there she was, standing right at my front door for the first time in over six months. She must have sensed how caught off guard I was, because she cleared her throat and said, “I hope you don’t mind me dropping by.”
My mind suddenly came back to me and I shook my head. “Of course not!” I said, a bit too loudly. I tried to open the door wider, but only succeeded in hitting it with my foot. Karen laughed quietly and I apologized. “Sorry…come on in.”
“Thanks.” She walked in a bit slowly, almost hesitantly, as if she knew that the memories that would rush through her mind would be immense. She took a deep breath and looked around. “Wow,” she said.
“I know, it’s clean.”
She laughed. “Yeah.” I saw her eyes move towards the kitchen counter where, for the last few months of our relationship, there was always a bottle of liquor sitting. There was nothing sitting there then and I thought I caught a sigh of relief from her. “So, how are you doing?” she asked.
I stepped away from the door and sat down on the couch. “I’m okay, I think,” I said, honestly. “It has been a pretty strange week.”
“I bet,” she said as she took a seat next to me. “So, you’re moving back in with your parents?”
“For now, at least. They’re willing to pay for school and not have me pay rent, so it’s kind of the only option I have.” I did not bring up the no drinking rule; no sense in bringing up old problems.
“Well that’s great!” I could tell that she really was happy for me, and I began to feel horrible only because I wanted so badly just to grab her and kiss her; just to forget about the past mistakes and start all over again.
“So, what brings you here?” I said, deciding to stand up and move away from her, before I did something I would probably regret.
“I just thought I’d drop by and see how the move was going. I figured I should say goodbye to this place before I lost the chance to.”
I smiled. “Yeah, there are a lot of good memories here.”
She stood up from the couch and walked down the hallway. “Have you gone in there yet,” she asked, pointing to David’s bedroom door.
I lowered my head and shook it. “No.”
She placed her hand on the knob. “How long has it been? Since you’ve been in there?”
“Since right after he died,” I said quietly. I noticed that she was beginning to turn the handle. “Look, I’d rather not go in--”
It was too late. Before I could even finish, she had turned the handle and opened the door. Now that it was open, I could not help but feel a bit curious of what it would be like to be in the room again. She took a step inside and I followed.
There was an air of mild neglect in the room…which was partially true. I took care to make sure nothing got disturbed, but that was only because I had never been back inside of it, nor had I let anyone else go inside. David’s bed was still sitting where it had the last time he woke up from it. The room was mostly bare, but there were a few things lying around. Seeing them again brought small memories that I thought I had all but forgotten.
Karen took a seat on David’s bed, sighing to herself. I could tell that she was deep in thought as well. I decided to say nothing as I slowly made my way over to her, reliving the memories of David myself. As I sat down next to her, she grabbed our old high school yearbook off of the ground. I remembered spending a few hours one night after David’s death in that very room, flipping through that yearbook and feeling so amazed at how naïve I had been about life. I had wanted to jump back in time and slap my past self for being so stupid...for taking everything for granted.
Something fell out between the cover of the yearbook, and Karen bent over to pick it up. Before she had even flipped it over, I already knew what it was. It was the picture of the three of us, the picture that I had practically carried with me all over that apartment. David had had a copy of it with him when he moved in. After he died, I could not part with his copy, even though I had one myself. I had stuck it between the pages of the yearbook for safe keeping.
Karen took a long hard look at the photo, her eyes racing across it. I could see her mind spinning with the hundreds of memories that were associated with that night.
“New Years Eve?” she asked quietly, not taking her eyes off of the photo.
I smiled. “Yeah.”
“It feels like that happened decades ago. How old were we? Fifteen? Sixteen?”
“Sixteen,” I said, wanting to remark on how much things can change in such a short span of time, but I changed my mind; I did not want to seem bitter, even though a small part of me still was.
“What do you think things would be like if he were still here?” she asked me, not taking her eyes off of the photo.
She asked the very question I had asked myself so many times over the past year. I never had a straight answer, just a sharp pain in my chest. I decided to bite my tounge and say, “Different. Very different.”
She chuckled to herself. “Could you have ever imagined him getting married?”
I had to laugh myself. “Are you kidding me? He was the definition of a playboy. That kid had no fears when it came to women. And I was the exact opposite.” I paused, reliving moments spent with David years before. I had remembered a specific conversation between he and I that was about Karen. I was not going to mention it to her, but the feeling of nostalgia was so strong, that I could not help it. “Remember when we first met, back when we were eleven?”
She was quiet for a moment, thinking back to that afternoon camping. “Yeah, something happened to the generator on my Dad’s RV and when they were out trying to fix it, we started talking about card games or something.”
“Yeah, and then we played War for like two hours.”
She smiled to herself. “I forgot about that.”
“When I got back home from that trip, I told David about you. Of course, his first question was how hot you were, but when I told him how I was so scared to even talk to you at first, he just laughed. He never understoo why it was so hard for me to just go up and talk to a girl. Remember the second camping trip our families went on?”
“Yeah, that’s when I met David.”
“Wanna know why he came?”
She looked at me with a surprised expression on her face. “You’re kidding me?”
I chuckled at the memory of my eleven-year-old self, trying desperately just to talk to the girl I could not stop thinking about. “He was my support. We had this whole meeting planned out where he walked me through what I was going to say to you and how I should react to what you said to me.”
Karen looked a bit taken aback. “I didn’t know that.”
“I know! I never wanted you to know.” I laughed. “Not only was I embarrassed at the fact that I had to have someone walk me through how to just have a conversation with a girl, but I was mortified that you would find out and think I was just some loser.”
“I never thought that,” she said quickly.
“I know. I knew pretty quickly that you would have never thought that, but I still felt ashamed. Like I was making you think I wasn’t this guy I was acting like.”
“Well,” she added with a sly look on her face. “I figured that out pretty quickly, Tyler. You’ve never exactly been smooth.”
We both shared a laugh at the memories of when we first met. After a moment, though, we both went quiet. I had slipped back in time again, hearing distant voices from the past: David talking about graduating high school, asking Karen if she would go out with me, the three of us going on a double date with one of David’s girlfriends. I was only seconds from standing up and heading for the freezer to look for liquor when Karen rested her head on my shoulder. It was a completely platonic move on her part, yet that small connection sent electricity through my veins. She sighed.
“I miss him so much, Tyler,” she said quietly, her eyes back on the photo.
I wanted to tell her how much I understood, and let her know that she was not alone, but guilt hit me like a ton of bricks, and I could not help but swallow air and try to keep my composure. “I’m so sorry,” I said quietly.
She looked up at me with curious glance. “Why?”
“I know we talked about this the other day, and believe me, I would love to just forget what I have done, but I can’t. I have been such an asshole to you and I feel awful about it.” I wanted to stop there. I knew if I kept going I would probably regret it later, but I could not stop. “I’ll never be able to forget how hurt you were when I said...what I said that night. How I acted like you weren’t hurt by his death.” Again, she tried to protest, but I cut her off. “I only said that because I knew how much you were hurting, and I was so angry at myself because there you were: the prime example of how I should have been handling every and yet I wasn’t. I had convinced myself that you must not have cared that much; that I was the only person alive who could possibly feel that pain, and it was so wrong of me.”
She looked away from me. “You scared me so much that night.” My gaze turned back to her; I had never heard her speak about that night, and although I knew better, I could not help but be curious. “You had never spoken to me like that, and I knew it was the alcohol. I knew you wouldn’t have normally said that, but that was the problem. You weren’t...you anymore, and I hated you for that.”
I wanted to hug her and tell her how sorry I was, but I did not. Instead, I stayed glued to where I was, trying to think of anyway possible to truly show to her how sorry I was. “I can’t--” I lowered my head, trying to think of how I could possibly go on. After what seemed like hours of sitting in silence, I finally said, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She stared deeply into my eyes, searching for something I could not understand. After a few moments, she said, “I know you are. That’s why I came today. I could feel how sad you were the other day. I could literally feel it, Tyler, and I had never seen that before with you. Don’t ask me why, but I know how much you have been beating yourself up over all of this, so I came to ask you a favor...for me.”
Without hesitation, I said, “Anything.”
“Just stop. I know how badly you feel for what happened and I know that you still feel guilty, so I am here to tell you that I forgive you, and to beg you to stop torturing yourself over the past. What happened, happened. You cannot change the past, no matter how much you think about it, and I know you still do. You have got to let go of it and move on, or else you will be right back where you have been, and I could not stand to lose you again.”
In that one instant, all of the guilt, all of the anger I had towards myself, was gone; not for good, but for now. It was like suddenly waking from a nightmare and having my senses come back to me. Words could not describe how amazing that feeling was, having her forgive me just like that. No judgment, no ultimatums. Just like that, she managed to write off all of the things I had done to hurt her, and it made me feel new again.
She could obviously tell the change in mood I had, because she asked, “Are you okay?”
I gave a small smile. “Thank you. You have no idea how much that means to me.”
She nodded. “I do..and that’s why I said it, Tyler. No matter what mistakes you have made, and I’m not justifying them, you do not deserve the kind of hell I can only imagine you have been living in.”
It was quiet again; there was somewhat of an akward moment there. That was the most intimate moment Karen and I had shared since we had broken up. Again, mostly just trying to change the subject than anything else, I tried to find out what she had been trying to tell me for so long.
“I’d rather not talk about it right now, Tyler,” was her response. I knew she did not want me to press the matter; hell, I didn't even want to press the matter. We had just had one of the most important and civil conversations we had shared since the breakup; the last thing I wanted to do was ruin all that we had just established. However, my curiosity was too strong, and now that I realized that she had been successful in dodging the question twice, I had to know.
“Karen, you can tell me whatever it is. That is the point of all of this; I’m here for you.”
She shook her head. “I can’t, Tyler, I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
She stood up, obviously agitated. “Because it won’t change anything, and I’m afraid that talking to you about it will only make things worse.”
“Karen, I’m not the same person I used to be. I’m not going to abandon you, again.”
I could tell this meant something to her, yet she did not budge. In fact, she said something that hurt so much that it took me a good minute to register that she had even said it. “Abandoning me would require you to be in my life in the first place.”
I was floored. Only moments ago she was not only forgiving, but accepting of all the mistakes I had made. Suddenly, she was throwing them right back in my face and I could not believe what I had heard. “What?” was all I could manage.
I could immediately tell that she regretted what she had said, but it was too late. I was feeling destroyed on the inside and she obviously felt horrible for it as well. She grabbed her purse off of the floor and walked out of David’s bedroom. I heard her mutter, “I’m sorry,” as she was walking out.
My life had suddenly turned back to upside down. Only moments before I was on top of the world, and suddenly I was back where I had started. In that moment I realized how much her opinion of me mattered, and now that I realized that she still harbored such angry thoughts towards me, I could not bear it. If she had not been there, if I was alone in that apartment when I felt the way I did, I would have ran over to Fry’s to buy the alcohol. But she was still there, and I put getting drunk in the back of mind and ran out of the bedroom.
“Wait!” I said, as she was turning the doorknob. Somewhere between standing up from the bed and yelling for attention, I realized what she was doing. It did not make sense that she would forgive me one moment and the next turn all my mistakes back on me. My first thought was that she had not forgiven me, that she still hated me, and all those other thoughts that had plagued me for the past nineteen months. Yet, as I called for her to stop, I knew that was not true. She had forgiven me. So why would she suddenly change her mind like that?
“Why did you say that?” I said, quietly.
She looked at the ground. “I’m sorry, I did not mean to--”
That is when it hit me; she was not trying to hurt me..she was trying to protect me. From what, I did not know. But there was something she did not want me to know, and whatever it was, it had to be big, because she never would have said something like that to me.
“I know you didn’t mean that. You would never say something like that and mean it. But I have the feeling you said it just to upset me, to make me forget about why you would say it in the first place. You’re trying to change the subject, Karen. Why don’t you want me to know about...whatever it is you’re going through?”
Tears began to flow freely from her eyes. She did not even bother hiding them. She tried to compose herself, but after a few moments of wiping her eyes and nose, she gave up on that. “I’m not...nothing’s happening, Tyler. There’s nothing to be worried about.”
My heart began to race when she said that. “You said it, not me. I never said I was worried.” She looked at me with such sadness in her eyes, like she could not stand the kind of position I was putting her in. “Karen, please. You can tell me.”
She slowly shook her head. “Not this.” And with that, she was gone. The door closed before I could even say another word.