by Amber Stuart
“I loved her, too, Dietrich. She was my friend. And you were different around her. Hardly anyone at work ever got to see that, except maybe Daniel. They joke about you being a cold, indifferent… well, you know… but they never got to see the way you were when you and Lottie were together. How… normal you really are.”
“Was.”
I didn’t mean to say it so quickly. I may not like people in general, but I know how to read between the lines; he was trying to tell me he was worried he was going to lose his best friend, too. And after all he had done for me, I didn’t have the decency not to shatter that hope until after this goddamn day was over.
******
The rain had finally stopped by the time we were gathered at the cemetery. I watched in detached numbness as the priest said a few more prayers, handed a small silver crucifix to Cathy, and tried to offer words of comfort… something about Heaven, maybe. Probably. I mean, he’s a priest and it was a funeral. I’m sure he mentioned Heaven somewhere in there.
Words just floated past me. My eyes were fixed on the cerulean casket in front of me. Eric later told me he had picked that one out because she would have chosen it for the color – it was the color of my eyes. At the time, it was just blue. A smooth, blue rectangle with silver bars running along the sides for the pallbearers.
She was in there. As soon as we left, they would lower her into the ground and cover her with dirt. I had the crazy idea that if I just stayed under the avocado green canopy, I could keep her out of the ground forever. I could stay with her forever.
Suddenly, I felt Eric gently pulling on my arm. He was standing. We were alone, except for the priest and the cemetery crew, waiting a respectful distance away from us, but waiting for us to leave so they could finish their jobs and go home. Probably to their own wives or fiancées or girlfriends. Maybe their kids, too. Lottie had always wanted kids. She made sure I knew that before the first time we slept together... just in case. We were seventeen.
I looked up at Eric, bewildered. The sun was much lower in the sky than I expected it to be. How much time had passed? How long had they been waiting for me?
The priest moved into the seat beside me. Fuck. He was going to try to save my Hell-bound, atheistic soul and I was finally going to lose it. I was pretty sure Eric wouldn’t approve of me killing a priest, considering I’d just learned he was Catholic and all.
“Dietrich,” the priest’s voice was soft but not in the same, I’m-about-to-fuck-up-your-world kind of way that Daniel’s soft tone of voice was.
He knew my name. I couldn’t recall his – I hadn’t paid attention to most of the service. I’m sure it started with Father.
“You’re both so young. I honestly can’t even imagine the pain of this kind of loss. I have the names of some grief counselors if you’d ever like to talk to someone.”
It took me a minute to understand he wasn’t talking religion to me. I saw him for the first time – took in his short, round body and equally round face, his receding hairline and eyes so dark they were almost black. But what was that behind those dark eyes? Compassion? Sadness? Kindness?
Great. Now I was going to have to give up mocking priests.
I shook my head.
“Thank you. We’ll go.”
I stood and reached out to touch her casket one last time; the sun had warmed it so that it felt more like an incubator rather than a tomb. I couldn’t stay with her forever. It was time for me to go.
I glanced up, where the rain clouds had mostly drifted eastward and the brilliant blue Texas sky broke through the gray. The rain was moving on to Louisiana. And my afterlife had just begun.
Chapter 1
Two years later
Have you ever had a dream that seemed so real that when you woke up, you weren’t quite sure what was reality and what was imagined anymore? Because I often dreamed of her still. Cooking dinner. God, she was such a good cook. Folding laundry while we streamed The Big Bang Theory. She thought it was funny. I thought she was adorable when she laughed. Making love then talking in whispers in bed, which was completely ridiculous since no one else lived with us but it never seemed right to speak louder while laying naked in bed. Her falling asleep on my shoulder, as she so often did, and as I stroked her hair, thinking this is more a Heaven than any place Man had dreamed up.
Sometimes, I still woke up expecting her to be in bed with me, and when I reached over for her and felt nothing but empty sheets, I expected to hear the steady drip, drip, drip of the coffee maker or the muffled voices of the television coming through the bedroom wall. Perhaps she had just gotten up to watch TV, like she did sometimes when she couldn’t sleep.
So I would lay in the blackness of that empty room and listen. I would listen until my ears started ringing from the complete silence surrounding me and I finally gave in and admitted that this was, in fact, not a dream. This was my afterlife. And I was alone.
Our apartment hadn’t changed much. I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of any of her things. Right after the funeral, I had let her mother come through here to find the vestiges of her childhood. Boxes of awards and certificates and graduation gowns went back to Louisiana; a few yearbooks, and some of Lottie’s favorite movies. But mostly, there was nothing in my apartment that could give Cathy Theriot her daughter back, and she had left Houston begging me to still come for Easter. I had promised her I would. Cathy had lost her husband a few years before and Lottie was an only child. If she wanted me to drive to Alexandria for every single holiday, I would.
But about a year after Lottie died, Cathy remarried, and our phone calls became fewer and farther between. I was just the man who was still in love with her daughter’s ghost. She kept telling me I would eventually move on, too. I knew that I never would.
Eric never tried to convince me of that; he never told me to consider dating again, or that one day, it would hurt less, or I wouldn’t still smell her everywhere in this apartment. He usually just brought beer and pizza or Thai takeout and watched baseball or football with me. If he was feeling really sorry for me, I might be able to talk him into watching a soccer match.
And so, for two years, I had kept everything as it was. Her clothes still hung on her side of the closet; her shoes still lined the floor; her books were everywhere around me; her music was still on my iPod. I wouldn’t delete her from my life.
She had so many things I had no use for. I couldn’t cook – I didn’t even know what a wok was for and why it was any different than a skillet, or why we had three different kinds of olive oil in our pantry. I knew it would turn rancid, but I didn’t throw it out either. Lottie had just bought a new bottle of extra virgin olive oil. She’d never even opened it.
Eric had tried to get me to see a therapist, but I refused. I didn’t have good memories of them. Part of me realized there was a huge difference between the things we are forced to do as a child and the things we choose to do as an adult, but I still wouldn’t go. What was the point? I was dead. This was my Hell. I was supposed to be suffering anyway.
Eric was here now, flipping through the channels, looking for the super regional playoff game. He had brought a six-pack of Shiner Bock and had just ordered a pizza. I was in a particularly bad mood today because I’d had one of those dreams last night. Such a simple dream: we were standing in the kitchen as she spread thick layers of cream cheese on toasted bagels. It was morning, we had just gotten up, and she looked so goddamned sexy in her boxer cut shorts and my old LSU t-shirt that I couldn’t help myself: I pushed the bagels away from her and took the table knife out of her hand, and she gave me that look that told me “I know what you’re up to but I’m going to let you get away with it.”
I put my hand on the small of her back and pulled her close to me, as close as I could, and still, I wanted her closer. Her mouth tasted like coffee, and I don’t know why, but that turned me on even more. Probably because I always associated coffee with Lottie. I lifted her onto the table. This wa
s a memory. I often dreamed of her with memories. I knew what was coming next; I wanted to relive it. I wanted to relive it over and over, but I had awakened, surrounded by that interminable silence.
I was not in the mood to watch baseball. I wanted to crawl back into bed and hope to dream of Lottie again. To finish that particular dream. But it was 1:00 in the afternoon, and Eric didn’t let me stay in bed all day anymore. So I did the next best thing. I sulked. It didn’t take long for Eric to figure out what I was doing.
“Dietrich, I’m not leaving just because you’re being an asshole.”
“I’m not being an asshole.”
Of course I was.
“Of course you are.”
“Why do you like hanging out with an asshole then?”
“Because you’re an entertaining asshole. And you have a nice TV.”
I didn’t mention his TV was bigger. He wasn’t here for either of those reasons.
“It should be. You picked it out.”
Eric smiled. “I have good taste.”
“Not in friends.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
I watched as the LSU batter hit a line drive to right field. A runner on third made it home. I was the LSU fan; Eric was only watching because the game was on. I should have been excited that my alma mater had just tied the game, but thinking of LSU only made me think of Lottie.
“Let’s go out to her grave,” I said suddenly. I had finally gotten Eric’s attention. He turned the television off.
“Now? The pizza hasn’t even gotten here yet.”
“I need to go today.”
Eric just sighed and pulled up the app on his phone to cancel our order. He never argued with me on this.
We stopped at the flower shop on the way to the cemetery so I could buy her fresh flowers; I came out here once a week to replace them. Eric had made me promise not to come more often unless he was with me.
We parked along the path closest to her grave and started walking. It was early June, hot and humid already, and we were sweating by the time we reached her. As usual, Eric kissed her headstone, murmured something to her about her fiancé being an asshole today, then walked away to leave us alone.
The flower arrangement was full of orchids and tuberose. I had been here only a few days ago, so the last arrangement I’d brought her was still in good shape. I picked the wilting petals out of it and brushed the few stray pieces of grass that had stuck to her headstone away. I never talked to her out loud like Eric did. It seemed silly. She was dead.
Unlike Eric, I didn’t believe in a Heaven. But she was here, and I often just wanted to be near her. I sat with her for a very long time before Eric made his way back to me and told me we needed to go. Just like he never argued with me about coming, I never argued with him about leaving. I brushed the grass and dirt from my pants and followed him back to his car.
You would think sitting at the graveside of my dead fiancée would have put me in a worse mood, but as we drove back toward my apartment, I actually felt better. Some of it was just being with Eric. He had that effect on me, even when I was being an asshole.
We had skipped lunch and we were hungry, so we stopped at a sports bar so we could catch the end of the game. The waitress was trying to flirt with me. I was trying to ignore her. And there was no way Eric was not going to tease me about it.
As soon as she walked out of earshot, Eric leaned across the table, and asked me, “Dietrich, does your dick still work?”
I rolled my eyes.
“She’s kinda hot,” he continued.
He was just fucking with me. He knew there was no one except Lottie.
“I just care if our food is hot. And fast.” Goddamn it, I had set myself up. I sighed before he could even say it.
“She seems hot and fast. You should get her number.”
“What for? Do you think she delivers? Food, Eric.”
Eric was smiling now. “Oh, I’ll bet she does. Get her number for me then.”
“I’m no expert, but I don’t think it works that way.”
Eric wasn’t deterred, probably because he wasn’t serious. I had never known Eric to spend a night alone if he didn’t want to.
“In my next life, I’m coming back with a European accent.”
“Hey, this particular accent only became cool again in like the last twenty years. Be careful what you wish for.” I had no idea if that were true or not. But it seemed like it should be. “Besides, you speak better Russian than I do. Just fake an accent.”
Eric’s smiled broadened. “I have. And it works all the time.”
By the time we had finished eating, LSU had won the game and Eric had given me seven sure-fire ways to pick up women, all of which he knew I would never use, but because it had distracted me from obsessing about Lottie, he had persisted in telling me anyway. The thing is, Eric wasn’t a bad guy at all; he talked like it, but I knew he usually only went home with a woman if she obviously just wanted sex or if he actually really liked her. But we worked in a testosterone-driven field; he had picked up the language over the years anyway.
As the waitress dropped off our checks, I noticed she had written her phone number on mine. I pushed it across the table so Eric could see.
“Huh,” he said as he slipped his credit card into the sleeve of the cardholder and picked up my check to look at it more carefully. “You should write her a note; tell her you’re really flattered but you have a girlfriend so she doesn’t get her feelings hurt.”
And that was the kind of guy Eric really was. I wrote the note.
That night, I lay awake in bed for a long time. I hated nighttime the most. The apartment was too quiet, too empty. The bed never felt right without her in it. I was usually the one who fell asleep pressed against her, burying my face in those long brown waves of hair, keeping an arm around her both protectively and for my own security.
We had shocked her parents when we moved in together so young. We had only recently turned eighteen. Lottie had just graduated from high school, and I had just graduated from LSU, and we were so sure of our love, of our future together, that we risked her parents’ fury and told them what we were planning on doing.
I had always liked Lottie’s parents, and I was certain they would never speak to me again. But a few days later, her father called me – and asked me when we were planning on moving so he could borrow his friend’s truck. Lottie had the kind of parents I thought were only made up for movies and books.
We didn’t have much then. I wouldn’t even meet Eric for another two months, but we had moved into a small one-bedroom apartment in Tiger Town near LSU. Her parents gave us some of their old furniture so that we weren’t eating on the floor.
In the beginning, we lived like any other kids. We ate a lot of macaroni and cheese, and we didn’t have cable. Lottie’s parents paid for our internet service because she needed it for school.
I had been accepted into graduate programs in physics all over the country, but I wasn’t going to leave Lottie. I still didn’t have a Plan B, so I started working at a cell store, and that’s how I met Eric. He came in one day for a new one, complaining he had dropped his and it was irretrievably cracked, broken, dead. I told him I could probably fix it and he didn’t believe me. I couldn’t blame him.
To him, I was just an eighteen-year-old kid, and although he doesn’t always act like it, Eric’s a genius, too. He figured if he couldn’t fix it, there was no way in hell I could. An hour later, I handed him his repaired phone, and Eric decided to look into this kid who was good with electronics and had just graduated from university summa cum laude.
There had been times in the nine years since that summer I had wished I had thought more about my decision to join him, had thought through what this job would entail and what I would be sacrificing. But at the time, it was a lot of money, a lot of adventure, a lot of power to dangle in front of a kid who had never had any of those things. And I liked Eri
c. So I agreed. I signed on. My citizenship application was sped up. I was soon able to buy Lottie everything she needed and we never ate macaroni and cheese again. At the time, I had only told Lottie that I would never lie to her, so I begged her not to ask me too much about this new job I was training for. Lottie never doubted me; she never asked me any questions at all.
We had eight years together. Eight perfect years. And maybe I should have felt grateful that I had gotten to experience that kind of love and devotion and happiness when so many people don’t, but I didn’t feel grateful for having this afterlife that had consumed me: this Hell that had become my prison. Without Lottie, there was no escape. I would go on through what felt like an eternity without her, knowing how beautiful life should be and knowing mine would never come close again.
As I lay there in that dark room waiting for sleep to take me, I found myself doing something I often did now: talking to a God I didn’t believe in. If He existed, then I hated Him. I hated Him for allowing all of the horrors I had seen in this world, hell, some of which I had participated in and maybe that just made me hate Him even more; I hated Him for my mother; but I hated Him mostly for Lottie, for letting me find a love that healed a broken child and had given me the promise of a future I wanted for the first time then ripping her away from me. And as I drifted off to sleep, I thought, “The least you can do now is let me dream of her.”
Chapter 2
That night, I did dream of Lottie. She was standing on the beach in Galveston, pointing out toward the Gulf, excitedly bouncing on the balls of her feet and squealing, “Dietrich! Look! Dolphins!”
That was one of her favorite things about going to the beach. I grabbed my phone and snapped a picture of her with the dolphins playing in the waves behind her. It was such a great picture of her, with the Gulf breeze blowing those loose waves of hair around her, her petite but curvy body filling out the bikini she was wearing – God she was so sexy – and her smile so genuine, so full of joy.
