Running Away

by Jen Andrews

  Why the hell not?

  By the time I arrived home, I’d heard songs about lost love, people dying, and my personal fucking favorite—things a couple would never have because they’d broken up. The lyrics even mentioned white picket fences.

  That was the final straw for me.

  Putting the song on repeat, I hooked a chain from the trailer hitch on the truck to the picket fence around my front yard. For the next thirty minutes, I yanked every post from the ground. Pickets and boards were splintered and scattered around the yard and the sidewalk in front of my house by the time I was finished.

  But the fence was gone.

  Just like the woman who had loved it so much was gone. She’d spent an entire weekend scraping the aged paint away and giving it a new coat of bright, white paint. Now it lay broken all over the place.

  I pulled the truck into the driveway and sat there. Several neighbors had come outside to see me yank down the fence. Knowing I was about to have a breakdown, I shut off the truck and went inside my house.

  I had to get her out of my system.

  I went into my old bedroom and flopped down on the bed. Plugging my iPod into the dock, I listened to the entire playlist again. Every song on the list ripped my heart out of my chest and stomped it into the ground. I understood why Z named the playlist “songs to cry to.” I wanted to cry, but the tears never came. I was too numb.

  At some point, I fell in to a deep sleep, and when I woke up, it was time for my morning run. I’d slept through the entire night. When I went out the front door, I came face to face with what I’d done the night before. That’s when I dropped to my knees and knew what I had to do.

  This was it.

  I wasn’t doing this to myself anymore.

  I couldn’t fucking take it.

  Nic wanted to set me up with her cousin, and I needed to get over Teagan. I made the decision right then to call Nic after work and set something up.

  Rather than go on my run, I cleaned up the fence mess. While I picked up broken pickets and chunks of fence, the song from the night before kept running through my mind. It was hard to let go of the fence even though I’d originally hated it. It was just another reminder of Teagan. She was gone and now so was the fence. Eventually, I loaded the destroyed wood into the back of the truck so I could take it to work and toss it in the dumpster.

  After I showered and dressed for work, I sat down and picked at my breakfast. While I was washing my plate, I realized I’d forgotten to do something very important last night. For the last month, I had been going to visit Teagan’s grandma on Sunday nights. I never stayed long when I visited her. Just long enough to read her a few poems from her Yeats book.

  She was always happy to see me, but every time she mentioned Peaches, my heart sank. I didn’t know what Teagan told her about us, and I didn’t know what to tell her. She never stopped asking though. All I could tell her was that I loved Teagan. I didn’t know what else to say.

  I arrived early to work to toss the fence before anyone could catch me doing it. Unfortunately, Zoey saw me from the window of her apartment and came down. She didn’t say a word; she just grabbed a spare set of gloves from the truck and helped me. Picket by picket, we tossed the fence into the dumpster until the truck was as empty as my fucking life.

  By lunchtime, I was free to go home because my job for the day was finished. I popped into the office to tell Zoey I was leaving for the rest of the day. When I entered the office, I found my sister sitting at her desk holding a newspaper in her hand. She was close to tears.

  “Z, what’s wrong?” I asked, kneeling at her feet.

  She held the folded up newspaper out to me and let out a shaky breath. I took it from her, and my gaze shifted from my sister to the paper. The page was full of obituaries and death notices.

  My eyes landed on a familiar name in the death notice section and the breath froze in my lungs. The notice didn’t list a date of birth so I couldn’t be sure if it was her or her grandma. Either way, my knees gave way, and I sat on the cold tile floor of the office as I read the notice over and over.

  Teagan Shea Donnelly—died February 28, 2014

  She’s gone.

  I can’t believe she’s gone.

  When I’d come to work on Friday, she’d been awake and alert. She’d had three minor strokes in the last month, but the damage had been minimal. I’d spent every weekday evening with her after work, visiting and devoting every spare second to her, because I knew in my heart, her time was limited.

  She was my rock, and I knew that once she was gone, I could never get her back.

  During my lunch break on the day she’d died, I’d sat next to her bed, using her table. As I’d slowly eaten a salad, I’d read poems to her from her Yeats book. Once I’d finished reading The Two Trees, she’d reached out and put her cool hand on my arm. I’d covered her hand with mine and turned to face her.

  “Peaches,” she’d said as her hand fell from my arm. Then her eyes had gone blank and her breathing had stopped.

  “Nanna?”

  No response.

  “Nanna?” I’d jumped from the chair, sending it flying backward and immediately started CPR. I’d pressed the button on the bed to call for help, but I’d known she was gone. When Rose and one of the doctors had rushed in, they’d found me cradling my sweet Nanna in my arms for the very last time.

  Working in home hospice while living in Denver, I’d had to be the bearer of bad news many times. But this . . . this was excruciating. On autopilot, I’d called my mom.

  “Mama, I’m so sorry,” I’d said, before bursting into tears.

  “Baby, what is it? What’s wrong?” she’d cried.

  “Nanna’s gone, Mama. She’s gone . . . I’m so sorry.”

  Wracking sobs had come over the line as my mom had broken down. My dad must have been close by because he’d come on the line. “Teagan? What’s going on?” he’d asked, as my mom sobbed in the background.

  “Nanna just passed away,” I’d whispered. “Please come here.”

  After hanging up with my dad, I’d broken down. I knew this had been coming, but it didn’t make the pain any less.

  Alone in Nanna’s room waiting for my parents and sister, the one person I had wanted to talk to was Jeremy. My finger had hovered over the call button on my phone, but I hadn’t been able to press it. Since I’d run from him a month ago, we hadn’t spoken.

  Not that I hadn’t wanted to, because I had.

  I do.

  But my family had shown up and we’d spent the rest of Friday saying our goodbyes to Nanna.

  Now I faced Saturday evening and I needed a break after spending the entire day with a swarm of grieving people at my parents’ house. I headed out for a walk around the neighborhood and found myself at Jeremy’s house. He didn’t answer when I knocked at his door, but I couldn’t bear to leave without talking to him so I let myself inside with the key I still had and waited for him.

  I wasn’t trying to be nosy, but I wandered around the house that had been my home. When I walked into Jeremy’s bedroom, I knew just by looking around he’d moved out of it. The mattress was bare and the bedding was folded up and sitting on the bed while the furniture was layered in dust.

  I pulled drawers open on his dresser, finding them all empty. I walked around the bed and pulled the top drawer open on his nightstand, only to find the six boxes of condoms he’d jokingly sent me a picture of, unopened in the drawer.

  Without Jeremy around to witness my humiliation, I sat down on the bed as an experiment. It’s only a bed, Teagan, a piece of furniture that holds no bearing on your relationship with Jeremy. I still got sick to my stomach as the visions came back and I left the room crying.

  Why was I still having such a hard time with this?

  Jeremy had done nothing wrong.

  He’d said he loved her, thinking it was me.

  He loved me, not her.

  Me, me, me.

  Not Cammie.

 
All I wanted was to be with him.

  But how could I do that if I couldn’t even be in our bedroom without running away from the memories of that night?

  Not having an answer to any of my questions, I walked around the rest of the house and found Jeremy had moved into the guest room. But why? Because I’d run away from him? The guilt overwhelmed me and I sat down on the bed. The scent of Jeremy’s shampoo and cologne wafted around me when I sat, so I pulled the bedding back on the bed.

  I noticed the pillowcases were mismatched. One was white, the other black. The white pillowcase was from the sheet set we used to sleep on in the master bedroom. That’s when I realized the bedding folded up on the bed in that bedroom wasn’t right. It wasn’t white. It was a light shade of gray.

  I jumped up and went back to the bedroom to confirm what I already knew. The bedding was different. I’d never seen it before. I went to the closet in the hallway and found all the other sets but the white one. Had he thrown it away?

  Oh my God, he had.

  Except one pillowcase.

  I jogged back to the guest bedroom. The pillow with the white pillowcase was on my side of the bed. Why had he kept it?

  Because he still loves you, idiot. And he can’t let you go. Like you can’t let him go.

  I sank down on the bed, and hugged his pillow against my body. It smelled like him, and I knew instantly why he’d kept mine.

  Memories flooded my brain. Thinking about our time together hurt and I let my mind drift to Nanna. I laid down on the bed and cried. I cried because my life was out of control. I cried because my sweet Nanna was gone and I’d never hear her call me Peaches again. Her last word . . . I’d never curl up on her bed and read to her again.

  I wiped the tears from my face with my right hand and felt the cool metal of my Claddagh ring brush over my cheekbone. I wondered if Jeremy was still wearing his, and hoped he was. Losing Nanna proved to me just how short life was and if the person you loved the most wasn’t in it, it wasn’t worth a damn thing.

  Eventually I heard the garage door open, and Jeremy’s car pull inside. Quickly, I jumped off his bed, ran to the living room, and sat on the couch. When I heard a woman’s voice as he entered the house, my heart sank. He’d brought someone home with him. I was too late, and he’d moved on. I sat as still as possible and hoped they would pass by without seeing me then I could sneak out the front door.

  I realized the woman was Nicole a split second before she saw me. When she informed Jeremy he had a visitor, he looked right at me and said, “She’s not real, Nic. If you blink a couple times and wipe away the blurriness, she’ll go away. She always fucking does.”

  He didn’t believe I was here. That’s when I realized how miserable he was.

  I watched in silence as he turned and left the room.

  Was he seeing Nicole again?

  “Hi, Teagan,” she said politely. “I need to take care of him, but can you stay? I’d like to speak with you before my boyfriend comes to get me.”

  Boyfriend?

  I nodded my head and relaxed, knowing she had a boyfriend. She and Jeremy weren’t together.

  Nicole went into the kitchen and came back out with a glass of water and a bottle of ibuprofen. She gave me a sympathetic smile as she passed and walked down the hallway to the guest bedroom Jeremy had gone into.

  She stepped back into the hallway, shut off the bedroom light, and quietly closed the door behind her. She came and sat next to me on the couch. “How are you?” she asked, keeping her voice low.

  I shook my head. “My grandmother died yesterday.”

  “Oh, Teagan, I’m so sorry.”

  She seemed sincere, but my thoughts were only on the man in the other room, now that I’d seen him.

  “Does he do that all the time?” I asked.

  Nicole followed my glance down the hallway. “Every Saturday night.”

  “Is it because of me?”

  Nicole didn’t respond. She didn’t need to, because I already knew the answer.

  I’d broken him.

  I freaking broke him.

  “Teagan, why are you here?”

  That’s when it dawned on me that I was here for my own selfish reasons. I wasn’t here because I wanted to come home, even though I did. I was here because I was grieving, and needed to lean on him.

  “Teagan?”

  I felt ashamed for being so self-centered I couldn’t answer her.

  “Look, can I be blunt with you?” Nicole asked, her eyes filling with tears.

  I nodded.

  “If you’re not here to stay, you need to let him go. That man in there . . . is not the Jeremy James I’ve known for years. He’s miserable, and I don’t even recognize him anymore. You can’t keep stringing him along.”

  She was right. I had to let him go. I needed time to grieve for my nanna, and it wasn’t fair to make him wait any longer. With all I’d put him through, he needed to be free of me.

  “Thanks for taking care of him, Nicole.”

  Headlights lit up the living room, and Nicole looked out the window. “There’s my boyfriend, so I need to go. Go easy on him, please.” She tipped her chin in the direction of the guest room.

  I nodded, and Nicole left.

  It took me some time to gather my thoughts before I went into Jeremy’s bedroom. When I opened the door, I left it ajar, so the light from the hallway allowed me to see him. He was asleep on his side, so I crawled onto the bed behind him.

  He didn’t stir when I wrapped my arm tightly around him and pressed my cheek to his. The tears started before I spoke a word.

  “Jeremy, wake up.”

  When he mumbled my name and took my hand in his, the words I’d never wanted to say spilled from my mouth.

  “Jeremy, I’m so sorry for everything I’ve put you through these last few months. Don’t ever forget how much I love you. I guess the time wasn’t right for us. I’m sorry for hurting you and pushing you away . . . if I could do things differently, I would. But I can’t change what’s happened. You shouldn’t have to wait for me anymore. It’s not fair to you and I want you to move on—be happy. I’m sorry I let you down, Jeremy. I love you too much to let you continue down your path of self-destruction because of me. So this is goodbye. I love you.”

  His hand jerked away from mine, and he reached up to wipe my tears from his cheek.

  After I eased off the bed, I knelt on the floor in front of him just to see his gorgeous face one last time. I wished I could see those beautiful blue eyes, one last time, too. Suddenly, they opened and he stared at me for a moment before he rubbed his eyes and closed them again. They blinked back open and he rubbed them again. He opened his mouth to speak and I held my breath.

  “Please go away,” he mumbled, blinking rapidly. “Why aren’t you going away this time?”

  Jeremy’s eyes closed again, and they didn’t reopen. He’d fallen back to sleep.

  I rested my palm on his cheek then combed my fingers through his hair one last time. I wanted to kiss him goodbye, but I didn’t deserve to.

  I walked out of his house and didn’t look back, hoping he would remember I had been here and what I’d said to him.

  The days after Nanna passed away, and I had officially let Jeremy go, were the darkest of my life. In less than forty-eight hours, I’d lost the two people I held closest to my heart. But Monday was here, and my mom and I had spent all morning going over arrangements for the funeral. As I was preparing lunch for my family, my cell rang.

  “Oh, thank God,” Jeremy said as soon as I said hello to him. “Teagan, are you okay?”

  “I’m doing alright at the moment.” Tears pricked my eyes for the hundredth time since Friday.

  “I’m so sorry about Nanna, Teagan.”

  He’d never called her Nanna, but her name rolled off his tongue easily as if he’d called her that all his life.

  “Thank you. I appreciate your calling to check on me. How are you?”

  He took in a deep breath
. “Better, now that I’ve heard your voice.”

  “It’s good to hear from you, Jeremy. Did Sonny tell you about Nanna?”

  He let out a sigh. “No, I haven’t talked to him lately. Zoey saw her death notice in the paper and told me. It didn’t list her birthdate—”

  Oh no, he thought it might have been me.

  “Jeremy, I’m so sorry you had to find out like that. I should’ve called to let you know she died.”

  “It’s alright, pretty girl. I’m glad you answered your phone right away . . . so I knew. Do you need me to do anything for you? Do you want to talk?”

  My broken heart ached. I wanted to be with him, and for him to wrap his arms around me and never let me go. But, us being together even to talk wouldn’t help either of us move on.

  “I’m getting by, Jeremy, but thank you.”

  “Do you mind if I come to the service?”

  “Not at all, Nanna loved you. She would want you there. It’s on Thursday at two. I can text you the address of the church if you want.”

  “Yeah, I’d appreciate it. Are you sure I can’t do anything for you?”

  I did need something. My mom wanted someone to sing at the funeral, but I wasn’t finding the time to work out the details before the service.

  “Red, you still there?”

  “I’m here. Jeremy, do you think Zoey, Jess, and Sasha would sing a song at the service?”

  “Let me ask Z, she’s right here, hold on a sec.”

  I heard them talking quietly before Zoey came on the line. “Hi, Teagan, I’m so sorry about your grandma.”

  “Thank you, Zoey.”

  “Jeremy said you wanted us to sing a song. We’d love to help if we can. What’s the song?”

  I took a breath and because of the title of the song, I almost started crying again. “It’s called ‘Do Not Stand at my Grave and Weep.’ There’s a unique version of it on YouTube that we love, but we didn’t think we could find anyone to learn it and sing it on such short notice. We were going to play the song from a CD we found, but it’s just not the same.”

  “Teagan, please don’t worry about it. We won’t let you down, I promise. Text me the link to the video and we’ll get as close to it as possible,” Zoey said, her voice reassuring me.