Losing Her

by Mariah Dietz

  My clothes were back on when your arm moved, sliding along the spot I’d just vacated, making me regret getting up. I remember your skin looking so soft and smooth with the sunlight streaming through the screen. Jameson started rambling about something again, so I carefully leaned forward so I wouldn’t disturb you, and covered your exposed shoulder with the sleeping bag. I paused for a second and then pressed a kiss to your forehead while breathing deep through my nose to smell you. This probably sounds weird, but I love way you smell in the morning. When your body is warm from the blankets and being pressed against me, you smell like heaven. I’d pushed up on my forearms to sit up and caught sight of the curve of your neck as you breathed. I can still see you like that. Measure the way your chest rose, and your eyelashes brushed your cheeks, and how your hair glowed a lighter blond with the sun. I kissed you once more and reluctantly crawled out to find Jameson.

  His hair was ruffled and sticking up, and he looked exhausted and as grouchy as a black bear being woken up in December.

  “Sleep well, sunshine?”

  He scowled at me as he dropped into a lawn chair and released a loud yawn. “Between the goddamn birds and Kendall’s drunk snore, I feel like I barely slept.” He rubbed his eyes a couple of times to wipe the sleep away. “I didn’t realize she had drank so much last night. She’s out like a rock this morning.”

  “Yeah, they got up and decided to party without us last night.”

  “What?” The shock in his voice made me laugh.

  “They got plastered and went skinny-dipping in the lake.” I nodded my head in the direction of the water that looked so peaceful and pristine. Calm, as if she hadn’t seen you two Bosse women frolicking naked in her arms.

  “Are you shitting me?”

  My head shook, trying to hide my grin as I started making coffee.

  “Let me get this straight, you got to see my girlfriend and your girlfriend, naked, for my birthday? You lucky fucker.”

  “How did you not hear the screaming?” Landon asked, rubbing a hand over his tired face.

  Jameson looked from me to Landon. “You saw them too?”

  Landon smirked in confirmation, and Jameson threw his hands up in the air, looking toward the sky. “What the hell? It’s my birthday!”

  The doorbell rings as I’m putting the jelly back in the fridge. I hate myself a little more as my heart races and my breath catches with the same hope that I’ve been holding on to for the last month, since I watched her pull out of her driveway without looking back.

  Muriel faces me as I open the door, looking immaculate as always. You’d never know that her husband unexpectedly passed away only two months ago. When she smiles at me, her neck stretches and her blue eyes drop, exposing holes in her perfect façade.

  “Do you have a moment, Max? I’d like to talk to you.”

  I take a step back, allowing her to enter without saying a word. I haven’t seen Muriel since before Ace left. I have no idea what she wants to say, but I know I can’t take another failed promise.

  She leads us into the living room without looking to see if I’m following, which I am because that small bit of hope that seems to die a little each day, refuses to be smothered.

  Muriel takes a seat on the love seat. She’s perched on the very edge of the cushion, looking like she’s prepared to get up and run at any second.

  My heart hammers in my chest as I watch her face give me the most miniscule of hints as to why in the hell she’s decided to finally come over. Slowly, I sink into the chair across from her, realizing she’s waiting for me to take a seat before she begins. Her and those damn manners … I wonder if they taught her to find a new husband as soon as the first one passes away in all of those cotillion classes she talks about.

  “It’s my fault, Max.” Her voice is softer than I’ve ever heard it and filled with more pain than she exposed through the entire month after David’s death.

  My eyes snap to her face, and I watch as her eyes rove around the room, landing on everything around where I’m sitting, but never on me. Everything in me wants to scream, “what?” and find out exactly what she’s referring to. Her eyes slowly fill with tears, and she swallows, looking almost pained by the simple act.

  “What’s your fault?” I gently coax.

  “She’s so upset with me. She doesn’t understand. I can’t mourn. I tried to make her see, I tried to explain it to her, but I didn’t know how to.” Muriel stops and stares at her fingernails, rubbing each of her nails with her thumbs.

  “I don’t understand,” I say, shaking my head.

  “Ace loves you, but she already thought she’d lost you, or at least thought she was going to lose you. I …” She stops again and glances up to my face and then back to her hands with a look of shame.

  My chest heaves with heavy breaths from the anticipation stirring inside of me. My eyes are stretched wide, waiting to hear more as I work to piece her random admission together. I rub my hands over my head a few times, trying to keep my mind reeled in from where it wants to dive down into my depths of hoping she isn’t really running from me. That this all is just some giant, screwed-up misunderstanding.

  “I told her she would understand why I need Steven once you moved on,” she finishes in a whisper.

  “I wasn’t … what! I wasn’t going anywhere!” I cry incredulously as I stand up from my chair. My arms bend over my head as my fists clench in frustration. “I just needed to sort things out!”

  “I didn’t think you guys would survive. Ace was always running from you, and you followed her. I thought at one point that you’d follow her to the ends of the earth. But after your last big fight, when you never came, I heard her talking to David. She was upset, telling him how she’d attempted to reach out to you, and how you wouldn’t allow her. I think she realized at that time how much effort you had applied. I think the fact that not only were you not coming after her, but were pushing her away, spoke volumes to her.”

  I shake my head angrily. I think she thinks I’m telling her to stop talking, because she does and looks a little caught off guard.

  “He knew. He knew that I couldn’t stop. Even if I had wanted to hate her, I couldn’t. Please tell me he told her that.”

  Muriel’s eyes focus on me for a moment and then look back at her lap as her head shakes ever so slightly. “I don’t know what he said to her, Max. He started speaking to her in French, and although David had tried teaching me French several times over the years, I never picked it up.”

  We both sit in silence as I angrily stew over the fact that the only person Ace would ever fully reveal her hand to is now dead and can’t tell us or help her.

  “I tried to make things right.” Her voice goes higher, turning into a plea. “When she told me she was leaving, I explained to her that you love her … I tried.”

  “You had just told her that I was going to move on!”

  She sniffles and wipes a tear from her eye, one that looks nothing like the tears I’ve seen her shed in the past. This one has her eyes turning a bright, angry red and her hands shaking. “I know,” she whispers.

  “I’ll go,” I resolve.

  Muriel shakes her head. “She’s made herself very clear. She wants time and space. I don’t even know where she lives. She won’t talk to me.” The small holes in her act begin to grow as her face contorts in pain. “I don’t know where my baby is.” Her hands cover her face as ragged breaths fall from her.

  The last thing I want to do is comfort the person that has caused my world to cease to exist as I know it, but I do. I walk to her side and sit a little further back on the cushion next to her, and pull her against me. I watch Muriel Bosse mourn for the loss of her child, and I’m pretty sure the fact that her own world has ceased to exist as well.

  The next day when I face Kendall for the first time since I threw the glass and demanded that she leave, I learn that no one knows where Ace has gone. I propose that we devise a plan to find her, certain with all of us we ca
n figure it out. Caulder has police connections, Kendall and Mindi can badger anyone into eventually giving up information, Kyle’s already prepared to fly over there and start going door to door. Landon and Jameson join in our efforts, along with my mom. Adam also tries to offer assistance, noting that he has multiple friends in the Northeast and could reach out to the different universities in the region. I don’t know if his interest to help begins with the same goal as the rest of us, but he seems genuine with the intent of finding her. We all want to find her. We all need to find her.

  “Delaware is one of the smallest states, someone has to know her!” Kendall quips as she surfs through another unsuccessful internet search, looking for anything tied to her. We’ve been searching for weeks now.

  “We should just go,” Kyle repeats, cracking his neck to relieve tension as Mindi stands to check on the two older girls while Sawyer swings beside their kitchen table we’re gathered around.

  “Maybe we just need to respect her wishes right now. The more we question her, the more she pulls away.” Savannah slides back from the table, folding her arms across her chest.

  “What are you saying?” Kendall’s eyes flare, filled with a fire that looks ready to break free.

  Savannah shakes her head. Her eyes focus on the chandelier hanging over us. “I’m done. I’m not looking for her anymore. It’s been six weeks that we’ve been doing this. When she wants to be found she’ll come to us.”

  “You’re giving up on her?” Kendall shrieks. “Do you think she’d give up on you? You know she wouldn’t. She’d never give up on us.”

  “Kendall she isn’t Ace right now!”

  Kendall’s eyes glaze with tears and her chin trembles, but she purses her lips, fighting the sadness with the fire I’d seen. Jameson intercepts her, pulling her to his chest as she thrashes and shakes her head.

  “She’s right,” Mindi says, returning to the room. She takes a deep breath as she walks to the front of the table. “Ace knows we’re trying to find her, and she’s made it very clear that at this time she doesn’t want us to. I think we should give her some time, see what she does. If she starts pulling away more, then we’ll try again—”

  “What?” Kyle’s eyes narrow and his forehead creases in a look that doesn’t even attempt to hide his anger.

  “No more,” she replies quietly.

  Kyle shakes his head a few times before gathering Sawyer and leaving the room. All I can do is continue to stare at the hallway where he disappeared. I can’t hear the conversations stirring around me or the movements. I don’t know how to move forward.

  “Max …” I feel my jaw clench as Abby’s voice breaks my slumber of blankness. She’s been the most persistent about seeing me. While I was at my mom’s for the summer, she came over nearly every week, though generally my foul mood didn’t have her ever staying long. Jesse accompanied her occasionally, but he was doing summer classes, as well as a new job because he refused to take any money from Abby’s family.

  I know what Abby sees this morning; last night I’d been working to drown my memories with gin—a liquor I had chosen simply because I knew Ace hated it.

  I’d begun throwing shit away, things that reminded me of her, which only led to an onslaught of memories that I’d worked ferociously to tame by drinking directly from the bottle.

  My eyes feel inoperable, as do the rest of my muscles, as I slowly look around. I don’t bother moving, she’s seen me worse, and I wouldn’t give a shit regardless.

  “Let’s go get some breakfast,” she offers, taking a couple of steps closer to me. My eyes close in response. It’s too hard to keep them open right now, and we both know I have no desire to go to breakfast.

  “You can’t do this, Max. You can’t just give up on everything. She wouldn’t want you to be acting like this.”

  My mind churns for a retaliation because she’s thrown her in my face, but my head feels like it’s about to explode. I don’t have the energy to fight her this morning. She realizes this and continues. “You guys love each other. I know things are a mess right now—”

  “Shut up, Abby,” I growl, reaching my limits.

  “I know how you feel, Max. Ace was born my best friend. Prior to all of this, I’ve never gone more than a day without talking to her. I know how your heart physically hurts with her absence and you feel a sense of loneliness, regardless of how many people are around. She’s the best kind of person there is.” Kendall’s familiar voice fills the room at one of the softest volumes I’ve ever heard, which must be why I’m not screaming at her to shut up, because I don’t need to be reminded of what her loss is doing to me; it’s evident to everyone that looks at me.

  “Ace didn’t make you a better person though, Max. You’re still the same person.”

  I thought she understood. This solidifies that she doesn’t have a fucking clue.

  As the comforter falls to the bottom of the stairs in a heap, Landon growls a quiet curse at me before I start throwing more things over the banister. I want to get rid of it all. Some are things Ace had given me, like the watch she gave me for my birthday or the Easter basket she and Lilly made for me that she had always kept stocked and would rummage through after we slept together, claiming that chocolate was her version of a cigarette.

  Other items are my own possessions that just remind me too much of her, like my gray Angels T-shirt; she’d slept in nothing but that shirt countless times. I throw out my pillows and blankets because they all smell of her. I throw out clothes I can recall her commenting on and a book that my mom had given me years ago because I know she read it once. We’d never discussed it, but it was stained. Everything is stained by her.

  I have a ton of pictures of her and the two of us together. Jenny, being a photographer, had made us her focal point on numerous occasions. I try to avoid looking at the prints as I take the frames off the surfaces they cover, and down from the walls, leaving random nails sticking out along the now bare space. I open the bottom drawer of my nightstand then begin peeling the frames open and dropping the pictures in the drawer and the frames in the trash can, watching with satisfaction as they shatter against one another.

  I drop a final lingering photo in the drawer and notice a ticket stub that’s stuck to the side of the drawer. This drawer was hers. She’d filled it with pamphlets and ticket stubs from everywhere we’d gone. It also contains every note she ever left me. I used to love waking up and finding them beside me. Sometimes she would just cover the sheet in x’s and o’s, other times she’d leave me something more suggestive, like: You. Me. Shower. 4:30. Don’t be late! Once in a while she’d leave a message that I was sure she knew drove me wild like: Last night was amazing! You are my sex God! Your tongue is ridiculously talented! Tonight it’s your turn :) She always signed them the same: Love, your Ace. How had I ever believed her? Had she ever really been mine?

  I grab the letter I’d received from David after the will had been read. I’ve read it so many times I don’t need to look at it to know what it says. It didn’t make sense to me then, and it sure as hell doesn’t make any sense to me now. My eyes fall to the image below the letter, and I see a picture of Ace in a maroon dress from Billy and Molly’s wedding last November. Slamming the drawer shut, I go back in search of more gin.

  You would have thought I was telling my mom I had been elected president with her reaction to learning that I’d asked you to Billy’s wedding. She tried to hide her excitement initially by trying to act surprised, but I swear it didn’t last more than a minute. Then she was hugging me and clapping—a similar reaction to the one that I’d received after she’d casually confronted me about you earlier that summer. I could tell from her leading questions that she already knew but wanted to see if I’d confirm that I liked you as much as I did. When I did, she simply gave me a knowing look and then threw her arms around me in a tight hug.

  Later, after the shock had worn off, she approached me again. I could have sworn I was talking to Kyle rather than my mom�
�the one that was supposed to be telling me I’d do great with this whole commitment gig that I’d never really attempted, that I wouldn’t screw things up, because my drive for achieving things and seeing them through will outweigh all of my flaws. Maybe she knew then that I’d fuck things up, because she warned me to take my time and reminded me that you needed support as well as fun.

  Remember the girl that was already seated in our aisle when we boarded? She couldn’t have been much older than twelve, she was tiny. I was so grateful you offered to take the middle seat because even though the flight to Phoenix was pretty quick, she was continuously alternating between flipping through a book on her lap and shuffling through the bag at her feet. Her nerves had me on edge before we even took off.

  I always knew you were smart, but I’ll never forget when you pointed at the shark book the girl had closed for the hundredth time and asked her if she liked sharks. God, there’s something about you, Ace, because that girl looked at you and I could sense her relief. I couldn’t see you, you were turned to face her still, but I’m sure you were smiling because she was smiling a grin that only you can evoke from people. She told us she was a self-proclaimed Shark Week addict.

  “A lot of people are really afraid of sharks. I’m sure you know this, but the chances of getting killed by a shark are really rare. One in 3.7 million or something crazy. That’s more than three times the population of the entire state of Montana.” The girl giggled, but my eyebrows were in my hairline. I had no idea how you knew the statistic on shark attacks, let alone the population of Montana. The girl joined in, talking about how ridiculous it was for people to fear sharks while I still tried to wrap my head around facts you were sharing with her.