“I told you, don’t be,” I tell her. “It happened. I’m sure I prepared for it in some way. I think on some level I knew the drugs would take her but I just thought everything would stay the same. When you’re a kid, even when you’re surrounded by death, you still don’t think death will come for you. But it came right to our fucking door. I remember that evening like it was yesterday…” I shake my head, suddenly finding it hard to breathe. It takes a few minutes before I can continue. “I found her. My friend Jimmy eventually found the two of us. I couldn’t leave her. He’s like a fucking father to me, that guy. And before I knew what was happening, I was shipped off to Mission to live with my aunt. A woman who showed me a fraction of the love my mother showed me.”
Silence hangs around us. It’s not uncomfortable, it’s just heavy. Weighted. This silence is the held breath of my mother and it demands our respect. I know we both can feel it.
After a moment I say, “I was happier before my mother died. I guess in some ways I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since, even though I know the last person I ever truly loved had left me.” I suck on my bottom lip, trying to put my feelings in the tiny neat spaces where they belong. “So that’s my truth. The son of a junkie. A boy who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. Who grew up too soon. Who stared death in the face every day and didn’t know it.” I burst out laughing but it’s a sour, bitter laugh. “I can see all those fucking headlines now, every single one of them, reducing my life, my love, into something quick and pithy enough to be devoured by the public.”
Again, the silence. Alyssa lessens it by leaning over and putting her hand on top of mine. I can’t help but meet her eyes, gaze deeply into them, wonder how the hell I got so lucky, wonder how the hell I’d ever let go.
“Your life is your life,” she says to me, each word sounding as if she’s handing them out with care. “No one else’s. Not a single person on this earth is entitled to your life and what you’ve gone through. Even if you’ve never gone through anything. You have every right to protect your heart and soul and family from the things that people don’t understand. And I will stand by you during every single step of the way. Contract or not, I’m here and I’m not judging and I’m not going anywhere. I’m just…yours.”
Mine.
Maybe not forever, maybe not for real, but for now…she’s mine.
I manage to give her a smile. “Thank you,” I tell her. It’s more than she’ll ever know.
Even though I know I promised her that I’d take her to the beach, to the improv, even though I planned on ravishing her bare and naked here on this bed, all of those ideas have floated out the window.
Right now, all I want is to go back to sleep.
With the sun streaming through the window.
With her in my arms.
I lift up the covers, gesturing for her to join me.
I don’t have to say a single word.
She gives me a sweet smile, places the tray on the floor, and then crawls across the bed until she’s settling beside me, pulling up the covers to her chin.
“I just want to sleep for a bit more,” I tell her, stifling a yawn. “And I don’t want to do it without you.”
She smiles again and runs her finger gently over my bare chest before she nestles herself into my arms.
A few moments pass. I hear her breathing growing heavier, the air conditioner kick on.
Then she says, “Emmett?”
“Yes, sunshine?”
A pause. I can tell she’s biting on her lip. “Is this real?”
I close my eyes and hold her tight. “It’s always real,” I tell her.
Then I fall asleep, wishing I could have told her more.
Chapter 15
Emmett
It’s Tuesday evening. After we got back to Vancouver on Sunday night, tired to the bone, we agreed to spend Monday apart to give us both some space and get our heads on straight. After all, I had a bit of a PR disaster to try and deal with and Autumn wasn’t being much help. But Tuesday is often a special night for me–when I’m not working–and I don’t want to let this one go to waste.
That said, I don’t tell Alyssa what I have planned until she’s sliding into the passenger seat of my car. The only thing I said to her earlier was for her to dress down.
Of course, she totally overthought the word “down” just like she overthought “jogging” and “sailing.” She’s literally wearing a long-sleeved baseball t-shirt and overalls.
I don’t think I’ve seen a woman wear overalls in a non-ironic way since I was in high school.
“Alyssa,” I say carefully as I look her over, trying to hide a smile. “When you heard dress down, did you think going to pick corn at my grandpa’s farm?”
She looks down at herself, defensive. “What? This is in. This cost forty fucking dollars at H and M!”
“Well if it’s at H and M, then it’s got to make sense,” I say mockingly.
She crosses her arms in a huff. “Well it would help if I knew where we were going and what we were doing.”
“You’ll find out.”
The truth is, I don’t want to scare her off, not until we’re at least there. I know Alyssa will probably take it all in stride, but still. She also has the tendency to build crazy ideas in her head into full-grown entities. I wanted to take her by surprise.
But Alyssa is smart. And as soon as my car takes a right off of Cambie Street and down Hastings, she knows. No one deliberately comes here. It’s always by accident. And this is no accident.
I pull in to a parking garage and come to a stop and it’s only then that she looks at me with soft eyes. “We’re here, aren’t we?”
I nod. “Yup.”
I get out and open the trunk, taking out the plastic bag full of craft service items I took from yesterday. I know the soup kitchen does a really good job with tasty and nutritious meals, but I also know it never hurts to have extra, especially food that’s portable. And yes, easy to trade, but at least the person then has a choice of whether to choose the drugs over hunger.
Alyssa gives me a slight smile and then grabs my hand, holding it tight.
Shit. I know she’s nervous about all of this, that it’s taking her out of her element. But the fact that she’s here with me, that she’s willing to see where I’ve come from, it means the fucking world.
“Did you know that four people die here each day,” I tell her as we walk down the stairwell of the parking garage. It smells like piss and she’s already wrinkling up her nose. It’s only going to get worse for her going forward. “That one hundred people in BC died from drug overdoses last month? That ‘Welfare Wednesday’ this April resulted in 130 calls for overdoses just on that day alone?”
She shakes her head. “I knew it was bad. But I didn’t think it was that bad. I’m a little ashamed to admit it but when I see this stuff on the news, I just tune it out. It feels so…hopeless.”
“I know what you mean. I keep coming here and trying to help, volunteering, but it’s like yelling into the wind. I wish I could shake them all, show them what happened to my mom, show them who I am and that I’m an example that you can come out of this world and live but…”
“At least you’re doing something. Most people turn a blind eye.”
“And I don’t blame them. Because it’s hard. It’s hard to watch humanity self-destruct. The government has failed them. Our supposedly glorious health care system has waiting lists upon waiting lists for detox centers and rehabs, turning away people who actually want to get clean. There’s no place for these people to go, no way to get help. It’s a circle of death that never ends. Hell. There are even teams of Good Samaritans on the streets right now, finding those who have overdosed and saving them when health care workers can’t.”
I know I shouldn’t sound so morbid about the whole thing but when we exit the garage and out onto the street, the depravity hits us tenfold.
Just like every time, it’s like walking onto the set of a zombie film where the special effects are terrifyingly real. People are scattered everywhere, camped out against the buildings, wandering across the street and nearly getting hit by cars and buses. Some ask for money, some try and sell stolen goods, most just talk to themselves when they’re not talking to each other. Every single soul here in need of help.