Some Days

The day after the funeral – after waking up in John’s arms with his lips pulled into a smile as he slept – I headed downstairs. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to see but the house was tidy. Jenny must have taken care of everything once everyone had gone. I slowly maneuvered through the dining room and into the kitchen, where I was faced with breakfast foods of all sorts. Donuts, toast, fruits, coffee, juice, jams and jellies, and the leftover spills from Regan’s grabby, impatient hands. Then there were little reminders that Payton was still here – her nearly-empty coffee mug and the edges of her toast were left on a plate in the sink. By the quiet nature of the house, I was left to assume Payton had taken Regan to the park to play.

I fixed a cup of coffee for myself and slowly ambled through the house. It was quiet, just like the morning I had found out my mother had been taken to the hospital. Sipping the coffee, I stopped in front of the entertainment center to admire the photos still in place. There weren’t many without me in them. They started when I was a baby and gradually I grew up with the love and support of my parents. But the family pictures stopped the summer after graduation. There were only a few after that time, never of my mom and dad together.

My fingers cautiously wrapped around the frame of one particular picture. It was my mom, beautifully illuminated in the afternoon sunlight. It appeared to be taken a year or so after I left. She looked so beautiful, so healthy.

“So, you’ve finally returned to us.” The voice was bitter, cold. I turned slightly, the coffee still grasped in one hand with the picture frame in the other. “You can’t do this again, Nolan.”

“Do what?” I asked softly. I placed the frame back in its spot, praying he hadn’t noticed which one I had picked up.

“Mentally you weren’t here yesterday. You sat on that couch and stared at nothing. You exploded at Garrett after hours on end of not speaking. Either you stay or you go. You can’t disappear like that anymore.”

“Dad, I-”

“Nolan, I’m telling you right now. Get your shit together or get out. I won’t allow you to hurt this family anymore.”

His words felt like a slap to the face. I stared at him, tears flooding my vision. But I remained silent, stoic. He had more to say and I wasn’t going to feed that fire by responding in the wrong manner.

“You ran away like a coward when you found out about your mother. You left us to wonder if we had done something wrong, if you were okay. As her illness set in, Nolan, she began seeing you everywhere. And it broke my heart because I knew you were never coming back but I couldn’t tell her that. When you swooped back into town, none of us knew what to think of it. But I’ll tell you something, Nolan Greeley. You are selfish. You are conceited. The way you’re acting is not the way my daughter acts.”

My body swayed backwards, as if absorbing the sucker punches he was throwing my way. Tears were freely rolling down my cheeks at this point. Each word stabbed at me like little pins, permanently finding a home within my skin. A small piece of me kept whispering that these words – these jabs and slaps and punches – were all being said out of grief and anguish. He missed his wife. She had been taken from him and because I had willingly left him once before, he was terrified it would happen again. He was saying these things to prepare himself, not because he meant them.

But it still hurt like all hell.

“Dad, I’m sorry,” I whispered, sniffled and used the back of my hand to hopefully dry some tear trails.

“You should be, Nolan!” he shouted. I instinctively set my coffee mug on an empty space in the entertainment center so I would have both hands free. Grief made people do funny things. “You killed her!”

A choked sob escaped my lips, one of my hands reaching up to cover my mouth. My vision was completely blurred by tears now. As he stepped toward me, I stumbled back. He reached out. Except he wasn’t reaching for me; he grabbed the frame I had been looking at and promptly smashed it onto the floor.

“Dad,” I tried through strangled sobs. “Don’t kill the memory of her.”

His eyes flashed to mine. He analyzed my entire being; the clothes I sloppily threw on, my disheveled hair, the radiating and telltale blush on my cheeks, the tears. His eyes hardened as my words settled in his mind. Both of his hands grabbed at objects and smashed them on the floor. When he paused momentarily, I figured he had finished. He backed away slowly, stopping at the other end of the bulky piece of furniture. I tore my eyes from him and accounted for all of the broken memories on the floor. Everything was shattered into unfixable pieces.

And then I heard a creak. My head snapped up. He was grabbing at the edges of the entertainment center and pulling it away, downward toward the rest of the memories on the floor. He was going to break it, and everything else on it.

“Mr. Greeley,” John shouted from the stairway. As it tipped forward, I realized where I was standing: directly in the line of fire. My frightened eyes met John’s. “Nolan, move!”

Scrambling out of the way just in time, I watched as the heavy wood fell on top of broken glass and scattered pictures. My mug smashed and the coffee spilled over everything, as if to make sure those things were completely unsalvageable.

The backs of my knees hit the edge of the couch and I couldn’t stop gasping and choking on sobs. My dad swiftly trekked around the mess on the floor, grabbed his keys from the key hook by the door, and left without another word.

It took a moment to process what had happened but as soon as everything clicked into place, I had no control over the scream that escaped my lips.

I screamed as fresh tears rolled down my face. John embraced me tightly, cradling me against his chest. I smacked him repeatedly; in the chest, on the arms, possibly once or twice across the cheek. I eventually dug my nails into his arms and heaved into his shirt, warm from the adrenaline pumping through his chest. He stood, his feet planted firmly against the floor, and whispered into my hair that it would be okay, he wouldn’t let anything else hurt me.

It took nearly half an hour before I stopped sobbing, dulled down to a steady stream of tears instead. “Do you need anything?” John asked. I nodded into his shirt. He gently held me away from him so he could lovingly dry my cheeks, though his efforts were completely useless. He smiled softly, though, and continued to run his thumbs across my cheeks. “What? What can I get you?”

“K-Kenny. I need Kenny here, t-too,” I stammered.

With a nod, he leaned down to press a gentle kiss to my lips before he fished his phone out of his jeans pocket and dialed our mutual best friend.

***

While we waited for Kennedy to show up, John and I headed back upstairs to shower. He switched into protective John mode and gently stripped the clothes from my body, helped me into the shower, and then quickly joined me. Tears were still rolling down my cheeks and the sniffles kept coming. John would steal little kisses every now and again, in between washing my hair and soaping up my body with a washcloth.

John had just finished washing and rinsing himself off when I felt the absence of tears. He kept his face under the steady stream of warm water, something he used to do to keep himself calm. I had my arms wrapped around my body, covering myself from him although he had his back to me. The sniffles stopped. The sobs and hiccups were gone. The only sound in the room was the water: falling from the faucet, the droplets pooling at our feet, and then being sucked down the drain.

“Nolan?” John questioned, removing his face from the stream of water. He was wiping the excess water from his face, “Are you still in here?”

“Yes,” I whispered. His eyes opened and fell on mine. A small smile spread across his lips.

Below us, the front door swung open in a panic. “Nolan? John? What the hell happened?”

The two of us climbed out of the tub and dried off. John called down to Kennedy that we would be there in a minute. I twisted my hair around my fingers and gathered the knot near the top of my head, securing it there with an elastic and a few pins. After changing into undergarments, I stepped into the closet and found a loose-fitting dress to slip over my head. When I emerged, John had rummaged through my drawers and found some of his old clothes.

His hand was held out, patiently waiting for mine, and once I latched on, he led the way out of my room. I stopped in the doorway. He looked back with a curious tilt to his head.

“I love you,” I whispered.

His smile grew so wide I was sure it had to have hurt. He closed the distance between us, his arms encircled around my waist, and his lips just barely met mine in a sweet kiss. “I love you, too,” he said, lips moving against mine. His words were soft as if we were in a bubble and speaking too loudly would cause it to burst.

Without another word, we found Kennedy downstairs. He was picking through the damage. “What the hell happened?” he asked softly, fear evident in his eyes. “Are you two okay?”

“It was my dad,” I told him as I let go of John’s hand and walked into Kennedy’s embrace. “He just.. He’s consumed by grief, that’s all.”

“Nolan, he nearly killed you,” John argued.

“Not on purpose,” I sighed. “He wasn’t thinking.”

“You screamed for nearly twenty minutes after he left,” John defended. “Maybe it truly is the grief. Maybe he really wasn’t thinking at the time. But he was angry and nearly toppled this thing over on you, Nolan. I heard and saw a lot more than you think I did.”

I pressed further into Kennedy’s embrace. He was rubbing soothing circles on my back. The three of us were silent for a while until finally, Kennedy spoke. “You need to get out of here, Nolan. Whether or not he was overtaken by grief, if he’s capable of doing this in a blind rage, imagine what else could happen. You can’t be here while he deals with his loss. Neither can Regan.”

I looked up at him and then over my shoulder at John, before I buried my face in Kennedy’s shoulder. I focused on his hands on my back for a while. Maybe he was right. Maybe this wasn’t the best place for me right now. My dad had a lot of pent up anger and resentment toward me, as obvious by his actions and earlier words. Maybe it would be best if I left this house.

“Okay,” I agreed. “Okay, you’re right. But I’m not ready to leave Arizona. I’m not ready to go home yet.”

Kennedy nodded, planting his chin on top of my head. “You’re like my sister, Nolan. You and Regan can come stay at my house, alright? For as long as you want.”

“We can help you pack up your things, too,” John offered. “My truck is still outside. We can just- we can just put everything you want in there right now and we can take you to Ken’s and- and..”

Kennedy pressed a gentle kiss to the crown of my head. “And we’ll protect you.”