We're Stuck Halfway

He couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Every time he tried thinking of Selina, imagining how he lay in bed with her a week ago, she would turn to face him and all of a sudden she wasn’t Selina but she was her.

Her eyes weren’t brown, but they were a beautiful grey; her legs weren’t as long as they were. Her hair was silk and her voice was low and raspy and her heartbeat was fluttering and her lips tasted like strawberries and mint and everything was amazing.

But what she always said wasn’t her usual ‘I missed you, Garebear.’ She’d look him in the eyes, stroke his hair back and giggle as she touched his beard, and then she’d suddenly say, with an unexpected iciness, “You played with my heart just like you play with your bass.”

He would then awake from his daydream, pounding his head with his knuckles while kicking his covers off the bed, breathing deeply as he would.

He didn’t play with her heart. She played with his.

And she was continuing to do so.

The thought of that caused a sudden burst of anger to escape from within him as he pounded his pillow. Why was she torturing him like that? He loved her with all his heart, gave her everything she asked for because she was everything he asked for.

But she wrote… she said, and she even cried.

Why?

Nothing made sense to him. He did say those things to her, told her that she broke him and that she didn’t actually love him, but if it were true, why was she crying over him? He always figured that she was over him in a snap, seeing as how she didn’t even bother sending him a sad smile at the drugstore. He watched her as she exited, and the fact that she acted like he didn’t exist made him so mad that he pulled the dental floss from a rack so furiously that it toppled over.

And what was up with the being so heartbroken about trust? He was the one cheated on; she had no right to go and make him look like that bad guy as she did.

Unless – unless she didn’t actually cheat on him.

Garrett groaned into his pillow, shaking his head indignantly. There were pictures. Of course she did.

She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She cheated on him. She che–

He lifted his head from the pillow his face was buried in, eyes scanning the room until it landed on his record player. He swiftly stood up, trudging over and taking Heroes from his collection, setting down the needle on it and listening in as he remembered those restless nights like he was having.

They were never spent by him alone because she was always by his side, playing with his hair or playing with her own, softly singing along as he stroked her arm mindlessly. They could never blast the track as loudly as they had wanted to because everyone in his house was usually asleep even before she got to his place. She was an insomniac, and he cared for her enough to stay up with her.

For some reason, they hardly ever slept on the bed together. They were usually sprawled on his floor, or lying down on one of his mom’s soft mats. He always had an arm around her, and they both always faced the left side, him behind her.

He shook his head as he remembered, fighting back whatever wanted to come out from him. He wasn’t weak. He couldn’t break after fighting it for almost three years.

Instead, he went for practicality, knowing well that he was never getting back together with her. He got up from the floor and gazed at his digital clock, grumbling as he read the time.

2:15 AM

Three hours before, the party ended for him. His friends were surprised at his reaction towards the Moleskine as he was surprisingly calm for the situation he was in. All hell broke loose when he arrived in his house, though, kicking off his shoes at once and running up the stairs, only to be stopped by his older brother midway.

“What have you got there?” Trey asked, nodding at the notebook Garrett had in hand.

With one look at him, Garrett knew that someone from the party had told him what was going on. But before he could think of a proper response, the notebook was snatched out of his hands. “Hey! What was that for?”

Trey ruffled Garrett’s long hair, smirking. “Look, lover boy, you’re high on denial, and I’m not letting you invade your ex-girlfriend’s privacy, so I’m keeping it for the night.”



Garrett groggily descended the stairs the next morning, his stomach grumbling. He wished his mom were home to cook some pancakes for him, but she wasn’t, so he stuck to pouring himself California Sunshine in a bowl filled with Apple Jacks.

He was pouring himself a new bowl when Trey appeared, squeaky clean and smelling like some men’s perfume he usually refused to wear.

“Going out with Mon,” he responded to Garrett’s questioning look. He took a handful of Apple Jacks, setting Holly’s Moleskine down on the dining table. “You do realize that you’re going to have to return it to her, yeah?”

Garrett grunted in response, chewing. He was still cranky due to the lack of sleep he had the night before. He was also pissed at how all his friends were ganging up on him, asking Trey to take the notebook away from him and all that. They all sucked.

“Are you even listening to me?”

He looked up at Trey indifferently. Actually, he hadn’t really thought about getting it back to her. He truly didn’t want anything to do with her any longer, but giving it back to her made sense. Even though it was weird on how he was returning the Moleskine she lost that he gave to her years ago as a gift.

Garrett shoved away his bowl of cereal and made his way to the bathroom, huffing as Trey shouted that he wanted the notebook returned that same day.

For someone with the last name Price, Garrett wasn’t sure she was actually worth it.



The ‘In case of loss, please return to:’ and ‘As a reward:’ blanks printed on all Moleskines were left blank by Holly, but Garrett knew her well enough to tell, even just from the first poem and the handwriting, that she owned it.

He couldn’t bring himself to read the rest of the poems she wrote down for some darned reason he couldn’t explain. Part of him was curious at how she coped with the breakup, but the greater part of him was terrified at finding out how she really did the months after he told her those harsh words.

If he were Holly at that moment, he would’ve slapped himself, telling him to fuck off after retrieving the notebook from his hands. Knowing how alike her attitude was with his didn’t help.

He was so tempted to release gas at the doorstep of her house, so he silently cussed and told himself that it was the worst time on earth to fart. Anyway, he didn’t need to be nervous. Holly could have changed drastically in the years they were apart, so there was nothing to be scared of. Nothing at all.

Without another menacing thought, he pressed on the doorbell, retreating his hand as if it would make a difference to the echoes of dingdong inside the household.

“Jane, dear, who's at the door?”

Garrett raised his eyebrows. He hadn't heard of a Jane Holly knew of, even as a cousin. He shrugged it off and waited patiently, taking deep breaths to calm down his nerves.

“Jesus! Gramma, it's Jesus!”

The comment compelled Garrett to reach for his beard. The tiny voice, the innocent mistake of confusing him with Jesus, and the term Gramma made his mind reel. A little girl was with her grandmother in the Prices’ home?

Garrett had already met Holly’s grandmother, and she most definitely did not like to be called Gramma. The closest to grandmother she was called was abuela. If not, she was called plain Nana Alda. That was her bad-tempered Spanish grandma; her American one was nicer, but he knew that she was confined to living in Seattle, where the main Price Enterprises office was located.

“Amanda Jane, please, remember your manners,” the woman, Jane's gramma, called back. Garrett was starting to calm down because it was evident that Holly no longer lived there, but hearing the name Amanda slightly tensed him up. It was her second name.

The front door creaked open, and a tiny girl about six years old appeared from behind it. Her brown eyes, almost exactly the same shade as Selina's, caught his attention immediately. She had something from his girlfriend and his ex-girlfriend, and it made him feel odd. “Hello. Uh, may I ask why you've come here, Je- Sir? Also your name please,” she sputtered. He tried not to laugh as she almost called him Jesus once again, and squatted down to her height.

“Hi there, my name’s not Jesus.” Garrett chuckled, unable to hold the laugh in any longer. “It's alright, though,” he continued as the little girl turned red, “My name is Garrett, and I'm here looking for someone named Holly. But by the looks of it, I think she's moved away.”

Jane nodded, recovering from her sheepish self a few moments back. “Well, I'm Jane! And that's true. There's no girl named Holly here.”

Garrett sighed internally but kept smiling as he stood up to his full height. He was hoping that his hypothesis on Holly not living there anymore was false; he would have trouble looking for her. “Alright then, thank you, Jane, I'll get going. Sorry if ever I bothered.”

Even before he had the time to turn around, Jane's grandmother appeared next to her, opening the door fully to reveal the main hall of the house he used to enter unannounced. “Wait! What did you say your name was again?”

Garrett repeated his full name and explained that he was looking for a girl named Holly Price.

The woman who was probably in her mid-forties stared at him for a long moment, and then said, “Oh, please come in, I have something to show you. It’s very important.” She left the doorway to enter the living room, throwing an, “I’m Mrs. Fitzpatrick,” over her shoulder.

Once Garrett was seated on a couch, Mrs. Fitzpatrick explained to him how she and his mother, Carol, had actually talked to each other a few times. This didn’t really surprise him, knowing how sociable his mother liked to be in the neighborhood. It was one of the main reasons he met Holly when they were ten, anyway.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick then instructed Jane to share her cookies before offering her untouched coffee to him, leaving to fetch for whatever was important. He refused the cookies politely, but Jane urged him to drink the coffee anyway, saying that it’d go to waste if he didn’t. He couldn’t say no to that.

Garrett turned to look at the little girl after drinking his cup, noticing how she stared at him. He realized it was in a curious way, so it didn’t startle him when the words, “You really look like Jesus,” escaped from her mouth. “Why do you even like your beard?” she questioned. “Doesn't it get in the way of your coffee when you drink it?”

He smiled at her interest in his facial hair. “No, it doesn't. I like wearing it 'cause, well, it uh... It makes me feel manlier, stronger.” He scrunched up his eyebrows involuntarily. It wasn’t really why he kept it, but he said it nevertheless, knowing that she wouldn’t take ‘because I’m hiding behind it’ as a reasonable excuse.

She crossed her arms, her small figure making it adorable. “I don't like manlier boys,” she mumbled.

Her sudden grumpiness alarmed him. “Yeah?”

Jane nodded. “They're scary. And gramma told me to stay away from them because they can't never be trusted,” she replied hastily.

There was a long stretch of silence as Garrett took in the answer of Jane. He wondered why Mrs. Fitzpatrick would tell her granddaughter such a thing.

“Who's Holly?” Jane asked then, giving a turn to the topic. She must’ve liked silence as much as Garrett liked his quest to look for his ex-girlfriend in the state of Arizona.

He opened his mouth to probably answer ‘a friend,’ but stopped himself. Mrs. Fitzpatrick was already at the top of the stairs, carrying a carton box in her hands. “Janey, go to your room first, please. Mister Nickelsen and I have some matters to talk about, alright?” Jane complained, saying she wasn’t finished with eating her oatmeal cookies; Mrs. Fitzpatrick allowed her to eat in her room just as long as she stayed there and kept quiet.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick set the box down on the table in front of the couch Garrett was sitting on. He noticed a small figure move near the top of the stairs. It was obviously Jane, ready to eavesdrop on their conversation. He really didn't mind. “When we bought this house from Price Enterprices,” she informed him, sitting on the adjacent sofa. “Mrs. Price's secretary, Kelly, if I recall properly, apologized since some things the family no longer needed were left behind. And no, she wasn't talking about spare furniture like I thought she was- she was talking about things like that.” She nodded towards the box.

Garrett leaned forward cautiously, carefully pulling the flaps of the box open.

Woah.

He parted his lips in surprise at the contents, his heart playing a funny beat that sounded much like a marching band. It couldn’t have been real. There were a million pictures shoved inside the box recklessly, mixed in with paper and stubs and tickets. He scrambled as he looked through the pictures, his heart continuing to hammer as he realized that all of the pictures had his face on them, Holly herself not appearing in some.

He lifted a Six Flags ticket, dating back to ’06. It was from the first time he and Holly were allowed to separate from Garrett’s parents at the amusement park. There was no way on earth that Holly had actually kept all of those things, from concert tickets to notes passed during trigonometry.

“Do you need a moment?”

He turned his head, remembering where he was and that he had a woman and a little kid watching him intently. He couldn’t break. He shouldn’t break. He must not break.

He shook his head after a while, barely having the breath to ask Mrs. Fitzpatrick where she found the box full of a million memories he shouldn’t even be looking back at.

He pictured her smiling at him shyly as their friends pressured them into kissing for the first time when they were thirteen. He recalled how horrified they were as they heard the click-snap of Holly’s polaroid camera go off, seeing Charlie, Holly’s bestfriend, holding it up with a mischievous smile plastered on her face right after they kissed.

“A room up there, colored orange, now Jane's room,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick replied. Her voice was the only thing to cling onto for reality. “I found it months ago, a piece of paper with your name stuck to it. I contacted your mom as soon as I saw it, and when she opened the box she told me that it’ll get back to you in time.” She paused, putting two fingers to her temple. “I’m more than happy to get this box out of my environment, but if you don’t want it in yours either, I’ll understand.”

As much as Garrett wanted to reply ‘hell yes,’ he couldn’t. He found himself shaking his head instead, his eyes falling on a flier from his first tour with Boys Like Girls. He flipped it over, his heart falling as he read his scrawl explain how much he loved her and how they were going to see each other soon. “I’ll keep the box. Thank you.” He couldn’t help it; he asked her, “How long have you been living here?”

Mrs. Fitzpatrick looked up. “Almost two years.”

The news was heavy on him. That meant that he’d been out of her life for so much longer than she'd been out of his. He started getting over her only when he finally let Selina take over in his life, which wasn’t exactly long ago.

Another silence passed, and Garrett suddenly shot up, remembering what he really wanted to know. “Would you have any idea on where Holly is right now?”

Mrs. Fitzpatrick smiled at him pityingly, shaking her head. “I don't have the slightest idea since it was her mom's secretary who sold me the house, but she did instruct me to write the official check to a girl named Charlie? I'm not so sure, actually. But… you might like to know that Kelly explained to me that Charlie needed the funds because she and Mrs. Price’s daughter were moving in together.”

That lightened up Garrett’s mood, at least. What mattered was that he had a lead to finding her. He flipped the box closed before his emotions dropped yet again. “Thank you. I know her bestfriend, Charlie Smithson.”

“Yes! That’s the girl.” Mrs. Fitzpatrick smiled again, but it wasn’t because she pitied him that time around. “Would you want to talk about it? Keeping everything bottled up inside of you isn’t good.”

Garrett thought twice about answering, and he gave in eventually. “I… two… no, no… it was more than two. Almost three years ago. I was away and things happened.”

Mrs. Fitzpatrick scrutinized him, her greying eyebrows scrunching up. “How long were you together beforehand?”

He wondered why it had anything to do with it, but answered anyway, without having to count, “Seven years.” He eyed the box warily. Seven years wasted. Everything thrown into a box.

She was indignant. “And you let one small mistake disrupt everything you had?”

“Not really, I mean... We both avoided each other anyway,” Garrett defended himself. Her sudden outburst at him scared the butts out of him.

“Remember, Garrett, 'the wounds of love can only be healed by the one who made them.'”

Garrett exited the house with a million thoughts swarming inside his head. He had a whole box of memories in his hands and a notebook he had yet to return. Amidst all those thoughts, however, there was one daily routine he hadn't forgotten.

“Selina?” Garrett asked into receiver as he held the steering wheel with the other hand. He had decided to do something radical, passing by his home on the way to his destination.

“Hey, loser,” she laughed into the line. Garrett smiled. “Please tell me that you’re not using up your minutes on me for pointless chitchat. There are telephones and Skype for that, knucklehead.”

Garrett paused at a stoplight, sighing into the phone. “Please, Sel, I’m not that stupid. I just wanted to call you before I do something I might regret.”

There was an unanticipated tension as Selina shrieked, “Oh my God, I thought you just told me that you weren’t stupid?”

“Hey now, lady, calm down. It doesn’t exactly involve something I don’t like,” he assured her, “though I’m not really sure if you would like it, so you’d have to wait for the surprise to know. Love you, babe. And yes, I’ll stay safe as long as you do. Bye!”

He ended the call even before Selina could get the surprise out of him and put his iPhone on silent, locking it. He parked his car in front of his destination and walked inside the ventilated area happily.

“Is there any free barber around here?”