Sunday Mornings

James had finally hit rock bottom. He thought that had been the days after Quinn's death but in reality that had been so, so much easier than right now.

When he had woken up that morning it seemed like for the first time in a long time he felt okay. He got up and went about his day; breakfast, taking the dogs for a walk, running a few errands, he had stopped to have lunch and then came back home but that was where it all seemed to flop for him. With nothing to keep him occupied all afternoon, James found himself faced with the fact that Peyton had been his lifeline all these months. He had been able to forget about himself, his problems and his feelings because she took up so much of his time. The whole reason he had left her in Pittsburgh with Jess and Taya was so that he could work on this, but he wasn't sure he was ready for that.

It was his boredom and desperation to get away from the thoughts swirling around in his head that made him head upstairs and into Peyton's room. He stood in the doorway and looked around for a few moments before he pushed off of the door frame and stepped inside. The first thing that he did was pick up all of the dirty clothes he had gotten into the habit of piling up on the rocking chair next to her crib and actually put them in the little hamper by the door. He then moved onto the folded clean clothes set on the dresser and started putting them back into their proper drawers, and that was when he found them.

Eight envelopes tied together with a blue ribbon.

The front one was addressed to him, in Quinn's handwriting. 'For when you're feeling a little inadequate.'

He took a second to flip through the top right-hand corners of each envelope to find that five of them were addressed to him, and three were addressed to Peyton. James wondered if this was what Quinn had been doing all those nights she holed herself up in her studio space for hours days before they had officially moved her to the hospital. She always seemed to need a little extra affection from him after those nights, now it seemed to make sense to him.

He pulled the top envelope out and set the others down on the dresser, sticking his index finger underneath the start of the seal and ripping the paper apart as he went. He pulled the folded up piece of paper out of the envelope and laughed when he saw what she had written.

'Suck it up.'

And then underneath that in small letters, she wrote 'Please turn this over.'

So he flipped the paper over and read the real letter.

'I do mean it when I tell you to suck it up, but mostly I mean it in the kind of way that I know you'll understand from me. One of these days you're gonna wake up and suddenly realize that you're better at this dad thing than you've always thought, I had been hoping you would have figured that out by now but... obviously if you're reading this letter you haven't. So, for the purpose of trying to get you there, I'm gonna pump your ego up a little bit... just a little because you need your head to fit through doors still.

I know that you know that I've always wanted a family, that I've always wanted a bunch of kids. Babies to be up all hours of the night with, kids to annoy on their first days of school, carting kids to and from every hockey, baseball and dance practice they have in a day. It kills me that I'm not gonna be able to be there to do any of that for Peyton but I know you'll do fine.

Just like the fact that there is no one I would have rather had a family with there isn't a single person on this planet that I trust to leave her with more than you. You are so good at this whole being a parent thing that I think I hate you a little for it because I think you're better at it than I am and that pisses me off.(I'd like to believe you know I'm trying to make you laugh, but if you're too far gone to realize that... laugh damnit) I just need you to understand that there is nothing that I want more than for you to be okay after I'm gone, and it's driving me crazy that I can't control that so I need you to do it for me.

You have no idea how great of a person you are, I know you probably think that without me you've gone back to who you were before and I want you to know that's not possible. Who you were back then is not who you are now, and it's not who you've always been. You're not that arrogant jackass who uses too much hair gel anymore. No, now you're a kind person, with a really big heart, a great unofficial husband, and a really amazing dad... and I need you to believe that because that's the truth, babe.

So take a deep breath, chill out, and realize that you're better at this than you think you are. Also... see you on the other side, just not too soon and please, for the love of God cut your hair before you come. I love you.'

James set the letter down on the dresser and he picked up the stack of them, pulling the ribbon off of them so that he could read what the rest were titled.

The ones with his name on them were all different. 'For a hard day', 'For when you meet someone really special', 'For when Peyton get's her first boyfriend' and 'For someday when you miss me just a little more than usual'

The one's for Peyton were all simple. 'For the boyfriend talk', 'For your high school graduation' and 'For your wedding day- don't make the same mistake that I did'

James didn't have to wonder what that meant. Just days before Quinn had passed she had told him that she regretted not marrying, not because she had changed her mind about her belief of marriage, but because she knew that was something he valued. He did, for the most part, and it took him a while to get used to the idea of not marrying her, but eventually he realized that it didn't actually mean that much to him because the only person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with was her, piece of paper or not.

Her regret had been not being open to talking about it.

He gathered the envelopes and headed down the hall, shoving them into the nightstand drawer with the other one he had found previously. He kept the one that he had already read in his hand as he headed downstairs to the kitchen, and he wrinkled the papers as he held onto it tightly while he grabbed a glass, two ice cubes and that bottle of Scotch Quinn had left him, sticky note still taped to it.

He dropped onto the couch and set the letter down on the coffee table in front of him where he could still see it as he pulled the lid off of the bottle and poured three entire ounces into the glass in his hand. He downed half of it as quickly as he could take it and then he refilled the glass.

That went on for close to an hour, and when the entire bottle was gone James took the letter into the kitchen where he set it down on the counter and he looked around, unsure of what to do.

Every time he read it he got angrier, and angrier until it seemed to swallow him whole until he couldn't stand it anymore. His whole body felt like it was on fire, and vibrating, like if he didn't find something to do with that anger he would explode. He was angry that he was alone, he was angry that Quinn had died, he was angry that he had done what he had to his life and the people in it. He was just plain angry and it seemed like, finally, he was being forced to deal with it only he didn't know how to do that.

So he did the only thing that seemed to make sense. He yanked a cupboard door open and pulled every single plate, big and small from inside it. He set them down on the counter and stared at them for a long time before he picked one up and hurled it at the wall across from him.

Because he was alone.

He reached over and picked up another and this time this one hit the table and shattered.

Because Quinn left him alone.

This time a smaller plate went crashing to the floor and he didn't even care if it broke the tile.

Because he hated his life.

The fourth plate ended up as four and five, two of them hit the decorative post at the end of the counter and clattered to the floor in pieces.

Because he gave up on Peyton.

Another two went flying to the wall.

Because he had given up on himself.

The stack of plates next to him was nearly gone, but there was still enough to get a few more bits of frustration out. So one more went flying somewhere in the direction of the table, he didn't know where all he registered was the sound of the ceramic shattering against whatever it had hit and then directly after that he tossed two more at the wall.

Because he didn't know how to function.

When he turned to find only one plate left he picked it up and held it in his hands, and then he simply let go of it and he watched it hit the floor in front of his feet and shatter.

Because Quinn was dead, she was dead and she wasn't coming back and he had made a mess of his life trying to deal with that.

In all his noise of his plate throwing escapes he hadn't heard the knock on the door, nor had he heard it open, but when Riley walked into the kitchen her eyes took in every little piece of broken ceramic before they looked over at him and when their eyes met James sunk to the floor, head in his hands and for the first time in months he sobbed.

It didn't take her long to sit down next to him and wrap her arms around him tightly as he cried and they sat like that for almost an hour until he was all cried out and he told her, "I can't deal with this anymore."

He let Riley pick him up off of the floor and they made sure to step over all of the glass on their way out of the kitchen. She set him down on the couch and then took the spot next to him and she asked him, "What's going on?"

"You know that meltdown they always talk about that comes after someone dies? Yeah, I think mine just came like eight months too late." James told her, and before Riley could respond his eyes welled up with tears and he said, "I don't know what to do anymore, I don't know how to deal with this because I've spent so long just putting it off and pretending it never happened."

She reached out and grabbed his hand and told him, "I wish I had something that I could tell you that would make this all better for you, but I don't and I'm sorry for that."

He nodded his head slowly and he told her, "I left Peyton in Pittsburgh."

"What?" There was surprise in her voice and for some reason it made the tears flow even faster down his cheeks.

He reached up with the back of his hand and wiped carelessly at his face as he told her, "When we played there and I went out a day early because I wanted to visit with Jess and Taya but... I took her with me and I left her there."

"Do you regret it?" Riley asked him softly, giving his hand a squeeze as he shut his eyes and tried to take a deep breath in.

"No. I mean... I don't know. Now I don't, now I know I made the right choice. I mean, what the fuck can I give to her except for this?" James muttered, shoving his hair out of his face.

Riley let go of his hand to rub his arm gently as she told him, "You need time for yourself, you need to learn to be on your own and how to handle that. There's nothing wrong with that James, absolutely nothing."

"I don't want to feel like this anymore." He desperately wanted to tell Jess not to bring Peyton back next week, part of him wanted to tell her to never bring her back but he knew he didn't really want that. He just didn't know that he would know how to be a parent anymore after all of this.

"Do you know what I would say to you right now if you weren't a fragile mess?" Riley asked him with a small smile on her face.

He looked over at her and let out a mixture of a cry and a laugh as he asked, "Suck it up?"

She chuckled and shrugged, "More or less, yes. You gotta deal with this at some point, it's not helping you at all to do it the way that you've been doing it. You have to just pick yourself up and move forward, I'm not trying to sound insensitive but you do, you need to move on James."

Riley was a little confused when he leaned back against the couch and changed the subject by asking her, "She was always so concerned about adopting and not having our own kids and... did she ever tell you why?"

"No, she didn't." Riley told him quickly, moving so that she was comfortable on the couch but still mostly facing him.

"It was because when the doctor scheduled her for the hysterectomy she called her mom, she was scared of the surgery and I couldn't be much help to her. Quinn didn't even get much more than the surgery information out before Tina was asking her where that left us on the whole family thing and Quinn and I, at that point, hadn't really talked about that but Quinn told her that when the time came we would just adopt and Tina told her that adoption was noble and all but how could she expect to love someone else's child the same way that she could love her own." James told her, staring at his hands in his lap.

"She never told me that." But so much of Quinn's apprehension about celebrating when they had finally chosen someone the first time, and even after they had taken Peyton home made sense to Riley now. Had she known that was what it was about she would have fought Quinn harder about it.

James went on to tell her, his voice shaking and cracking with each little breath he tried to take in, his eyes filled with tears again, "She was so upset Riley that she wanted to cancel the surgery. She was willing to risk her life just because she was afraid that not being able to have her own kid would somehow make her less of a person, less of a woman and I was so angry with her. I wish to God that I hadn't been but I was. I didn't talk to her for a whole week, and then I lied and told her that I didn't even want kids. I made up a bunch of fairly valid excuses; I'm never around, we would never have privacy, I grew up in a big family and don't that, I'm not cut out for it. I convinced her to have the surgery because it wasn't like we were gonna have a family anyway."

Curiously she asked him, "So why did you lie? No judgement, I promise, I'm just curious."

He took in a deep breath, it hitched for just a second in his throat before he let it out and told hr, "Because as afraid as she was about not being able to have a baby someday... I was even more afraid of having to live without her, which, given the circumstances now, it all seemed pretty pointless now."

"So how did Peyton happen then?" Riley asked him with a raised eyebrow. This was all news to her, but she couldn't blame Quinn for not sharing what James had just told her. She knew that Quinn took the second diagnosis and their plan for treatment rough, but Riley hated the idea that she had kept all of these feelings to herself.

"After her surgery, when she was still in the hospital, I felt so guilty for doing that to her. I couldn't believe how selfish that was; to say those things and make her believe that we wouldn't have that kind of future together, knowing that was all she wanted practically her whole life just because I was mad at her. The minute we were left alone after she woke up I kind of just blurted it out that I lied and that I did want a family with her but that I didn't care if the kid was ours or someone else's because as long as she was it's mom that kid was ours no matter what." James explained to her, and Riley couldn't help but smile.

"Was she pissed? I can see her being pissed?"

James nodded his head in agreement because that was something that, typically, would have angered Quinn to the point of no return but he told Riley, "I was expecting her to be so mad at me and I think that's why I told her while we were still in the hospital; so that she couldn't inflict any real injuries on me... but she just smiled and told me that she knew I was lying all along."

"So she knew you were lying but went through with the surgery anyway?" Riley asked him in surprise.

Nodding his head James told Riley, "I guess she overheard me talking to my mom on the phone, mostly venting and trying to understand where her head was at with that decision and she realized that it wasn't just her decision anymore. It was a decision that affected the both of us and that I should get a say because I was right; if she didn't do the surgery there was very little chance of her surviving. Not that it did much, she still died anyway."

He put his head in his hands, elbows on his knees and he squeezed his eyes shut tightly as they flooded with tears again. Riley scooted close to him and she rubbed his back gently as she rested her chin on his shoulder, her other arm slipping through the space between his chest and his own arms to wrap around him like a safety net.

"I miss her. God, I miss her and I hate that because I know that if she could see this; me drunk, breaking all of our dishes and crying about this while Peyton's with her family in Pittsburgh she would be so mad at me." James exclaimed, and he continued before Riley could even think of what to say in response, "I don't want to do this to myself anymore, but I don't know how to be better. I don't know how I'm supposed to live without her. I don't know who the fuck I am without her."