Accidentally on Purpose

“How are you, Liv?” My best friend Derick’s voice softened enough to make me flinch.

It was the same softness I’ve been hearing for the past year. The one that told me people were walking on eggshells, thinking that I was going to break if they talked to me normally. The one that told me that they were sorry – so, so, so sorry – and that they’d be there when I lost it.

He didn’t mean it that way. I know he didn’t, but with the one year anniversary just days away, he couldn’t help it.

“I-“ I sighed and looked down at the tattoos on my arm, a constant reminder of what I had and lost. I couldn’t tell him that I was fine. He wouldn’t believe it, not like everyone else who took the word at face value because they didn’t want me to be anything but okay.

Fine. I didn’t even know what the word meant anymore. Lost? Alive? Barely living?

Broken?

Because that’s what I was. I was broken, and no amount of casseroles and pitying glances were going to put me back together.

But I couldn’t tell him that. Telling him would make it more real – not that he didn’t already know. Since the day we met, Derick Bassard had known me better than I knew myself. Almost knew me better than –

I gulped and pushed back the tears.

“Liv.”

“I’m – I’m better.” I gave my blank TV a watery smile. “It’s been a year, D.”

There was a tense filled silence before my best friend whispered, “I know.”

I looked around my house, the pictures on the wall making my stomach clench painfully. Happiness that seemed so far away shining from the faces staring back at me.

I flashed back to my conversation with my sister-in-law Nicole, her telling me that I needed distance from the life I had built – the one that had been torn away from me.

“I think I need to get out of this house. It’s too much, being here.”

Derick was silent for a heartbeat. “Move in with me.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “D…”

“Hear me out, Olivia.” I heard him take a deep shakey breath before he continued. “You don’t want to stay there anymore. I know you still don’t sleep in your bedroom, and I’ve talked to Nicole – you’re like a ghost. You put on a brave face for everyone, but you’re stuck. You’re surrounded by his family, and as much as I know you love them, you need to learn to live without them… without him.”

I didn’t say anything, knowing that he was right, but not wanting to say it out loud.

He let out a harsh laugh. “Besides, I can use the help getting situated in Pittsburgh. I’ll buy us a house – Danny will get his own room, and maybe we could get a dog. You can leave whenever you want – whenever you’re ready – but, Liv, I think it’d be good for you. Like it was when you stayed with me in Ottawa.”

I thought about the panicked decision of fleeing Columbus right after the funeral. It had all gotten to be too much – the black, the tears, the sympathy. When Derick offered Danny and I an escape from it all, I hadn’t hesitated in packing our bags, leaving that very night.

It was the best think I could have done. It gave Danny a male figure who wasn’t lost in the grief to talk too. Derick let him be mad, let him cry, and most importantly, let him be happy. He hadn’t known what was really going one, being only three at the time. He just knew that everyone was sad all the time and that his dad wasn’t there anymore.

It was also the only time I was able to truly grieve about what I had lost without worrying about the others around me. I had become a widow in the blink of an eye, and with Derick taking care of Danny, I was finally able to finally be alone – and I wallowed. I screamed, I cried, I sat still for hours at a time, not feeling anything. I smiled at the memories I had, and I let myself be devastated for the years I wouldn’t get to have.

Once I got home again, I was thrown back into being a mom, and a sister, and a daughter – the roles of my life not giving me the space to miss the one I had loved the best – that of being a wife.

I looked back at the tattoos on my arm, lightly tracing his name with my fingertip as the phone rested between my ear and shoulder, the crescent moon making my lips turn up into a small smile as I remembered the same tattoo on the arm I thought I would hold for the rest of my life. Added since then was the name, and two fingerprints – one his, one mine – formed in the shape of a heart.

He always wanted me to be happy. I wasn’t happy in this house anymore.

I brushed my finger across his name again.

“When should we come?”

**Title from the song Accidentally On Purpose by The Shires**