Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 72233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
You didn’t go because you would have been too far away from Price.
Ugh, I hated that I still loved him. I hated that I was fighting off tears because he was so close to me, holding those ugly, floppy flowers in his lap. I hated that I’d been waiting for him to come for me, even while I hid and told myself I was gathering strength to move on. I had no strength. I was an idiot, and always had been.
When we got to the cemetery, I jumped out before he could come around and open my door. I scanned the expanse of lawn and weathered memorials. It was easy to find Simon’s grave. There was no headstone yet, but there were piles of flowers and beribboned reproductions of his work. A couple art school kids hovered nearby, poking through the bouquets and cards. Price’s scowl sent them scurrying back to their car.
Once they left, he turned to me, holding out the tulips. I didn’t take them. I couldn’t take them. I was too preoccupied with the dirt. All the flowers and notes people had left didn’t cover the bare rectangle of turned earth packed down over Simon’s remains. The man who’d pleaded with me at my studio mere days ago was under that dirt now, in the ground, forever. Shit. Don’t cry. Don’t fucking cry.
Price leaned down and put the tulips near the other piles of potted plants and bouquets. I wondered if Simon’s family came here every day to look at them. His parents had moved here from Florida years ago to try to help him. I wondered if they could bear to visit with all that dirt staring them in the face. Why couldn’t I help him? Even before Price’s interference, I couldn’t help. For years and years, I couldn’t help.
For years and years, I’d known it would end this way.
Still, I said, “I can’t believe he’s dead,” like an idiot. It was more that I couldn’t believe he was under that dirt, buried in some box. He was dead, and he wasn’t coming back, and that was why I finally started bawling, because there was I guess this is the end of us and then there was fucking death.
Price came to stand beside me, a pillar to steady me as I wept. “You must be happy,” I said bitterly between sobs. “Your rival is gone.”
“Why does it matter?”
He didn’t say it in a mean way, the way I’d sounded. He said it like he was stating a fact. Yes, why did it matter? Price was out of my life the same way Simon was out of my life, with one big difference. Price wasn’t dead, buried under six feet of dirt in a quiet New Jersey cemetery. The idea of Price and death made me clutch at him like he needed saving, like the earth might open up and take him too.
He brushed away my tears as I clung to his elbows, like I had any power to rescue either one of us.
“Just tell me you understand that this isn’t your fault,” he said gruffly, as more tears replaced the ones he wiped away. “That’s the reason I was so stubborn about all this. About his funeral. I should have let you go to the damn thing, but I...” He made a vicious face, staring down at the flowers, all colors, all kinds. “I was right about not letting you help Simon, because he was beyond saving. He would have turned you inside out again, and he’d already hurt you enough. But I was wrong about the funeral. After all those years, everything you suffered, you earned the right to say goodbye.”
“It’s a little late to realize that now.”
“I know. When it comes to you, I always figure things out too late.”
“What does that mean?”
He shook his head, wisely refusing to talk about us. It was too dangerous at the moment, with him apologizing and me in tears. We looked down at the grave instead, and I realized I really had nothing left to say to Simon Baldwin or the dirt that covered him. I’d said goodbye years ago, whether Price believed me or not. As for my guilt in the saga of Simon’s terrible choices, I’d have to find a way to let that go.
I turned back toward the car, drawing our visit to a close. Goodbye, Simon. Goodbye, Chere’s fucked-up past life. It was time to move on.
Price opened the door and I slid across the seat, mopping at my eyes. They stung from crying, and I had a headache. I used to deal with pain and discomfort all the time at Price’s hands. I loved that kind of pain, but the pain I brought on myself was unbearable.
He climbed in beside me and shut the door. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you want to get something to eat?” He studied me in consternation. “You look like you’ve lost weight.”