The Wall of Winnipeg and Me - Mariana Zapata Page 0,199
angry that she’d stayed out so late. Had she cheated on him? How many dicks had she sucked? Why hadn’t she invited him? She told me about how he’d then hit her and kept hitting her before storming out, enough so that she knocked on her neighbor’s door and had him drive her to the hospital. How she filed a police report against him.
I’d spent the next two days at her apartment so she wouldn’t be alone, listening to her tell me how wrong things had gone. How embarrassed she was. How stupid she felt.
I couldn’t remember much after that. I felt like I was in a dream. The guilt I felt for not making her tell me something was going on was suffocating, debilitating. Why hadn’t I said more? Done more? This was my best friend. I knew better. Hadn’t I lived with the lies of what was secretly going on at home for half my life?
Her black eye, busted lip and the bruises I saw all over her wrists and neck when I sat in the bathroom with her while she showered were seared into my eyelids. I wasn’t surprised at all when, on the second day, she said she wanted to go stay with her parents in San Antonio for a while. She wasn’t sure how long, she just knew she wanted to go be with them. I helped her pack two suitcases.
I knew Aiden’s friends were gone by the time the taxi dropped me off at home; there weren’t any cars other than mine in the driveway or street. Aiden had been in the nook when I first came inside. He’d walked up to me and hugged me without a word, letting me bury myself into that great big chest.
I’d been helpless countless times in my life—too many times really—and once more, as an adult, was nearly too much to bear. Because there was nothing you could do when someone you care about had something like that happen.
And the anger and the regrets ate you up.
In the days that followed, I couldn’t shake off the guilt or the disappointment in myself for not doing something or making Rodrigo, Diana’s brother, confront her. When I went to Aiden’s bed that night, and every night afterward because being with him made me feel better, he welcomed me without a word or expression of complaint. I didn’t feel like talking, and I’d gone to the only person in the world who would understand better than anyone what had happened to someone I loved.
Then the day came that he was set to leave for Colorado. He’d stood in front of me in his room, given me a hug, kissed my cheek, kissed my mouth gently, slipped something over my head and he left.
My friend was gone. My puppy with him.
I couldn’t remember ever feeling so alone.
It wasn’t until he was out of the house that I looked down and saw what he had left me with. His medallion. The St. Luke’s medallion his grandfather had given him. It made me cry.
Zac, who I didn’t think knew how to handle the mood I was wrapped in, didn’t do much more than make sure I ate, and checked on me from time to time.
But nothing changed the biggest truth resting on my soul in the aftermath of Diana leaving: I missed the hell out of the big guy. Missed the shit out of him.
Good things in life were precious, and I’d been too much of a coward to do anything about the gift I’d been given, and it seemed like I was reminded of it every day.
From the moment he’d landed in Durango, Aiden had begun texting me. First with:
Made it.
Then he’d attached a picture of Leo sitting on the floor of the rental car he had for the next two months. Then a picture of him running through the snow at the house in Colorado.
A week passed in the blink of an eye. He sent me at least four text messages a day. Two of which were always of Leo, and the other two were usually something random.
Took your entire Dragonballs collection in case you’re wondering where it is, he’d let me know. I hadn’t even noticed the DVDs were missing.
Leo ate the toe of my runner while I was showering.
How’s your knee?
He sent me bits and pieces every day that tugged at me, only making me miss him more through the haze of sorrow surrounding my thoughts and heart.