One Time, Badly Read online

  "I'm so sorry, Mrs. Maylor. I know that feeling, to be so lost in everything that's happening that you can't even see past it. To be scared that there isn't anything past it.

  When Max and I broke up, it was awful. I felt like my heart had been ripped out of my body and there was just like this painful, gaping hole in my chest that wouldn't ever heal. I couldn't eat or sleep or think straight, I really thought I might die from it. But it was still better than watching him kill himself.

  No matter how bad I was feeling, I knew that I made the right choice because nothing I had done had helped him. And if I couldn't help him, I at least wanted to be able to remember our relationship for the amazing thing that it was. I left before it could get worse and it was selfish, but he was so good to me right at the end that I can never regret doing that for myself, and for the pieces of him that I wanted to always remember."

  "It makes me so happy to hear that. He came home from that trip so lost, he was in his room for days and I was worried that maybe he'd lost control and done something to you. That's part of the reason that I've been so reluctant to call you. But now I need to know, anything that you can share with me is helpful."

  Cecelia nodded, trying to pool together any victorious moments that they'd had, any conversation that had gone the right way. She told Mrs. Maylor anything she could think of, watched as Max's mom absorbed that information, a determined look in her eyes. It was as if Cecelia was sending her on a secret mission, giving her the codes and instructions that would get her through to the end.

  As she looked into his mother's eyes, she so wanted to see Max again. Just for a second. She wanted to look out the rain-streaked café window and see him standing just outside, peering in at her. She would walk across the room and swing open the door, embracing the chill in the air, and wrap her arms around him. She would press her face to his chest and just breathe.

  2018

  September

  That meeting with Elaine Maylor had been the last time she'd ever had a conversation about Max that didn't involve tears over missing him, or cursing him for making it so damn hard for her to find someone new, someone who could compare. Until a few months ago, when Joe reconnected with Max, it had been the last time she knew how he was doing.

  She'd spent a lot of time thinking about Elaine after that, imagining her hovering a hand over Max's face while he slept, waiting to feel his breath hit her palm. She pictured her grabbing his head in her hands, begging him to meet her eyes and come back from wherever it was that had taken such a hold of him. She could see her sitting alone in her cozy living room, devastated and scared, praying for her miracle to come back to her.

  She tried only to think of Max when it was absolutely unavoidable. That meant keeping him out of daydreams and random thoughts. If she came across something that triggered a memory, well there wasn't much she could do about that. But the days of her walking past a store and thinking Max would love that, or hearing a song and wanting to play it for him, those days were gone. She needed to do this favor for herself.

  As she moved along in her life, meeting new people and experiencing new things, she didn't mention Max. About a year ago, she'd gotten into a conversation with a few coworkers turned friends at a happy hour downtown. She'd hopped the 2 train and headed to the Financial District with a few of the girls from the office. They'd been talking about it for weeks, FiDi Friday they were calling it.

  The idea was to put themselves in a position to meet men from a different area in the city. They'd all agreed that the Financial District would be a good place to start. The chances of marrying rich were high there, which was something they'd laughed about since making the plan. Hey, if you had to pick someone to spend your life with you might as well pick someone who could give you a good one.

  Cecelia wasn't quite sold on the whole finance guy thing, they're reputation as a whole wasn't great. Douche was the word that could often be used to describe your average Wall Streeter, that or Finance Bro. Neither seemed to be something that she was looking for, but 'what she was looking for' hadn't made in appearance in nearly two years, so she was willing to mix it up, if only for a night.

  She and the three girls she'd gone with had ended up getting horribly drunk and while she did exchange numbers with someone, she could barely remember what he looked like the next day and couldn't bring herself to answer they 'Hey cutie' text that he'd sent a few days later.

  What she did remember was the conversation they'd had on the train downtown. They'd all had a glass or two of wine at the office as they'd wrapped up their day, something that was a normal occurrence throughout the office to ring in the weekend. Their respective buzzes had them feeling chatty and emotional on their ride downtown, when Lita, one of the girls that worked a few rows away from Cee and had become one of her closest work friends, brought up failed relationships.

  "It just sucks, you know, that we have to go all this way to try and find someone to date us. We're catches, it shouldn't be this much work," Lita may have had more than two glasses of wine, but no one was going to hold it against her.

  "I second that," that comment came from Brynn, she wasn't in Cee's department so she wasn't as close with her as the other girls, but she always enjoyed her company.

  "Third," Cee jumped in.

  "Honestly, I already know what's going to happen," Nora, Cee's best work friend, added. "I'm going to get too drunk to meet anyone and text Liam the second we leave the bar."

  Liam was Nora's ex and she couldn't seem to stop going back to him, not that Cee could blame her. The boy was gorgeous and always made himself available to Nora. Though her friend had told her that the breakup was mutual, she had a feeling that it was more Nora's idea than Liam's.

  "Maybe you should just get back with him, Nor. You clearly still have a thing for him," said Lita, hanging desperately onto the bar in front of her despite the fact that the train was currently stalled.

  "I can't! We broke up for a reason and I don't want to just forget about that because I'm bored or lonely or whatever it may be on a given day. I don't love him and I have to stop pretending that I do," Cecelia gave Nora credit for that. She had said that she just couldn't see herself being with Liam long term and she didn't see a point in wasting any more time with him.

  "Ugh don't even mention the L word or you'll have me calling approximately three men who definitely do not want to be hearing from me tonight," Brynn shuddered. "Sometimes the drinks just hit me wrong and I honestly believe I'm still madly in love with these losers I never should've dated in the first place."

  "Hear, hear!" Nora seemed happy that someone there might be able to dissuade her from sending the Liam text later tonight.

  "What about you, Cecelia? Ever been in love?" Brynn had no idea about Max. Nora was the only one who even knew he existed and, as far as she knew, he was just Cee's college boyfriend, none of the gory details.

  Cecelia took a second before she answered, willing the wine in her system to lay low. She didn't need to be spilling her soul in this dirty subway car. So she simply nodded her head and allowed for a small smile.

  "One time, badly."

  Though her conversation with Elaine stayed with her, Cecelia had allowed it to give her the bit of closure that she'd been searching for since Max sped from her doorway, leaving her standing there with her bags at her feet. He wasn't well, but he was being cared for. Whenever she got stuck on him, or she felt her heart randomly begin to race as she sorted through work emails or sat down to eat dinner, she reminded herself that he was being cared for.

  And though the sadness was mostly gone, it floated around the edges of her - just faintly present. It was in her fingers and toes, not holding her back anymore, but weighing her down just that little bit. She'd accepted that it might always be there.

  She'd tried purging herself of it. Tried everything she could think of to finally let go of all of the ways that her sadness over Max still affected her life, but nothing made it go away. It wasn't until she'd
spent so long not talking about him, that she realized maybe she'd gone about it the wrong way.

  She could do something for herself, something quiet and personal that might finally allow her to find peace with the guilt and the devastation that still kept her from sleep, even three years later.

  Cecelia decided to do the thing she'd avoided doing. She would write it all down. She would change their names and some of their story, but she would finally allow herself to get it all out without fear of judgment or shame.

  It does take time and everybody says that, but no one ever explains why it takes so damn long. Longer than it makes sense for it to take. It’s because you’re bound to him by a million moments that exist in the back of your mind that you aren’t even aware of. You don’t even consciously think of these memories but you can see them and they still give you comfort.

  So, she would give them 80,000 words on Max. And though she was no longer quite the Cecelia that she had been, and Max was fading slowly into a part of her mind that didn't allow for much more than a short visit, she would sign it with her name. And she would call him all that he was. Because trouble, and sadness, and despair are only bad if you make nothing of them. And because we reject them outright, and because those around us work so that we're able to let them go, these dark emotions are more fleeting than joy.

  She would find a way to explain all that he had meant to her and all that she still felt that she was losing. She wouldn't tell her friends that she was still missing the milestones that she and Max would never hit, but she could give those feelings to the girl that she would create.

  Let her miss Max and let Cecelia finally move on from him. Because what are we except a compilation of our memories and how they made us feel. We are a fine-tuned reaction to everything we've ever seen or done or had done to us.

  And maybe this girl could have one more conversation with Max. Maybe she would get to say the things that had made a permanent residence on the tip of her tongue should the chance ever present itself for her to say them. She would take her time and get it right. She would close this chapter of her life by opening a new one.

  Cecelia didn't tell anyone she was considering writing a book, she looked at it as a side project and worked on it sporadically. She didn't give herself a deadline and she allowed herself the time it took to reflect on all of the feelings that she unearthed in the process.

  Was life easier without him? The obvious answer was yes, but it wasn't exactly true. Loneliness can be just as hard, sometimes even more so, as the work it took to be with him.

  For now, just a few months shy of the two-year mark, she was successfully alone. It was more through circumstance than choice that she found herself single nearly two years after her breakup with Max, but she saw no point in pursuing the men that she'd gone on dates with, not when they didn't ignite a spark even close to the one that Max had lit on the night they'd first met.

  Cecelia tried to tell herself that things were different now, that she was different now. She wasn't going to meet a guy and fall into the charm trap that a 20-year-old version of herself was susceptible to. She needed to give it more of a chance. No amount of convincing could get her to warm to them, so she went with her gut. She was confident that she'd find someone eventually, but she couldn't bring herself to force it. It would come when she was ready and she was hoping that the purging she was doing through her writing would do the trick.

  She was not wallowing in her sadness and there was a certain amount of pride to be taken in wanting someone, but never crossing the line into needing to have someone. That was dangerous territory and she was happy to be closed to the option of dating all of the wrong people just to ease the worried voice in the back of her mind that was associating being single with shame.

  She would write of Max's quick smile and wrinkled t-shirts. She would write of his shaking hands and pale face. She would write of her own despair and the sickness that had stayed with her for months. She would explain how it wasn’t until all of the good things in her life started crawling back to her, that she was sure she’d done the right thing.

  The further away she got from the relationship, the more she wondered about him. At the time when everything was happening, she was too focused on how she was feeling and how she would recover that she didn’t consider him. She knew, without a doubt, that she was still on his mind. It would be impossible for him to not think about her.

  But as time passed she wondered more and more what he was doing. She thought less about her own feelings on everything and more about his. The more probable it became that he was in fact not thinking about her, the more she couldn’t help but think about him.

  She thought of her own mind and its tendency to recall him, even after all this time. For a while, she viewed this as an acute weakness; an inability to let go and move on. But now, many changes and a few years later, she appreciated the memory of him.

  It was a nice reminder of how real she could be, of the depth within herself that she was open enough to expose. It took bravery and true selflessness to share what she and Max had. Instead of thinking of it as weakness, it was a reminder of great strength. And it gave her hope that she would be able to do it all again.

  Chapter 21

  2018

  September

  Cecelia let out a sharp curse as her mascara wand slipped sloppily across her eyelid, leaving a trail of dark black liquid behind. She’d dreamt of him again, reigniting a low-grade, half-remembered heart sickness that she thought she’d left behind. And, even watered-down, that kind of pain still hurt like hell. This was all the power Max had left and she was thankful for it, but it was still something she couldn't ignore.

  She could hear Louisiana fumbling around in the kitchen, probably nursing the same hangover that had Cee's tired eyes doing their best to correct the mess she'd made on her face. Today would be Louisiana's last day in their shared apartment before she moved in with Joe.

  They'd decided to spend their last night as roommates toasting to the good times, of which there were apparently five bottles of wine worth. Louisiana had taken a half day at work in order to meet the moving van out front at 2pm. Cee was in for a full day of torture.

  She'd debated taking the day off, but she knew she would just sit around feeling sorry for herself. She was genuinely happy for Louisiana and the step she was taking, but that didn't mean she was ready to say goodbye to the best roommate she'd ever had just yet.

  "Cecelia!" Lou was yelling from the kitchen. Where she'd found the strength to even speak at the moment, Cee had no idea. "Juice!"

  Now that quick throw back had Cecelia scrapping the attempt of makeup altogether. She was bound to cry it off anyway if Lou insisted on walking down memory lane today.

  "Yeah?" Cee walked into the kitchen, noting that she had 25 minutes before she needed to head to the bus.

  "Do you remember the first night in the dorm room? When we tried to play twenty questions to learn more about one another and only made it like three rounds before we were talking like we'd always known each other?"

  "I really don't want to do this Lou," Cecelia remembered the night well. She was so happy to have found a friend so quickly in her new world.

  "I know, I know. I just feel so mushy today. It’s the end of an era," Cee could see the tears pooling in Lou's eyes.

  "Come on, Lou. If you cry I'm going to cry and it took all I had in me today to get this mascara on my lashes."

  "I'm just scared, I think. What if Joe and I make it to round twenty of twenty questions? What if we move in together and realize we can't stand one another?"

  "That's definitely not going to happen. You guys are meant to be; you know that. You spent two years pining after him and trying to forget him with absolutely no success. That should be all the proof you need."

  "I know, you're right. I just feel so weird," Lou shook her head, as if trying to knock the feeling away.

  "It's just a change, you'll adjust in no time. I'm sure Joe is fee
ling the same way, but I know how excited you are about this. He's your fiancé, this is the next step."

  "It's just that I was so surprised when he proposed. I was happy obviously, I love him and I want to be with him, but now everything is changing and I just think I'm still trying to adjust to the fact that I have a wedding to plan and now I'm moving to a whole new place and it's just a lot."

  "It's just nerves! You'll be 20 minutes away, I can come over whenever you want and you can come hang here anytime, too. You're going to love living with him, I know it."

  "And you're going to be okay by yourself?" the tears were back in Lou's eyes as she looked at Cee. "I'm not abandoning you here?"

  "Lou, are you serious?" Cee stood up and reached for Lou, giving her friend a hug as she spoke. "I'm so happy for you. If anything, all of these amazing things that you have going on are just making me excited for what's to come for me too. I promise."

  "I just know that Max is going to be around again. Joe seems to be with him more and more. I'm starting to get nervous that he's going to try and put him in the wedding party."

  "Lou, I'm totally fine. If Max is around, Max is around. It's been almost three years, I've come a long way since I let Max Maylor ruin my day."

  "I know, I just feel like a bad friend. Like I'm leaving you when you're going to need me the most."

  "You're not leaving me! You're moving three towns away. You better believe I'll be on your doorstep the second I need you."

  "Do you promise?"

  "Yes, I promise."

  That weekend, after she'd moved back into a one bedroom that was nearly identical to the place she'd had before Louisiana's promotion, Cee remembered the peace that came with having her own place.

  She played music throughout the apartment as she made breakfast without a care for someone sleeping in the next room. She lit her favorite scented candles, even the ones that had given Lou a headache. She cried a bit without having to worry that Lou would come rushing in to help her.