“You’re going to be the death of me,” he says against my neck, his lips brushing my skin.
“Why?” I manage to breathe, my hands splayed against his chest. He smells like the woods.
“Because you’re so much better than I deserve.”
I wake up in wonderment, because hello. I’m so not better than he deserves. My subconscious mind must be on drugs, but regardless of that, my dreams are heaven.
I shower and make my way downstairs for a late breakfast/ early lunch. The pickings are slim in the pantry.
“We’re out of lemons for lemonade,” I tell my dad as we munch on cereal. “We’re also out of sandwich meat, spaghetti sauce, bread, milk… basically anything we can use to make dinner.” He nods, unconcerned and I sigh.
I feel like he’s been slipping. Like he cares less and less about real life issues every day, and more on his grief about mom. He cares about his job, of course. But that’s nothing new. He’s always been a workaholic. In fact, that’s where he was the night mom died. In town, picking up a body.
I force my attention from that, onto anything but that.
“I’ll go to the store today,” I tell him, getting up and stretching. “Do you know where Finn is?”
My father keeps his face buried in his newspaper, but still pulls out his wallet and hands it to me. “No.”
I sigh again. “Ok. Well, if you see him, tell him I’ll be back later.”
I take his wallet and slip out the door, grateful for a chance to be away from his blank expression. I know we all cope in different ways, but Jesus.
The mid-day sun gleams on the wet road as I steer my car down the mountain. The birds are chirping in the trees, and I roll my windows down to let the brisk air in. I take a deep breath, then dance in my seat as a happy song comes on the radio.
Thank you, God, I whisper in my head. Happiness, in any form, is hard to come by these days and I’ll take it where I can get it. Reaching down, I roll the volume dial up, pumping up the music, filling my car so that happiness is all I hear and all I feel.
I only look away from the road for a second.
For one brief moment.
When I look back up, a tiny animal is sitting in the middle of the road. It happens so fast that I only see two green eyes looking at me, and gray fur, and I yank the wheel hard to avoid hitting it.
My car rumbles off the road and I slam on the brakes, my wheels skidding in the dirty gravel on the shoulder.
I skid to a stop, at least a foot from the edge, but still, I’m horrified and frozen. I can’t breathe as I sit still, as I eye the edge and suddenly, it seems very close to me. Like I could’ve plunge
d over the side, just like my mom.
My breath comes in heavy gasps, my heart flutters in my chest as I hear her screaming, as I see the rain from that night, the steam rising from the road, the sound of her shrieking tires in my ear. It all swirls around me like stuttered pictures from a movie, re-living itself in ways I can’t stop. I put my hands over my ears to block out the screaming, and my chest contracts and contracts.
I’m having a heart attack.
But I’m not.
It has to be a panic attack.
I’m panicking.
I can’t breathe.
I throw open the car door and the roar of it is loud. I scramble out, and bend over, trying like hell to breathe, and failing miserably, my hands on my knees, my mouth open, gasping impotently.
“Stand up,” a calm voice says quickly. “If you can’t breathe, stand up.”
I do, arching my back with my hands on my hips, my face turned up to the sun.
One.