The Truths Behind the Life of Maeve Sun Lively

90

ME AND KLARISE BARELY SAW Cameron when he started to completely lose himself. Not because we exactly refused to, but because he was always at one of his parties, never home. He hadn't taken a film in about two years.

Articles everywhere were talking about Cameron's collapse, absurd titles such as "2044, the Year Cameron Li has Gone Wild?" or "Husband of the Year to Party Man!". And despite everything, they were all saying his reason for these parties was because of me, since I didn't offer myself as a good devoted wife and worked nonstop instead. Sometimes when I got a little drunk from the drinks I had, I wanted to yell at their faces that I was the one who made all the money while he spent all of them on wasteful things because he couldn't deal with a breakup. Klarise was maybe the most put together one, and so she tended to me when I got to that kind of a state. And when I calmed down, I would start to cry and wished Mason was here. And that I couldn't help Cameron because I could scarcely begin to help myself.

"Things will get better," she'd say to me each moment when she thought I needed to hear it. And I actually believed her for the first few times. I believed it so hard sometimes I began to think that things were better. But after those first few days, the more she said it, I started to notice as she told me these words, she could never look me in the eye. And I realized she barely believed it herself.

Time passes faster than we realize. Cameron hosted parties everyday, him being in every single one of them, doing what we didn't know for sure but had a good idea of already what they all contained. His parents frequently came to me to ask about him, trying to find him and even weeping while I fetched them tissue boxes one by one. And without saying it out loud and rather indented into what seemed to be kind words, they blamed me for his condition just like everyone else in the world did. I would always wonder, after some thoughts, if Mason was seeing this, wherever he was in the world. Surely he'd come back because of Cameron's state? Surely he'd show up and save all of this disaster?

He never did.

And before we even knew it, a year had passed since he left us.

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Where should I begin?

I don't like this part of where my life began to lead. Before I decided to do this, to tell everything, I thought I wouldn't be able to say this part. But I'm beginning to surprise myself, and I'm starting to learn that maybe it's not that I can't say it since I'm afraid. More like because I haven't accepted these events have happened. I have spent half of my life trying to forget these memories, trying to lie and fool myself that they were dreams, and now I am drawing it up from the deepest of my cache. I would have never imagined myself doing that in a million years. Who am I doing this for? I don't know, myself? Klarise? Mason? Cameron? Izzy? Rosalie? Jackson? I think you can somehow learn a lot from revisiting memories and saying all of them out.

(Deep breath inhaled, a exhale followed)

Okay. I'll start with how one event led to another, the very beginning. Yet also the middle.

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Klarise and my relationship was like day and night. The day representing the goods and lovingness, the night representing the fights, the yells, the arguments. And day would come again after night, where we apologize to each other. Day follows by night, the process goes on and on.

So it wasn't a kind of a big surprise to me when we'd have a huge argument, and the next day she'd come and apologize. It was something we got used to.

We fought about Juno mostly.

"It's just a dinner, jeez, Maeve. Stop making such a big deal out of it." She waved me off that one time, slipping into the dress I had bought for her forty-two birthday, which was just a few days ago. I had had a headache from the small hangover I had the night before and slept till noon. And it was just right after waking up that I found out she was going on a date with Juno. I had thought she was mine, but it felt like she wasn't fully mine. She was—