What A Kiss Is

Chapter Twenty-one

Twenty-One

I feel strengthened, fortified, after my evening with Amber. My computer hums to life, and I’m determined to get through some emails today. Determined. Dad sits across from me with his cup of coffee and scrambled eggs. He’s working on edits of another of his novels.

I start at the beginning. I open a file for notes from my friends, notes from the Today Show people and NBC, lawyer and accountant stuff goes in another file. I create one from Mom’s manager who’s sent a million.

Now. Where to start?

Mom’s friends. The people who are my friends, who I know are worried about me, who I barely spoke to at services in New York or Arlington. Flashes of both those days hit my chest like machine gun fire—hard, fast and unrelenting. My breath hitches, and I open the first one. It has to be done, right? I’ve built up some good defenses over the past weeks, or however long it’s been. I’m ready. I can handle it. And now I sound like some shrink or something.

The letters blur together one apology after another.

…so sorry about Liv, she was so loved…

… can’t imagine anyone with more life in them…

… if good people never died, your mom would live forever…

… she was the most amazing kind of person…

…she was working hard, Antony. She believed in the things she reported. She loved what she did, but not nearly as much as she loved you. Her biggest fear in sending you to your father’s was that you’d feel deserted there. She wanted you to know him more than anything, and it gave her the chance to do something she knew you’d love, knew you’d be proud of. We all loved your mom. I don’t know anyone who didn’t…

Don’t cry. The stupid generic sentiments don’t hit me, but the last one did. She didn’t desert me. She wanted me to be proud of her. Me of her. How crazy is that? Her smiling face hits me again and again. I can’t make it go away. Can’t push it down. It’s all coming to the surface and shit, there’s nothing I can do to stop it. The pain is searing, ripping at me like it hasn’t since I sat staring at that damn metal coffin. The fucking thing gets her instead of me. Why did this have to happen to her?

Dad’s arms are around me from the side. Am I crying? My body’s convulsing, shaking in the sobs I’ve been holding down. I feel like a baby. A five-year-old. But no five-year-old could feel this. Feel this much. It’s like I’m being torn apart, unable to breathe, unable to speak. My knees come up, as if shrinking myself will shrink the pain. Only it doesn’t shrink it. Instead the more the tears fall and the more I shake, the looser everything inside me becomes and the more it all needs to be poured out.

He doesn’t offer me a drink this time. I’d probably throw it up anyway.

“You’re okay, Antony. Your body needs this.” His voice is quiet.

How can my body need something that’s shredding me this way?

There’s no telling how long Dad and I sit together. But for the first time I get that he really loves me. Loves me as a son. We’re not strangers anymore, we’re different, but not strangers.

I hope that shitty moments keep coming with realizations that preserve my sanity.

- - -

I feel hollowed out. Caved in. Something. Something that makes me only a shell of Antony. I need alone time. I start up the dock, and Amber’s standing behind her boat.