The Wondrous Pain of Letting Go

28. How It Ends

Hennessey's POV

It's quiet in the store, not a customer insight, so I take a minute to myself and sit in the back nook. Oli and Jake are stopping by later on their way out of town. Summer came and went in the blink of an eye and it's time for us to say goodbye and go our separate ways for college. We decided that we'd spend the summer together and make the most of it, one last hurrah, and then when we leave we won't keep in touch. We all need a fresh start, away from this town and each other, because there's too much pain between us. I look at the three other mismatched chairs around me, deliberately placed in a circle for talking. I smile at the memory of sitting with my friends, laughing and talking. But that was before, and now I live in the after. The after started on February 24th, 2017. The after is where one chair will forever remain empty.

I think of that day a lot, despite how much I try to forget. I think of Nick and how he looked at me like I was the most important thing in the world and how he squeezed my hand a little extra tight before letting me go for the last time. If I had known it would be the time I would've held tighter. If I had known the importance of that date I would've done a lot of things differently, we all would've. I try not to think of what if's though, it hurts too much.

After we left Nick's house that day we drove around town all night looking for him. We checked all the spots that we had taken him, even the ones I showed him, the ones that Oli and Jake didn't know about, but we eventually had to give up. Our efforts were useless anyway because little did we know, Nick wasn't even in town. He went back to his hometown, to the bridge where his best friend died on the one year anniversary of his death, and then jumped into the mostly frozen river, sliding beneath the ice and letting the current take him. They didn't find his body for a week after the river had melted some more and he surfaced a few towns over. By then we had already figured out what had happened because the letters arrived before he did.

Oli's arrived first. It was an ordinary-looking envelope, addressed to him but with no return address. He opened it without thinking but to this day I don't think he's been able to read the whole thing through. He called me first and together we took the letter to Nick's parents so that they could know what he'd done. His mom cried after reading the first line and left the room. His dad thanked us and followed after his wife, we showed ourselves out. They got a letter the next day as did Jake, who tore it in half and threw it away after reading it. Mine didn't arrive until two days after that, and I had almost given up waiting for one. I got a small package with my letter which is why it took so long.

The letter was pretty simple, some bullshit reasoning for why he did what he did. He thanked me for making him feel again during his last few months, he said he was sorry and that he loved me. Then he said goodbye and that he hoped I never stopped seeing the beautiful things the world had to offer. At that moment I hated him because he was the only beautiful thing I wanted to see in the world and he took that away from me. I still hate him sometimes. Inside the package was a single object: his cellphone. It was dead but I charged it up and turned it on and was immediately greeted with over a hundred missed calls and texts, many of them from myself. I opened the phone to find it had mostly been wiped clean. The apps were gone, the music was deleted and the background was changed to something generic. Aside from the calls and texts, there were only a few things left on the phone.

There was a single photo of us sitting in the cafeteria that Oli or Jake must've taken and sent to him. We were staring into each other's eyes and there was a genuine smile on both our faces. It was perfect. There was also a voice memo that was a few months old. It was the four of us singing badly off-key and laughing. I couldn't remember the day it was recorded but it felt good to hear us happy. The last thing on the phone was a note and all it said was "I love you, Hennessey Jones." I cried until I ran out of tears. My mom found me on the floor and held me for what felt like hours. I finally understood how Nick felt losing Shawn. I felt like I died that day.