HAPPY | ✔

JOYCE: 20.0 FREE-FALL

Within the pages of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz, Ari describes love as something heavy, something he always had to carry.

Even in my adolescence I understood his words to mean loving someone was a burden. One to be carried uphill; only, the path is steep and riddled with misfortune. The skys are dark and the air cold, and though the weight rests heavily on your straining shoulders, to set down this load would mean to lose it.

I was the heavy, and it felt as though Daniel's knees had finally buckled beneath the stress.

We were quiet. The air between us stifling with all that remained unsaid and flushed with the heat of all that had been belted out in anger and now regret.

"I'm sorry."

I knew he meant it because his words were so soft, his grip on the steeringwheel so tight. He pressed his forehead into the space between his knuckles and just breathed.

"I'm sorry."

He kept on saying it. Kept on whispering the words into the air until they lost meaning. Until they became as light as pollen in the wind.

Even after, I could still hear the echo of their intentions when I pressed my face into the pillow by my daughter's head. My ears filled with the reverberation of desperate conversations and my finger rested unsaddled by love's burden atop the sheets.

I guess it was naïve of me to believe sleep would come on a night such as this, where the mind was tangled in strings of emotional exertion.

He was right. I thought too much. But it was never something I could control. If I had possessed any restraint over my exhausting rumination, I'd of been in his bed, my face nestled into his neck.

Happy.

Instead, I was on my äss, on the floor, in the corner of the room, staring at twentyfive boxes stacked high. And all I wanted to do was cry.

"Twentyfive pairs for twentyfive years."

It was as though he were right here with me, his presence inescapable, engrossing.

I reached for the IPad on the nightstand and scrolled until I found what I was looking for.

Odette: Did you know Gordon Ramsay trained in France to become a chef?

Danny: Is that so?

Odette: Yup! When I get big I want to see Paris for myself. I have seen loads of pictures and it looks so pretty.

Danny: You want to be just like him don't you?

Odette: Yes, maybe even better someday!

Danny: That's the spirit! Aim higher.

Odette: I know I'll have to work super hard but I'm okay with that. I watch Mom and Grandma and Grandpa work super hard everyday and I'm ready to do the same.

Danny: Hardwork will take you anywhere you want to go. If Paris is your dream, I'll make sure you get there.

Odette: OMG, do you promise?

Danny: On my life.

Odette: I will make you and Mommy and Daddy and Grandma and Grandpa and everyone proud, I swear it!

Danny: I know you will.

I stared at the screen until my eyes lost focus and I was left seeing nothing but a white blur. I didn't know what to do, how to fücking feel. It was as though someone was sitting on my chest, except he/she was both five hundred pounds overweight and a sadist, taking tremendous pleasure in watching me suffocate.