Chapter 2
You sleep, you dream, you wake, you never forget.
You prefer being asleep now, you have since the day she left. Because at night, you see her. You see her and you can touch her and you can hear her like she’s there, like she’s right there and so are you.
You remember Flora calling it being tucked away. That’s what you are, you’re tucked away with her in a place where you’re safe and you’re happy and she’s real.
And when you sleep and you dream and you can tuck yourself away in the safety of her, you remember what it was like and why all of this, every single goddamn moment of this, was worth taking her hand and walking out of Bly by her side.
You hope she dreams of you too but you fear that she’s faded away into the murky bottom of the lake; that she’s tangled with the brush and her mind has been dulled to remember anything of you. And it’s been seven years and it’s been too long but you can feel her like she’s still there and you can create these pockets of time where she’s with you and you sleep.
Sometimes you would swear you can feel her when you wake. Just a ghost of her touch on your shoulder, but then it’s gone. You run to the tub and to the sink and to the glass of water you leave by your side and you search and you search and you always come up empty.
But you can smell her. She smells like honey and rain and you just feel her. You never see her, you never see her face but-
When you sleep, she’s there. And you never forget.
Dani is doing it again. She’s looking over her shoulder; looking around, through, and over every head of every person that walks in the coffee shop.
“Poppins?” You say. She doesn’t look your way and she just hums in response as her leg keeps tapping up and down, up and down.
“Poppins.” And this time you say it with enough command in your voice that she drags her eyes away from the door and to you. Her eyes are wide and her lips are pressed together tight and you giggle at the concern on her face. “You wanna tell me what’s bothering you, then?”
“-I-I… what is she going to say?”
“Fuck if I know.”
“- Jamie- ”
“Okay sorry.”
You both are silent again as you take a small sip of your tea and watch her over the rim, smiling into the cup. You love watching her, you love riling her up. You love to do it because you know everything is going to be fine and you both are going to be fine and she’s just being so… Dani.
And boy, do you love Dani.
Her leg keeps bouncing and it’s starting to get annoying the way it rocks the booth so you press your palm down on her knee and it stops. She breathes. You always tether her back to the ground.
“Poppins,” and you let the way it rolls off your tongue drag low, right into her ear so she turns to look at you. Her face is close and her breathing is starting to even out and you smile right at her and she smiles back.
“Okay, okay- y-yeah you’re right.” She closes her eyes and shakes her head and she lets out a light chuckle under her breath. “You’re right, it’s going to be fine.”
Just then a woman, a harsh looking woman with a long dress skirt and a suit jacket, walks through the front door and she’s looking every bit of somebody you don’t want on you want telling you no. You feel Dani stiffen next to you and you rub a small circle on the inside of her knee before moving your hand back into your own lap.
“That’s her, that’s-”
“-I know, Poppins.”
“That’s- okay, do you have everything?” She looks frantically around the table to make sure all the folders are in place.
“Nope. Forgot it all back at the flat.” It’s a joke and it’s absolutely the wrong thing to say because she rolls her eyes at you in a way that says ‘don’t’ and then stands to greet the woman who is now at the corner of your table.
“Miss Clayton, I presume?” She holds out her hand and Dani takes it right away and nods her head in a way that you think it might pop off soon if she doesn’t sit down and just breathe.
“Hi. Yes, hello, I mean- I’m Miss, well Dani. Or-or-y- you can call me Danielle, Dani. Whatever works.” Dani is stuttering over herself and Jesus Christ, down girl.
The woman, to her credit, smiles and sits and you give her a nod as if to say hello and please go easy on her. You take another sip of tea and the woman looks over the documents you slide to her in a manila envelope. Dan is shaking again and starting to bite at her nails and you have every urge to swat her hand down but you can’t.
“So Miss Clayton. You’re looking for a small business loan?” And it would be you - this whole flower shop was your idea after all - but she’s the one with a better resume, and a masters, and the credit and well, she’s American, so it just makes sense to do this in her name.
Dani nods and her leg shakes and you’re about to break in to handle this yourself until-
“I think I can help you with that.” Dani breathes, and you smile.
“Jesus Christ, Dani, will you please just let me help you?” You shout at her and it’s starting to get annoying the way she is always trying to place things on her shoulders when all you want is for her to share the weight. Christ, you’ll carry it all.
She storms by you and you pull at your hair in frustration. You count to ten because if you don’t you’re going to follow her and you will fight and you don’t want to fight.
This woman. This bloody woman.
You hear a clash in the bathroom and you have to start counting again.
"Dani.” And you hear another clash. This woman, this bloody woman. This stubborn and beautiful and clumsy-
It’s silent for a few moments and she reappears, her shirt pulled halfway over her head and her shoulders hunched over.
“I need help.” you hear and it’s so faint, so quiet, the smug person in you almost wants to laugh and say no just out of spite but it’s this woman, this bloody fucking woman- “I can’t do it.”
“Baby, come here.” You say instead and she shuffles towards you as you lift the shirt over her head and run her hands over her sharp collar bones and down to her ribs. She shivers and you smirk. “What did we learn?”
“Don’t go skiing drunk.” And you kiss her gently and help her into the shower, broken wrist and all.
She’s drunk. You both are. It’s New Years and it’s your third in the states and there’s champagne and fireworks and her eyes are sparkling and so is the popper in your hand.
She’s twirling down the street and you love watching her smile like this, watching her so blissfully ignorant to the world around you. It’s such a difference from when you met her just a couple years ago when she was on edge and nervous and so very haunted.
She’s laughing about something somebody said to her in the bar and you are only half listening because she’s talking to herself and you can barely make out the words she says.
“Can you believe it? That man. Calling me a housewife.” You shake your head because you have absolutely no idea what or who she’s talking about.
“Positively absurd.” You deadpan and grab her hips so she doesn’t walk into the trash can on the curb.
She laughs like you’ve said the funniest thing and you can’t help but lick your lips at the way her eyes twinkle. You push her forward and you’re almost at the shop, and the flat above the shop, and ready to put her to bed and begin the new year, new decade.
“I could be one, you know. I’d be good at it.” She stops and stares at you, now serious.
“Good at what, Poppins?” You ask and you’re so close and just a few more steps.
“Being a wife. I’d be a great wife.” You smile because her brows are furrowed and you know you won’t get her to move without coaxing her a bit so you brush your finger against the back of her hand that hangs at her side and you tilt your head and lower your voice.
“I’d marry you in an instant if this blasted country would let me.” And you mean it but the law hasn’t caught up to your heart and it breaks a little that you can’t give her that. You put your key in the door and push it open. “Alright here we go then.”
She smiles and she starts skipping up the stairs now and whatever you said worked because not three minutes later she’s ripping your shirt off and you’re ringing in the new year.
You’re 35 when she asks you to marry her.
It wasn’t the first time she brought a dead plant home. Your home was basically an orphanage for any sad looking shrub home Dani found on the side of the road. And each and every time you fell a little more in love with this girl and her heart and how big and open and beating it was.
She was real and she was yours and every day she just got a little more real and a little more yours and you knew she was it.
So you should have known the second you touched that gold band what she was about to ask but still, you couldn’t wrap your mind around this woman, wanting you, forever.
“Here’s the thing. You’re my best friend. And the love of my life. And I don’t know how much time we have left,” You want to jump in and scream no, no, no. We have time. You have time. You have all the time.
“But however much it is, I wanna spend it with you.” And you heart is screaming yes, yes, yes because of course you’d spend every moment with her, in this life and the next. But it’s not time, it won’t ever be time.
“And I know we can’t technically get married, but I also don’t really care. We can wear the rings and we’ll know. Okay? And, that’s enough for me. If it’s enough for you.” And it’s almost silly that you have to agree to this because of course it is. She’s always been, always will be, enough.
You laugh, “I reckon that’s enough for me, yeah.” And this woman, this bloody woman.
You’d marry her now, you’d marry her always.
And when she kisses you, you’re reminded of how you got here. It’s not lost on you that she told you, once, a long time ago, how afraid she was of this very thing. How afraid she was to tether herself to one person, the wrong person, for the rest of her life.
But now you’re crying and it’s happy and she’s crying and you love her and you’re pretty sure that the future is better than you could have imagined.
You’re crying and she’s crying and you don’t understand how you got here.
Everything was fine, it was. It was going so well and you were thinking about making this move permanent and then all of a sudden she says I can’t and you should go back to London and this was a mistake.
You are searching every corner of your mind for what you did wrong and your throat is starting to close up and you aren’t sure you can breathe without her.
“Dani, please talk to me.” She’s packing her bag and for each shirt she puts in, you take it back out and throw it to the ground. You’re starting to panic because you think she’s really serious this time.
“I can’t do this, Jamie. I can’t.” Her tears are flowing now and you can hear the thickness in her mouth as she speaks. You can hear her words break and your heart is shattering.
“Tell me what I did, I can fix it. I can-”
“It’s, it’s not that easy, Jamie-”
"Make it easy! Please!” You are begging her because for every shirt you can’t throw back, she’s getting closer to walking out the door and leaving you standing here in a hotel room off the interstate somewhere in New England with nothing but your heart in your hand.
She’s zipping up her suitcase now and you can feel it coming and you might just do something stupid and-
“It’s you-”
“Jamie.”
“It’s me.”
“Stop it.”
“It’s-”
She’s in your face and her lips are on yours and you can’t breathe so she’s breathing for you and pretty soon you can taste salt and you know you’re crying or she’s crying or you’re both crying and she’s shushing you.
“Don’t,” she whispers into your mouth and your breath is catching in your throat.
“I’ll do it for you.” You say back and it’s desperate and you mean it. You’ll take this burden from her, you will.
“I don’t want that.” She wipes at your tears. “But I can’t put you through this, too.”
And you understand now. You understand why she wants to leave you like this, leave you behind, leave you intact. She thinks it will be easier than if she leaves you like-
“Right, well, why don’t you leave that up to me, hm?” And it takes a few kisses to her neck but she finally nods and you think you’ve won.
“One day at a time, Poppins.” And she kisses you again and this time it’s calm and slow and you think you may have found the key. “One day at a time, remember?”
“Jamie I need you to promise me you’ll leave if this gets too hard.” She’s shaking her head and you grab her face to steady her. “Promise?”
It’s a promise that’s easy to make because you know you’ll never walk away. Nobody is going anywhere.
You promised her.
And you really did mean it when you did. You had absolutely every single intention to follow through but honestly, you over estimated just how much work it would actually be and-
You’re sitting on the couch when you hear her key in the door and you spring up as if that’s going to help you. She pauses before she can even shut it behind her and raises her eyebrow in your direction and you think she already knows that you’ve broken your promise.
You move swiftly and shut the door while backing her into it. You think if you can just distract her long enough with your tongue and your hands and right here on the couch then maybe she won’t go back there and maybe you’ll be able to avoid a fight.
And it’s easy enough at first when you slip your tongue in her mouth and you can hear her start to moan like she does when she’s already ready for you and you know her body and it really wouldn’t be that difficult-
But she pulls away and pushes your chest to lead you back to the bedroom and you can’t let her back there so you grab her hand and pull her back towards you and kiss her hard. But you’re too strong and your kiss too desperate and she knows you so well that you give yourself away because she immediately pulls back and her tone grows heavy and you hear,
“Jamie.”
“Okay, listen,” you start but she’s already walking away from you.
As soon as she opens the door her face isn’t surprised, it’s expected you think. You’re expected.
She waves her arm as if to say see but you act shocked at her reaction as if somehow you didn’t promise her you would have the bed built and somehow she must have imagined the whole thing.
“You see.” She gestures to the unpacked boxes and upright mattress. “You said ‘I’ll get started on the bed, Dani. It’ll be easy’.”
And it’s funny, when she gets mad at you. Because it’s never for long and it’s never for real and you’ve got the perfect answer when you lean in close and push her against the propped up mattress and whisper in her ear,
“I don’t need it horizontal to fuck you on it.”
And when you kiss her neck and press your thigh between her legs, she moans into your ear and you know you’ve won this battle.
“You really don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.” You say to her and you mean it because you know what it’s like to have a family that’s never been all the way there and you’re her family now and you want to protect her from anybody who can’t love her for exactly who she is.
“No-no- I need to do this.” You haven’t seen her this nervous since you arrived back in the states a few months ago. “Now that we have a plan, at least for now, I need to tell her. It’s important that she knows.”
You nod your head and hold her hand as she dials the phone number and it rings three times before she hears a ‘hello?’
“Mom?” Her voice is shaky and you know this is hard for her. Hard for a number of reasons; where to start, where to end, what to say.
She hasn’t spoken to her mom in a few months, as far as you know. You don’t know much about the woman they call Karen, other than she is a conservative Christian with a proclivity for vodka, straight up.
As far as you know, Karen has no idea that Dani has even returned, that she’s even-
“I’m back, Mom.” It’s silent on her end for a moment and she drops your hand to fiddle with the ends of her shirt and tucks the phone into the crook of her neck. “Yeah, just got back. Well, back to the states.”
It wasn’t totally true and it wasn’t totally untrue. You had been in the states for about three months now, driving up and down the east coast, hoping from town to town, hoping to lose her somewhere along the way.
“No, I’m actually not- no, I’m not coming back home.” You grab at her fingers that are beginning to fray the edges of her sweater.
“I just-we just-” You know the we in that sentence probably won’t sit well and you know this is why you’re here, beside her, while she does this.
“Um,” she looks at you and bite the edge of her lip. She’s weighing her options and deciding if she’s going to dive in or wade on the shore. “Jamie.”
You smile at her, you hope it’s reassuring.
“Actually, she is-”
And then, “Mom, I need you to listen-”
And then, “Jamie is my-”
And then, you can see her deciding and you nod because whatever she decides right now, for the both of you, you’ll go with. Whatever she decides is the right choice. You hold her hand and kiss the back and she breathes and then,
“Actually Mom, Jamie is my girlfriend. She’s my- she’s my girlfriend.”
You can’t hear what’s said on the other end but you can’t imagine it’s much. You decide it’s not enough of whatever Dani needs to hear as a tear escapes her eye and you brush it away softly with your lips high up on her cheek.
It’s only a few minutes later but it feels like forever when she puts the phone back on the receiver and leans into your side and cries. You hold her and you let her because you don’t know what was said but you know what wasn’t and you know her mother didn’t beg her to come home and she didn’t ask to see her and she didn’t tell her she loved her before she hung up.
You never had a mother, not really, but you imagine the pain of being rejected by one is even more painful than never having one to begin with.
So you kiss her on the head and you offer to draw her a bath and when she nods and asks you to join her, you have no other answer but yes, yes, yes.
You didn’t notice the water at first, not right away. Which, in hindsight, seems like an extreme oversight on your part.
Which is how you’ve been going through the last few years, if you’re being entirely honest with yourself. You’ve been digging your head in the soot - just like your father - to what’s happening to your wife; slowly, achingly, painfully.
Your wife, your wife who you love and would do anything to keep.
“Well the queue was shite, but I’ve got it. Our union is officially civil. We’ll marry again when we can.” You yell into the flat. “It looks like that’s enough for now.”
It’s always been enough, just you and her. It’s always been enough for you to look into her eyes and know that the person you were meant for is looking right back at you.
“Dani.” And when you don’t get a response, “Dani?”
And you hear it. You know the sound because you’ve heard this before. You’ve heard it when you’ve found her staring into the bottom of the sink after brushing her teeth or into a puddle after a long summer rain. It’s been getting worse lately, more frequent, if you really pay attention.
And you do, you do pay attention. But you don’t want to think about what it means because you know what’s at the end, when you can’t stop the water or you come home too late and you can’t bear the thought. You found Rebecca floating once, and you couldn’t handle finding your wife, your Dani, the same.
You wouldn’t survive, you couldn’t.
You turn off the tap and you shake her back to you. Come back, come back, come back, I’m here. It’s me.
And she does, “do you see her?” she asks you and you answer the only way you know how. The only way you’ve known for the last thirteen years and,
“I only see you.”
You’ve only ever seen her. In a crowded room, in her reflection, in your dreams and in your heart. Her. Only ever her.
She apologizes for the water and it’s the last thing from your mind because you may finally need to come to terms with what’s going on here and you can’t, it’s not time.
“I’m so tired, Jamie.” And you know, sweetheart. You know. “It’s like everyday I feel myself fading away but I’m still here and-”
“Hey,” you pull your arm because no, it’s not time, “You’re still here. You’re here.”
Please, stay here, with me.
“It’s like I see you right in front of me, and I feel you touching me, and every day we’re living our lives and I’m aware of that but it’s like I don’t feel it all the way. I’m not even scared of her anymore. I just stare at her, and it’s getting harder and harder to see me.”
You want to scream, but I see you. I see you. It’s not time.
“Maybe I should just accept that.” No, no, no. It’s not time. “Maybe I should just accept that and go.”
No. You’re not ready. You’re not ready to lose her. It’s not time.
You shake your head and you can feel the tears sting your cheeks, “No. Not yet.”
You’re being selfish and you know it, but you can’t do this without her. You can’t live without her. And you won’t. You can’t. And it’s not time.
“Jamie.” The way she says your name feels like she’s asking for you to release her from this, release her from this wretched curse and move on to where she can rest but you can’t. You’d never be able to let her go.
“Look, it’s fine if you can’t feel anything, then I’ll feel everything for the both of us.” And you know it’s true because you already do. You already feel it so deep. “But no one is going anywhere.”
“You’re still here.” and it’s not time and I’m not ready.
You’d never be ready. How could you? You tried to fight off loving this woman, and then you fought to love this woman, and now you’ll keep fighting whatever is trying to keep you from loving her for the rest of your life too.
“What if I’m here, sitting next to you, but I'm just really her?” And you’re so, so fucking scared because you don’t even believe yourself anymore when you say,
“One day at a time.”
You were 40 when it finally hit you that the love of your life is running out of days.