‘Sure, and my fiancée was there too.’ He shakes his head and sits down. ‘No, we decided it was finally time to take the next step.’
I move behind the bench to spot him during the exercise. ‘Oh, so you spent the whole night going at it like rabbits…’
‘A house, Jaden, we’re going to buy a house,’ Ray cuts me off before I can finish my sentence.
The house, Jaden. Sell it, then you’ll feel better, I promise.
There they are again, Mom’s words, and they echo in me for a conspicuously long time. I can almost see the street in front of me, the sidewalk, the gate, the stepping stones.
The door.
‘We went through the online real estate listings. The prices are totally insane,’ Ray chatters on, yanking me out of my thoughts. ‘In South End you can easily drop a couple million on a house.’
How did he end up on South End? Fancy-schmancy isn’t his thing at all. ‘That’s where you want to live?’
He lies down on his back, and I lift the barbell off the rack for him. ‘No, we just stumbled across it and were shocked, that’s all,’ he says as he does the first two reps.
I lean on the barbell rack. ‘Yeah, you’d need to win the lottery for that.’
‘Then we…,’ Ray presses the barbell up with a gasp, ‘…looked in Bedford.’
Bedford. The images come back. The roof, the round windows in the gable, the rusty gutter.
‘But even there….’ He pauses mid-movement, takes several deep breaths, lets the barbell sink back to his chest one more time, but can’t manage to push it up again.
I take the barbell from him and set it back on the stand.
‘…prices have really gone up lately,’ he finishes his sentence, panting.
It’s really cheap. Yes, it needs a lot of work, but I’m telling you, the area is going to boom over the next few years.
Camee. In an instant I’m as tense as Nyla when she gets lost in her worries. At the same time I feel that she wouldn’t let me run away if she were here now. On the contrary, she’d make sure I faced every facet of the pain that’s threatening to spread through me right now. Because unlike me, she has the courage to face painful subjects—and she can still keep breathing while she does it. She survives it, and for a split second I wonder if I could do the same.
‘Do you see it, Jayjay, do you see it?’ She tugs on my hand. ‘What it could become…’
I slip my arm around her, pull her close, and kiss the crown of her head. ‘Yeah, Camee, I see it.’
My chest tightens.
Ray lets his arms dangle beside the weight bench. ‘Do you happen to know anyone who wants to sell their house? A private seller would be great, then at least we’d save the realtor’s fees.’
Mom thinks I should finally get rid of the house, and Ray needs one. I wouldn’t even have to drive out there; I could just give Ray the key so he can look at it on his own. It would be perfect, and yet something in me balks at the idea.
Handing the house over to someone who will fill it with a life it was never meant for feels wrong. Preserving this place—at least in the one way that’s possible for me—is the only one of my promises I’m actually keeping. If I break that one too…
No, I can’t do that.
All at once, in my mind’s eye I see Nyla strolling through the house, eyes shining with excitement.
Where did that come from all of a sudden?
‘Unfortunately, no one comes to mind,’ I say absentmindedly and motion for Ray to clear the bench. ‘I can manage one more set.’
As soon as he’s stood up, I sit down, get into position, and lift the barbell out of the rack.
Pump once. Twice. Three times.
Images of Nyla, the house, and Camee flicker through my mind. Some of them are beautiful, some of them hurt.