Done Adulting Vol. 1 Ch. 132

“You’re quiet today,” Cheryl said.

“I’m always quiet.”

“You were once.”

“I’m glad you came.”

“So, tell me about your life here.”

“Oof. Where to start,” Jamie said as he shook his head.

“How are you getting along with Becky? I know the two of you struggled a bit at first.”

“We got past it. I call her ‘Mom’ now. She calls me ‘Baby Bear’ sometimes.” He blushed, not having meant to say that, but as always with Cheryl he felt compulsively honest and didn’t think she’d judge him for having grown so close to the woman she’d chosen to be his guardian.

“That’s cute.”

“Manda calls me ‘Jamie Bear.’”

“Ever call her ‘Manda Bear’?”

“No, but Mom does sometimes. Still can’t believe I didn’t think of that months ago.”

“You guys make a beautiful family. You even look a little like them, all that blonde hair the three of you have.”

“It’s pretty out here.” Jamie stopped walking and looked around, inhaling deeply of the cold salt air. Snow weighed down the tall grasses growing where the dunes met the beach, and rime covered the sand at the edge where the tide had only recently receded, a thin crust of ice that wouldn’t live long. The water was pale slate reflecting the overcast sky and broken by slow sliding waves gliding over one another on a breezeless day. “I’m sorry we didn’t have a sunny day,” he said.

“C’mon,” Cheryl said, leading him away from the surf and brushing snow away from the sand until she’d made a spot the two could sit on. She shook her head again after they’d sat down, looking from him and back to the ocean.

“You keep doing that,” he laughed.

“I just can’t believe it is all. Are you happy? Do you like it here? With them?”

Jamie closed his eyes before he answered. “I love them so much, Cheryl. You …” He got choked up and shook his own head to clear the emotions. “You did such a good job. They’re perfect for me … We made Manda my official guardian.”

“I know; I saw the paperwork …” Cheryl leaned over and put her head against his shoulder. “I’m so glad to find you like this … I never wanted to tell you – it didn’t seem fair – but I was beside myself for weeks … so afraid you weren’t happy with them.”

He put his arm around her. “I wish you’d have said something. I’m sorry you felt that way.”

“I couldn’t say anything. Like you didn’t have enough to worry about. That wouldn’t have been right.”

“Still. At least I could’ve reassured you.”

“It wasn’t until I got the report from your first home visit that I felt okay again.” The thought of her struggling for that long made Jamie’s chest tighten.

“I shouldn’t … I should’ve written nicer letters … I’m sorry if I … if I made it worse for you,” he apologized.

“O, Jamie, don’t be. That’s what friends are for sometimes.”

“Sometimes … It took me a while to be okay being …” He shook his head again.

“Being what?”

“Someone who takes so much. Everything … All these people, you, everything everyone has done for me … I still don’t know what I did to deserve it, if I deserve it.” Cheryl smiled sadly at him.

“You’re still … I didn’t help you because you deserved it. Everyone deserves it. I helped you because you needed it. That’s why people help other people, or at least that’s why they should. And you don’t take too much, Jamie. You give so much,” she said with eyes pleading for him to understand at last he was never the person he feared he was all those months ago when he sat across from her in her office for the first time. “At least as much as you take, you give. You always have.” Jamie smiled weakly and looked down. “Just look at how much joy you’ve brought to Becky and Amanda. That’s what you give, Jamie. Joy. Nothing they ever do … Nothing I’ll ever do has given me so much joy … as knowing you and helping you.”

“I’m just me; not so special. I’m no saint.”

“I never thought you were. I wouldn’t like you so much if you were.”

Jamie closed his eyes against the tears. “I just … People who come from where I come from, who grow up like I did … I never expected love in my life. I never thought …”

“O, enough. Enough,” Cheryl said gently, putting her arm around him. “What you have now is right. Everything else, everything that happened to you, everything you couldn’t control, all of it – that was all wrong. You got cheated, Jamie. And fooled into believing a lot of things about yourself that are untrue.” They sat quietly for a few minutes.

“Could you do one last thing for me, Jamie?”

“Anything.”

“Put ‘deserve’ behind you. I don’t love you because you deserve it but because …” She swallowed a lump in her throat. “Because you’re … I don’t know how to say my love, I guess.” She tried to smiled softly. “I love you … because you are such a … a bright soul, Jamie, in a place that’s very dark sometimes, and to be with you, even just in my heart these past … hard months … makes me feel like, like the sun is always shining, Jamie. And it’s not about what you do or did, but who you are.”

Jamie took in her words and scratched his head through his knit hat. Cheryl expected one of his rebuttals. Instead, he said, “That … That’s how I feel about you, and them.”

She sighed and closed her eyes, opening them again and hearing the cold waves wash on the near-frozen sand. “That’s all I ever wanted for you. To feel that. To know it.”

“I do.”

“And you’re happy?”

“I …”

“Just say what you feel.”

“I think I am.” A laugh rocked his body. “What does happiness feel like?”

“Like you don’t want the day to end, even though you know tomorrow will be better.”

“Can I ask you something?” It seemed like the right time, though it might have also ruined the moment.

“Anything,” she said, her gentle smile reassuring him they had no secrets.

“When I left, how did you … I think I was in love with you. I’m pretty sure I was.”

“And you want to know if I was in love with you, too?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because ever since you wrote and told me you were coming, I’ve been afraid I was going to break your heart.”

“You’re obviously not afraid of that now.”

“No … should I be?”

“I was in love with you. Kept trying to tell myself I wasn’t. Couldn’t be in love with a client. Couldn’t be in love with someone I just sent through a dimensional portal.” She paused and thought back on all of it. “I was pretty angry with myself for a while, thinking I should have done more to keep you.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I ran through the normal process, but – sorry, this is selfish – I kept thinking I should have delayed it, tried to talk you into therapy, seeing if you would get better and change your mind. Partly because I was afraid you made the wrong choice.”

“You were pretty sure it was the right choice before I left.”

She shrugged. “You were still there. Once you were gone I just started thinking of all the ways things could be going wrong.”

“You picked the right people for me. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, but you know how it is sometimes. You can’t help letting your mind go to the worst-case scenario. And with you, well, I was afraid being here might have taken all of your problems and made them worse. But I think I was torturing myself, because I knew that was unlikely, but I was angry at myself for letting you go, so I just made myself suffer,” she explained.

“Sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

“And now you’re not in love with me,” he said.

“I love you so, so much, Jamie, but not like that anymore. Time. Distance. Life. Once I found out you were okay, and I started being rational again …”

“You started to heal.”

“Yeah.”

“I understand. It took me a while, too, to get past being in love with you. That bear … I’ve never cried so hard in my life when I heard your voice.”

“Sorry.”

“I rather I had cried, though. Leaving someone you care about shouldn’t be easy. And that was the night I got to know Manda.”

“How?”

“She … found me, held me until I stopped, and then she told me why she picked me … And she told me what I meant to her … God, I don’t think that made any sense to me then, but it was,” he searched for the right term, “a life ring. That day … I was drowning; I thought I’d ruined my life. Or at least I was afraid I had. That seemed impossible after she told me how she felt; couldn’t be possible if she felt that way already, loved me already. Scared me; totally confused me; but, well, like I said, a life ring.”

“What’s she really like?”

“What do you mean?”

“I just saw their files and interviewed them.”

“Amanda’s … She’s what you said. She’s my sunshine.” Jamie got teary again. “She saw me for who I am. Mom didn’t. Manda just got it right away, more or less. She stuck up for me. She helped me understand how to live here. She talked me into letting them take care of me. She made me feel … It’s hard to put into words. Like I mattered. Not just that she loved me, but like I mattered.”

“I think they call that a ‘manic pixie dream girl.’”

“Well, she’s not manic, and I don’t think anyone is ever going to accuse her of being a pixie. Unless a pixie can be thirteen feet tall.”

“But she’s your dream girl?”

“I guess so.”

“And your mom? Becky, I mean.”

“Her heart’s always been in the right place. I think I took it a little too personally at first, but she just had her big blinders on. It took her a while to understand what it means for a little to not be regressed.”

“What changed?”

“I think Amanda explained it to her, like three or four times. But mostly getting to know me, I think. Trial and error. Figuring out what made me happy and what didn’t … Truth be told, I was kinda an asshole for the first few months here.”

“That’s hard to believe. You?”

“It’s true. Swear. If I got angry, I just let it fly. I still get angry, but I don’t lose my temper like that, at least not often. Partly because Manda and Mom will do it for me.” He chuckled thinking of the times they, and Manda especially, had gotten their dander up on his behalf.

“Kinda nice having family,” Cheryl said.

Jamie shook his head again and exhaled audibly. “Sorry,” he said, “I just – Saying it alone just doesn’t feel like enough. Thank you for putting me with them. I just … I don’t know how all this would have turned out without them. Or without you. Some other caseworker. You were just the first available before work that week. Roll of the dice.”

“Life’s like that,” Cheryl replied.

“Life is that, I think, mostly random rolls of the dice. Kinda thought I’d lost the game until all of this … But what about you?”

“What about me,” Cheryl asked.

“You. What’s in your life now?”

“My work. Family. Friends. The usual.”

Jamie let out a dry chuckle thinking back on what had constituted his life and routine. “I remember,” he said.

“What fills your days?”

“Well, I got these littles at little care thinking I’m sort of a god because I can read.” Cheryl snorted in laughter. “Are you happy,” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“Guess that’s what I really wanted to know.” Cheryl leaned over and kissed him. He kissed her back.

“I think you might be the best thing I ever do with my life, Jamie.”

“I hope not. I really do. You got too many years ahead of you for that.”

They sat quietly in the cold, leaning against one another until they were ready to walk back.