Chapter 38 What October Was Really About

Chapter 38 What October Was Really About


Chase texted me on Friday morning.

Chase: I'm going to see my dad today. After my last lecture.

I read it twice before I replied.

Me: okay. do you want me to come with you.

Chase: no. this one I need to do alone.

Me: okay. I'll be here when you're done.

Chase: I know.

I put my phone down and sat with that for a moment. The specific feeling of watching someone you love walk toward something difficult and not being able to do anything except stay close enough that they know where to come back to.

That was its own kind of hard.

\---

He went at five.

I knew because he texted me when he was leaving campus and I tracked the time the way I had tracked time outside conduct offices and scholarship meetings — not counting, just aware.

I was in my room with a book I was not reading when Priya came over uninvited which meant she had been tracking the time too.

She sat on my bed and we watched a film we had both already seen and neither of us mentioned Chase and the film finished and we started another one and at eight forty-one my phone buzzed.

Chase: can I come to yours.

Me: yes. I'm here.

I looked at Priya. She was already picking up her bag.

"Call me later," she said.

"I will."

She squeezed my shoulder once on the way out.

\---

He knocked at nine-oh-four.

I opened the door and looked at his face and understood immediately that whatever had happened at his dad's apartment had taken something out of him that he had not been prepared to give.

He looked exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with the hour.

"Come in," I said.

He came in. Sat on the sofa in the living room — not the edge the way he sat when something was running — just sat, back against the cushions, head slightly back, eyes at the ceiling.

I sat beside him and waited.

The living room was quiet. My mom was already in bed, early shift tomorrow. The lamp in the corner was on and everything else was dark.

"He has a whole life," Chase said eventually. To the ceiling. "I knew that. I knew he had moved on and had the apartment and the girlfriend. I had seen him at the restaurant that night." He paused. "But seeing it is different. Walking into it is different. There are photos on his fridge. Not of us — of her family. Of places they have been together." He stopped. "Our school photos used to be on the fridge at home. The ones mom put up every year. And I walked into his apartment and there was just — none of us. Anywhere."

I did not say anything.

"I told him that," Chase said. "I said it out loud. I said you have no photos of us anywhere and he looked at the wall and he said I know. He didn't even try to explain it."

"What did he say," I said quietly.

Chase was quiet for a long moment.

"He said he left because he was sick," he said.

I turned to look at him.

"Not physically," Chase said. "He said he had been struggling for a long time. With his mental health. That he had been in a bad place for almost two years before he left and that he had been hiding it from everyone including mom and that by October he felt like he was drowning and the only thing he could think to do was remove himself before he hurt everyone more than he already had." He exhaled slowly. "He said he handled it completely wrong. He knows that. He said leaving the way he did — no conversation, no explanation, just gone — was the worst decision he has ever made and he has been in therapy since November trying to understand how he let himself get to that point."

The living room was very quiet.

I sat with everything he had just said.

"Did you know," I said carefully. "Before October. Did you see it."

"I saw something," Chase said. "I didn't know what it was. I thought it was work stress. He was quieter. He was home less. But I was eighteen and I had my own things and I didn't—" He stopped. "I didn't ask. I never asked him if he was okay."

"Chase. That is not your responsibility."

"I know." He said it quickly. Like he had already had that argument with himself and had not fully won it. "I know it wasn't my job to fix it. But I keep thinking — if I had just asked. If I had just said hey, are you actually okay—"

"He was an adult man," I said. "A father. The asking goes the other way."

Chase looked at the ceiling.

"He cried," he said. "Sitting across from me in his apartment with his girlfriend's things on the shelves and his new life all around him. He just — cried. And said he was sorry and that he knew sorry wasn't enough and that he had been trying to find the right time to explain but there was no right time for something like this." He paused. "And I sat there and I thought about Micah waiting by the door for two weeks after his birthday. And I thought about my mom working doubles. And I thought about every morning I woke up before everyone else and went running because I didn't know what else to do with everything I was carrying." His voice was getting unsteady at the edges. "And I didn't know whether to be angry or sad or relieved that there was actually a reason. That it wasn't just — that he didn't just stop caring about us."

"He didn't stop caring about you," I said.

"I know that now." Chase's jaw worked. "That almost makes it harder. If he had just stopped caring I could be angry and be done with it. But he was drowning and he didn't tell anyone and he made the worst possible choice and he has been living with that for a year." He pressed his lips together. "And I don't know what to do with that."

I turned toward him on the sofa.

"You don't have to do anything with it tonight," I said. "You don't have to decide how you feel or what it means or whether you forgive him. None of that has to happen right now."

He looked at me.

His eyes were doing something he was trying to hold back and not managing.

"I'm so tired," he said. His voice cracked on the last word. Just slightly. Just enough.

"I know," I said.

"I've been tired for a year and I just kept going because stopping felt like everything would fall apart and Micah needed me and mom needed me and the team needed me and I just—" He stopped. His hands came up and covered his face and his shoulders dropped forward and he just — stopped holding it.

For the first time since October.

For the first time in front of anyone.

I moved closer and put my arms around him and he leaned into it the way he had only done once before in a hallway after his dad's late birthday gift and this time it was deeper than that. This time it was the whole thing — a year of running before everyone woke up, of doing voices for bedtime stories through clenched teeth, of turning up to practice when everything inside was falling, of being the person who held it together because nobody else could.

All of it, finally, with somewhere to go.

I held on and said nothing because there was nothing to say that would be better than just staying and so I stayed.

His breathing eventually slowed.

The lamp in the corner held its small circle of light.

Outside the apartment the city went about its Friday night entirely indifferent.

When he finally pulled back his face was raw in the way faces were after something real had moved through them. He wiped it with the back of his hand and looked at me with an expression I had never seen on him before — not the open unguarded one, not the full smile, not the controlled version. Something new. Something that only existed on the other side of letting go.

"Sorry," he said.

"Don't," I said.

"I don't usually—"

"Chase." I held his gaze. "Don't apologize for that. Ever."

He looked at me.

"You have been holding things together for a year," I said. "For everyone. You were allowed to put it down. You were allowed to do that in front of me."

He was quiet for a moment.

"Did it scare you," he said. "Seeing me like that."

"No," I said. Without hesitation.

"Why not."

I thought about it honestly.

"Because I've been waiting for you to put it down since the first night I walked into your house," I said. "Because every time I saw you running before anyone woke up or coming home from practice with that locked jaw I thought — he's carrying something he hasn't found somewhere safe to put yet." I held his gaze. "I'm glad it was here. I'm glad it was me."

Chase looked at me for a long time.

Then he reached over and took my hand and held it the way he held things that mattered — not tight, just certain.

"He wants to see Micah," he said quietly. "Properly. He asked me. He said he understands if the answer is no but he wanted to ask through me rather than going to mom directly."

"What did you say."

"I said I needed to think about it." He looked at our hands. "I don't know yet. I don't know if Micah is ready. I don't know if I'm ready to watch that happen." He paused. "But I don't want to be the reason Micah doesn't have a father if his father is trying to be better."

I looked at him.

At this boy who had just cried for the first time in a year and was already thinking about what was right for his six year old brother.

"You don't have to decide tonight," I said.

"I know."

"Or this week."

"I know."

We sat on the sofa with the lamp on and his hand in mine and the Friday night outside and eventually my mom's alarm went off in the bedroom for her early shift and the ordinary world came back in around us.

Chase stayed until eleven.

When he left he hugged me at the door and said into my hair: "Thank you for being the place I came back to."

I held on a moment longer than necessary.

"Always," I said.

He went.

I closed the door and stood in the hallway and thought about a man crying in an apartment surrounded by a new life he had built from the wreckage of the old one. About a year of early morning runs and locked jaws and bedtime voices and doubled shifts. About a six year old who kissed hurt palms because it was the obvious solution.

About Chase Hendricks putting something down for the first time.

In my living room.

With the lamp on.

I turned off the light and went to bed.

And I thought that love was not always the river and the birthday cake and the PA system.

Sometimes it was just the lamp on and the door open and being the place someone came back to.

And that's just all you need.