Drown #2: supernova

New Year's Eve, 2084. Justin Kim is 23. Stephanie Day is 24.

* TS2 pictures just because I had some that were sitting on my hard drive for almost 5 years that I never used! It won't be a regular thing though. ;)  New Year's Eve 2084 from Stephanie's point of view. This is the other half of that story, from Justin's point of view. 

Justin's mom had finished three glasses of wine and now she felt like telling embarrassing stories from Justin's childhood. She thought it was cute, but Justin wasn't amused. He was also too miserable to be embarrassed. This story was about that little boy he used to pick on outside Stephanie's house. "Do you remember how mad you used to get?" she said to him. "You'd come home all bent out of shape because she was playing soccer with that boy."

She was exaggerating, Justin figured. Bent out of shape? "I did not," Justin said.

"You did. You were so jealous. You'd come home ranting and raving. I always used to tell you, 'Why don't you just play soccer with them? Then you could all play together?' But you weren't the sporty type, were you? What was his name? Steph, do you remember?"

"Tyler Jackson," Stephanie said, beaming an amused smile. "Oh, he was just a baby. What were you ever jealous of him for?"

"I wasn't," Justin insisted. He wasn't only jealous of Tyler Jackson, but it was true, he was jealous. "Well, okay, you were Miss Popularity in high school and I was some geek who used to be your best friend."

Justin's mom got up then, probably after Justin gave her a few snide glares that storytelling time was over.

"You were still my best friend," Stephanie said.

Justin shrugged. It didn't matter anymore.

"You never told me that."

"What difference would it even make?" 

"Maybe it wouldn’t, but still." 

Stephanie stared at him for an unusually long time, like she was trying to figure something out. Then she looked around the room for a clock. "I promised my dad I'd stop over."

"Do you have to? Are you coming back for midnight?"

"I’ll come back," she said. "Don't be mad."

"I'm not mad at you."

"Why are you mad, then?"

Mad wasn’t the right word—this was much more than mad. It didn't have to be like this—his wife chose this. Keri didn’t just flake out on his birthday, or dis one of his favorite TV shows. She didn't step on his toes or spill red wine on his favorite shirt. She left him. He didn’t want her to go—she told him she wouldn’t go it if he told her not to, and he told her not to—but she was always going to go anyway. No matter what he said. No matter what he wanted. No matter how he felt. She was always going to do what she wanted anyway. He felt more than mad, he felt betrayed. "Do you ever feel mad at him for going?"

"Mad at Jeremiah? No, not really. But it wasn't really a choice on his part. Do you get mad?"

Stephanie waited for a response, but tonight wasn't the night for grieving their betrayals. They were supposed to be celebrating the new year, or something.

Stephanie went to check in with her parents, because that was what she promised. He always imagined that Stephanie was a girl who kept her promises. She also promised she would be back by midnight, but the minutes went on, and Justin went outside to wait for the fireworks alone. The girls slept, both of them sharing Lily's crib, and his parents cleaned up in the kitchen. They would watch the ball drop on the TV and avoid the frigid cold.

Justin didn't feel that cold anyway. He looked for the moon and couldn't find it. It must have been behind them, on the other side of the whole world. She was closer to China than she was to here. What an odd thing to think about. She was out there and he was down here. Keri did what she wanted and got what she wanted and nobody got in her way. Not even her husband. So he would support her, because what else was there to do?

But it isn’t love, he thought, if she only takes and takes and takes. That isn’t love. That isn’t a marriage. It’s not the kind of marriage he wanted. It's not what he imagined when he said, "I do." They even fought on their honeymoon. A serious fight over something stupid, probably. Now they were having a stupid fight over something serious. It was so much more serious than she wanted to think it was.

Stephanie said she’d be back by midnight, but the minutes counted down and she didn't come back. The first fireworks burst in the sky. One more person to break her promise. Maybe they all would, one after another after another. 

He called her. “Happy new year, Steph.” He could hear her breathing, but she felt a million miles away. “Are you there?”

“I can still hear you,” she said. “I’m coming back.” 

Then she sprinted around the corner. "She wasn't scared?"

Willow, her baby. He had a baby monitor in his back pocket and the girls slept soundly as the night sky lit up with color and sound. "No," he said. "They didn't even wake up."

Stephanie headed for the house anyway. The babies were fine. He was not fine. There was too much pleading in his voice and he hadn't meant to let that show. He didn't want to worry her any more than she was already worried. She did this thing with her eyes sometimes—a deer in headlights, startled by the overwhelming gravity of it all. Yes, he thought, sometimes I’m disappointed too. So disappointed in it all, I just want to explode. Like a supernova. I get it. “Stay here,” he said. “For a minute.” 

"Okay," she said, and she settled in beside him. She looked almost grateful, he thought, like maybe it did her good to know that somebody else was just as broken as she was for once. 

They watched the fireworks. Their faces flashed from green to pink to gold. They didn’t need to talk. 

Justin thought of her birthday, last year, before Keri had left him. When Keri had first told him of her plans. Stephanie had a newborn and Justin had one on the way and Keri wanted to end it all and go to war. Just like that, she wanted to break up their family before it was ever started. He was not okay with it. He did what he was supposed to do for her, but he was never going to be okay with it.

Stephanie wasn’t pregnant anymore and she wanted a drink for her birthday. They left the babies with their parents and they went out to drink. Justin hadn’t invited Keri. Jeremiah drove them, and Justin and Stephanie drank. They drank and drank and Justin drank too much. "Stop the car," Justin said. He wasn't quite able to get out in time, but most of his vomit ended up in the snow. Justin knelt down on his hands and knees, his fingers burning and turning red from the cold. Stephanie got out, too, and she rubbed the center of his back as he threw up some more. He told her everything. About how Keri didn’t care about him or what he thought or what he wanted or what she promised. He was mad, and Stephanie let him be mad. She didn’t tell him to be strong, to be the bigger person, to forgive, to suck it up, to bear his end of the burden. No, she just let him be mad, and he was so grateful for that. She took his frozen hands into her warm fingers. She pressed her thumbs into the center of his cold palms. He said, “Nothing is the way I thought it would be.”

He remembered her eyes when she looked at him, like a deer in headlights, so big and helpless and scared. She said, “No, it’s not.”

Then Jeremiah finished driving them home. 

“I’m sorry I puked on your birthday,” Justin said now. 

“What?” Stephanie laughed and it sounded so clear and bright in the gap between firework explosions. 

“Not this birthday. I mean your birthday last year, after Willow was born. We all went out drinking and I was mad at Keri and I puked all over Jeremiah’s car.” 

"If you guys can’t work it out, are you going to hate me for setting you up with Keri?"

"You didn’t force me to marry her," Justin said. "In fact, I remember you wishing you could take it back." 

Stephanie shook her head. "I never said that." 

"Freshman year, you said, and I quote, 'Maybe I shouldn’t have set you guys up! Maybe it was a huge mistake!'"

Stephanie laughed. "You remember that?" 

"Yeah, I do," he said. 

"Okay, but only because you guys never stopped making out even for a minute, and whenever she came to campus, you two would disappear into your room and have sex for like, years! And I missed you."

"And then you met Jeremiah, and you guys started having sex for years, and you ran off to the mountains and you stopped missing me."

"I never stopped missing you," Stephanie said.
  

Justin grinned from ear to ear and then neither of them felt sad anymore. 

"Stop it," she said, reaching out, pushing his shoulder. "You’re making me feel weird."

"I like it when you feel weird," he said. "Better than when you feel sad." 

"Yeah, it’s better," she said.

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