Noa Bellamy (sharpthings) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2016-10-07 16:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | # 2019 [09] september, noa bellamy |
Who: Noa Bellamy
Where: Her home in the Greenbelt District
What: Noa puts away a keepsake and remembers an important day.
When: [backdated] 9/5/19, 10:30PM
There are days that are always going to stick with Noa, that have left an imprint in her memories that just won’t smudge, no matter how much she’d like those days to be erased sometimes. It’s true that with years and age they soften and become less distinct, like shadows, but they’re not ever gone entirely. Today though, today she’s thinking only of a few happy things. Memories of a courthouse wedding, Jonny’s charming smile, and the way it felt to take his name are what sits at the forefront of her thoughts. Two wedding anniversaries have passed without him, but this year feels different than the last. She doesn’t hurt. There’s no sharp twist in her gut, no flood of hot tears. She thinks it might continue to lessen, like the sharp edges that she was first left with have slowly been worn away by a persistent tide, dulled until they don’t bite at each other any longer. The days that she spent wishing for one more with Jonny, to hear his laugh, to feel his arms, are history. Recent, sure, but not a yearning every morning when she wakes up. Although she’ll admit to herself sometimes how nice it might be to hear him again, to feel him again, there’s not a stab in her chest when she remembers that she won’t and can't. Instead it conjure only a smile when she recalls those actions. The pain and heartache replaced by happiness. She knows there still might be days where she’ll wake up and miss him more than she did the day before, that she’s not free of the ebb and flow of her own healing heart, but there aren’t tally marks to keep count. He was her first real love, he left his mark on her heart, and she wouldn’t want it any different. But she has pages of sketches, and tattered photographs to look back on when one of those days crops up. Jonny would have liked the house she found in the Greenbelt. Not because it fit him (it didn’t), but because it fit her. The colors and the white spaces that remind her of blank canvas. Jonny would have taken one look around, wrapped an arm around her waist, and asked, “Well, what you gonna do?” Noa knows what she’s going to do - make a studio like she’s never had before. Settle into it the same way she settled into their Atlanta apartment, into the Airstream. Make it feel like her home. She won’t be kicking his motorcycle boots out of the entryway or closing up milk containers because he never remembered to, but it’s okay that Jonny never walked through the rooms of this house. It’s only for her. She climbs the stairs to the master bedroom. Duke’s snoring, asleep on his dog bed, where he doesn’t even stir when she walks in. It makes her smirk and mutter, “Some kind of guard you are.” Before she crosses to the closet. There are boxes of things that belonged to Jonny on the bottom below the clothing she’s hung up, and another box of keepsakes on the top shelf. There’s only one item left that hasn’t been put in that box. The silver band she wears on her ring finger. The one that’s been there so long the skin beneath is a shade lighter than the rest of her. She doesn’t know why she’s kept wearing it, but she thinks maybe now is the time to put it safely away with everything else. The box on the shelf isn’t heavy, but she lifts it down slowly anyway, setting the top aside. There’s a small drawstring bag nestled amongst everything else. It holds the pin he used to wear on his cut and his wedding ring. She hadn’t let the rest of the Hounds bury the latter with him. It feels right that the two pieces of jewelry be stored together. A pair. Folding herself onto the corner of the bed, Noa removes the little bag and sets it down beside her on the duvet. She fidgets with the ring on her finger for a few moments before she slips it off and holds it in the palm of her hand instead. They had their wedding date engraved on the inside. It’s been a decade since that day, but she still remembers the smell of the courthouse and the nerves in her stomach, she can still see the suit jacket that Jonny wore, and the way he’d trimmed his beard to look presentable, but couldn’t get the engine grease out from beneath his fingernails. Her dress still hangs in her closet, white and untouched. At the time she’d felt stupid pushing it into a suitcase when they’d left Georgia, but she’s happy she has it now. It feels like she’s releasing her grip on the small things she’d still been clinging to without realizing. But she no longer needs the physical reminder. Noa knows that even if she puts her ring away it doesn’t change or lessen how he made her feel. She has personal doubts, like maybe Jonny really was it for her, that maybe she’s not meant to find a second love. But they’re familiar, like static now, not something that overshadows the happy burst in her chest when she remembers the kind of commitment he’d had to her, and them. There isn’t some sick tangle between her fears and her memories of her husband. They taught each other a lot through the time they had together; Noa’s stronger for having loved him, she knows some of how she’s been shaped has everything to do with Jonny, and that she shaped him in return. But after so many months where it felt like remembering him was a lifeline, she’s grateful that for the last year she’s been letting him go in increments. She can move on knowing that her actions bear no weight on the impressions he’s left on her. Shifting, Noa drops the ring into her other palm, curls her fingers over it while it soaks up her body heat. She leaves her hand like that for a full half minute, watching the light catch against the metal she can see, before she picks the bag up with her other hand, and opens it. With one last look, she brings the ring to her lips and presses the metal against her mouth like a benediction to their marriage. Noa knows it’s a little crazy to put so much significance into her actions, into her small ceremony for one, but it’s for her and only her. It feels like closure. With her eyes closed, she drops the ring into the bag gently, hears it bounce against the one that’s already inside, and smiles. “Happy anniversary,” she says to the air, then laughs softly because she knows Jonny can’t hear it, that she’s talking to herself. But she feels lighter anyway. |