It was odd to be back in the room. To sit in the oversized, brown leather chair and look across to see Dr. Bailey smiling at me from where she sat, a notebook ready in her hands, her dark hair tied into a bun. It felt as if it had been years since I had last been inside here, even though I knew it had only been just over a month.

“So, Katy,” Dr. Bailey began, smiling at me. “What would you like to talk about?”

I let out a soft laugh, picking at a loose thread on my shirt. “I have no idea. I wasn’t prepared for another appointment.”

She nodded, seeming to understand. With a soft sigh, she flipped through what I assumed to be the pages from our previous appointments, her eyes scanning over the words scribbled over the pages. “Do you still have the nightmares?”

I felt my face tighten up at the mention of them. The nightmares. The ones where Evan was alive at the beginning, but I was there when he died. I had to helplessly watch him fade from me, my body frozen in place. It wasn’t always the same scenario, either. At first, I was in the car with him when the accident occurred. I saw the other car, but I couldn’t yell to him, tell him to swerve out of the way. Sometimes he was shot, other’s he was in a hospital. It didn’t seem to matter how he was at the start of my dreams, he was gone by the end of them. They had haunted me ever night for the first three months, no matter what I did to try and deter them from my mind.

I let out a long breath of air, running my hands up and down the thighs of my jeans for a few seconds, calming myself. “Not as much. It’s been a week or so since the last one, actually.”

Dr. Bailey nodded, the same look of compassion on her face as every other appointment I had been to. “Do you think that this is because you’re moving on?”

I thought about it for a moment. “Maybe. Or maybe I’ve just been too busy with other aspects of my life. Evan was the sole focus of my thoughts for so long, even before he passed. Now, I’ve been busy with-” I paused, choosing my words carefully, “other things.”

Dr. Bailey nodded, peering at me with a look of curiosity that I had become familiar with. “Do you feel like sharing these distractions?”

I chewed on my lower lip for a brief second before choosing to chew on my thumb nail instead. I knew that she and Kris were still meeting for his therapy sessions once a week, meaning that she was already aware of Kris and Evan’s friendship. She may have even been aware of Kris and I’s past friendship. The thought of her possibly knowing about Kris’s strange feelings towards me was one I wasn’t quite ready to face, yet. I shook the worry before it could settle in and voiced a cautious answer. “A friend that I hadn’t seen in over a year has just sort of come back into my life, and I’m trying to decide how it makes me feel.”

Dr. Bailey offered a small smile. “Well, that’s what therapy is for,” she reminded me. “Tell me a little more about this friend.”

The way she enunciated “friend” worried me. She said it with a tone that understood there was no friendship behind the term in this case. It was as if she knew that I was speaking of Kris, and she was already aware of the fact that the friendship was strained, to say the least.

“Uhm, he used to be one of Evan’s best friends,” I began. “When Evan first died, he completely blamed me. He told all of our mutual friends that my neediness was the reason Evan ended up behind the wheel. He was horrible to me with the things that he would say, the looks that he would send me, the whispers behind my back. Thankfully, the hockey season started and he was gone. I threw myself into sessions with you, and his hostility became an after-thought.”

“But now he’s back?” Dr. Bailey asked, watching as I nodded. “And how does that make you feel?”

“At first it was terrifying. He still blamed me. He was never a cruel person before, he was actually one of my closest friends, and he was a never a very angry person. The change scared me, and when we first bumped into each other, the anger was still as strong as it had been when I saw him last year.” I paused, clearing my throat.

The way Dr. Bailey was looking at me made me feel sick to my stomach. She had heard this story already, just from the other perspective. The knowing glint in her eyes, the way the corners of her mouth were tugged into just the smallest hint of a smile, it gave her away. She raised her eyebrows at me, waiting for me to continue.

“But then, something changed. He apologized, he started acting nicer, he wanted to be friends again. I went to see one of his games and watched him get knocked unconscious, and it scared me. I stayed at the hospital with him all night because I needed to make sure he was okay. He keeps apologizing, and being nice, and he told me that he had wanted to date me before Evan and I became a couple, and that he was in love with me, and I’ve been so busy trying to wrap my head around how he turned his personality around so fast, that there’s no way I’ll be having those nightmares now.”

It took a moment for Dr. Bailey to process everything I had said, as I had rushed the story, left out many details, and hardly paused between words. Once she seemed to have a grasp on them, she gave her head a shake. “You said that he was one of your best friends in high school?” She watched as I nodded, agreeing. “Did you ever look at him as anything other than a friend?”

I almost laughed, now certain that she and Kris had discussed me before. “I’m not sure. I always thought he was a good looking guy, but I was always very focused when it came to school. I had all these dreams of starting my own business and knew I needed the grades to get into the right University. Evan and I becoming a couple seemed to surprise me more than it did anyone else. I had always thought of my guy friends as simply friends, which is why the night of the concert was such an epic night.”

“So you simply never felt that way towards him?” She pressed.

I shrugged. “Maybe I did. But, if he and I were supposed to be together, wouldn’t it have happened by now?”

Dr. Bailey smirked, an expression she didn’t use too often, especially with me, and set her pen down on the pad of paper. “Katy, sometimes people walk out of your life for a little while so that they can decide what part of your life they want to be in. If they find a way back in, it means they want back in.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying,” I admitted, almost feeling foolish.

Dr. Bailey only offered a small smile. “Why do you think this person is back in your life?”

“To keep things interesting?” I offered. She laughed, picking the pen up and jotting something down, causing me to eye her curiously. “Why do you think he’s back in my life?”

She looked at me as if she was already prepared for the question. “You both lost the person closest to you, right? Katy, you’ve dealt with Evan’s death in a way most people can’t. You accepted it. You struggled with nightmares, but not the kind most who lose a partner have. You didn’t dream he was still alive, you kept witnessing his passing. Maybe your friend just needs help accepting life. Loss is the loneliest experience if you give it the power to make you alone.”

I frowned. “Do all therapists talk in riddles?”

She laughed, checking her watch. “Well, Katy, I’m afraid this session is over. But I’ll see you again next week.”

I nodded, grabbing my purse off of the floor and thanking her.

---------------------------

Evan’s tombstone was a place I had only been to twice. Once for his burial, and then a few months later when it would have been our anniversary.

I’m not sure what compelled me to stop by the graveyard after my therapy session, but there I was. It was nice day out, which seemed to relax me a little more. I could barely remember where his tombstone was, and it took me a good ten minutes before I finally laid eyes on it.

It was so strange to see his name etched into the stone, with his birthday and the day that I somehow had a hard time accepting. I don’t know how long I just stood there, staring down at it, not even noticing the graves surrounding his, or the wilted flowers that his mother had probably put there a month before. I just stared down at the grave. Eventually, my legs grew tired, and I found myself sitting on the grass, my fingers tracing along the engraving. Evan Michael Daniels: Loved by all who knew him, and more talented then we ever knew. He’s skating with the greatest now.”

I had always thought the epitaph his family chose was a little cheesy, but as I read over it countless times sitting on the grass, I loved it. I loved that in two simple sentences, Evan was perfectly described. He was a person that we all loved, a person who seemed to illuminate light and fill your heart with warmth. He was talented in ways that I could never comprehend or explain. It was rare that Evan wasn’t good at something. Kris often joked that he and Sidney Crosby would have been either the best of friends, or greatest of enemies. His talent as a hockey player was only beginning to develop, but he was better then he was credited for. A team like the Penguins, one filled with names that were already considered “All Stars” when they were his age, was a hard team to make right off of the bat, but the Penguins had sworn they wanted him on the team by the next season. I could remember the day he told me over the phone that Marc Recchi had complimented his skating skills. The joy in his voice that someone thought he was talented was enough to make me grin.

I must have been there for a good forty minutes before I felt a barrier break within me. The tears that I had refused to cry anymore were tired of being ignored, and I felt my body crumble with the power they held. My one hand was resting against the grave, while the other one covered my eyes. The wave of sadness rippling through me was so unexpected that I wasn’t even sure what was happening. I had accepted that Evan had passed months ago, but for some reason, as I cried against his tombstone, it felt like I was actually letting go. Sitting there, seeing his name on stone and resting in the grass with so many others forced me to acknowledge that he was truly gone. I had hidden from so much of the world for the last year and bit because of reminders that I wasn’t ready to visit yet, and as I sat somewhere towards the back part of the cemetery, I realized that I couldn’t live inside of that shell anymore. I acted more put together then it was, and maybe the reason I was at the graveyard was to show me that I needed to be put back together, that I needed help.

Dr. Bailey’s comments raced through my head as the sound of my cries drowned out the outside world. “Loss is the loneliest experience, if you give it the power to make you alone.” I had forced myself to cope alone. I had pushed so many people away, but tried to make them feel as though they weren‘t being shoved, something that Marc had called me on weeks before.

If I hadn’t been so busy crying, I probably would have laughed when I felt Kris sat down next to me, whatever he had brought with him falling beside him as he reached out and grabbed me. How he ended up there at the same time, I didn’t know. Whether it was some form of fate, or if he was here often, I didn’t know. But when he whispered, “It’s okay. I’m here,” I felt a sense of calm be placed upon me immediately, and as he tried to calm me down, completely unaware of why I was having such a breakdown.

Eventually, I managed to stop, my face bright red and my eyes probably an unflattering shade of pink. Kris let go of me once I stopped, allowing me to look at him and notice the tears in his eyes as well. “I don’t want to be alone in this anymore.”

He nodded, his attention moving from me to the tombstone. “I don’t either.” He picked up the flowers he had brought, and a small piece of paper, handing the flowers to me. “My mom always tells me to bring these so that people know I was here to see Evan.” He gestured to the wilted ones. “It’s been awhile, obviously.”

I nodded, picking up the old flowers and putting the new ones he had handed me into the vase waiting. Kris placed the tiny piece of paper in an envelope resting right behind Evan’s tombstone, awakening curiosity inside of me once more, but I didn’t question it.

For the first time since we had both lost our best friend, we sat in front of his grave. It was the first time since Evan had passed that I knew someone understood the extent of the loss. It was the first time in over a year that I wasn’t alone.