Chaconne, Partita No. 2

I spent the first few hours of Christmas Day 2016 muzzily buzzed in a hotel bar overlooking the Santa Monica Pier.

"Very bougie," he said.

"The Ferris wheel is Christmas-themed," I repeated.

It lit up with a swirling red-nosed reindeer.

"Hah," he said, finishing off his second eighteen-dollar martini.

We spent the next few hours of Christmas Day 2016 in a 24-hour diner with cheap beer and some sort of food. He put his arm around me, and I leaned in because I felt like he needed it more than I did. I'm lying, of course.

"Stay over tonight," he said in the car between muttered ohgodshits and fuckfuckfucks.

"But all my stuff is already in your car," I said.

We stopped outside his apartment, and we didn't look at each other.

"I'll drop you off at your place," he said.

Ohgodshit. Fuckfuckfuck.

Outside my empty apartment building, I grabbed my guitar from the backseat, and he grabbed my bags from the trunk. We hugged.

"I love you," he said.

"I know," I said.

I started crying before I even got to my door. It's the first time I've been able to cry like that, loudly, and even then, I wondered at how strange I sounded, distant sobbing, choking breaths, just tears and tears in the worn family fabric that hadn't ever been whole to begin with.

Selfish tears.

It's still Christmas morning, though not for long.

Nothing much has changed.

I took my bike on a spin through Brentwood, and there was a little boy climbing onto a little red bike, his father carefully holding him steady.

"Nice bike," I said.

The father looked up, smiled. The boy, white knuckled, didn't.

I turned away.