Peachy O's
Stories come to me and then they're gone. Most of them, anyway. They just dissolve into the blur of everything that's ever happened. I don't think about them. I don't hold onto them.
But this one—this one comes back every single time I see Peachy O snack rings in a store, on a shelf, in someone's hand. Every time.
Ryan and I had broken up.
I went through the opiate withdrawals—the shaking, the sweating, the wanting to die but not being able to. The whole terrible, beautiful nightmare of getting clean.
He didn't.
It boils down to this: I spent more time with Shannon. Deserved it. Started feeling back to good. Almost good. The fun blurred out the heartache, at least enough to breathe again. Enough to laugh. Enough to forget him for hours at a time.
But I was worried about him. Always worried about him.
Halloween was the last time we talked. Really talked.
Thanksgiving was when I realized it was really over. That's another story. A sad one.
I started making the living room at the Hideaway my second home. My real home, maybe. I fit right the fuck in there—with the smoke and the regulars and the way time moved differently in that dim light. But Laverne had been the 5 AM bartender for 30 years, and she had beef with Johnny, and loyalty kept me from fully claiming that calling.
Shannon lived in that apartment building right in front though. So I had no choice. I was there all the time. The Hideaway pulled me in like gravity.
This was the week before Ryan died.
I didn't know that then, obviously. You never know when the last week is the last week.
Almost Christmas. Randomly—or maybe not randomly, maybe he knew—the handsome devil started calling. Leaving messages. That voice. That charm. He knew exactly what to say, exactly what I loved, exactly how to pull me back in.
And I let him.
It was easy. Too easy.
That last 60 or so hours we spent together were just like we always were. Like nothing had changed. Like we hadn't broken up. Like he wasn't bad and getting worse.
But he was bad. Bad bad. Anyone could see it if they looked. I looked. I saw it. And I stayed anyway because what else do you do when someone you love is drowning and they're reaching for you?
We called his parents. That whole conversation, that whole terrible attempt at intervention—that's part of this story too. Part of the bigger story.
After he got the concussion—don't ask me how, it's blurry, it's always blurry when things are falling apart—we were at my house early in the morning. Dawn light. That in-between time when you're not sure if you should sleep or just keep going.
He had come up with snacks at some point. Peachy O's. Those cheap little snack rings that taste like fake peach and childhood and nothing and everything.
We were strolling hand in hand down the Ala Wai, wobbly, both of us unsteady for different reasons. The world tilting. He kept dropping the Peachy O's. Little orange rings falling from the bag, bouncing on the sidewalk, rolling into the gutter.
As one does when you're concussed and high and dying and don't know it yet.
I remember laughing. I remember his hand in mine. I remember the warmth of him, the weight of him leaning into me. I remember thinking we'd be okay. We'd figure it out. We always did.
A couple of days later, he was dead.
My life shattered.
And I kept seeing those fucking Peachy O's on the sidewalk.
Everywhere I walked down the Ala Wai, there they were. Little orange breadcrumbs marking the path of our last morning together. Some crushed into the concrete. Some still whole, baking in the sun. Some swept to the edge by rain.
They stayed there for weeks.
I couldn't stop seeing them.
Every single one was a timestamp. A marker. A tiny orange ghost of the last time I held his hand and believed we had more time.
I still see Peachy O's sometimes. In stores. In gas stations. Someone's kid eating them at a park.
And I'm right back there.
Walking wobbly down the Ala Wai.
Watching them fall.
Not knowing.
