Retrovertigo

I sat cross-legged, soaking up the shores of my past. With an emptied box by my side, I waded through an endless sea of memories. From a bright-eyed child to a sullen teen, this particular box at it all. My gaze drifted over the lean man I used to adore—I supposed I still did adore him, all those years later. That level of affection could never truly dwindle away.
His crooked nose, his twinkling eyes. Running the tips of my fingers over his features, it almost felt like home.
“What do we have going on in here?” Brian smirked, leaned up against our white archway.
I smiled up at him, giving my shoulders a subtle shrug, “Making myself sad.”
“Sounds like my wife,” he concurred playfully, abandoning his station to pull up a space of hardwood by my side.
He leaned into my shoulder, studying the photograph squeezed between my fingers. With a laugh, he snatched it away.
“Look at you!” he swooned. “You were so tiny!”
I scoffed, “I’m still tiny.”
“How old were you here?” he asked, fawning over childhood me.
“I don’t know,” I breathed, trying my best to formulate some sort of response. “Ten maybe. Tyler had just played at a guitar competition…took home first, too.”
Brian smiled fondly, glancing over to me, “You guys looked happy.”
I nodded, pulling the photograph back from my husband and tucking it into the messy pile by my side, “We were happy.”
Brian watched me closely as I continued to plunk through memory after memory, some sweeter than others.
“This Haven thing’s really bothering you, huh?” he questioned knowingly.
My green eyes shut up at him, trying their best to shelter my insecurity away. But Brian knew better than that—he knew me better than that. So, I caved a little.
“Just a bit,” I shrugged.
I immediately stumbled over my favourite picture of Tyler and I. We were dressed head to toe in Christmas colours, Ty wrapped in garland like a tree. Snow had fallen and replaced the soil, painting our tiny town in a wonderland display of white. I could remember shivering with my entire being; the cold nipping at each of my limbs.
But I didn’t care.
We thought we were so funny. We thought we were so cute. We’d demanded Marge take our picture—we were the epitome of Christmas, we’d told her. With a pair of velvet reindeer antlers banded to my skull, I dawned the world’s most genuine exuberance. Tucked beneath Tyler’s arm, I’d never felt so carefree.
“Check out this one,” I snickered, handing the memory off to my doe-eyed man. “Bet you didn’t know I could be so sexy.”
Brian laughed sharply, his lips spreading from ear to ear as he took in the majesty of the picture.
“God damn, that’s a good look for you, Blair,” he told me, biting at his lip to hold back the laughter.
I nodded furiously, “Don’t I fucking know it.”
Brian continued to stare at the photograph as I muddled my way through some more, stumbling over candid stills of Tyler caught existing. There was no purpose to the film, no poses or facades. These were simply Tyler—they were simply our friendship.
He’d hated when I’d snap unsuspecting photographs of him. He’d fight with me and insist that I was entirely too camera happy. But years later, when all was said and done, I was thankful to my younger self for my conviction. These memories would have all been lost, had it not been for Baby Blair and her eternal need to capture everything.
A trait wrapped up in fear of losing everyone, no doubt.
I’d since grown out of the camera-wielding phase. Granted, when a moment really struck me—in the way that it hits like a bolt of lightning, warning you that a memory is being mad—I was always sure to shoot and click. I wanted Brody to grow up with a box of film to rely on. I wanted him to remember it all.
The good and the bad.
“I had no idea you had all these,” Brian confessed, seemingly ashamedly.
He lamely handed the photograph back to me, a sympathetic smile plastered across his face.
“I’ve got all sorts of boxes like this,” I replied coolly.
“Do you have a Brian box?” my husband grinned.
I nodded, “I do…Sexual innuendo purposefully fucking neglected.”
Brian laughed, “You do not.”
“Of course I do,” I insisted, scowling at my skeptic of a man. “I have a Haven box—or I did…I can’t really be sure that I didn’t burn it in some psychopathic fuckin’ rage…and I have a Jimmy box…and a Brian box. I even have a Lauren box.”
The corners of his lips curled up toward the heavens, “Blair Peterson Haner, are you secretly sentimental?”
I grinned, “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
“You’re totally sentimental!” he accused amusedly. “Holy shit! Matt’s going to get a kick out of this!”
“Don’t you dare,” I warned, thrusting a pointed finger in his direction. “Because then I really will have to kill you.”
Brian smirked, “I want to see the Brian box.”
“We’re currently working through the Tyler box,” I reminded him, mostly because I was far too humiliated to show off the contents of my husband and my past.
I’d kept everything.
But Brian didn’t need to know that.
“Yes,” he replied slowly. “And when we’re through bumming you out, I want to see the Brian box.”
“Don’t you have a son to go bother or something?” I groaned, packing a few of my sifted photographs back into their black box.
Brian scoffed, “He’s been asleep for an hour. So…now I have a wife to bother. Show me the damn box!”
“Nope,” I insisted, giving my head a thorough shake.
“Blair,” he whined, jutting his lip out theatrically.
“Oh!” I yelped, excitedly thrusting a new picture toward my husband’s pouting face.
He narrowed his eyes, giving his head a slight tilt as he tried to make out the photo.
“Did you need to borrow these, old man?” I smirked, wiggling the thick rims of my glasses against my nose.
“Shut up.”
“This,” I proclaimed happily, “my elderly husband…is the night we met. The day I met Jimmy, too.”
Brian smiled, carefully stealing the picture from my grip.
“Fuck,” he snickered. “Look at all that eyeliner.”
“Yeah, you really went heavy on the black,” I grinned.
He ran his fingers along the gloss, his eyes softening with fond reflection.
“Even back then, after knowing him for a couple of hours,” Brian thought aloud, “look at you two idiots.”
Flipping the picture around, a tapping finger directed my attention to Jimmy and I. At the end of our cramped table, we were cozied up comfortably. He held one arm tightly around my shoulders, the other flailed a beer around above our heads.
And I looked at him like he held all the galaxy’s stars.
“Oh, but look,” I smirked, turning the photo back around, “Tyler actually liked you back then!”
Tyler was drooling all over Mr. Synyster Gates. It was evident that he was star-struck, even through the haze of time.
“Do you think he would have?” Brian asked strangely. “Liked me? You know…if…”
“Yes,” I decided quickly. “I think he would have loved you…just like I love you.”
Brian nodded, smiling faintly as he continued to memorize our youth.
“He was just protective,” I told Brian softly. “He thought you would be a bad thing for me…But you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
My husband raised his brows at me.
“You are!” I maintained with a laugh. “You’re a saint, Brian Haner. A fucking saint. Lord knows I would have lost my mind without you.”
He nudged my ribs with his elbow, “I think that ship has sailed, regardless of me.”
“Fuck off,” I snickered.
“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” Brian decided, neatly placing the photograph along the empty floorboards stretching out past his legs. “You’ve saved yourself all this time. I was just here cheering you on.”
I sighed, “I’m too tired to get into this kind of battle of semantics.”
“We’ll agree to disagree,” he winked lazily. “But we’re keeping this picture out. That was a good night…it deserves to be remembered.”
Unwilling to argue because his statement was loaded with truth, I simply nodded. Brian and I worked our way through the remaining pictures, lingering over the childhood shots so Brian could gush about my “adorable baby face”. Once we’d cycled through them all, the sadness crept in.
Once again, I’d wandered through my entire life with Tyler. The pictures were gone, now familiar once more. There would be no new ones to take. There could be no more memories to make.
I was, once more, without him.
“You okay?” Brian asked gently, watching with caution as I packed my past away.
I nodded.
“Blair,” he pressed lightly.
“I’m just missing him,” I replied with a faint smile. “And that’s okay.”
Brian smiled entirely, “That is okay.”
“Sometimes I wonder what life would be like,” I confessed, my heart heavy. “You know, if he hadn’t died. If he’d survived all these years and had somehow made it to the finish line with me…Would things be as they are now?”
My husband considered this but seemed hesitant to offer his perspective.
“I probably wouldn’t have the relationship with Lauren that I do,” I offered for him. “I probably wouldn’t have gotten so close with Jimmy.”
“That one’s not true,” Brian argued warmly. “You two would have been best friends in any universe.”
“Maybe so,” I conceded. “But it would have been different. It would have had to be.”
Brian frowned, “I guess everything happens for a reason.”
“Unfortunately,” I frowned back.
“But,” he added more chipperly, “for what it’s worth, I like the way things are now. Everything we’ve been through…everything that’s happened…I think it was worth it. Coming home to you is worth it.”
I glanced over at him.
“You’re my best friend,” he smiled.
With a narrow of my eyes, I scoffed, “You’re not getting the fucking Brian box.”
“Oh, come on!” he pleaded loudly, letting his arms fall limply against the floor.
“Nope,” I declared, pulling the lid onto the box and the box into my arms.
Brian pouted, “But I said nice things!”
“Yes you did,” I agreed playfully, climbing to my feet and stepping over my husband’s defeated corpse. “But you’re still not getting the box.”
“Like hell I’m not,” he grinned, lunging from his place on the floor to steal me up into his arms.
I squealed like a teenager, “Brian!”
“Show me the box!” he insisted, wrapping me tighter and tighter into his tattoos.
“Never!” I shouted, squirming until I’d finally broken free.
I sprinted through the living room and into the office, trying uselessly to take shelter behind the cherrywood desk. I slipped the box atop the surface just as my husband came chasing after me. We played a messy game of cat and mouse before I, screeching all the while, made a run for it.
My agility was no match for his speed. Without delay, I was pulled off my feet and into my husband’s chest.
“Okay,” he grinned, beating his eyes against mine as I finally resisted the urge to flail. “How about a compromise?”
I shook my head, “I don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
With a laugh, he continued, “I’ll give up the Brian box.”
“I’m listening,” I cooed, pushing my toes down against the empty air in effort to reach the floor.
It was in vain.
He grinned, closing the small gap between our lips. Instinctively, I wrapped my legs around his hips and twirled my fingers into his hair. After a decade of the same touch, I still hadn’t tired of the sparks that flew between us.
Parting, Brian purred, “In exchange for the Blair box.”
“Oh, gross,” I grimaced.
He laughed maniacally, adjusting his grip beneath my hips as he carried us both through the doorway and toward the stairs.
Like the twenty-somethings we once were, fiery in lust and drowning in infatuation, Brian and I fell into your youth.
For the time being, I, too, was content with how everything had worked out. The one constant in my life proving to be the most influential. From Tyler, to Jimmy, to Lauren, there was never anyone quite like the friend your spouse could be.
There was no best friend for me quite like Brian.

Notes

The Bs <3

xx