Raff realised he didn’t have much by way of luggage. Thankfully, it wasn’t as if he had an awful lot to pack. As long as he had his guitar and his record collection with him, everything else was inconsequential.
Returning home from Wyoming, he’d had a worn backpack that he’d used every day in the park, so much so that it was barely holding itself together by the time he arrived back in New York. Helen had declared it an eyesore and stuffed it into their garbage can, which Raff knew was more of a punishment for him - the physical removal of anything that might remind him of his time away from her and make him yearn from it. The backpack had been immaterial though, with no real sentiment attached to it. Wyoming wasn’t the backpack, nor was it the iron-on patch of a fir tree attached to its top flap. Wyoming had been the deer and the aspens and Jack’s voice. Helen couldn’t touch any of those things.
It did mean he was without anything to stuff his clothes in. No matter how little of them he had, he knew he shouldn’t leave them behind.
After crouching down by the closet, rummaging through various shoe boxes that held actual shoes belonging to Helen, and some housing old photos that neither he or his wife had ever expressed an interest in looking at ever again, his hands had eventually closed around something flimsy but which definitely had handles. He’d tugged it out, and then suddenly he’d had a lap full of his father’s old military grade duffle bag. Instinct made him want to wrinkle his nose and stuff it back in the bottom of the wardrobe, but he had no better options right now. Soon enough, the duffle bag was slung over his shoulder, alongside his guitar case strapped to his back and a crate of records threatening to weigh him down. His arms burned with the effort of carrying them, but he didn’t dare leave a single one behind. Raff had never been a material person, but he wouldn’t be parted from his records, not when he knew that Helen would fight him tooth and nail for everything else in their apartment.
The sun beat down on him as he walked the ten or so blocks to Maria’s apartment. He’d made the mistake of shrugging on his winter coat, thinking it would be easier for him to carry whilst forgetting that his cousin didn’t just live across the street from him. By the time he reached her doorway and buzzed her apartment number on the control panel, he was sweating right through his every layer.
He’d never felt lighter.
As soon as Maria opened the door, Raff was hit by a wave of gratitude. Not exactly for the certainty with which he knew his cousin would accept him, although he wasn’t turning his nose up at that either, definitely not. But mostly he was grateful that Maria shared his complete and total disregard for preamble. He could be blunt with her and cut straight to the point.
“I left Helen. Can I crash with you?”
Maria had known exactly what she was letting herself in for when she’d agreed to spend the day with Cody and Walt. Firefighters didn’t hold very sociable hours – not that it ever stopped her and Alexey from dragging Andy out on the town and plying each other with tequila shots until their pretty blond friend coaxed a few glasses of water into them and beckoned them home – so she knew she needed to be strict with the time that was spent away from the firehouse. But, as much as Maria liked to claim otherwise, those closest to her knew that she was a soft touch underneath it all. Walt knew that better than anyone, so when the kid demanded a day in front of her TV watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy, she bit her tongue and obliged.
Despite it being a rare weekend that she had off, Maria had dutifully agreed to let Cody and his son crash over night, when they’d all inevitably wiled away ‘precious Tolkien Time’ (as Walt had put it) by daring to do something as stupid as try to feed the boy at healthy intervals. Sufficed to say, pizza and ice cream had fed into their movie marathon, and Maria had offered to put them up for the evening and continue their watch-along on the Sunday too. Cody’s shift didn’t start until the afternoon, and he was a far softer touch than even Maria could be accused of being, so Walt had gotten his way. She’d smiled her way through endless trivia, even going so far as to play dumb when Aragorn had kicked the Orc helmet, doing her best not to allow her eyes to glaze over when both father and son had recited their trusty Viggo Mortensen lore back at her. She was giving Cody the organic first-time-watch experience just as much as Walt. Neither of them needed to know that she’d practically burned an additional hole into her own movie boxset as a kid, a secret obsession that she’d buried with her parents and brother. Their absence weighed heavy on her every day without the additional reminder of the things they’d once loved and shared together.
Now, she was damn-near catatonic on the sofa, ignoring the remnants of her grief that threatened to cascade down upon her like falling debris. She was exhausted right down to her bones, feeling every bit as old as she often teased Raff for as she yearned to amble back into her bedroom and fall into bed and let the afternoon whisk her away into a deep sleep. She could already feel herself drifting in and out of consciousness when she felt the knock on her door, and it was with great effort that she pulled herself up and onto her feet and trudged towards the door.
If her cousin’s presence came as a surprise to her, his words arrived like an ice-cold bucket of water, soaking her down to her bones and sobering her up immediately. She was wide awake suddenly, her limbs acting before her mind caught up as she surged forward to help lighten his load. With the ease of a woman who regularly lifted well over her body weight across her shoulders, she pulled the strap of his guitar case into her hands and hoisted it onto her shoulder, relieving him of some of the pressure.
Then, without missing a beat, she huffed out a laugh, “Well, ding-dong, the bitch is dead.”
She’d never been tactful when it came to Helen, and now seemed as good a time as any to keep the consistency going. She hated her with every fibre of her being, and knowing that Raff was finally free from the clutches of that miserable old cunt was enough to render her fucking ecstatic, untethered from the grasp of feminism as she applied every hateful, misogynistic expletive she could think of to the woman he’d left behind.
“You can stay as long as you like,” Maria told him as she ushered him inside, though she was sure he didn’t need the confirmation. Not really. “What the hell happened?”
