the journey is my home [ march 2011, jon umber & gerris ]
The clothes go in first, just a few dozen t-shirts and jeans, underwear and socks, two or three classy button-ups, one fancy pair of dress pants. Shoes, two pair of sneakers, one pair of dressy ones. Then a few paperbacks, the pages well-worn with the colours at the edges faded to yellow, the covers sprinkled with white creases.
Not his Physics textbooks, though. Those he tosses into the dust bin without sparing a look, along with gifts and notes and letters, too many to count, the pages white and pink and lilac, adorned with hearts, written in an elegant female hand, sweet words cloaked in lies, perfumed paper now rancid with the stink of betrayal. He throws it all away, and he feels a little better as he does so, with each toss and gnash of his teeth, with each blink against the press behind his eye balls.
Next he packs the essentials: his cell phone, his wallet, brightly-coloured soda bottles for the first drive down to the motel that he rests on top of clothes and covers with a few bags of junk food. Three boxes of condoms go next, of course, always those, he’ll need them. Gerris zips his bags and turns around.
There’s still clothes in the wardrobe, but he won’t need those. Gerris might come back to pick them up after traveling with Jon, or he might not. Might just leave them there, swinging forlornly in a forgotten closet in a forgotten room, feasting moths and seating dust. Maybe he’ll come back to find them in tatters, years down the line, but none of that seems to matter right now. He’s taking everything that matters, the few books he loves, that shirt that he once got from his best friend; that and himself is all he’s going to need. All he’s ever going to need, from here on out.
His cell phone vibrates and he flips it open to check his messages. Jon says he’s here, waiting just outside of the gates of Northwestern University, here to pick him up, and not a second too soon.
Gerris has sent his professor the news that he’s quitting. Has told all the friends he’s made in Chicago that he’ll be gone. He snorts a little at ‘friends’ – they can barely be called that. Stuck-up yanks, the lot of them, a few smiles and manipulations and well-placed compliments in his London accent that they apparently like so much and they rewarded him with a flurry of bright-eyed affection. No, they don’t matter, he doesn’t feel bad about leaving any of them. His friends back in England are the ones who matter, and he would never have even come here if it hadn’t been for her.
He grits his teeth when he hoists the bag upon his shoulders and walks out. Some dorm mate of his greets him but Gerris just walks past. He’s got not time and if he did, he wouldn’t spend it on people who didn’t matter. People he never would’ve met if he hadn’t given up everything (his friends, his family, hislife) spurned on by some idiotic idea of love. He’d been as awed as a ten year old girl in a field full of daisies beneath the stretch of the blue, blue sky or some shit like that, had wrapped up his heart with a shiny golden bow and given it to her as a gift, and she’d rewarded him by devouring it and spitting it all over him once she was done, chunky pieces and all.
People part around him when he stalks the way down the dorms, spills onto the street. Spring is in the air, crisp and fresh, and students mill about. They keep a tightly-corded distance from him; the displeasure just might hover, the anger just might be etched in the tight lock of his jaw, the tendons in his twitching fingers. There’s a girl that Gerris recognises, a girl he used to be friends with (and never tried to seduce, because he was with Rhaenys and he loved her, he did, so much, how could she?), but he walks by as she raises her hand to greet him.
There’s something in the pit of his stomach, hard and round, like a ball of thrumming resentment and pain. He swallows and swallows, feels the thick saliva pull down his throat and into his stomach, but the ball won’t loosen. Every time he tries to ignore it, it seems to crawl up, slithery and malignant, settle in his throat, press against the back of his eyes.
He won’t cry. He won’t. Gerris hasn’t cried since he was six years and his mother left.
He really should’ve learned right then and there that women can’t be trusted. It’s better not to open up to them, it’s better not to care. It’s better to just take and leave, has he forgotten who he is? Gerris Drinkwater, the bright one, condensed charisma. Bright smiles and brighter eyes, a natural grace to his limbs. A love for adventure, hiking and surfing and football, scared of nothing and no one. He thinks back to when he was younger, when he used to drag his friends up mountains to dig for treasures, dived along the shores for ship wrecks, drove racing cars, dined with celebrities, worked up his way with one clever one-liner or smile or raise of his eyebrows at a time. What has he even been doing for the past year, since giving up that life and more for one single woman?
Nothing. Nothing. (Everything).
He spots Jon waiting by the car. Walking over to him, he feels his mouth twitch into one of his warm smiles, and he knows he looks good right now, lingering blue eyes, fond little smile. He greets his mate and he’s genuinely glad to see him, doesn’t have to fake his affection.
The tight ball of tension in his stomach loosens and gives. When he swallows, he feels a little lighter. An icy clarity descends upon him, cutting what he is, what he has done, what he’ll need to do into sharp contrast before the messy background of his past.
And when he stretches out his hand to give Jon a friendly clap on the shoulder, he knows that he’s saying goodbye to something, only he isn’t sure what. He wishes he could say with certainty that it was Rhaenys, but he fears it might be darker, more intrinsic than that.
“Let’s go,” he says, voice easy, bright, airy. He searches for his friend’s eyes and smiles. “I’ve brought enough money to roadtrip across the country for months and enough condoms to last me for a while, mate. It’ll be fun. Life’s a game and we’re the players, eh?”
