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?”