June First

by Jennifer Hartmann

June always feels like a new beginning.

I’m still not sure if I like her yet, but I want to help her.

“Sometimes you do too much. You are too eager to please. That will be your downfall if you are not careful.”

“I’ll kill you if you touch her again.”

Lines were starting to blur. And if there’s anything in this world that can mess a man up inside and drive him to the brink of insanity, it’s a blurred line.

The first law of nature is self-preservation. Cut off that which may harm you. But if it is worth preserving, and is meaningful, nourish it and have no regrets. —T. F. HODGE, FROM WITHIN I RISE

“You might want to be sitting down for this, but I have some news. Toad is a mushroom—not a toad.” “What the hell?” “Don’t tell me you never knew this. He looks exactly like a mushroom.” Theo taps the half-empty beer bottle against his thigh, running a hand through his slightly grown-out sandy hair. “I always thought he was a weird-ass-looking toad. Why is his name Toad, then?” “Because a toadstool is a type of mushroom,” I say, unable to hold back my laughter.

“Yes, Brant, I’m sure. And by the way, fuck you, and fuck mushrooms.” His flash of teeth and burst of laughter softens his words. “I don’t even like mushrooms. Now I’m pissed I always picked him in Mario Kart.”

“Seriously,” he says. “Fuck a lot of things, but fuck mushrooms the most.”

And I plan to keep a close eye on this kid named Ryker, because anyone who has a name like Ryker probably also has a motorcycle, bad intentions, illegal drugs, and an executive suite booked at the Sunnyside Inn under his mom and dad’s credit card. Hell no.

Maybe there was a tinge of resentment there. She promised me she’d always protect me. Those were her last words, and I believed them. But where was she? She was six feet underground. She was dead, and I was still here.

I’m hopelessly, irrevocably in love with you, June Bailey. The desperate, aching kind of love. The kind there’s no coming back from. The kind there’s no way out of. The kind that’s going to be the death of me one day. I fall more in love with June than I ever thought possible as we clutch each other in a moonlit graveyard on her eighteenth birthday, with my mother on my mind and the scent of sweet desserts dancing in the air.

“Life’s too short to hate the people we love the most.”

“You were unsure which pain is worse: the shock of what happened, or the ache for what never will.” —SIMON VAN BOOY, EVERYTHING BEAUTIFUL BEGAN AFTER

“Let me feel you. Please…let me know you’re alive.”

“I’m just an orphan,” I continue. “Life’s forgotten transient. I’m the by-product of a man who didn’t give two shits about me—who killed my mother, then killed himself.

“You’re the strongest person I know. The bravest. When life knocks you down, you keep getting back up again. No one in the world has that kind of resilience—no one.” She’s still shaking her head. “You’re a true fighter. A hero. My rock.”

I’d had practice with tragedy. I’d been there before, and I’d seen what the darkness could do. I’d lived inside it, and I’d crawled my way out with teeth, claws, and blood. I knew that darkness wasn’t permanent—just as the sun sets, the sun always rises. And so do we.

Tragedy changes people. It alters them permanently.

The quiet is where I overthink. The quiet is where I backslide. The quiet is where I second-guess everything.

“Grief is selfish. There’s no shame in that.”

“Listen…everyone reacts to trauma differently. There’s no right or wrong way to heal. Some people need time and space to process, to grieve alone, and some people, like me, need to stay busy. Social and useful.”

“You’re not responsible for the way others react to what you need to do to get better.”

“I’m going to take off, too. I have a date with a riveting book of smut and my vibr—” She wheezes a little, catching herself. “Vibrant imagination.”

“I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but the thought of another man putting his hands on you makes me borderline murderous.”

My mother has always had that uncanny sense of something not being right. She calls it a motherly intuition, while I tend to lean more toward the voodoo or witchcraft angle.

“You’re playing with fire, Brant. If you’re looking to get burned, have at it, but those flames are going to spread… You have to be okay with letting the things around you burn, too.”

“Fire is pretty straightforward. You light a match and shit burns down.”

“There are worse things than loving the wrong person. And that’s losing them.”

“No relationship comes without a fight, but it has to be worth fighting for. It has to be worth all the sacrifices you’ll inevitably have to make.”

“You still have you. And you matter, too. You matter a whole hell of a lot, okay?”

“We were written in the stars. Stars don’t make mistakes.”

How can I explain the inexplicable? How can I excuse the inexcusable? How can I justify the unacceptable?

“There is no sense in love,” I counter, swiping away more tears. “It’s a senseless thing.”

“And I didn’t pursue him. He didn’t pursue me. It just…happened. Because that’s what love does. It happens. It sneaks up on you, and then it burrows. It festers in your blood. And once it’s in your blood you can’t just flush it out. It’s a part of you. Trying to get rid of it would be like cutting off a limb or carving your heart right out of your chest.”

“When you find the right person, there is no ‘right time.’ There’s only right now because that’s all we ever have.”

“You’re not lost,” he counters. “You’re finding your way. There’s a difference.”

“There’s no right way, Peach, and there’s no wrong way. There’s only the way you choose and what you decide to make of that choice.”

“Anger is nothing but misplaced passion.”

Passion is meaning. Passion is purpose. And tragedy is simply the risk we take in order to experience it.

We’ll fly over the rainbow together one day. Just you and me. I’ll wait for you, Junebug. I’ll wait forever.

“Sometimes that’s the greatest gift we can give someone,” she says. “Time.”

Time can be the most painful thing in this world, but sometimes it’s the only way to heal.

I’m done being angry and hateful when I have so much to be thankful for.

I’m done being sad. We’re all done being sad. It’s time to chase our light.

That light shines differently for everyone, but at the end of the day, it all amounts to the same thing. It’s the better version of yourself, the person you’ve been trying to get back to. It’s your healing heart. And a heart can only heal if you choose to let it.

“I’m your man, June. And the only thing I’ve ever needed is you.”

“Never underestimate a man willing to wait forever for the woman he loves.”

True happiness is a puzzle. It’s a jigsaw puzzle we’re all carefully putting together, searching for those pieces that link and connect, that allow us to move on to the next part of the puzzle. Some puzzles remain incomplete, and I think that’s because many people don’t know what makes them truly happy. Or…they’re unwilling to take the time to find those other missing pieces first. They just want to squeeze the last piece into a space it won’t fit. Those other pieces are integral, though. They are the stepping stones for the finished puzzle.

Just as we cannot force ourselves to love someone, we cannot force ourselves to unlove them either. Fate can be foolish, and fate can be careless. But fate is always true.