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On the nights that Dirk Strider was lucky, it was only regret that entered his dreams.
Most nights it was just better not to sleep, which was often how he handled the inevitable dreaming that came with such a state for the last six years. At least awake he was in control of his thoughts, he could distract himself, he could chant the mantras Roxy had taught him: It wasn’t my fault. He doesn’t blame me. I don’t blame myself. Somehow, he will come home.
It never made him feel any better. But it helped Roxy to know that he was helping himself and that did lighten him up a bit.
Roxy was a rock. Jazzed and supportive. A warm blanket weighted around your shoulders with a shot of vodka and a direct dosage of dopamine to the brain, sprinkled with a touch of sunshine and harsh and gentle realities. It was impossible to feel down when she was around.
With a lot of practice, somehow Dirk had managed anyways.
It was a different kind of sadness though. That heavy depression of wanting to be better and knowing the possibility existed, that you were capable, but still finding more motivation in others than yourself. Dirk may have still been heavy weight in the air, even with Roxy spinning in his desk chair, chattering his ear off, but somehow he still managed to smile.
On the nights that Dirk Strider wasn’t lucky, it was Jake English that entered his dreams.
The dreams always started with water. That was the first warning sign and the only chance for Dirk to get out, to wake up before it went sour.
He never did.
The water never had any feeling but, somehow, Dirk knew he was floating on it. He would open his eyes and see the canopy of trees above him and panic would seize him. Then it would go dark and cold and as clear as if he was standing right beside him, Jake English would say his name, urgently and a bit concerned.
Dirk would turn his head and find only inky blackness, blink and then find sunlight lighting up the water with grimy streaks. Through the murk a figure would be resting on the sand below, twisted and displaced, and without detail, Dirk knew who it was.
He would begin to swim, but as was the law of dreams, he wouldn’t get anywhere. In the struggle, he would see Jake’s eyes open and Dirk would freeze, watching as Jake’s mouth moved but nothing else stirred, his limbs useless like he had been dropped there by a giant and hadn’t bothered to move.
He could never hear the words. He wasn’t sure he ever wanted to.
Then Dirk would wake, slowly, as if rising from a peaceful slumber. Nothing showed signs of the nightmare, at least not on the outside. No, everything was internal, the throbbing in his brain, like the chemicals screaming at him to understand, the weight in his chest that made breathing feel like a conscious function, the stiffness in his legs, the wetness of his cheeks that he would touch to find his fingers come back dry.
There must have been something in his eyes afterward because Roxy would see him and say, “You had that dream again.”
And then he would counter with, “And you’ve been drinking.”
And then they wouldn’t say anything at all.
*****
Contrary to popular belief, Roxy Lalonde wasn’t okay.
Oh, she had everyone fooled. Carefully hidden liquor bottles and smiles to contend with the sun for energy had most people brushing her off with, ‘she has this under control.’
But when she was alone, Roxy Lalonde’s life fell apart.
It was Dirk who was there to pick up the pieces.
She had other friends, of course, Jane and Jake were both just as close to her as Dirk was. But Jane was content to take Roxy’s word for it, as long as Roxy was putting on a brave face. Jake, well, if he had been around, never would have sat still long enough to take notice.
So it was Dirk who would bore into the cracks, remove the covers from her head and the bottle from her hand. It had started angry, hands more like claws, angry words filled with tinges of betrayal.
“I already lost him, do you want me to lose you too?”
He hadn’t meant it. Not in the sense of believing he had lost Jake. Roxy would have hazard a guess that was when the nightmare started, the one where he found Jake at the bottom of the lake, the one he believed was real.
It was also the time that the next time she heard Dirk speak it was from beside her hospital bed.
She was more careful after that.
She never stopped drinking, not really, and Dirk never really stopped her, the same way that she never really forced him to sleep. Perhaps it wasn’t healthy, but they found ways of balancing. Dirk would take bottles from her house, throw them in trash cans on the other side of town. Roxy would come in and force Dirk to listen to some new game stats she had found on a recent game until he passed out. They gave up on talking, Dirk was never really good with words anyway. It was better to just take action and then maybe talk about it afterward, but usually, the silence said thank you well enough for the both of them.
*****
Dirk was often struck with how opposite he and Roxy were, especially in relation to Jake’s disappearance. Dirk was convinced that Jake was gone. Convinced that the drowned body he saw on repeat in his dreams was a way of telling him what happened, a failed attempt at closure.
Dirk would throw himself into these emotions, envelop himself in them, marinate in them until that was all his mouth could taste. He was sad Jake was gone. He hurt, he regretted, he missed, there wasn’t much else to feel.
Roxy, on the other hand, pushed those emotions into the private corners of her house, the ones filled with bottles of vodka, nudged to the side with the toe of a boot when no one was looking. Those corners remained shadowed and out of sight and in the light Roxy was steadfast and certain. Jake was coming back and everything was okay. Dirk’s dreams weren’t real, just his fears manifesting in sleep. But at night those corners were where Roxy would live, emptying bottle after bottle and refilling them with tears, laughing at things that weren’t funny and pretending no one could see her cause she couldn’t see them.
But Dirk could see, just as well as she could that happiness he kept tucked in his own little corners.
Their balance was precarious, but they kept it and kept it well.
*****
“You know what I regret the most?” Dirk said casually, like he wasn't asking more than for Roxy to pass the butter.
“Hm?” Roxy asked from her position half on his bed, head hanging off the side, tongue sticking out slightly as she mashed a button on her DS with more speed and force than was probably necessary.
“That I never really understood him,” Dirk replied. He continued to tap away at the intricate circuitry he was putting together. Occasionally, there would be a whir and sparks or the buzz of a tool, but mostly it was tapping.
This caught Roxy’s attention. It was like a new secret, intriguing and at its base, difficult to understand. As someone who prided herself on knowing everything about Dirk Strider, learning new things was one of the more fun games to play.
“What do you mean?” she asked. She paused her game and rolled so she was on her stomach, scooting back a little for better support. “You guys were married and that was after dating for what felt like half our lifetimes. What was there left to understand?”
Dirk shrugged, but continued to concentrate on his work. “Like, I supported him, let him go off on his little tirades, but I didn’t really get it, you know? I didn’t know why. It never really mattered, he was happy and he always came home.”
“But then he didn’t,” Roxy finished.
Dirk didn’t respond and when the silence was broken again it was him talking over the whirring of tools.
“I just wish I had, I don’t know, listened better, asked more questions. That day he left. He came out, talking a million miles an hour. He was going to the Amazon for some new discovery, he wasn’t sure how long he would be gone, but he would keep in touch. I nodded along and helped him pack his bags. At the airport, I gave him a kiss and waved him off. I never ask what he had discovered. I never understood why he left.”
Roxy had heard the story a million times, it was one Dirk liked to tell when he was in a melancholy mood that was somewhere between brooding silence and active denial of emotions. But over the years the story had changed. It was different than it was six years ago, two years ago, than it was last month. Time had altered it from something distraught and filled with pain to something more fond with a tinge of sadness. This one had a new ending Roxy hadn’t heard before.
“So you don’t regret him leaving? You just regret not knowing why?” Roxy asked, trying to get this new story straight.
“Yeah, I mean, I guess.” The tools went silent and neither of them said anything for a long time.
“I think that’s okay,” Roxy said softly, resting her chin on her folded arms. “I still think he’ll come back and then you can ask him all the questions you want.”
Dirk didn’t respond but the silence was thank you enough. She watched and the way his shoulders loosened a little, the way his hands seemed to move with more confidence had her thinking that maybe this time, he might have actually started to believe her.
*****
The balance of Dirk Strider and Roxy Lalonde was precariously perched over a pit of open water and there was this lingering fear that if it tipped, they both would drown. However, as they learned the shifts of their platform, the changing of tides below them, the way the winds would blow around them, they started to learn the give and take of keeping themselves upright. Slowly, hand in hand and with a synchronized tap of toes, they had braved the balance and started to dance. And maybe, just maybe, if they fell, they would find that they knew how to swim.