Archive of Our Own ^beta

He’s in Chicago for three days.  Three days to pay his respects to his parents’ graves, grab the last of his belongings he’d yet to grab from the storage unit, and try not to go crazy.

He figures he doesn’t have to do everything on the first day that he’s there, so he buys a case of beer and holes up in his hotel room, watching some old police show that manages to keep his interest for the better part of four hours.  Just when he thinks the beer’s going to get the best of him, and he’s about to pass out, a new detective is introduced on TV, and his heart drops.

The woman is small, blonde, and has the biggest blue eyes he’s ever seen.  She’s not his ex-wife, but she reminds him of her, and he hates the way that feels in his gut.

The buzz he’s got going causes his hand to twitch toward his phone.  Maybe seeing this woman on his TV is a sign to reach out to Hailey.

When his fingers brush against the plastic of his case, he flinches and pulls back.  It’s been over two years since they got divorced.  He can’t reach out to her.  She doesn’t even live in Chicago anymore, so there’s no point in even trying to connect with her.

He lets out a low groan and rubs a hand over his face.  There goes any chance he had at sleeping.  He’s gotten better at falling asleep with little to no issues within the past few months, but any reminder of Hailey can keep him up for hours.

Turning off the TV, he pushes himself out of bed to grab the case folder he’d brought with him from Seattle.  He’d been living in Will and Natalie’s basement for two days before he’d realized he was going to need a job to better help him get an apartment of his own.  He loved his family, but being woken up at 6am because his nephew wanted to play video games five feet away from his bed was pretty jarring.

It resulted in him studying up to join Seattle’s SWAT unit and making it after his first interview and practical exam.  He mainly worked at a desk due to the injury he sustained in Bolivia, but he’d been cleared for interviews and the occasional field work, especially if they were in need of a sniper.

He didn’t hate the work.  He actually appreciated it for what it was.  Because of his role within the unit, he found it pretty easy to stay objective.  Lines weren’t blurred, and its black and white nature allowed him to leave at night knowing that he truly did all he could for the time being.

Will encouraged him to leave work at work, and he obeyed for the most part, but when anniversaries showed up or the past was too haunting, he had no issue sneaking a case file or two out of the office to give his mind something else to ponder.

Making his way to the desk, he settles into the chair to work for the next four hours.  There are bank statements, blueprints, and security cam grabs to go through.  By the time his eyes are burning from staying awake past midnight, he’s not even thinking about Hailey and what she could possibly be doing right now.  He falls into bed without setting an alarm and without his heart paining his chest.

Chicago is cold in January, but Jay welcomes the bite on his skin.  He’s wandering around the city just trying to stay busy now that he’s checked everything off his to-do list.  The fact that plane tickets were double the price today compared to tomorrow pissed him off.  He should have just bit the bullet and paid the money; it’d just been hard to swallow when it cost less money for an extra night in the hotel compared to going home to his own bed.

He tries to tell himself that the fresh air is good for him.  As fresh as Chicago air can be.  He wanders the Riverwalk before making his way through Millenium Park.  There aren’t too many tourists, but there’s enough to make him wonder if he’s one of them.  He’s also out here basically just exploring the city, and his goal really is just to take it all in before heading home.  However, he grew up here and worked here and knows it like the back of his hand.  That fact alone cannot make him a tourist.  He’s been gone for over three years, but only called Seattle home for the last one and a half.  That can’t be enough to change his status.

And neither can the fact that he somehow ends up three blocks away from the 21st District.

When he finally clocks in to where he’s at, just as the sky is starting to turn a faint orange, his feet become cemented to the ground.  He shouldn’t be here.  For a brief second, he can’t breathe.  The last time he was here, he wasn’t himself.  He’d needed to flee the city based upon actions that he couldn’t even recognize anymore.  He didn’t like who he was the last time he’d stepped into that building, but his heart tells him that’s not how he was supposed to go.

Years ago, when he was married to Hailey and at the top of his game, he imagined what his last day at the 21st would look like.  Ideally, he would have been the sergeant of Intelligence, having taken over after Voight retired.  Maybe Hailey would have worked alongside him and the new version of his unit, but they both had a feeling she was going to become a sergeant of her own somewhere else.  Either way, he’d be retiring with multiple honors to his name and a sense of pride that he would have wished his parents could witness.  Even if everyone he once worked with had moved on to different units and ranks of their own, they’d still come by to wish him well before they all headed off to some restaurant for a retirement party Hailey teasingly put on for him despite not wanting the attention on himself.  He would have accepted it with a smile because that’s what she’d done when she had her own anniversary party, but also because their kids would be there, and he’d want them to see that he was proud of the work he’d done.

Now, he can’t say the same.  He certainly can’t see him having a unit of his own in Seattle, and he knows Hailey won’t be there to celebrate with him.  Kids seem to be off the table because he doesn’t think he’ll ever get married again.  There have been a few women he’s met and spent time with upon his return to the States, but none that he can ever picture himself celebrating a future with.

He wishes that his current future wasn’t what it was, but it’s at least easier to swallow than his past just because it hasn’t happened yet.  If he could go back to his last day in Intelligence, he’d take it in a little longer.  Look around at the pictures on the walls and the random items they’d taken from raids.  Have an actual conversation with Trudy and properly clean out his locker.  Leave a note on Adam’s desk to not be an idiot and slip his favorite flashlight into Kevin’s drawer.  Do anything to make this moment sting a little less.

Before he recognizes what he’s doing, Jay starts walking the final few blocks toward the district.  He can’t change his past, but he can make a new last day at the 21st, and that needs to be enough.

The smell hits him as soon as the doors open, and he closes his eyes at the warmth it brings.  He almost laughs at the sense of home that surges through him, but then a couple patrol officers brush past him on their way out, and he’s reminded that this is still a police station at its core, and it’s not just here to make him feel better about his past.

Still, though, he lightly jogs up the small set of stairs, and now he actually laughs because Trudy’s standing at her computer with her back to him, her desk phone pressed firmly between her shoulder and head.  It’s been three years, and he knows she’s still got a lot of fight left in her, but seeing her back in her element makes him feel like he’s never left.

“Driscoll, I need you to do me a favor,” she barks out before hanging up the phone with a sigh.

Jay bites back a smile and walks forward to greet her, tugging his hat off and pressing it into his pocket as he listens to her tell a man, Driscoll, he assumes, that he and his partner need to go help out some new patrol officers who seem to have gotten their car stuck on the side of the road.

“Never a dull day, huh?” he says quietly upon Driscoll’s departure.

Trudy’s shoulders tense for a moment before she slowly turns to face him.  He sucks in a breath when her eyes first meet his.  Maybe coming here was a mistake because there’s no real reason to believe that Trudy would even want to see him.  Maybe it was selfish to step back into this place that once meant so much to him.

He can’t read her expression as she stares at him, but then she’s moving again and making her way around the desk.  “Jay,” she breathes.

He nods and swallows a sudden lump in his throat.  “Sarge.”

She shakes her head before pulling him into a tight hug.  For a brief second, he freezes.  She hasn’t hugged him since he and Hailey told her they had gotten married, but it’s not like they had any reason to hug after that anyways.

Once he wraps his head around what exactly is happening, he allows his numb arms to reach up and squeeze her back.  The movement is enough to wet his eyes and make breathing even harder.

He never got the chance to give her a proper goodbye, and it was one of his biggest regrets of that final day.  Not even just her goodbye, but everyone’s.  Intelligence was his family, and they deserved to see him before he disappeared.  At the time, he’d been naive in thinking he’d be back in under a year.  A text couldn’t and shouldn’t have sufficed.  But that’d been before the fear of reality and self-hatred had sunk in.

“What’re you doing here?” Trudy asks when she finally lets go of him.  She clears her throat and looks away while blinking quickly in an attempt to hide any tears that sprang to her eyes.  He leans into that emotion and openly wipes at his face right in front of her, something the therapist that Will and Natalie insisted he get would have been proud of.

“I’m just in for the weekend,” he explains, “Grabbing the last of my things from the storage unit and visiting my parents.  Nothing too crazy.  I was just walking around when I thought that…that’d I come say hi.  It’s been a while.”

“Been a while?” Trudy repeats, and her face slowly shifts into one that he’d seen one too many times in his career.  “Oh, Detective, it’s been more than a while since you said hi, let alone walk through those doors.”

He swallows more pain in his throat and nods.  “I know.  I messed up-”

“I’ll say.”

He winces and continues, “But I couldn’t keep ignoring this place.  I needed…I needed to just see it one more time.”

Trudy studies him for a moment before nodding behind him and murmuring, “Come here.  Let’s talk.”  She leads the way without even waiting for him, but he dutifully follows her into the small office he’d once attended many informal meetings with her in.

“I’m glad to see you’re alive,” she says when he closes the door behind them.

He smirks slightly and replies, “Thanks.  Same to you.  Adam keeps me updated.”

“Adam, huh?” Trudy says quietly.  She nods and crosses her arms.  “I don’t remember you attending the wedding.”

Jay winces again and rubs the back of his neck.  “I didn’t want to make Hailey uncomfortable.”

“She didn’t show either, so seems she had the same idea.”

He sighs and tilts his head up at the ceiling.  He was afraid of that.

“Have you talked to her?”

He shakes his head and looks at her again.  “Not since she told me about the storage unit where my stuff was.  Even then, we were texting each other, so, I guess, that doesn’t count?  The last time I heard her voice was…”  He sets his jaw and lets his eyes flicker toward the window.  Shaking his head, he doesn’t want to admit their final conversations.

A month before he’d been told she filed for divorce, they had an hour long conversation on the phone about everything that was going on between the two of them.  She kept asking him if he wanted to be tied to her and could continue treating her like he was where she didn’t know what he was doing or even where he was.  He tried fighting for them, telling her that he’d come home if she needed him to, but she wouldn’t hear it.  She hung up when he told her he loved her and wanted her happy.

Upon getting notified of their marriage ending, he tried calling her four times a day for a week straight.  Every time, he’d been met with her voicemail, and, every time, he pleaded with her to call him back.  That was the last time he’d heard her voice, and it’d just been a recording she’d set years prior.

It was the cruelest of endings to their story.

“She loved you.”

“I know.”

He’d felt it.  Every voicemail of her own that she’d leave.  Every text she sent.  Every care package she managed to send him.  Hailey did everything with love, and he was a sorry excuse of a man to run from that in fear.

He hadn’t wanted to hurt her anymore than he already had, and, it turns out, that’s exactly what had hurt her the most in the end.

“And you still love her.”

Jay’s head snaps toward Trudy.  He hadn’t told anyone that - not Will, not his therapist, not even Natalie when they stayed up drinking and commiserating together after she had a rough shift.

She smiles slightly and crosses her arms.  “Do you remember when she went to New York?”

He nods and sucks in a breath, already knowing where this was going.

“You were such a mope,” Trudy continues, “A bit of a pain in my ass, if we’re being honest, because you were doing so much of it on my time.  She was across the country, not even out of it, and yet you were constantly on the phone with her.  You tracked her location-”

“How’d you-”

“And sent her flowers-”

“Why didn’t-”

“And I knew.  I knew she was more than just your partner.  And then she became more than just your girlfriend and more than just your wife.  She meant something to you, and that kind of feeling doesn’t just go away, especially not when you try to run away from it.”

She’s right, and Jay can’t help but deflate slightly at her words.  He’d meant it when he told Hailey she was the love of his life.  They were words that he chose to live by.  Even if he had to put himself first for a while, he never stopped thinking of her or loving her.  He knows now that he was in a deep depression and that his hero complex got tied up in it.  He lost sight of who he was, and that meant losing sight of the role Hailey played in his life.  There was nothing he regretted more than that.  He could live with the fact that he went to Bolivia, but he could have handled that change so much better.

Because of that realization soon after coming home, his love for Hailey never disappeared.  In fact, in a way, he thinks it increased.  He doesn’t just love her now, he longed for her, needed her.  He doesn’t even know her anymore, but he knows who she was at her core, and he doesn’t think he could ever stop loving that person.

“The day she officially sent in the divorce papers,” Trudy begins quietly, “I took them out of the mail.  I thought about ripping them up and calling you to get your ass back here.”

Jay’s eyebrows shoot up, and his left hand clenches at his side.  “But you didn’t, right?  I’m-we’re-”

“You’re divorced,” Trudy says with a nod, “I put them back, but only when I realized why you did it.  You signed them for the same reason I put them back, actually.  You signed them because you thought that’s what she wanted, and you wanted her happy.  I let them get sent out because it’s what she needed.  She needed closure, and that was it.  I hoped it would bring her some sort of peace.”

“And did it?” he asks quietly, and he doesn’t know the last time he’s felt this vulnerable, especially not in front of Trudy, of all people.

“I think it gave her something,” Trudy sighs, “She wasn’t happy, but she also wasn’t carrying a weight around anymore.  She latched on to Voight, and that was…”  She trails off, and Jay can’t help but narrow his eyes at her.

He has a feeling that whatever happened because of that choice wasn’t good, but Trudy can’t seem to bring herself to fill in the rest of that story.  She shakes her head, and he knows that he’s going to have to eventually get that story out of Adam.  His friend may have kept him updated on his own life, but his stories from home always seemed to leave out Hailey.

Except for when he told her she’d decided to move to Colorado.

That’d been a brief conversation, almost even an after thought, but at least he’d told him.  He didn’t deserve to know, yet Adam knew he’d want to know, and that had to be good enough.  Since then, he’d considered going to Denver and tracking her down, but that seemed a little too much like a stalker, and he didn’t want to become that kind of ex.  Still, what she was doing in a completely different state never ceased to live in the back of his mind.

“Do you still talk to her?” he asks quietly.

Trudy’s lips tip up, and she nods.  “Once a week.  She calls on Thursday nights, as long as she has the time.  If she can’t, we reschedule for Sunday mornings.”

She stops to study him, and he knows she can read his mind.  He wants to know if she’s doing well and what her job is and where exactly she’s living and how she’s adjusted to life outside of Chicago and even if she talks about him, but he also knows he wouldn’t be able to handle that extra information.  It’d further break his heart into two, and he doesn’t think he’s strong enough to even make it home to Will if that were the case.  Hearing something like that would require more than the last three beers he has in his hotel fridge.

“How much longer are you here for?”

“Uh, I leave tomorrow,” Jay says, “Flight leaves at 2:30.”

“So you’ll be over for dinner tonight,” Trudy replies with a nod, “I’ll let Randall know.”

“Whoa, no, no, you don’t-”

“I do.”

“Trudy-”

“Just because I’m disappointed in what you’ve done doesn’t mean I don’t care for you.”

The words practically slap him in the face, and he can’t help but take a step backwards.

“I guess we can see if the others would like to come over too,” Trudy continues.

“No, we don’t-”

“We do,” Trudy insists, “So go upstairs and talk to Kim; see if she has plans.”  She moves to walk out of the office, but Jay steps in her way and puts a hand up.

“Please.  I just came here to say goodbye to the job.  I wasn’t looking for a whole thing.”

Trudy raises an eyebrow.  “Then you need to say goodbye to the people who made this job what it was for you.  I don’t know if you realize this, but you hurt more than Hailey by leaving without more than a text.  She’s not the only one who deserved closure.  She got hers, so it’s time that everyone else got theirs, even if it’s a few years too late.”

She gives him a moment to respond, but when nothing comes to mind, she nods in triumph and steps around him.  He sighs and rubs the stress from his face.

“Halstead, gates open,” she calls out.

Groaning quietly, he shakes his head and turns on his heel.  “Trudy, this is nice and all, but I don’t know if I can.”

“I do,” she states.  She purses her lips then points toward the stairs.  “Go on.  Catch her before she leaves.”

She’s not going to budge, and he knows he’s already given her enough of a fight.  This is not an instance where he’s going to win.  Perhaps she has a point, anyways.  He did want a form of closure by coming here, and that closure needed to include the people he once considered his friends.

Still considers.

He still cares about all of them and seeing them all might not be the worst thing.  Besides Adam’s texts, Kevin and Dante still try to keep up with him, and Kim has sent him Christmas cards the past few years.  They’ve all given him space, but they haven’t forgotten about him.  This closure that he’s looking for doesn’t have to mean goodbye forever.  It just means that they’re all putting the past behind them:  closing one door to open a few windows.

Trudy makes a point of making the gate beep, and a ghost of a smile crosses his face.  He huffs out a breath before lightly jogging up the stairs.  The gate clanks closed behind him, and it’s as familiar a sound as the smell was when he first walked in the building.

Upon reaching the bullpen, the nostalgia overcomes in, and he once again finds it hard to breathe.  In a way, it’s like nothing has changed.  The same flyers hang on the walls next to the exact same plaques and memorabilia.  Al’s hat sits firmly where it’s always been, and Kevin still has a picture of his siblings on his desk.

The call signs are different on the chalkboard, and it’s the second one that makes him smile.  Adam told him of Kim’s promotion, but seeing it written out in confirmation brings him an even stronger sense of pride.

He glances at what was once her desk and isn’t surprised to see it empty.  Something twists in his gut when he realizes where her picture of Makayla now has to be.

Walking across the empty room, he stops at the desks he once shared with Hailey.  Hers is currently empty, and the computer is off.  His, on the other hand, has a handful of open files covering it.  There’s also that exact picture of Kim and Makayla on the corner that he was expecting to see, but it’s the pink pen with a giant puff ball at the end that makes him shake his head.

He smirks and picks it up, twirling it slowly in his hand.  He never would have been caught dead using such a pen.  Once, when he and Kim were the only two pulling a late shift, his standard blue ballpoint pen ran out of ink and he was in need of something to quickly sign one last form before going home.  She’d tried getting him to use this exact pen, but he’d rolled his eyes and dug through Hailey’s desk to find something that wasn’t as offensive.

“Pretty sure the last time you picked up that pen you told me you’d rather sign your name in blood.”

Jay laughs loudly and turns to see Kim walking toward him from the copier.  “I don’t know if I was that dramatic.”

“You were,” Kim says with a laugh of her own.  She stops in front of him and stares for a moment before shaking her head and tossing the papers on top of her desk.  “Come here, idiot,” she whispers.

He welcomes her hug and swallows that same lump that had formed within his throat that formed upon hugging Trudy.  “Hey,” he breathes.

“I feel like I’m seeing a ghost,” Kim murmurs, “What’re you doing here?”

“Uh, inviting you to dinner,” Jay says as he pulls away.

Kim laughs and holds up her left hand.  “I know you missed the wedding, but I’m pretty sure you got the invitation.  I’m married now, Halstead, you’re about ten years too late.”

He laughs with her and shakes his head.  “Very funny.  Trudy’s insisting.  I don’t think she’ll take no for an answer.  She, um, she…”  He trails off as the guilt starts boiling in his stomach again.  Rubbing the back of his head, he clears his throat and quietly admits, “She wants us all to get our closure, so she invited me over and wants to make it a thing.  She told me to check with you first.  Are you the only one here?”

“Eva’s downstairs, but regarding who you’re talking about, yeah, I’m the only one here,” Kim says.  She walks around him and sits down in her chair.

“Eva?” he asks.

“New officer,” she answers, “Third one we’ve gotten since you left.”

“Third?  What the hell’s been happening?”  He settles into Hailey’s chair and leans across the desk.

“Uh, first was killed in the line of duty,” Kim begins quietly, “Second was offered a new job when we were disbanded, and now we have Eva.  She used to work with ATF.”

Jay whistles quietly.  “That is…I’m sorry.”

She shoots him a tiny smile of understanding and nods.  “Thank you.  Eva’s good, though, we like her.  Hoping she gets to stay.”

“Yeah, me too,” he replies.  He watches her rifle through her papers for a moment then asks, “How’re you doing?  Adam’s kept me as updated as he can, but I know you, and I know this job, and I know how much it can take from a person.”

Kim glances at him then lets out a breath.  “I’m fine.  A lot more paperwork than I imagined, but the pay raise was pretty nice.”

He chuckles and nods before holding up her pen that was still in his grip.  “And are we signing said paperwork with pink pens?”

She laughs softly and reaches over to grab it from him.  “I’ll have you know it has black ink, so it’s a perfectly acceptable pen to use.”

“Uh-huh,” he hums while leaning back in his seat.

Once she’s dropped the pen back in her mug, she lets out a long breath and gives him a pointed look.  He raises an eyebrow despite having a feeling he knows what she’s going to say.

“We miss you up here.”

It’s not at all what he was expecting, but he still nods and murmurs, “I miss you guys too.  I wish…”

“I know,” she interrupts gently, “We all do.  We’ve come to understand why things had to end up as they did.”

He nods again and swallows.  “I’m sorry.”

“We know that too,” she assures, “It’s been years, Jay.”

“Which is a long time for you to think about what you want to say to me, so let me have it,” he confirms, “I need to hear it.”

“You do not,” Kim sighs, “And we don’t need it either.  What we all need is to move on, just like Trudy told you.”

Jay stares at her, and he has a sinking feeling she, like Trudy, is not going to budge on this.  She really was raised by the same sergeant.

“What we need,” she continues, “Is our friend back, and that’s not saying we all want you to move back in Chicago - which, by the way, none of us would hate, as long as that’s what you wanted - it’s saying that we want you back in our lives.  Keep in touch more often; don’t be afraid to reach out.  You just said you know me; well, Jay, I know you, and I know you think that we all took Hailey’s side in this entire thing.”

He lets out a breath and tears his eyes away from her.  “Don’t lie to me and say you didn’t.”

“I’m not going to,” she insists, “But I am going to say that it happened, and we can’t keep holding on to the past.  Like I said, we need to move on like adults, so, yes, I will go to Trudy’s for dinner tonight, and I’ll make sure to tell the others to be there too.”

“Can you…” He sighs and rubs his hand over his hair again.  “Can you at least accept the apology?  And when I apologize to the guys later, can you not jump in and just let it be?”

Kim softens in her chair and nods.  “I can do that.”  She gathers up the papers on her desk and stuffs them into the corresponding folders.  “You need to pick up a cheesecake before tonight, by the way.”

“What?” he asks while standing.

“Yeah,” she confirms, standing as well.  She grabs her coat and explains, “We’ll need a dessert, and Adam, Mak, and I have been eating cheesecake a lot lately.  Mak has a whole rating system, so the stakes are high.”

Jay raises an eyebrow.  “Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack,” Kim breathes.  Slipping her coat on, she says, “So, if you want her forgiveness, spend your money wisely.  The most expensive isn’t always the best quality.”  She winks at him then nods toward the stairs.  “I’ll walk you out.”

“Uh, actually, I’m going to take a minute up here,” he replies as he leans against Hailey’s desk, “I want to…”  He trails off, and Kim nods.

She squeezes his arm on her way past him then calls out, “Six o’clock!” over her shoulder.

He smiles slightly then looks down at his feet.

This trip was meant to wrap up the last of his life in Chicago, but perhaps what it ended up being was the start of his life outside of it.  He needed this trip to say goodbye while also accepting that it’s okay to hang on to the important bits of it.  His friends were always going to be there for him, even if he majorly screwed up years before.  They were a part of his life as much as he was a part of theirs, and he wasn’t in a place to completely cut them off for good.  Not anymore.

He glances around the bullpen, and memories of the past filter through his mind.  His first day.  Laughing with Erin.  Arguing with Voight.  Protecting Hailey.  A paper ball fight with Kevin and Adam.  Late nights with Al.  Whispered conversations with Hailey.  Second guessing Dante.  Meeting Trudy.  Kissing Hailey in the break room.  Solving his father’s murder.  Interviewing countless victims.  Giving Hailey the key to their apartment.

His life truly seemed to begin up here in this room - in this department.  He owes more to this job than he ever could have imagined.

This isn’t retirement, and it’s certainly not a party tonight to honor the work he’d done, but he knows this will be the last time he comes up here.  Once he walks out, he’ll be able to say his goodbyes and move forward.  For the most part, his heart will be okay.

The only way he’d truly be able to move on would be if Hailey also attended Trudy’s dinner, and he knows that’s not possible.  However, with all the grace that Trudy and Kim have given him, maybe he’s stupid enough to believe that his ex-wife will allow him the same.

His hands shake, but if he doesn’t do it now, then he doesn’t think he ever will.  There’s a small chance she’ll even respond, but maybe getting it out there will lessen at least some of the hatred and fear and regret he still holds.  That needs to be good enough.

This place always gave him an extra boost of confidence, so he holsters that and grabs out his phone to send the text he’s been wanting to send since he moved to Seattle.

Once it’s sent, he takes a deep breath and gives the bullpen one last glance.  He smiles at it, rushes around to leave a few notes on Kevin, Dante, and Adam’s desks, then lightly jogs down the stairs.  His phone buzzes in his pocket as he waves at Trudy and confirms that he’ll be at her house by six, but he gives it no mind until he’s in an Uber on the way back to his hotel.  The reply to his text lessens the weight on his shoulders, and he actually smiles at the words on his screen.

He won’t reply until the next day, after he’d said his goodbyes to his friends and promised that he’ll be better about texting and calling, but before he’s boarded his flight.  It will give him hope that he can survive this next chapter of his life, this next room where one door had been closed to the past, but several others had been opened all because of this weekend.

It’s the best he’s felt in years.

~ I’m in Chicago for the weekend and thinking of you. Hope you’re doing ok, Hailey ~

~ Chicago will do that to you. I thought about you a lot when I was in last month too. I’m glad to hear from you ~ Hailey