June First

by Jennifer Hartmann

“I guess she just needed her mom.”

“I’ll love you like my very own, Brant. I’ll love you like Caroline loved you. You have my word.”

Tiny fingers clamp around my pinkie, stealing my next breath. She clings so tightly—as if she needs me for something, as if I’m important, and that causes my belly to flutter. My chest tickles, too. I like the feeling: being needed, wanted. Claimed. I feel claimed. And after losing everything I love, it feels really good to belong to someone.

It felt like I would never be lost again.

Our story was impossible to predict.

I knew that Baby June had claimed me in that moment, and she never stopped.

She claimed me like the sunrise claims the morning sky with lightness and blush, promise and wonder.

She claimed my good and my bad, my light and my dark. She took my broken, ugly bits and molded them into something worthy of display. She turned my agony into art.

June claimed me in a way that could ultimately be defined by a single word: Inevitable.

I wish I could admit to doing the same…but fear is an ugly, unpredictable beast, and the greater the fear, the more strength it takes for us to face it.

He has dents that pop up on both cheeks when he smiles wide, and Mama says they’re called dimples. I love Brant’s dimples. I pretend they were made just for me.

I watch from my perch in the corner, grateful I was made a part of this family.

He turned the only girl I’ve ever wanted into the only girl I can never have.

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.

“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

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

“We were broken before we even began.”

I don’t love that I fell for the one person I shouldn’t have.

“I love June. I’m in love with June…madly, completely, infinitely. I’m in so deep, there’s no way out. And I’d love her no matter what, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of if we were neighbors, friends, classmates, or strangers. I was always meant to love her.”

“You’ve always put love first, Brant,”

“You’ve always put June first.”

I’ve always put June first. She’s always put me first. And I hope, I pray, I beg, That someday… We’ll finally be able to put us first.

“Brant means ‘sword.’ Brave, gallant, a stalwart defender.”

“You’ve lived up to your name, Brant. More than you know.”

That hope came in the form of forgiveness. And that forgiveness came in the form of Andrew Bailey.

“I grew up in Tarrytown, just north of Manhattan.

I figure it’s probably Ethel, the next-door neighbor,

He takes my hand. He takes my whole life, too.

A moment that confirms that we were never wrong. Our love story was never wrong. We were simply waiting for the timing to be right.

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

“I love you, Brant. I love you…over the rainbow and back again.”

“True happiness is worth every sad, unremarkable minute,”

I’m living my dream with the love of my life.

Every last will be with them.