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Clem: Sis. Turn on the news.
“Sydney…” he continues, then heaves in a deep breath. “It’s Oliver. They found Oliver.”
I know all I need to do is pull back the drape and step inside, I know this…but if he doesn’t remember me, if he doesn’t look at me and see fireworks and oatmeal cookies and laughter beneath the summer sun, I swear my heart will shrivel up and die.
I think he’s about to say my name, but instead, he rasps out, “Queen of the Lotus.”
What happened to you, Oliver Lynch?
“I remember everything about you, Oliver. You were real. Your life before what happened to you was real.”
“I thought I created you.”
“I wanted to see you.” I’m startled by the sound of my own voice as I turn to look at her through a jagged swallow. “I just didn’t want to be seen.”
“You saved my life.”
Oliver responds so softly, I almost don’t hear him. “I always save you.”
He brought me to life in the only way he knew how.
Hi, it’s Oliver. Don’t be alarmed, but I’m standing behind you.
“We’ll be best friends forever, right?” “Yes. Until I die.” “Even then, I’ll find a way to bring you back.”
“There is beauty to be found everywhere…even in the things that scare us.”
“I wasn’t aware it could feel like that.” “What did it feel like to you?”
“Like every star in the galaxy tumbled to earth and crawled beneath my skin.”
I miss her warmth like I missed sunshine.
my heart almost spontaneously combusts when I spot the singular flower in his hand, stem rolling between his thumb and forefinger. “Hello,” he greets, an adorable, dimpled grin on his face. I blink. “Ugh…fuck me.” Oliver’s eyebrows lift to his hairline, his cheeks coloring a demure shade of pink. “Pardon?” Shaking my head and cursing my inept choice of words, I usher him inside the house, blowing a strand of hair out of my eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t mean… Hell, what are you doing here? More importantly, why do you have a flower?” “It’s for you. I took a run down to the lake where we saw the
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“Oliver…why are you here?” “I was hoping I could kiss you again.” My heart erupts. Ruptures and explodes, fireworks and embers. So long, heart.
“I have a hard time believing someone could kiss you and regret it.”
“I want to be more.”
“She really loves you.” “Yes,” Oliver says softly, his gaze still fixed ahead. “But not all love is meant to stay. Sometimes it only serves a temporary purpose.”
“You hypnotize me,” he whispers in a ragged, fervent breath,
Everything changed the moment he came back.
“There’s no way you could possibly feel what I’m feeling, what I’ve felt, from the moment Gabe told me they found you. That you were alive. You have no idea what it was like to be haunted by you for twenty-two years, then to hold you in my hands, flesh and bone, like you were back from the dead. You couldn’t understand any of that.”
“You’re worried I can’t fuck you like they can.” An audible gasp escapes me. “Excuse me?” “Frail, inexperienced Oliver Lynch. The boy who never grew up.”
“You heal me. Every day you put another piece of me back together,”
“God, who hurt you, Sydney?” “You did!” I shriek, unplanned and untethered, my hysteria bubbling over. “Something inside of me fucking died the day I lost you!”
The truth is, I didn’t have a heart to give. My heart was with a ghost.
“I have a secret, but I’m scared to tell you.” “You can tell it to my teddy bear. She’s very good at keeping secrets.” “Okay. You promise?” “Promise. Pinkie swear, even.”
I fucking felt him.
All four of us laugh, candid, without constraint, and I know this moment will stand out in my mind for the rest of my life. Me and my boys—my sweet, beautiful men, smiling and alive, together, vibrating with genuine joy.
“Just let me hold you.”
“For so long, I was just a name carved into a stone wall. I was a picture on paper, created by my own muddled mind,”
“You make me feel like I’m…someone.”
“When I was five years old, I gave you my heart on your front porch, and you gave me an oatmeal cookie, and I’ve thought about that moment every single day for over two decades. Even when you were gone, you still held my heart.”
“I’m not gone anymore, Syd.”
“I’m right here, with you, and I’m still holding on to your heart. Please don’t ...
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“I ache for you, Sydney,”
“There is no logic in the way our hearts beat, Sydney. Only magic.”
Lowering my mouth to her ear, I whisper, “I want you to teach me everything. How to touch you, taste you, worship you.”
“It’s hard to break someone who has already experienced the worst out of life. We tend to be fairly resilient.”
“Lotus.” The word sounds strange on my tongue; unfamiliar. I don’t know what it means, but I think… I think it means everything.
Strength. I used to think strength was rooted in the fight. Prevailing. Surviving the things determined to tear us down. But true strength isn’t necessarily overcoming the fight—it is how we fight. It is not within the sword itself, but in how we wield it.
His eyes widen with alarm. “Boyfriend?” “Duh. We exchange orgasms and collective loyalty.”
And I realize in that moment that Bradford didn’t take me because I reminded him of his son. He spared me because I reminded him of his son.
As the flames flicker and climb, an inferno threatening to burn down the life I’ve rebuilt, I close my eyes and make a wish. I wish on fireworks, on every shooting star, on birthday candles and dandelion seeds. I wish to the man in the sky with all my heart, with each tumbling tear…
“Goddammit, Syd…you have your whole life ahead of you. Fall in love again, have children, create, thrive, laugh,” he implores, a desperate final plea. “Don’t do this. I’m begging you.”
