Savor It

by Tarah DeWitt

I learned that if something takes a village, the people of Spunes almost always find a way to function as one.

“People can be a bit meddlesome around here.” “Ah, yes, the customary small-town welcome. Spying on their neighbors.”

“Not a wealthy widow three times over, then?” I nod at the robe. Her eyes flash and her smile opens wider in delight. “Not yet, but haven’t you heard of manifesting? Dress for the job you want, they say,” she replies playfully, dragging the back of her hand down the robe with a flick.

I open my mouth to respond, but then her smile broadens—like she’s excited for us to spar some more. It throws me off-balance.

“Being forced to grow up too quickly into my emotional maturity means I surely missed developing some of it somewhere, which seems to manifest itself in me forever endeavoring to be important to someone or something.”

Her casual indifference comes off a bit forced. I can’t help but wonder if she’s trying to help me by … by letting me help her?

And every time we meet, I find myself stirred by a strange mix of familiarity and mystery in him, like he’s a puzzle I’d love to solve.

Fisher leveling the full force of this charming version of himself on someone is a sight. He thinks my sunroom’s nice! I’m tempted to tell her.

You’re too nice is exactly the kind of thing Ian would say to me and in nearly this same way that Fisher just has—where it’s something you mean to be playfully teasing in the beginning of the relationship, but turns out to be a real issue later on.

“Tell me something I can do for you,” he suddenly says. I think I’m maybe imagining that it sounds like pleading.

I feel like an exposed nerve. Like I just became way too unguarded to someone who should feel like more of a stranger still.

I have to bite back the urge to say something self-deprecating in a more lighthearted way, something that’d make my candor seem glib and less true. But it feels good to speak plainly for once. To worry a little less about making my feelings smaller to spare someone else the discomfort.

“Something tells me I couldn’t have you pegged in a decade, let alone a few days, Sage. But even I can tell that you’re vast.”

“Whenever you think too little of the world, try to remember that somewhere, something, or someone is always waiting to be known.”

Every time I’m with Sage, I find that I want to see her more, and every time I feel a little more fucked. It’s like a squeeze of longing for the next time hits me even before that current one has a chance to end despite how much I try to fight it.

“I did find you,” I say, just barely above a whisper. I don’t say that I’m glad I found him that night he showed up here or that I’m glad he found me in the library that day, but something tells me he knows what I mean. We both can’t seem to stop finding one another.

His expression softens. “As your friend, I don’t like when you try to make yourself seem small. And I’m sorry I ever belittled you before, I was wrong.” He huffs out a frustrated sound. “I don’t know how to defend you from yourself, though, Sage.”

It’s no wonder we keep finding each other. I’m learning that it’s okay for me to want more for myself, to want the new and the unknown, and he’s trying to learn how to hold on to less. How to let go. How to quit trying to hold on to control, to let go of regrets and shame.

“I think finding the right people—finding your people—can be the thing that makes anywhere feel like home,” I say.

“Or,” she says, “you learn quickly that no other person has that kind of power, anyway. The kind to make you happy. So you figure out what you want and where you want it, and you go after it.

I realize that I managed to let other people dictate my life’s direction, in a way, even from the other side of the country.

People can’t follow your rules if you don’t make them clear. This applies in all your relationships: parenting, love, and friendships alike. If you don’t tell people what is and isn’t okay with you, they have no way of knowing.

“I like that,” I say. “That you like learning new things and you’ll throw yourself into them.” “You don’t?” “I like mastering something, I think,” I admit. “I struggle when I don’t feel like I’m good at it, or struggle to jump into something when I don’t feel like I can see and control the outcome.”

The fact of the matter is that I don’t have it in me to maintain some sort of detached, cool reserve. I never have.

“My brain and I are fighting, I think.”

“Your laugh is … I don’t know what it is, Sage, but your laugh…” I feel the muscles in his back bunch beneath my hands, the ones in his stomach contracting and relaxing against mine. “I think your laugh could maybe defibrillate me.”

I remind myself that it’s absurd, that life is not a meritocracy. Just because you do everything right, even if you know you deserve it, doesn’t mean that it will all be perfect in the end. Just because you accomplish a dream doesn’t mean it’ll make you happy forever. Sometimes wonderful people get sick, and sometimes people who were terrible to you have everything go according to plan. It really is what you do with it, what you take with you when you go to bed at night that counts.

She’s always surrounded by so much life. Her garden and her creatures and just … her. Like some sort of mythical thing. Except she’s also real, which makes it so much worse. My fantasy and the reality I’ll likely always dream of wrapped up in one. I feel like the life she breathed into me is leaving already.

“Time’s the only thing that increases your pain tolerance. Eventually, you see the good that came from it more than the pain.”