The Fall

by Tal Bauer

It’s a good place to disappear.

Inhale, exhale. Does anyone remember that I am living inside this disappointed life?

What hurts worse—your dream come true and losing it, or realizing it came true for someone else?

Lily. Her name moves through me like a whispered secret.

“You have me,” he says against my lips. “All of me, always.”

This is what it feels like to be cherished, to be wanted for everything you are and everything you aren’t yet, but could be, if only⁠— If only has arrived, though. I’m here, I’m living it. This is my life, my beautiful, wondrous, amazing life. With Blair. The missing pieces don’t matter. The uncertainty and the fear—all of it falls away. This is everything. I’m complete.

Every lick draws a new sound from me, and the world blurs to color and ache.

“I love you,” he breathes between kisses. “I love you, I love you.”

I think I’ve found the answer to all the questions I’ve asked. How do you know when you’ve gotten everything you ever wanted, even the things you didn’t know you needed? Does it feel exactly like this?

You are the part of me I never knew was lost, my missing piece I never knew I needed.

So this is how it begins. Again. For the first time.

It’s all a dream, a beautiful dream. I remember skating beside him last night, last week, a year ago, a year from now. I remember his lips on mine, both never and forever.

He gave me his trust. I want to give him… everything. How do you wrap love in paper and a bow? What do you give the man whose heartbeat I can still feel against my cheek, even though he’s never held me that way?

I say, softer than a secret, “Fall in love with me the way I’ve fallen in love with you.”

“I’ve wanted you for so long,” he confesses. “I have, too.” He can’t know how true that is for me, how it feels like I’ve lived lifetimes loving and losing and loving him again.

“It was your laugh,” I whisper. “It was...” I swallow. “It was everything, every single piece of you.” I shake my head. “Loving you is like breathing. I can’t stop if I tried.”

Whatever cosmic force thinks it can separate us doesn’t understand. We have chosen each other across impossibilities, always and forever. We belong in the same story, on the same pages. Our love defies the physics of space and time. Nothing will stop me from loving Blair.

I loved him once without knowing why. I love him now knowing everything. I’ll love him always, even when time steals him away again.

There is no prayer or promise more sacred than giving him my heartbeats.