When We Believed in Mermaids

by Barbara O'Neal

“See? Love found you.” “It broke my heart, though.” “Sure.” He lifts his shoulders. “Me too. But you don’t die. You just . . . begin again.”

But it’s not about comparison, as my counselor used to say. My pain is my pain.

“Perhaps,” he says gently, “it is time to stop thinking and feel.”

Neither of them was perfect. One was a hard man raised in a hard place. The other was warped by abuse.

The revelation is soft, rolling through my body like a summer breeze. It eases the knots in my belly, unfurls the protective thorns over my heart. Maybe I don’t have to choose between Dylan as a villain and Dylan as my beloved hero. Maybe he was both. Maybe Josie was—is—both too. Heroine and villain. Maybe we all are.