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“Don’t let them decide the life you’re going to live. You only get one.”
“Because there are two types of people in the world, difficult ones and easy ones, and they marry each other.”
There was something fragile in the silence. I got the feeling that if I hung up without getting her to agree to meet, I was never going to see her again. Like she would just disappear back into the universe. And something told me she could go either way.
The sexual tension between the two of us was like a sunflower turned to the sky. I’d felt it even when she was gone, I realized. Like my body was looking for her even though I didn’t know where she was. It was a shift in gravity. Two bodies in a hammock, or an old mattress that dips in the middle. I could feel us rolling toward each other.
Being on his lap, letting him hold me, smelling his warm, piney scent—it was a finally moment. Like arriving at a finish line or letting go of a breath you’ve been holding—or coming home.
It’s the release that happens when you don’t have to think about anything at all.
It was such an unfair power dynamic. She was like a kid wielding her one-star reviews like a toy, for fun. Only it wasn’t a game. It was someone’s livelihood.
Sometimes what you have to give is enough. Even if it’s a rock instead of a diamond.”
I wanted to see her world with my own eyes, not just these glimpses behind the curtain. I wanted to be a part of it.
Dad would never accept her. Never. Just like he wouldn’t accept someone like Daniel. So Derek didn’t even bother. He’d protected his wife from the rejection and gave up his life instead.
I wondered how many of the little trinkets I’d found in Aunt Lil’s box were like this. The remnants of small moments in her life that stayed with her forever. Proof of a thumbprint on her soul.
It’s amazing how someone can touch you, even if you only know them for a moment in time. How they can change you, alter you indelibly.
Wakan and Daniel were planted inside of me and they were growing there, like a garden bursting into life. Roots plunging and anchoring me, vines twisting and flowers pushing from the earth and blooming in my soul, filling me up.
“I believe you. I can handle anything you need to tell me. You don’t need to protect me from the truth and I’m here to help you in any way I can. It’s not your fault. And you don’t deserve it.”
I knew it might have been better to let her leave that day after the spaghetti dinner and never see her again. Because while it would have hurt me, it didn’t have the power yet to kill me. Now it did. I was in love with her.
Nothing could convince me this woman wasn’t made for me to love. I think my soul recognized hers the second I laid eyes on her. Our bodies knew it the very first night. The power she had over me terrified me. But it also gave me clarity. There is a peace in knowing the one thing you can’t live without. It simplifies all things. There was her, and then there was everything and everyone else. And only she really mattered. It was easy to know it.
“I love you,” he whispered. “We are together. This isn’t over. And even if you leave, it won’t be over because you’ll take the love with you and it’ll bring you back.”
Love follows you. It goes where you go. It doesn’t know about social divides or distance or common sense. It doesn’t even stop when the person you love dies. It does what it wants.
Losing Alexis would alter me forever. Like the rings in a tree, you could open me up fifty years from now and see when it happened, see the damage. I was ruined. I’d never be as good ever again.
It was amazing that one season of someone could paint over a lifetime. This wasn’t the place I grew up in anymore. It wasn’t my home. It was just the last place I was with her.
I fell into one of those sleeps of the brokenhearted. The kind that breathes in and out, between here and gone. You want to dream about them but then regret it when you do, because waking up hurts too much. So you hope for nothing but black. The temporary reprieve from existing without them.
There’s something more final than forever. It’s never. Never is infinite.
