The Rest of the Story

by Tal Bauer

Shea’s jerky breaths puffed across the inside of my wrist. My thumb ran upward along the line of his jaw, smoothing over his skin and his uneven patches of stubble. Our eyes found each other. He breathed in, short and sharp. “So, what’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?” I asked. That got a tiny smile out of Shea, followed immediately by a wince. “Don’t make me smile.” A fresh drip of watery blood slid down his cheek. I wiped it away. “Ah, but you have a good one.”

“I like the idea of it.” His voice was getting smaller. “Being someone’s one and only. A forever kind of thing.” Another shrug as he pulled himself up, slumped at the edge of the couch. “I want to be in love when it happens. I want the guy I’m with to love me, too.”

If no one got close, no one could gut me from navel to heart, could they?

His big blues were rock steady, like I could lean into them and he’d hold me up.

In the movies, this would have been the moment when he held out his hand and I took it in mine, when we stepped in as one and put our foreheads together. When we couldn’t look away and our gazes locked, and we breathed each other in while reality reordered itself. He’d pull a smile out of me as his lips teased at mine. He’d taste like butterscotch from the latte he’d ordered. I’d gone for a black drip. Would he think I tasted too bitter if I kissed him again?

He was as close to perfect as I’d ever seen, so close that it burned to be around him. He was like staring at the sun.

It should be fucking illegal to smile like that, looking like that.

I wanted his dreams to come true, and I wanted his days to be made of wonder and raw lightning, cascading into a lifelong perfection that hummed as sweet as summer.

I’m yours. I’m yours as long as you want me. You can smash me to pieces, shatter me into smithereens, and it will all be worth it, just for the chance to be part of your life.

“I don’t want the world.” Shea slipped his hand into mine, wove our fingers together. “I want you, Morgan. I just want you.”

Living like this, in such simple perfection, undid the corners of my very tattered soul. The calluses around my heart fragmented like a jeweler was taking swings at them. A tap here, a strike there, and the scar tissue cracked away. Shea’s smile, the sound of his laugh, the starlit joy in his eyes when he looked at me. Each day seemed lighter than the last.

“I can see everything with you,” Shea breathed. “Any dream I have, I see it coming true with you.”

You all will heal, day by day. Moment by moment. It gets better. You get better.