Travis

by Mia Sheridan

To all the readers worldwide who first loved a silent boy and helped give him a voice.

Second best. Second best. You’re nothing but second best. And second best didn’t even deserve a goodbye.

Fingers… …snapping in the air. At me. To fetch him a water.

“You do have to have a tough disposition to seek out certain forms of knowledge. Some don’t have a choice though. The knowing of things that no one wants to consider finds them,”

I closed my eyes and relished the quiet for what it was. Solitude. Well, with my new friend. My onion man.

Why? Had I let the lingering fear of not being good enough in the eyes of the one person who really mattered to me rule my behavior?

Weren’t all of us a compilation of the versions of ourselves we’d once been? Maybe if we were lucky—and insightful—we learned how to extract the good and leave the bad behind, the parts that hadn’t worked for us and instead brought nothing but pain.

“Men are simple,” he whispered. “Add a little challenge, a little healthy competition, and the interest increases tenfold.”

“Maybe the terrible truth about love is that when it’s gone, it leaves a hole in your heart so big it feels like nothing will ever fill it. The idea of risking again feels fatal. A human being can’t possibly lose that much of themselves and still survive. And so you try desperately to fill it with things that never quite do the job. Things that sometimes hurt other people,”

“We’ve all made mistakes, Travis,” she said. “We get to reinvent ourselves. And if the new version is even better, it means we’ve learned and we’ve grown.”

“It’s meant to work that way, isn’t it?” Burt asked. “All the things that have brought us pain carve a distinct hole in our heart, and there’s someone else out there with the perfect something that will fill the void. And in turn, we get to do the same for them. And suddenly, it all makes sense. It all fits. Because we haven’t been forsaken. We’ve been prepared.”

It hurt to look at my father in that moment. I could have used you right now. I could have used you in so many moments. But even if you had lived, you left. You chose him over me. You fucking asshole.

At the time, I didn’t completely trust myself. I knew how I felt, but I questioned whether I had anything to offer her. He paused, his eyes returning to me. But she made me want to become the man she deserved. She made me braver and stronger. Because of her, I wanted to be the best version of myself. And that, I think, is what love does, if it’s really love.

“Oh, I’ll date you, Haven from California. I’m going to date the hell out of you. No one will have been dated harder in the history—” I planted my lips on his and he laughed against my mouth as he swooped me up in his arms.