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“Some would say that this is a good form of therapy,” he muses.
“Self-inflicted torture can be therapy?”
He laughs again. “Exercise in the form of being outdoors, surrounded by nature.”
“Surrounded by blood thirsty mosquitos and huge spiders and other buzzing things that land in my ear,” I grumble, and swat away said buzzing thing.
He shakes his head at me. “Come here, just through these trees.” He leads me up a bit more and I grumble the whole way. It only takes maybe two minutes before we enter a small clearing and my mouth parts at the view before me.
We’re definitely on top of a mountain. It’s incredible. Truly exquisite. The trees are still pretty bare but you can see the beginning signs of life on many of them. There are rolling hills and smaller mountains surrounding us and the sky is painted a bright blue with big white clouds resting atop of everything. It’s beautiful. I take a few moments, turning in a full circle to take everything in. I close my eyes and breathe in.
But I don’t find myself counting this time, because I’m not breathing to calm any sadness or grief. I’m breathing because in this moment, I feel peace. I feel happy to be alive. I’m thankful to be alive. I find myself thankful that I have opportunities to enjoy moments and wonders like this. I’ve struggled with the guilt of taking things for granted—Hayden and our time together, the past almost two years without him, how I’ve been just surviving and keeping my eyes down while ignoring life going on around me.
But in this moment I feel hope. And I haven’t felt that in a long time. It feels strange. Almost a bit itchy and uncomfortable in my chest, but then soothing in a way I’d never thought possible again.
I breathe deeply again, feeling a small tear slip out of my eye, and I say, “This is incredible.” I smile and turn to look at David who is standing beside me. “Beautiful,” I add.
He is watching me so intently, like if he looked away from me everything around us would fall to pieces. “It is,” he says, not taking his eyes off me. His eyes are filled with light, warmth, longing and joy. “It really is.”
I smile at him, holding his eye contact and we just look at each other for a while. It doesn’t feel uncomfortable, forced or awkward. It feels like we’re both being filled. With life, with joy, with…something. He takes a slow, tentative step towards me. I don’t stop him, so he keeps closing the space between us until he stands about a foot away from me. He reaches his hand up, even slower than his steps were, and he touches his fingers to my cheek to wipe the tears. But he then uses those same gentle fingertips to brush from my temple to my jaw, lingering by my mouth before he drops his hand slowly, almost reluctantly. My breath hitches in surprise and my hand reaches up to cover the space he touched. I still feel both the warmth and the chill from where his fingers were. That surprise turns into peace. Instead of retreating into myself from guilt and betrayal, from the abhorrence in myself of letting another man touch me, I revel in the peace that his touch brings me.
In this moment I don’t feel so empty and broken. My broken pieces don’t feel so formidable. His warmth and light feel like a balm to my jagged edges.
“Thank you for bringing me here,” I whisper, worried that if I speak too loudly I’ll break whatever is happening in this moment. I’ll pop the bubble and end this feeling too soon.
“Thank you for coming,” he says, his voice as low as mine is as if he’s worried about the same thing.
FORTY-SIX
THEN, WINTER 2 YEARS AGO
We’re laying in bed staring up at the ceiling. My eyes focus on the tiny crack that is just beside the ceiling fan.
“It’s going to be weird not being together so much,” I whisper. Hayden, who has one arm wrapped around me and the other tucked under his head, rubs his hand up and down my arm.
“We’ll be together every night. We’ll eat dinner and have the whole evening together,” Hayden assures me. He sighs. “I can’t wait to come back to a home cooked meal every night.”
I elbow him in the ribs, hard, and he grunts before he laughs. “We’ll take turns cooking, or we’ll be so tired from being so successful in our careers that we’ll order takeout every single night. Maybe we’ll be so successful and wealthy that we’ll hire a private chef and have all of our meals cooked for us,” I joke.
He chuckles. “And someone to clean and pick up all of my dirty laundry.”
“You’ve gotten so much better with that. I really appreciate it,” I say with an amused smile.
“Anything for you, Ana Reyes,” he says and I laugh. “Do you think we’ll have a big family?” he asks.
I think about that for a moment. I told him in the beginning of our relationship that I never really wanted to have kids. It was never something I imagined for myself or wished for my future. He was understanding and told me that whatever our future looked like, as long as we were together was enough for him.
But then as the years passed, it started to become something that I didn’t hate the idea of. Maybe it wasn’t that I didn’t want kids, but I couldn’t see myself having them with just anyone. But the idea of having a family with Hayden is something I can see. Something I think I want.
“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. “Coming from a big family, I see the perks and I also see the frustrations with it. It’s kind of scary not knowing what to expect.”
“No, it’s not scary,” he ponders. “It’s exciting,” he assures me. “We don’t have to have all of this figured out right now, or even in the next few years. We have time. We have forever,” he reminds me, kissing the side of my head.
“I know,” I sigh. We lay in silence for a few more moments.
“I’m going to miss having all of this time with you. During the days and every evening,” I whisper.
“It’s going to be okay,” he promises me.
