“I am so happy you come here, Lennon,” he finally said once we stepped out into the brisk fall breeze. “I know therapy is good, but there was something very healing about that room. About Rachel…The way she spoke with you, with such ease. I could see the weight of what you carry just…ease off for a minute. She’s good for you.”
I smiled faintly to myself. He was right.
“Rachel said in there she was proud of you for getting creative and finishing the bucket list,” he added. “How did you do it?”
There was a hint of caution in his tone.
We walked slowly, hands laced together, with no real pace to be anywhere.
“Well, I wrote down in a journal what our bucket list items looked like. The ones we completed. I turned them into chapters. Chapters of our lives in sequence, exactly as we experienced them.”
I swallowed before saying the rest.
“And then, I wrote the next chapters with you, as if we were going to experience them in the future. I wrote about what we would do, where we would go. I researched places. Restaurants. The Dead Sea. Road trips and whatever else. I built it all. On paper.”
He stopped walking.
From his back pocket, he pulled out a crumbled, worn sheet of paper.
“Can we check off one right now?”
My heart stuttered, unsure of what Asher meant, but I nodded reluctantly anyway.
When he unfolded it, I recognized the page immediately. Our original bucket list. Checks and scribbles marked up the page with smudges. A tear in the bottom from folding it too many times.
“I love you,” he spoke so sweetly, steady and certain as his eyes locked on mine. His beautiful blue eyes bore into my soul.
“I have loved you and I will continue to love you. Until my last breath…and then until we rot together.”
There was no hesitation. I smiled, reached for the paper and pen that was now in his hand he’d somehow carried with him.
Searching for the statement, my eyes finally found it.
Be loved by someone.
The pen pressed into the paper against the backside of my palm as I checked it off.
It felt monumental to check this one off.
When it went on the list, it was the only one I felt wasn’t possible. Like fiction. To be loved was more difficult than winning the lottery.
It was a life I couldn’t imagine for myself, even beyond my wildest dreams.
But Asher eased into this impossibility of mine with such grace and patience. He was unexpected, with everything and more. He was the change that saved my life. By nearly losing him, I had found myself.
Asher saved my life—at least for today.
“Let’s take a trip,” he said.
I let out a dry chuckle. “Asher. You just barely got out of the hospital. Don’t you think we could just fucking breathe for a second while you got your bearings again?”
His smile didn’t waver. “Lennon, we both know my time is limited. I don’t want to be cautious anymore. I was always fucking cautious. No more. Let’s just keep adding to this bucket list.”
He was playful and excited. So I asked, “You trying to keep me from exiting stage right?”
“Always, baby. Always,” he said.
The idea of leaving on a trip with him—anywhere—felt reckless. I couldn’t deny that it sounded like the perfect way to continue on this whirlwind romance we ignited.
