He wants me to find myself before I find him.
So, I don't call him. Instead, I lock the phone and set it face down on the nightstand. Then I sit there for a long moment, just me and the ring box in Zach's empty cabin with the sound of the ocean and the distant noise of the ship waking up around me. Doors opening. Footsteps as people walk down the hall. Someone laughing in the corridor.
The world, apparently, continues even though mine has taken a massive shift.
I pick the box back up. Turn it over in my hands once. Twice.
He's been carrying this for years, waiting for me to become the version of myself that can accept it.
I’m not worthy yet, but maybe that’s where I start.
I close my fingers around the box, take my pile of clothes from the bed, and walk to the door. As I step out of the room, I take one final look at the rumpled sheets over my shoulder, determined more than ever to become someone worth loving.
My notebook is still blank. I’ve been staring at it for twenty minutes with my pen hovering over the paper, waiting for a divine intervention that isn’t coming. So far, I have thirty blue lines and nothing else, which feels about right for where I am in life right now.
You’re a failure.
I shake my head, stopping the negative talk before it can run through my mind and grip every part of me.
Then I press my pen down and force myself to write something. Anything. I need to prove to myself that I can do this. I’m not lost; I’m just not found yet.
Day three without—
No. I’m not doing that. I’m not writing about him. This notebook is supposed to be about me developing a creative writing process, not a journal about missing Zach.
I cross it out immediately, watching as the ink bleeds into a dark smear across the page.
Well, at least there’s only twenty-nine lines to fill on the page now.
I bite my bottom lip, feeling overwhelmed.
I want this, don’t I?
Dr. Reeves said I should write down thoughts that run through my mind, and if it gets too hard, then write about other people.
It’s hard.
Much harder than I anticipated.
I flip back a few pages where there are wild scribbles from the day I went down the zip line. It was the first time I felt free enough to write. The sentences barely make sense, but the pages are full, and even just reading the sections makes me feel excited.
He reached his hand out to me...
My feet teetered the edge. “Okay?” he asked...
The first thing I saw when I landed was his wide smile.
Wait.
My brow crosses, and I frown as I read every sentence I wrote from that day.
When I get to the final line, my shoulders slump in disappointment.
It’s all about him...
I was supposed to be writing about the feeling of trying something new. How the wind felt flowing through my hair, how my heart beat so fast I couldn’t hear Jonny talking anymore. Instead, I just wrote about Zach with a few extra steps.
Well, shit.
