Juniper sighed, and she flicked her empty ice cream stick into the grass. She’d pick it up later, but she couldn’t resist theurge.
“I will not make it through you leaving again. Not after this time.”
“I would never, ever do that again. I can’t help that I applied for this job before things changed between us. I am not taking that job. I only wanted another chance to talk to him to see if I could work something out remotely, very part-time because the work truly interests me.”
Juniper finally looked at her. “You know what I thought about all afternoon. That you moved back here, made me fall in love with you again, just for you to leave again. It’s so fucked up, it almost feels like you planned it that way.”
That sentiment looked like it hit Rowan like a sack of bricks. Juniper almost felt sorry she’d said it. But it was the truth, and she’d said it.
“Do you really think that little of me, still?”
“It’s more that sometimes I think that little of myself. That it would be easy to do something like that to someone like me.”
“That…” Rowan shook her head in disbelief, “that is really hard to hear.”
“I didn’t have the opportunity to go off and make something of myself the way you did. I saw the way you are when you’re with your friends and former colleagues, how happy and complete your life was. You’ve hadeveryopportunity. This thing I’ve created here – that is my opportunity. This is all I have.”
Rowan looked down and paused to pinch the bridge of her nose. When she finally looked up, Juniper could see the wetness in her eyes again. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”
“Didn’t you, though? You’ll always have other options – clearly. I won’t. And I worry that even if you promise me it’s not now, it will be someday that you finally decide this place isn’t enough for you. Or what we built together. Or that I’m not enough for you.”
“What makes you think that? I could never in a million lifetimes think that way about you, or what you’ve done, orwhat we’ve built together. I didn’t leave before because you weren’t enough for me.”
“I think you can see why I would think that though.”
None of these confessions made Juniper feel better, but she continued with a voice shaken by her truth finally freeing itself after so long.
“I’m just… I’m just going to say exactly how I’ve felt. You obviously saw what I experienced as a child. You saw it all. Everything. The tears, the bruises, the abandonment. You held me so many times while I cried.”
That’s when the first tear from Rowan’s eyes fell. As much as Juniper wanted to look away, she held that painful gaze. Rowan didn’t say anything. She just nodded her head.
“I spent so long thinking that if I could just be smart enough, clean enough, do enough, be good enough,” her throat seized on the last thought.
“Junie,” Rowan softly started before Juniper cut her off.
“Turns out I was never enough of any of those things. Well, you know how that story ended. I’ll spare us both re-living any more of that. Even after lots of therapy, I still have this thing with abandonment and not being enough. Is it so wrong to want to be claimed by someone? That someone would show up for you day after day, be on your team for every curveball life throws at you, love you unconditionally?”
“No. It’s not wrong at all.”
???
Rowan sat and held her head in her hands for a long while. She had always known, deep down, that that’s how Juniper would interpret the way she responded to their love finally coming into the open and then shattering when she left. She couldn’t reasonably be expected to heal the effects of generations of trauma that impacted Juniper as a young eighteen-year old. Especially not when she had her own shit todeal with.
But at the same time, she knew that wasn’t really what Juniper had expected of her anyway. She wasn’t asking to be fixed or saved or validated. She wanted to be seen, to have someone consistently show up for her without question. That was the unconditional love Rowan had always provided for her, platonically, well before they had romantic feelings towards each other. Juniper deserved someone who told her they loved her to not vanish in the middle of the night. Rowan had unfortunately been the second person in Juniper’s life to do that to her.
“I don’tneedany of that anymore. I don’t need to be loved like that anymore. I have cultivated an environment of love around me that’s so dense it’s all I feel. But now it’s what Iwant.I want to be in love with you, and you with me because it feels good. It feels happy. It feels purposeful. It feels like nothing else I’ve ever felt.”
“That’s exactly how I feel too.”
She gathered the strength to pull her head back from her hands. She gazed at Juniper, who had tucked her arms around herself and was staring off into the horizon. She wanted, almost overwhelmingly, to reach out and touch her, to feel her skin under her hands, in a way that loved her with the tenderness she deserved in life.
“Juniper, everything I’ve ever wanted is you. You respect my deepest vulnerabilities, but you also push me to feel brave and alive. I’ve always felt like two people trapped in one body – one masculine, one feminine. But with you, I was always made to feel whole.”
Juniper’s eyes darted to hers in concern. “Of course I’ve always felt that way about you. I love you for exactly who you are, Rowan.”
“So when I felt like I was finally being cleaved in half by all of the pressure around me, it’s like I blacked out on life and disappeared.”
“What pressure? What are you saying?”
