She doesn’t need me. And frankly, that’s one of the things I admire about her the most.
She doesn’t need me, and she will realize that now that I’m gone.
She doesn’t need me, but I fucking need her. Like damn oxygen. Like taking a deep breath of fresh air, and a breathing out of all my concerns.
“Do you want to spill some of those worries?” Alf asks.
He’s known me for ten years. He found me beaten on the side of the road when I came back here to grieve Noah, and I didn’t care about my own life.
Getting into that fight was a suicidemission. I picked it on purpose. Pushed until someone pushed back harder.
I’m not sure whether I really wanted to die, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Alf found me. Nursed me back to life, and I started helping him with his mission here.
Concrete dust, rebar, sunburn, sweat. No boardrooms. No expectations. Just work.
Building affordable housing for the poor. In Noah’s memory. This is where I disappear when I need a reminder that life is worth living. When I need to escape my existence.
Roxy was right all along: being driven by revenge is exhausting. This place has been a reprieve from that.
Working, sweating, exhausting myself for days. Letting my body hurt so my head can finally shut the fuck up.
“You know, man, what I liked about you is that we could be silent together. Don’t fuck it up now.” I raise my beer and take a swig.
“Before I knew your demons.” He circles in front of me with his bottle. “This is different. What did you do?”
I scoff. “Why would you assume I did something?”
He gulps half of his bottle, wipes his mustache, and shakes his head. “Are you going to pick at my words, or be a man and fess up?”
“Being a man hardly means sharing,” I grumble.
“Jesus, it’s like pulling teeth with you.”
He takes a puff from his pipe. The smoke curls between us, sharp and sweet, clinging to the humid air.
I take a sip, and we fall silent. Only the silence isn’t the companionable, pleasant version. It presses. Accuses.
I fidget in my seat, and then I sigh. “Alright, you annoying asshole. I fell in love.”
“My condolences.” He chuckles.
“Fuck you.”
“So touchy,” he taunts. “You’ve been coming here for ten years. Together we’ve built twenty, maybe thirty houses. Not counting the ones you sponsored. All that work, all that charity, and you never ever left here feeling better.”
I frown. “Your point?”
“You’ve been driven by revenge, by grief, by anger and self-loathing…”
“Don’t spare me.” I raise my beer.
“Why would I?” he snorts. “Maybe love is what was missing. The question is, why are you here now when you found one?”
I sigh. “She needed space. Time to think.”
“And you gave it to her?” His tone is laced with condescension. “When you find the one, you hold onto herno matter what.”
“Says the man who’s been divorced three times,” I scoff.
