ME: See you soon, pretty girl.
I set the phone down. Lean my head back against the couch and stare at the ceiling.
The minutes stretch, and I just don’t move. I’m not sure what I even feel right now. Sadness? Emptiness? Every time I grieve, the weight of others I’ve lost weighs even heavier on me.
Then I hear her car.
The engine. The tires on the gravel. The crunch of her pulling in beside my truck, and the slam of the door before the engine's even fully off.
Footsteps on the porch. Running.
The front door opens, and Harper is standing in my living room, purse dropped on the floor, keys still in her hand, hair a mess from driving with the windows down, and she's looking at me with an expression that cracks something open in my chest that I've been holding shut all day.
“Hi, Acey,” she whispers.
She crosses the room, and I'm on my feet before I know I'm standing, and she crashes into me so hard it knocks us both back a step. Her arms go around my neck. Her face buries into my chest. She holds on with everything she has, and the force of it, the way her whole body presses into mine, and her hands grip the back of my shirt.
I wrap my arms around her. Pull her in. Tighter than I should. Tight enough that she probably can't breathe properly, but she doesn't pull back. She just sinks deeper.
"I'm here," she whispers. "I'm right here, Ace."
Something breaks.
My face drops into her hair, and I breathe her in, and my shoulders shake once. A sound comes out of me that I've never made before, and she doesn't flinch. She holds tighter.
"I've got you," she says. "I've got you, baby. Let go. I'm not going anywhere."
So I do. I let go.
Not all of it. Not the rage. Not the cold, sharp need to find whoever did this and put them in the ground. That stays locked in the part of me that will deal with it when the time comes. But the grief. The sadness of losing someone who shaped me into the man I am. Knowing that the east fence will be empty tomorrow morning and every morning after.
That I give to her. All of it. Because she's the only person in the world I trust to hold it without breaking.
We stand in my living room for a long time. Her arms around me. My face in her hair. The clock ticking in the hallway.
Harper doesn't try to fix it. She doesn't tell me it'll be okay. She doesn't ask questions or offer solutions or say any of the things people say when they don't know what else to do. She just holds me.
After a while, she pulls back just enough to take my face in her hands. Wipes the wet from under my eyes with her thumbs. She studies me with a look so tender it almost starts the whole thing over again.
"When did you last eat?" she asks.
I don't remember, so I don’t answer.
"That's what I thought. Sit down."
She presses a kiss to my forehead. Then she lets go and walks into my kitchen and starts opening cupboards.
I sit back down. Listening to Harper move through my kitchen. The fridge opening. A cupboard closing. The sound of her pulling the cast-iron skillet from the rack where it hangs, because she knows this kitchen now. She knows where everything lives.
The smell hits me before I see it. Butter in a hot pan. Garlic. Rosemary. The sear of a steak hitting cast iron, that hiss and spit that fills a kitchen.
She's cooking my favorite meal.
She comes back thirty minutes later, carrying a plate that nearly makes me lose it all over again. Ribeye, seared hard on the outside, pink and bloody in the middle. Creamed mashed potatoes, loaded with butter and cracked pepper. Roasted asparagus with garlic. A pile of caramelized onions on top of the steak that she knows I'd eat straight from the pan if she let me.
She sets it on the coffee table with a glass of water and a cold beer. Then she sits beside me, tucks her legs under her, and puts her head on my shoulder.
"Eat," she says. "Then tell me about him."
