Page 45 of Keep Me

“What kind of anything?”

“I don’t know. Something that isn’t about any of this.” I picked at a blade of grass, twisting it between my fingers. “Tell me what you’re wearing. Tell me what the house smells like right now.”

He exhaled, and I could hear the smallest smile in it, the kind I knew the exact shape of even blind. “I’m wearing the gray shirt. The one you stole for three weeks last winter and then pretended you’d never seen before.”

“That was a good shirt.”

“It’s still a good shirt.” A pause, warmer now. “My mom made that lemon chicken thing tonight. The house still smells like it. She keeps trying to feed me like I’m twelve again, like enough food will fix all of this.”

“Is it working?”

“No,” he said. “But I let her try. It’s the only thing she knows how to do with her hands when she’s worried, so I let her do it.”

I closed my eyes, picturing it, his mother’s kitchen, the warm yellow light I remembered from every holiday we had ever spent there. It was a kinder image than anything in front of me right now, and I held onto it like a hand.

“I miss your hands,” I admitted, the alcohol stripping away whatever filter usually caught a sentence like that before it left my mouth. “That’s a weird thing to say to someone on the phone. But I do. I miss the weight of them. On my back, on my face. I miss being held like I’m something worth being careful with.”

His breath caught, just slightly, just enough that I heard it. “You are something worth being careful with, Seren. You always are.” His voice dropped. “I think about your hands too if it helps. I think about the way you used to fall asleep with your fingers curled into my shirt like you were afraid I’d disappear if you let go. I haven’t slept right in days. I hate every bed. Because you’re not in it.”

My throat tightened, grief and longing tangled so completely I could not have separated them if I tried. “I didn’t think you’d say that. I thought you’d be mad at me.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m the one who sent you away.”

“You didn’t send me away,” he said, gently. “You asked for space. I’m not punishing you for that. I miss you so much it’s stupid, and I think you needed this, and neither one cancels the other out.”

I pressed the heel of my hand against my eyes, the tears coming sideways and unannounced the way they had in the shower. “I love you. I don’t think I’ve said that since before. Since the hospital. I love you so much. I love you more than I ever imagined I was capable of.”

“I know,” he said. “I’ve felt it anyway. But I’m glad to hear it.”

“I love you,” I said again, like the word might become bigger the more I used it, or that it might stop catching so hard on its way out. “I love you, and I miss you, and I am so sorry I’m sitting in a graveyard drunk instead of in your arms right now, where I actually want to be.”

“Don’t apologize for where you are.” His voice had gone tender, the kind of tenderness that used to undo me even on easy days, let alone a night like this one. “I would drive there right now if you asked me to. You know that. I’d be there in ten minutes flat, and I wouldn’t say a single word, I’d just sit down next to you and let you lean on me until the sun came up.”

“I know you would.”

“But you didn’t ask. So, I’m here instead, on the phone, in my parents’ house, missing you with my whole chest, and that’s okay. That’s allowed to be enough for tonight.” A pause, softer still. “You’re allowed to need both things, Seren. The space, and me.”

I sat there with the phone pressed so hard against my ear it almost hurt, my mother’s stone cool against the back of my skull, my father’s raw grave dark beside me, and let his voice be the only warm thing in the whole cemetery.

“Stay with me a little longer,” I said again, quieter this time, half a question.

“As long as you need,” he said.

“I was angry at Jax tonight,” I said, the words arriving before I’d decided to let them. “Here. At the grave. I came to be sad about my dad and somehow, I ended up mad at a person who has been dead for three years.”

Zane went quiet. “Tell me more.”

“It doesn’t make sense. He has nothing to do with any of this. My dad didn’t even know him, not really, not the way we did.” I picked at the grass again, twisting it loose by the roots. “But I was sitting here trying to just be sad, normal sad, the kind other people get to be when their parents die, and instead I was doing this whole other math problem about him. About what he took. Like he found a way to be in the room even now, even here, even at a grave that has nothing to do with him.”

“What do you think he took?” Zane’s voice was careful, but not the careful of someone afraid of the answer. The careful of someone making sure he heard the real one.

“Years,” I said. “Not just the bad years. The ones after, too. I think if he hadn’t hurt me, I would have just gotten to be sad about my dad. Just sad. I wouldn’t have had to go looking for an old pain to blame for making the new one so complicated. I think about everyone else who’s lost a parent and I bet most of them don’t have to do this. Don’t have to drag the person who hurt them into the grief like he’s part of it, like he’s still entitled to my pain.”

“He’s not entitled to anything,” Zane said.

“I know that. Knowing it doesn’t make it leave.”