Page 90 of How I Met Your Murderer

At 11:35pm, we both came for a second time.

At 12:00am on October 31st, Raff held me extra tight as we lay in bed watching the stars shine through the window. If I was a doll, he would’ve squeezed the stuffing right out of me.

At 12:48am, when I still hadn’t vanished on him, he finally started to relax.

At 2:13am, he lost the fight and sank under the waves of sleep while I rested beside him, toying with the chain of the pendant around his neck and wondering when I’d start to feel some kind of change come over me. Wondering when some golden door might appear.

But pretty soon, lulled by Raff’s deep, rhythmic breathing, I was asleep, too.

twenty-five

Choices

Eric

As usual, I drifted instead of truly dreaming. But this was different somehow, my awareness heightened. There was no more bed with a too-soft mattress and luxury bedding, no more Raff to snuggle up to. No more castle.

For the first time in sixteen years, I floated free. I had traveled somewhere else entirely.

Golden light surrounded me, washing over me in slow, gentle waves like the lapping of water against a harbor dock on a clear day. And with it came the gently rising tide of every memory I’d ever had, every experience in my life and afterlife, all flickering at the edges of my vision like minnows darting away from my feet in the shallow creek behind my grandma’s house where I’d played as a kid.

There was no one else with me. No shadowy figures. No voices. Just a steady presence, an energy I recognized as vast and patient and much older than my own.

It didn’t speak, but sent another flicker of understanding my way that unfurled inside me like taking a deep breath after so long without: There was no deceptive magic here. I was simply being offered a choice.

Stay, or return.

I could drift further into the all-encompassing brightness, let myself become the stuff of stars in what would feel like the gentlest surrender. Like laying down every burden I’d ever been asked to carry.

Or I could give in to the faint pull around my navel that tugged me back toward the shape of my old body, its outline waiting for me like a coat I’d left hanging by the door and forgotten to pick up for years. Toward a thready pulse that would grow steadily stronger. Toward the heaviness and the ache and the mess and the sheer beauty of existing.

That pull grew stronger the moment I remembered someone lay there beside me. Beside what I could be. Someone who always looked at me like I was worth choosing.

The steady presence around me didn’t push. The gravity of each path was mine alone to feel and weigh. And as I drifted through the lightness and the brightness of the dreamy in-between, I realized the choice I needed to make wasn’t about life or death after all.

It was about who I wanted to be.

Something in me tilted, turning away from a light that didn’t ask anything of me, didn’t need me, to focus more fully on a darkened room in an old stone castle and the man now alone in a big bed. And like a compass needle pointing me north, I remembered his hands and his laugh and the way he said my name like it mattered.

I turned to Raff, and felt a tug warmer and sharper than anything this place could offer.

I chose the shape of my body, breath and ache and being loved by him. As long as he was in the world, I wasn’t done with it after all.

I chose to stay, letting the world pull me back into myself, reshaping my physical form from that tidewater of memory. I wasn’t done yet. Half-asleep, I nuzzled his hair, which tickled my nose and smelled like belonging. He was my reason to stay.

I was home.

When I jolted awake, I wasn’t entirely sure what had pushed me into alertness, because the room was still dark and Raff was still sleeping soundly. Maybe it was my blazing hot feet, one hooked around Raff’s ankle, trapped under too many covers. Maybe it was the ache in my spine from being bent out of shape by the soft mattress. Maybe it was the desert-dryness of my throat despite how much we drank before bed. Maybe it was Raff’s hair tickling my cheek, because we had somehow started sharing a pillow as we slept. Maybe it was the hunger blooming in my gut, deep and insistent. Maybe it was the faint soreness of my well-used ass.

Or maybe it was all the noise. The rise and fall of my chest that brought soft gusts of breath, a sound I hadn’t heard in over sixteen years. The rush of blood circulating through my body, the faint jump I felt beneath my fingers when I shoved them against my wrist.

I had a pulse.

My stomach gurgled.

I needed to pee.

Naked under the covers and nestled against Raff’s huggable bulk, I was sweating. Out of my pores. I had pores.