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“I don’t like myself very much right now anyway, so fire away.” Her eyes are telling me stories about my past and future and I can’t get away from this moment. I’m out of sorts and time. I don’t get to contemplate and try to lose myself in painting anymore. She’s here, right in front of me, and I know there is no closure.
She steps forward, but I move away. She plants herself and squares her shoulders. It’s adorable and she’s perfect, and I can’t get past the scary cliff we’re on the edge of. A lifetime of making sure I wasn’t a victim has led me to hiding from her.
Her voice is sure and somehow I know she’s going to rip us apart so we can maybe heal and find our way back together. “This was our first test together as a real couple, and we both failed. You ran scared like Danny did after you thought I broke up with you. After the horrible world you lived through, you protected yourself by leaving. Boston College played in California your freshman year. You could have found me and asked why. And I went catatonic and then went about burning everything to the ground. I raged forward, like I did when I discovered my father’s meddling orchestrated way too much in my life. I believed I wasn’t worthy of your love, so screw it, I’d become someone else. I changed because of you and in spite of you.”
Since the moment I smelled her soft vanilla and green grass scent coming up the staircase tonight, I felt whole again. I raise my arms in a stretch and my shirt lifts. She looks at the strip of skin above my waistband. “Eyes up here.”
She smiles and meets my smirk. I can’t help but take in her chilled nipples in the thin cotton nightgown. But is this all chemistry? I think it might be time to find out who we are beyond our past.
“Fuck. I did run from everything, especially you. Do you think we can ditch our histories and create a new one?”
She steps towards me and I move from victim to complicit. I say, “Perhaps we leave those people behind.”
She nods. “Then who do we become?”
I’m done questioning or pretending I’m not completely enthralled with her and that she’s standing in front of me, fighting for me.
I say, “Us.”
Her eyes brim with tears as she manages to say, “What you’re telling me is, we should probably never leave each other again?”
“Don’t let each other out of sight, for safety’s sake, of course.” I push off the wall and move towards her, giving up the high ground and collecting her into my arms. My body relaxes into who I’m supposed to be—which is simply hers.
She collapses into me and I bury my face in her. We stand there for way too long as we let it all go. With every second we hold each other, another piece of our armor and our fear falls away. We’re shedding it like a skin we no longer need.
I say, “There’s nothing else for me but you. I love you, Lizzie.”
She rubs my stubble. “I think I’m finally Elizabeth. I want to be whole. I want to be with you and the rest will come to me.”
Complete and whole sounds good.
“I’m going to need to stay Hayden. But a different Hayden. I can’t be Danny or Christopher. I don’t know what you should call me.”
“How about ‘mine?’”
“That works. I love you so much. I’m sorry I ran and left. I think I was so used to the pain of not having you that I returned to something familiar. Like prisoners who get out and can’t hack it on the outside.”
“I’m like prison?” She raises an eyebrow.
“That came out wrong.”
“Yes, it did. Fortunately you have forever to rewrite it.” Her skin is soft, and her voice is a bit deeper as she speaks.
I kiss her lightly and say, “Many, many drafts.”
She smirks, “Lots of late nights and long hours for us to get it just right.”
“It will be our greatest work in progress. All of this wasn’t you and I wasn’t fair. I want to build a life with you, not in spite of you. You’re the only thing that’s ever made any sense.”
I kiss her lightly and it’s the reason for everything. That feeling of good bourbon or a job well done, the sunshine after a shit-ass winter, and the taste of everything good in the fucking world. She’s all of it.
She says as she pulls back from our kiss, “You’re here in our house. It feels like it’s yours, but how is that possible?”
“I bought it four years ago with Robbie’s help. I couldn’t bear to have anyone in our home. Then it became the place I wanted to be all the time. There wasn’t pain here, only the good memories. Only the inspiration for a life you told me I could have. I let myself deserve things here, so I bought it. I come here a lot. The apartments were rented out until recently, so it kind of paid for itself after a while.”
She kisses my paint splattered cheek. Her kiss is sweet and sultry, and she clutches me closer. I take hold of her hair and the kiss.
“I love you so much. I love you with all the bubbly excitement and dark sarcasm in the world. I love you more than winning,” she says.
