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Ethan says there are people I can talk to who are trained to help me piece together who I was and what I am and what I could be, but he understands I’m scared. He tells me it’s not weak to talk to someone, that it doesn’t make him pity me, that we can take it slow, try as many as it takes to find someone I trust.
I don’t know what’s left of me now that all the pain is taken out. For the first time in my life, I want to dosomething, help Ethan pay for our house and our food with money that isn’t from my future legal settlement. We’ve talked about it a lot, and the other day he drove me to the local rec pool and asked if they were looking for swimming teachers. The guy behind the counter about shit himself when he looked up from handing me the application. He said I didn’t need to fill anything out, and I can have any class I want.
I’m nervous; I’ve never hung out with kids before, and I don’t know what to say to them. But it feels warm and right to sit at the big dining table in the sun, thinking of lesson ideas and trying to remember what it was like to swim for the first time.
And whenever I get tired and lost in my head, Rio or Ethan or both of them come nuzzling and nipping at me until I’m laughing so hard my ribs hurt.
I never thought.
I never thought I’d be here.
I never thought I’d know what it means to be happy.
And sometimes we say I love you, and sometimes we say I hate you, and sometimes we just exist together without a name, two stars in the universe, and it doesn’t matter because they’re all different names for the same thing, something that will never belong to anyone but us.
