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As if she can save me from the cold that I feel right in the pit of me.
“Shower?”
I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve to spend a second more with her when I’m lying to her. I’d do anything to protect her and keep her safe, and I know that’s why I can’t tell her the truth yet, but even when she finds out the truth about Granny and my brothers, there’s still more. Things I don’t want her to know about me. Things I don’t want anyone to know.
“I’m going to make a terrible father.” There. It’s out there. It’s been said.
Ayana tears one hand from mine and claps it over her mouth, but a cry escapes all the same. “Don’t say that,” she begs from between her fingers, her eyes huge. “Please don’t say that. Why would you…why would you think that?”
“I…” Tell her the truth about some of it. Tell her the truth about all of it. “Doesn’t everyone have those fears?” I’m a coward.
I’m a coward, not because I want to get in the shower with her, but because I’m afraid. I’m afraid of being alone again in a way I never fully realized I even was until her. Alone even with the love of my family. Alone in a heart that is nothing more than scattered shards. Because people like me, people who have been wrecked and starved, beaten and abused when we were young, don’t know how to pick up the pieces and be whole, even if we look like it from the outside and can fake our way through it. I didn’t even fully realize that about myself until I was told that I’d created a life—a life that was going to be brought into the world in under a year.
You’ll mess that kid up just like you’re messed up.
I want to slap my hands over my ears to drown out the voice, but Ayana stops me by stepping in and clasping my face almost brutally. “That’s nonsense,” she says forcefully, her voice trembling with emotion and nearly breaking up as it’s so thick and raspy. “Whatever voice is telling you that, telling you that you wouldn’t make a good father, tell it to shut the fuck up. It’s okay to have doubts, but you’re shaking. I refuse to believe that, just like I refuse to believe that I’d be a bad mom just because I didn’t have one.” Her innate ability to just get me nearly shatters me right there. She knows just what to say, reading me as easily as if she’s known me for our whole lives. As if she really is my missing other half. “You can talk to me, Smoke. You can tell me. Or we can just…use our bodies to talk. We can also sit in silence, not talking or touching, and let it somehow heal up all the scars in us that people who didn’t deserve us left behind. Whatever you choose, I’m not leaving here. Not until you can look me in the eye and tell me it’s all nonsense.”
I can’t do that. But I do want to look her in the face and tell her some sort of thank you for not letting me drown in self-pity and for not leaving me to wallow in the past and soak up the foul lies that keep coming at me from my own brain—a brain festering with memories that, most of the time, I’m pretty good at blocking out, but blocking out doesn’t mean getting past. Maybe whenever good things happen, the bad will also always be there, a sort of sickness that is never properly or fully expunged from my system.
Honestly, I feel a little bit like I’m breaking open at all my seams. What did I once liken it to? A banana. Yes, that’s me. A damn banana that’s squishing out between the little cracks in its peel. I feel like I need air. Like I need space. Like I need to kick my way up to the surface and breathe again.
I come back, the harshness of the sounds of my breath echoing throughout the room. Panic writhes around in my gut, making those breaths harder and more rapid.
And then there’s Ayana with her sweet, trusting face. I drown in her eyes, in her plush lips that part when our gazes lock, and in the way her hands reach for mine again and hold on tight. She’s a goddess, a warrior goddess, and it’s so, so easy to believe that she could and would go to battle for me. To save me—a stranger she barely knows. Because she’s like that. Goodness in and of itself.
“I’m scared too,” she whispers, her voice ragged and her eyes burning like she’s staring down a golden sunset. But she’s not. She’s looking at me. “Life is just like that. Messy. Shitty. But it’s beautiful too. I made a promise a long time ago that I’d pick out the best parts and revel in them because life’s too short, and it doesn’t always last. I haven’t been very good at keeping that promise to myself, but now I’m promising it all over again. I choose to believe in grace and hope and the things that make this world a good place despite all the bad. I’m a hard realist because I’ve known the hardest reality, but I’m still choosing it. The fear of mess, of shit going south, of…of not being right isn’t going to stop me from living to the fullest right now. Or from feeling to the fullest. If there’s anything I want to teach our baby, it’s how to cherish the best moments while they’re here and not ruin them with what ifs and doubts and insecurities and shit from the past.”
