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Henley: I’ve come to realize that the power behind love can morph into hate when it all goes wrong. I love you, and I hate you. But I hate myself more than I could ever hate you. I often wonder if I could love myself as deeply as I love you. Maybe I could hate you enough to want to forget you.
Brooks: Or maybe if you loved yourself as deeply as you do me, maybe, just maybe, you’d let yourself take a chance on letting me love you back.
I stare at his words. They all but pulsate on my screen, forcing me to feel them in the tips of my toes to the very top of my head. Coursing through my veins.
Maybe you’d let yourself take a chance on letting me love you back.
I want to scream at him. I have let him love me back. I don’t doubt for a single second that he loves me as deeply as I do him. I just wish he’d understand that sometimes it just isn’t enough. Sometimes living in the throes of love is more painful than losing it.
Henley: Most days, I wish I never met you. But those days, I feel the most pain because I don’t think I’d know happiness without you.
I wait for him to respond. My cell phone damp with sweat in my palms. My words were hurtful. Not purposely harmful, but necessarily honest. I feel content in my own company traveling the world. But contentment is worlds away from happiness. Brooks is the only place in this world where I feel happy. When I’m with him, I never feel alone. And the harsh reality of that scares me more than anything in this world. He has the power to break not only my heart but also my spirit and soul.
Brooks: Will you let me buy you a coffee.
Henley: Yes.
I don’t think before replying. I’d rather live in the pain of seeing him than with the regret of not.
* * *
I arrive deliberately late.Afraid he’ll stand me up. Petrified of sitting in a coffee shop alone and hopeful only for him to decide it was a mistake to suggest it.
Shedding my layers as I step into the coffee shop he’d suggested, I search the space with an anticipation that turns my stomach. My heart rattles in my chest at an unhealthy speed. Scarf held loosely in my hand, I pull at the beanie on my head as our eyes lock. He stands, the deep swallow in his throat as obvious as my own.
Two years.
Twenty-four arduous months of finding myself while needing to stay lost.
My feet move forward of their own accord, and I can see the physicality of his sigh. The relief that drops his shoulders. He smiles then. A small smirk, one that hasn't changed throughout the years. The tip-up at the right side of his mouth, a slow blink of his beautiful blue eyes as he takes me in.
Standing in front of him, I let my eyes track his face. Cataloging everything I’ve missed over the past few years.
At only twenty-seven, he exudes a maturity most often seen in middle-aged men. Life experience tucked comfortably in his pockets. The better part of a decade spent solo, traveling the world, and embracing different cultures will offer you that. I don’t doubt, staring into my eyes the way he is, he sees a similar experience in me.
Hair cut in the same style he’d worn at Addy’s wedding, the length drops over his forehead, obscuring the view of his left eye. The light shades that danced through the color have faded, having given way to the dark brown you’d be forgiven for thinking was black. The bottom half of his face is decorated in a shadow of dark hair, a thick mustache hiding the rich red of his lips.
“Squirrel,” he breathes, hand grabbing hold of my jacket to pull me into an embrace I feel starved of.
My arms wrap around his waist like a vise, cheek to his chest. I breathe him in. Drowning myself in the relief of feeling at home for the first time in years. A single sob escapes my throat before I can stop it. The sound broken and relieved and altogether full of affection.
Brooks pulls me closer, nose to the top of my hair as he inhales. His hand finds the nape of my neck, holding me against him.
“One minute, Henley. I need a fucking minute before you pull away from me.”
The quiet desperation in his tone forces another sob to break free and I press my face into his chest, hiding the sound from the crowd around us.
He steps back before I do, hands moving to my cheeks as he looks at me.Reallylooks at me.
“Telling you I missed you seems deficient in meaning to how I actually feel,” he whispers.
I close my eyes to catch the pool of tears within them.
“Let’s get a coffee.” I feel the loss of his hands on my face like a wound to my heart, but I nod in agreement, opening my eyes to the blistering affection in his.
“Sorry to interrupt.”
We turn to the gentle husk of the man standing beside us.
