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“Don’t worry about it. It’s just a dress.” The lie sounds awful on his lips.
I pull my legs up to my chest and wrap my arms around them. “It’s not, though. We both know that.”
“I probably shouldn’t have kept it. It’s just…getting rid of her things feels like getting rid of her.”
“I think it’s okay to keep them if they make you feel better.”
“I’m not even sure if any of it does make me feel better. I don’t know how to feel or what to do anymore.”
The heartache in his voice nudges my own anxiety and confusion to the back burner. He didn’t come in here because he was mad; he came because seeing the dress opened a door for him, too, and grief walked right back in. It’s so unfair—he’s been trapped in an almost debilitating emotional limbo for eighteen years. When does it end?
Softly, I say, “I once read that one of the hardest things to do after you lose someone is to figure out how to be you again without them.”
His head lowers. “It’s true. Kelley’s constantly on my ass about it, and I know he’s right. I haven’t moved forward. Not with my career, not with my life. It’s like I fucking died with her.”
Over the years, I’ve watched Alex attempt change in tiny increments, but he never fully commits. He’ll build sculptures but won’t agree to an art show. He’ll sit in his car but won’t drive it. He’ll start fixing things around the house but won’t finish. He’ll take his wedding ring off and a week later slip it back on again. He gets so very close but then can’t take the next step. I can only guess it’s because he can’t bring himself to move on to something without Brianna’s memory attached to it.
“Not to sound cliché, but I think she’d want you to live. Brianna loved everything about you. She believed in you. It’s so clear in everything she left behind. It’s in her paintings of this house, it’s in all her sketches of your work, it’s in all the pictures she took of you. She loved her life. She loved your life. If she could see you now—and I truly think she can—not living your life, not chasing your dream…” I swallow back the emotion wavering my voice. “I think she’d be really sad. As much as she wanted a life together, she wouldn’t want the end of hers to also be the end of yours.”
He takes in a deep breath and lets it out in a slow whoosh. “You’re right.” The words are a mere croak. My heart nearly cracks, hearing the pain in his voice.
I want so badly to hug him, but it feels like it would be wrong to do so in my bedroom, lit only by the moon.
He rubs his hand over his face and straightens his eye patch—which is more habit than an actual fixing. That’s when I notice there’s something in his hand.
“What’s that you’re holding?”
Looking down at it in his hands, he says quietly, “Your poem. The one you gave me the day I told you not to come back.”
Wow. The fact that he still has it after all this time makes my stomach flutter. “And here I am, years later, living in your house.”
He chuckles. “Yup. Here you are.”
“Does that bother you?”
“No. It’s good for Lily to have you here.”
I love Lily to the ends of the earth. But I also want to know how he feels. “And what about you?”
He pauses for a beat before answering. “It’s good for me, too. You remind me what it’s like to be happy. To have dreams.”
His unexpected admission makes my chest tighten. “I didn’t realize I made you feel that way. I’m honored,” I say affectionately. “But you’re not giving me the poem back, are you?”
“Nope.”
He unfolds the paper and grabs my phone from my nightstand, touching the screen so it wakes and glows enough to give him light to read:
“Oh, what a lovely return it will be,
Slipping quietly from there to here,
among whispers and memories,
To find you again, my eternal love,
with your beautiful smile
Waiting always for me.”
I might be new to all things attractive in the male species, but I’m pretty sure there is nothing sexier or more romantic than a man reading poetry out loud.
“Did you write this?” he asks in his low, gruff tone.
I’m too mesmerized by his voice reading my words to be offended by the question. “Of course I did.”
“Then you were only twelve when you wrote this.”
I stayed up all night writing that poem, driven with such fervor that I cried, trying to get the words right. It had to be perfect. I just didn’t know what would make it perfect. I wrote and erased and wrote and erased until I was exhausted, my tears blurring the ink, and then, finally, it was right. The voice in my head let me rest, and I’d crawled into bed, weary but excited, at three a.m. with my stuffed fox.
