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“Yes,” I whisper, tasting his tears and mine as they mingle between our mouths. “I’ve loved you since I was nine. I’ve been in love with you since I was fourteen. I know it makes no sense, but loving Jeremy didn’t mean I stopped loving you. I’ll always love you, Lucas. Please don’t leave me. Don’t ever leave me.”
The words rip something open inside me, allowing a new facet of grief to surge forward. Turns out acceptance is loss, too, as the lies I’ve wrapped around myself to avoid pain are stripped away.
This grief is a slow wave, bright instead of the usual dark. As it filters through me, fills me up, it feels like being put together again after decades of being half-whole.
Maybe it will never make sense—that my heart loves two men—but I’m no longer able to deny the truth: I belonged with Jeremy then, and I belong with Lucas now.
He kisses the tears from beneath my eyes. “I won’t leave you. I promise. I’ll even let you die before me—many, many years from now.”
I laugh, which mutates into sobs again. They’re softer, though. Spring rain instead of a winter storm. “You’re my Peapod, too,” I tell him.
He laughs. I laugh, too. And then we cry and laugh and hold each other in the cold water until we hear the familiar rhythmic splashing of oars.
A canoe manned by two fishermen glides close. They give us wide-eyed stares. One of them asks, “You two all right?”
Lucas looks at me. “Yeah, thanks.”
“Actually,” I say, smiling brightly at the men, “my friend here isn’t a very strong swimmer. I came out to rescue him, but I’m not sure I can support his weight all the way in. Can we get a haul to shore?”
Lucas sighs.
The men smirk and throw us a rope.
We sit shoulder to shoulder on the end of the dock, the sun slowly drying our wet skin. The fishermen are long gone, and the air is still, the lake a mirror reflecting wispy clouds and distant mountains that sit like a hat atop the tree line.
Our fingers are linked tight, braced on the warm wood between our knees.
“Do you want to read the letter?” he asks.
I shake my head. “That’s okay. I think I already know what it said. He wanted you to come back and take care of me, right?”
He nods, his eyes tearing. Mine are leaking too.
There have been times in the past when I was convinced I had no more tears left in my body, that the necessary function itself was broken from gross overuse. But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that there will always be more tears. Always more joy, more sadness. More to feel.
More life.
“I wouldn’t change anything,” I tell him, surprised when I find the words honest.
“I wouldn’t, either,” he says, then he chuckles. “I think he was wrong, anyway. You never would have accepted me back then. I even tried, remember?”
I do—though I’ve spent years forcing myself to forget the conversation we had leading up to our fight.
“I’ll move home.”
I lifted my empty gaze from the dirt. “Why?”
“For you, Peapod.”
“No,” I whispered. “Go back to Seattle, Lucas. I’m fine. I have support.”
“But—”
“No. Sun River isn’t your home anymore.”
A light drizzle misted the air around us, slowly progressing into a steady rainfall. I watched the freshly churned dirt grow darker.
Beneath the numbness, all I felt was rage. Everything was wrong.
