Self-hatred rose up inside me. My entire being recoiled at being forced to confront this deepest, darkest secret of my past. Every dark, twisted part of my soul curled up tighter at the prospect of being exposed.
To his credit, he didn’t ask any questions, just gave me all the runway and space I needed to get the words out.
“It was a sibling I wanted. I wanted a little sister or brother. On my birthday they announced my mom was pregnant and gave me a picture to prove it. I was getting my wish… a little brother. I was more excited about being a big sister than anything and helped take care of him, but after a couple years, he started to get on my nerves and I started to push him away.”
The guilt and shame washed over me like a hot wave, threatening to consume me. Knots twisted my stomach until bile rose in my throat. I could barely speak through the lump in my throat as I confessed to Xander. “I was supposed to watch him in the backyard, but I was annoyed and wanted to do my own thing. I wanted toplay.” I said the next part quickly. “He walked out into the street and was hit and killed by a car.”
Admitting this truth to Xander felt like standing at the edge of an abyss, the ground crumbling beneath my feet, threatening to swallow me whole. Every word I uttered felt like I was excavating parts of my soul I had kept buried under layers of self-recrimination and denial. The weight of the confession pressed down on me, a tangible force that squeezed the very air from my lungs.
It's not just a secret I was revealing; it was a scar, deep and raw, a wound that never fully healed. No matter where I am, or what I’m doing, that moment always roils at the base of my every move, my every thought.
The silence that followed my confession was suffocating. It was everything about myself I tried to deny and outrun, but my mistake wasn’t simply something I did. It was part of me. The vulnerability of this moment overwhelmed me as I laid bare the most broken parts of myself to the one person whose opinion mattered most.
“You were a child,” Xander said quietly.
I shook my head, feeling like I had sliced my guts open and they were now floating in the water with us. “That doesn’t matter. If I had watched him, if I did what I said I would… if I had been a good big sister, watched over him instead of playing, he would still be alive. He wasn’t even three years old.”
My parents did their best to keep what happened under wraps, saying they didn’t blame me. But I knew the truth. At a young age, I knew my parents would always resent me on some level. It’s why we kept in touch mainly via Christmas cards and a bi-yearly update call or email.
“Miranda,” Xander’s hands lifted from the water, dripping as they clasped my face, forcing me to look at him. “Where were your parents? What was the driver doing? You were a child. Of course you wanted to play.”
I shook my head with a crooked smile. “I’ve tried telling myself all those things, but all I know, in the deepest parts of my soul, is that I wasn’t vigilant and when I allowed myself to play, he died. Since then, I’ve known that every time I’ve given into that side of myself, the selfish side of myself, something bad would happen.”
Shame coils tightly around my heart, a constant reminder of the irrevocable mistake of my past. It's a shadow that's followedme, growing longer with each passing year, a dark specter I could never outrun.
He let out a deep sigh. “When you brought me back, something bad happened.”
I nodded. The shame burrowed into my heart, like worms eating their way through an apple.
“I love you, Xander.”
He sucked in a breath as if pained, but I knew he was overcome with emotion.
“But I have to confess, I don’t know how this works. I don’t know how to do this even if I want to. Not to mention the whole other part.”
The part I hadn’t even allowed myself to entertain because I couldn’t get past the first barrier much less the second.
“What other part?”
“You’re a god and I’m a mortal.”
His face wrenched up as if experiencing physical pain.
“You know I won’t turn into a vampire. I have my son, who I love. I don’t want to live forever. I want to grow old like Mama Jean. I want to see lines of age on my face. One day, I want to rest in the Afterlife.”
Xander’s nostrils flared, hands gripping me so hard to him though we both knew it wouldn’t be enough to keep us together.
“I know,” he said, his voice rough with emotion.
“I don’t know how this can work,” I repeated in a whisper.
Then he said something that made me feel like I wasn’t alone for the first time in I don’t even know how long. He ripped the walls down around me, clinging to me, and confessed, “I don’t know either.”
I wasn’t alone, but being with someone I loved didn’t keep me from feeling the deepest pits of sadness. So we clung to each other, unsure of what to do next. Or how to be better.
We movedfrom the pool to his massive bed, clinging to each other, kissing and touching even as our hearts broke together. As my emotional walls and Xander's big secret dissipated in that pool of water around us, I would have thought nothing could hold us back from each other, but it only seemed to solidify the hopelessness of our situation.
Xander eventually fell asleep, no doubt exhausted from fighting himself. I continued to lie there next to him, combing his hair back as his chest rose and fell steadily. Then I dropped a kiss to Xander’s forehead, feeling my heart squeeze so intensely I feared it might implode. I stayed as long as I could before I quietly dressed, gathered my things, and slipped out.
