He continues. “I understand if you don’t want to talk to me about everything, but I am here for you. I can help you through this.”
“Like, counsel me?” I ask, sitting back down with my fresh drink.
Brother Johnny nods.
“It might be a rough go at first, but I think—” I pause, taking a steadying breath. For so long, I’ve thought therapy andcounseling was for weak-minded people. But honestly, if that’s the case, then so be it. I’m weak right now, and I need help. “Okay. Let’s try it.”
“Glad to hear it, Stone. You’re not alone, okay?” He stands and embraces me in a man-hug. “I’ll call you tomorrow to set something up with you.”
“Thank you,” I say as we walk to the door. “Can I just call you Johnny?”
He grins, eyes alight. “I would love nothing more.”
After he leaves, I hop on my motorcycle and take to the roads to process. I drive to Hartfield then down the Mississippi River, passing old antebellum homes and estates. I ask God questions, ones that I have zero answers to currently. I beg Him to fix me. I thank Him, even in the exit of my rebellious state, for sending Johnny up to talk with me today. I eventually find myself in front of the store, and go in and purchase a pink composition notebook.
Lucy is a lover of words and stories, and I want her to see my heart. Even if I don’t know what comes next for us, if there will still be an us, I want her to know that I’m ready to change. To try. To wrestle with God and find answers.
I’m ready to learn how to love her best.
Swallowing the fear and resistance in my throat, I knock on Lucy’s door.
“Who is it?” she calls in a strained voice from somewhere inside her apartment. I swear I hear her mention something about theaudacity of receiving surprise guests as her footsteps approach the door. The urge to flee flickers at the edges of my thought, but I stand my ground, squaring my shoulders and clenching a small notebook in my hand. I suspect she’s looked through the peephole and spotted me since she’s said nothing else nor made a move to open the door.
“It’s me, Lucy May. Can I come in?”
“Why? State your purpose.” Her tone is indignant, but I can’t control the small smile that flashes across my face at her word choice. She sounds like a detective bent on an accurate interrogation.
“I need to talk to you. And I have something to give you.”
“I don’t need anything from you. Nor do I have anything to say.”
I place my hand on the door and bring my face closer to the peephole. Am I slightly nervous that some sort of needle may bust through it? Yes. “I have something to say. It’s important you hear it.”
After a long pause, I hear the deadbolt unlock and she slowly opens the door.
Taking in her beautiful face after not seeing her except in the pictures still saved in my phone, my eyes grow a little misty. My step-dad has counseled me a few times over the past couple of weeks when I’ve had something come up that I wanted to talk about with him, and I guess I’m a man who cries over small things now. Do I still sometimes feel like I’m not a man because of it? Absolutely. Do I now fight that internal monologue with scriptural truths? Yep. But I have a long way to go.
“What? You’re the reason I’m like this.” She gestures from her frizzy, unkempt hair down her stained t-shirt and then to her baggy basketball shorts
Wait a second, those are mine…
I press my lips together to keep from commenting something inappropriate, though I’m sure my locked gaze on the shorts says it all.Man, I still have a lot of work to do…
When I snap my attention back to her face, she’s grimacing at me with her arms folded over her chest.
“You’re beautiful as ever, Lucy. Now can I come in?”
“No,” she says sternly. “Say whatever you need to say right here.”
I guess I’ve earned that. I release a breath and remember the words that I wanted to say. “Apologies are not adequate for what I’ve put you through over the past four months, but I’m sorry. I’ve thought through many different ways I could show you how sorry I am, but everything came up short. I won’t tell you the full story of what has happened since you walked out of my house, but I did write it down in this notebook, along with other things. I know you’re a lover of words, so I wrote our story through my eyes, and I hope you won’t criticize me too much for not being as talented a writer as you are.”
The tiny pink composition notebook feels like a brick in my hands as I hold it out to her. She eyes it warily, but she takes it. As she begins to open it, I reach forward and snap it closed, my hand covering hers and sending all those electrical energies that I haven’t felt in a while coursing through my system.
Our eyes meet, and I lean forward as if pulled by a magnetic force to kiss her. She doesn’t smell like spicy vanilla right now. In fact,she smells like the old coffee stains on her shirt. Right before my lips meet hers, I halt, remembering this is not what I came here to do and it instead only proves that I need to tell her this final thing.
Sighing as I pull away, her face twists in confusion. And then disgust. She throws the notebook into her apartment and then spins to enter herself.
I grab her wrist out of instinct. “Wait!”
