I found the low windowsill where we’d once sat shoulder to shoulder, knees touching, pretending the world couldn’t see us if we stayed still enough. I brushed my fingers through the dust and wrote his name there.
Anthony
My handwriting was steadier than it used to be. That mattered to me, like I was finally finding peace with whom I was.
I sat cross-legged on the cool stone floor and pulled my journal from my bag. The new one he’d bought me. Bright pink spine. Hope-colored. Like he’d believed I’d live long enough to fill it.
I opened it to a clean page and wrote:
Maybe healing isn’t becoming someone new.
Maybe it’s learning to hold the old parts without hating them.
I closed it and smiled faintly.
A few months ago, I wouldn’t have trusted this quiet. I would’ve mistaken it for abandonment. I would’ve filled it with catastrophic thinking, panic and self-loathing.
Now I just… sat in it.
I thought about the surf shop. About how my hands no longer shook when customers smiled at me. About how Mia taught me how to make pasta without burning it and Dix had tried to put eyeliner on me. And how Jet pretended not to watch Drax like he hung the moon.
Their dynamic was one I was still learning. But no one could mistake the love and respect they had for each other. They were a family first and foremost.
My thoughts drifted to therapy. To Nora’s calm voice. To how she’d taught me that wanting to die had never been the same thing as wanting the pain to stop. To how grief had warped my sense of worth. To how love wasn’t meant to feel like standing on the edge of a cliff waiting to be pushed.
I smiled.
The ocean below glittered instead of roared. Once, it had felt like it was trying to swallow me whole. Now it looked like it was breathing. Peaceful. Wide. Endless in its beauty. Like it wasn’t something to survive anymore. Like it was something I could live beside.
One thing that was never far from my mind was Anthony. His voice once a week on the phone was careful. Grounded. The way he never pushed for more than I could give. The way he stayed even when staying hurt.
I don’t want you to need me to live. I want you to want to live.
It was easy to hear the work he’d done in the way he spoke about himself. The way he talked about his childhood. His father. Mom. His guilt. His fear.
He wasn’t a shield blocking the world out anymore.
He was beside me in it.
I checked the time once. Then again. Midday slipped into afternoon. The light shifted, and the air warmed. The ocean kept glittering. I waited. Not because I was afraid to leave. I was stronger than that now.
But because I wanted to be here when he came.
Instead of hiding away during the best and brightest hours of the day, I grabbed my bag and journal, then settled on a rockyoutcrop dotted with wildflowers growing out of cracks in the stone.
Watched gulls circle thermal pockets over glittering waves. And for the first time in months—I drew something. I didn’t realize how freeing that would be.
When the sky began to soften into shades of gold, peach and rose, I heard footsteps behind me. They didn’t rush or hesitate. The steady thud of booted feet was like a metronome, each step a quiet promise that he wasn’t turning away this time.
My heart didn’t panic the way it once would have. It opened, filled with possibilities and hope.
I turned slowly as Anthony sat down beside me, close enough that I could feel the heat of him, far enough that he wasn’t assuming anything. His dark hair had a few more threads of gray than before. His beard was fuller. His shoulders broader in a way that looked less armored now, more settled.
He looked… real. And unbearably beautiful. His dark eyes creased at the corners when his gaze locked with mine, and something like relief flickered across his face.
A paper bag lay across his thighs. A bouquet of wildflowers—uneven, yet imperfectly beautiful—peeked out of the top. Next to him was the same picnic basket he’d brought here with us countless times before.
A wave of nostalgia rolled through my chest. I rolled my bottom lip between my teeth, taking in every little change. The way his hair curled at the nape of his neck, now a couple of inches longer. The way his hands rested open instead of clenched. The way his nervousness wasn’t sharp and brittle anymore.
