His eyes are everywhere on my face. “And it made you mad?”
“Vin, it made meirate.And for a long time, I thought it was anger at, you know, fate. Or the driver, even though it was an accident. But…no. No, Vin, it’s anger atyou.”
He’s stroking a hand from the top of my head down to my back. We are so not fighting right now. We are so tender and open. It’s so hard to hold it all at once, the low-lying torrential rain of an emotion that’s been on my heels for a year, and this sweetness for the person I love the most in the world. How do I feel it all? How does anyone live for decades? Life only gets more and more complicated. The good never unmixes with the bad. It only tangles more and more.
“Vin, I’m so mad you got hurt. There’s a fourteen-inch scar down your back, for God’s sake. And your knuckles. Your poor knuckles.” I lift his hand to my forehead and I just hold it there, feeling his warmth.
He does what he does best and doesn’t say a word. He waits. He lets me fill the silence because he knows that when I do, it won’t be trapped inside anymore. It’ll be between the two of us, where he’ll help me carry it.
“You arenotallowed to die for me, Vin. And I’m so mad that you almost did. It falls under the same category as dying from drunk driving or dying because you were base jumping or doing something stupid and dangerous that you shouldnotbe doing.”
“Baby, all due respect: dying for you is not stupid.”
We laugh because I don’t know why. “If you’d died for me, do you know how awful my life would have been after that?I would never get over that, Vin.Never.”
“Sure, yes, but you’d be alive.”
“Look, I’m not saying that my anger is rational. Anger is almost never rational, right? I’m just saying this is how I feel.When I think about that day, remember that moment, I just want to screamVin, get out of there!Because it feels…it feels like I almost lost you. And you were sostillon top of me, and I know it was just a moment. But it felt like forever that you didn’t move. Like maybe Ididlose you. And my brain goes back to that moment, over and over, trying to make you wake up and be happy. But it took paramedics to lift you off me, Vin. Even after you were responsive again, the laceration was so bad you weren’t moving…And I know now that you’re proud of it. And I know it’s the best thing that anyone has ever done for me. It’s the most loved I’ve ever been. But it was alsothe worst moment of my life.To be saved and then think that I had to live anentirelife without you.”
“Baby.” Even if it’s a moment he’s proud of. Even if it’s the light he carries, he can see that anything that ends with him being torn from me is something I can’t help but hate.
“And the worst part…” I’m hiccuping now. “Is that…in your arms, you on top of me, one hand under my head, that’s always been the best place in the world, Vin.In the entire world.And nothing bad happens to me when I’m there. I know this. I know this in my soul. But this time your arms were around me and something bad happened toyou.Which, Vin, don’t you get it? Something bad happening to you is the worst thing that could ever happen tome.”
He’s tranquil, tender, his eyes searching my face and his fingers tucking my hair behind my ear. “You would die for me, too,” he says quietly.
“Of course I would! Gladly! A fourteen-inch scar! And I thought you were dead! And now I can’t eventhinkabout you holding me like that again. Being on top of me like that. Thatfuckingaccident took that and made it terrifying for me. Can you even—”
I cut off at the flash of expression on his face.
“Can I even? Roz, you have a mark on your chest because something almost—” He cuts off. “I know a lot about what you’re talking about. Okay? You’re my favorite place too. Being able to be against you like that. It’s…the best I’ll ever feel in my life. And yes, that’s gone for now. God. Sometimes…I still…”
“Can’t believe it even happened?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe we’d have a crib in that room over there, if it hadn’t,” I say quietly, finally saying out loud something we’ve never directly talked about. “A little crying raisin. Instead of a gigantic sleeping Raff.”
We had just started trying to get pregnant like a month before the accident. After the accident, well, you already know we weren’t trying anymore.
Vin is nodding. “That’s the thing about stuff like this, it changes your future in a million little ways. Not only are you different, but yourlife,yourcircumstances,are different. All because a truck driver had a seizure at the wrong moment. That year, for us, it’s just…” He snaps his fingers.
“And for Raff,” I say quietly.
“And for Raff,” he agrees. “And for Ethan.”
“That’s his name? The other guy who was in the coffee shop?”
“Yeah.” Vin rubs my back and holds me on his lap. “I reached out to him. He invited me to his bar. I’m gonna go tomorrow. I think that’s part of why…I think that’s why I wanted to tell the story tonight. I’m trying to get it all out, Roz. All these little painful jabs from trying to keep it in. I’m trying to set it all down now. And I think meeting him is part of that. For me.”
He doesn’t ask if I’m coming with him.
A few minutes later, when he’s still rubbing my back and I’m flopped against him, docile as a kitten, he speaks again.
“Still mad at me?”
I stiffen and scramble up to look him dead in the eye. “Look, Vin. Everybody wants to be the person who runs back into the burning building to save the box of kittens, but nobody wants to bemarriedto that asshole.”
He laughs. “Okay, okay. I get it. No dying for you.”
