And like my dad, he didn’t respect me enough, didn’t trust me enough, and had to handle it his own way.
My talk with Lexi comes back to me, along with Rory’s harsher words, and I shut my eyes against the truth that’s staring me in the face.
IknowWeston is nothing like my dad in those ways. I’ve known it since the first night we met.
He’s healthy, well-adjusted, comes from a loving family where he’s the apple of his parents’ eyes. Of course he’s going to think he can just show up for me.
That’s what his family does, right?
Wyatt, Rory, Lexi. They all show up for one another when they’re struggling or in need.
It’s me. I’m the asshole who wants to do it all alone, but only because I’ve had to. It’s the only thing I know at this point.
My thoughts are interrupted by a burst of feminine giggles and a voice too low to make out the words, but it doesn’t take long for the bodies that go with the sounds to appear on the path coming out of the woods.
A couple are walking together, she’s probably around Weston’s age, long blonde hair and a curvy body that’s noticeably pregnant. The man with her looks to be even quite a bit younger than I am, mussed, slightly curly reddish-brown hair, his heavily tattooed arms wrapped around her and wandering freely as they go. There’s gotta be at least ten years between them, but it’s clearly not stopping them.
Cheeks flushed, she giggles, leaning harder into him as they walk until her eyes fall on me sitting on the boulder on the side of the path.
Abruptly the woman stands up straight and pushes her partner’s hands off of her baby bump, where one hand was going north and one south.
He murmurs something into the curve of her neck, not realizing yet that they aren’t alone—or maybe just not caring—andIalmost blush from the intimacy of it.
“Stop,” she giggles. “We’re being inappropriate, honey bunny.”
“If you want inappropriate, I can show you?—”
The woman reaches backward to place one hand over his lips and stops him mid-sentence. With her free hand—can’t miss that ring on it, even in the twilight—she points at me.
“Oh,” he says, straightening, wrapping his arms around her in a move that looks casual, like touching her every second he gets is just what’s normal for them.
“Sorry to interrupt you guys,” I whisper, eyes starting to water at how easy and evident their love is.
The curvy blonde giggles again, voice high-pitched, soft and feminine as she speaks again. “No, I’m so sorry. Newlyweds,” she gives me a knowing look with a shrug. “He can’t keep his hands to himself.”
“Never gonna change, Ell.” He whispers the words against her temple, but I hear them even over here. “Married a couple months or going on fifty years.”
She shushes him again, swatting at him, but that radiant smile on her face doesn’t dull for even an instant.
“I’m sorry again, hope you have a good night.”
“Don’t apologize,” I say, waving in their direction. “Please. If you’ve got a love like that, don’t waste a minute of it.”
The younger man winks at me before wrapping his arms around his wife even tighter and shuffling back toward the parking lot with her.
“Good advice,” I hear him say to her in a low voice, but it’s my own words that punch me in the gut as the couple falls out of earshot.
For the first time I have a chance at a love like that. And here I am, wasting precious moments of it.
Staring into the trees, listening to the soft whistle of the wind as it blows between the leaves, now full and deep green, I startle when I see a light.
Yellowish green, so tiny that at first I think I imagine it, but then there’s another. And another. In minutes I’m surrounded by fireflies.
A million magical reminders of the love I share with Weston.
And I’m the one that left him when he tried to show me that love by being there for me.
Dropping my head in my hands, I shake with the realization that I’m the one who fucked up. He tried to do this together, I pushed him away and handled it like I always have. On my own.
