I turn to look at him. He looks to me like he did when we were kids. Young, innocent, a golden surfer boy.
“You were there,” I say.
Stone shakes his head. He’s never been a crier. I think I saw him cry only once in the twenty-five years I’ve known him, not even the day we broke up. But the tears come fast now.
“I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t make it less painful.” He wipes the back of his hand against his cheeks. “I should have insisted she have morphine. I should have made that decision for her, fuck what she wanted. Her doctor, that quack…” He wipes the back of his hand across his face. “I wasn’t even there when it happened. I went out to get a fucking bagel.”
His voice trails off, and I feel a hot sting in my chest. I feel like a monster.
I could fix this for him. I could give him the ability to go back and make it better. He could give her morphine; he could say goodbye. Her death will haunt him for the rest of his life, and I won’t do a thing about it.
I’ve felt the guilt before, of course I have. The world is full of tragedy. There are fires that kill thousands of people, guns that kill hundreds at a clip. I could stop it, maybe. Travel there, capture the ember, point out the backpack. I could help. Every day, every year, there are things I could undo, deaths I could prevent, families torn apart I could mend.
Stone hangs his head. His shoulders shake. I feel helpless. No, more than that—I feel ashamed. I feel this power like an albatross. I feel its weight.
I want to make this better for him. My heart cinches at the revelation: I want to fix it.
I reach out and grab his hand. He curls his fingers around mine and then brings them to his chest. I can feel his heart—steady, rapid beats.
“Lauren,” he says. Just that, just my name.
And then, as if in slow motion, he bring his mouth down to kiss our interlaced palms. I feel the cool weight of his skin on me, the wet press of his lips.
“Yes,” I answer, but it’s not a question, not really.
I can hear my blood in my ears as if it’s an impending tsunami.Run run run. Get to higher ground.
“I’m sorry,” he says, but his lips don’t leave my hand. Instead, they trail over my fingers, stopping to open my palm and explore the pad of my thumb.
It feels like a train is about to leave, is leaving, has already left. His mouth finds the curve of my wrist.
His hands are on my arm now. Exploring the belly of my bicep.
I want him to name it. I want him to tell me, right here in this car, what it is that is happening. We were so young when we were together that we rarely expressed ourselves at all. I have so fewmemories of him telling me anything. Of any truth that wasn’t just our bodies.
“I can’t believe you’re here right now,” he says, as if I’ve spoken it aloud. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
I exhale a shaky breath. He stops what he’s doing and looks at me. Our eyes lock, and in that moment I see only us, only what was once uncomplicated by life. Before money and fertility and practicality mattered. When life was all possibility.
“I still think about it,” he says, and when he does it feels like a door opening, like a breeze blowing in. “I want to say I miss you, but it’s not strong enough.”
I close my eyes against his words, but it doesn’t matter, they are already inside. I feel them down deep, into my stomach. They buzz and course through me like swallowed honeybees.
When I open my eyes, Stone is still looking at me.
“Nothing has turned out how I thought it would. I never should have left. I never should have fucked up what we had.”
“Why did you?” I have been waiting more than a decade to ask this question, to get the answer.
He exhales out. He seems, all at once, frustrated.
“Because I thought I didn’t know enough yet to choose. I was young. I didn’t know you don’t get to decide, life decides for you.”
“I chose,” I say.
Stone nods, but it’s not just an admission, it’s movement. It’s toward me. His fingers move over mine. His thumb caresses the back of my wrist.
He looks up at me, and in his eyes I see all of it—all the pain of the loss, of this moment, of everything he cannot undo. I see Bonnie and his family and dinners around her table. I see the yearsspread out like a map—all the weaving ways life has taken us from each other and wound us back together, back to this moment.
