I didn’t sleep. I just stared at the camera footage of her in the lake house.
The light in the bedroom stayed on all night.
She didn't sleep either.
I open the door slowly at seven.
I stand in the doorway of the tiny lake house that my father built when I was nine years old, and I look at her.
She's sitting at the kitchen table in the same clothes she was wearing last night. Her hair is down. Her hands are wrapped around a mug she must have found in the cabinet — she made herself coffee, that's the first thing I notice.
She looks up when I come in.
Her eyes are tired, but they’re not red. She hasn’t cried, which is good.
She looks at me, and I stare back.
Holy shit, I’ve missed her.
I love her so fucking much.
I go to the kitchen and find the pan.
She watches me while I cook.
I don't say anything. I make eggs the way she likes them — she went through a phase sophomore year of telling me exactly how she liked her eggs every single morning until it became the kind of information that lives in you permanently, the kind you don't have to try to remember — and I put toast in. I find the butter, and I do all of it without speaking because I don't have words yet.
I'm working up to words.
I put the plate of food in front of her.
She looks at it for a moment, blinking.
Then she picks up the fork and eats.
I sit across from her with my own coffee. I made myself a plate so that I could eat with her.
The ache in my chest slowly subsides in the silence between us. I no longer feel the liquid rage, the dreadful longing, or possessiveness. What I feel when I look up at her is just –– love.
Plain, devastating, and completely without an agenda.
I love her and want to be near her. I miss her.
She puts the fork down when she's finished, and then she leans back in her chair.
"You kidnapped me, Cody."
I look at her, setting down my fork.
"What is this? What are you doing?"
I look at her across the kitchen table. A piece of me wants to remain quiet, but I shouldn’t. I should talk to her. This morning, I was given the green light. They agreed that I could talk to her first. After all, this all started because of me and my dumb fuck decisions.
"I'm trying something different," I say.
She looks at me for a long moment. "You don't do different," she says.
"No," I say. "I don't." I look at my hands on the table. "I do what works, and I do it until it stops working, and then I do it harder." I pause. "That's what I did with you for two years. I loved you the only way I knew how, and the way I knew how was — it was wrong, Adela. I know it was wrong. I knew it was wrong when I was doing it, and I did it anyway because losing you was more terrifying than being wrong."
