Toward the love song we never finished.
***
It’s smaller than it looked in the pictures: tin roof, log siding, a tiny porch made of wind-beaten wood planks.
A painted brown door and a single square window make up the face, the home devoured by billowing, mature trees.
I choke on my own heart, and it tastes like grief and fear.
Eight months.
Eight months he’s been here, living and hiding.
Away from me. Away from everything.
All because he was scared of what he was becoming.
But I know the truth.
He was becoming my rock, my light, my savior.
My favorite song. The honey moon in my midnight sky.
As I sit in the driver’s seat, clutching the wheel, I stare at the house like I might be able to see through the logs and catch a glimpse of the man who abandoned me.
Anger stabs at my chest. Remorse. Red-hot pokers of buried pain.
I need answers. I need clarity. I need him.
With a deep breath, I switch off the ignition and pocket my key fob. The house seems to move farther away with every step I take. Everything blurs. The trees, the rust-colored logs, my thoughts. I don’t know how he’ll react. I don’t know howI’llreact.
My mind takes me back to August when I sat behind the wheel for the first time in years. My palms were slick. My heart thundered so loud I could barely hear the instructor.
I remember the tunnel of motion, the trembling, the ache in my jaw from clenching it so hard.
I thought I might crash again. Lose control. Fall apart the way I did the first time.
But I didn’t.
I took a breath, gripped tighter, and kept going.
This feels the same.
Like stepping into the wreckage before the impact and trusting that this time, maybe the wheels won’t spin out.
I climb the steps slowly, my pulse badgering at my throat.
One knock. That’s all it takes, until suddenly I’m sixteen again, barreling toward something I don’t know how to stop.
I wait on his front stoop, hands tangled in my fuzzy sweater, makeup half melted from the car’s heat vents. The air is warmer here. Softer. A fifty-degree breeze brushes against my skin like a memory I’m not ready for.
Then I hear it—
The rapidclick-clickof nails against wood.
Toaster.
Tears blanket my eyes, distorting the door in front of me as I shift my weight from foot to foot, every second stretching like a lifetime.
