“You lie.”
“No.” A grin twitches. “It’s really good, Annie. Thank you.”
I allow myself to relax, exhaling a breath as I take a seat beside him at the hand-carved table in the eat-in kitchen. “I guess you can’t go wrong if there’s garlic.”
He drags his fork across the plate, scooping up soggy vegetables half drowning in mystery sauce. Despite the poor execution, I can’t help but feel proud.
Years of my life were lost to codependency, to submission masquerading as love, to letting someone twist devotion into control. I shrank myself to fit inside a version of a life that was never mine until there was no space left for who I really was.
My dreams deflated. My confidence dimmed. My spirit wilted.
I see that now.
Sometimes it only takes one person to make you realize everything you’ve been giving up in the name of someone else’s idea of happiness.
And I would still choose this every time. Every day. In every lifetime.
Chase.
No matter how flawed, broken, or lost, he’ll forever be the truth that unraveled all the lies I used to live by.
After we finish eating, I stand and collect our empty bowls, the quiet between us full of things unsaid. He stares in my direction for a moment as I float around the tiny kitchen in a neon-orange dress and tries to memorize whatever glimpses he can.
Then I return to the table and take him by the hand. “Come on,” I say, tipping my head toward the door. “Let’s sit out on the deck.”
Moments later, we’re perched in two side-by-side rocking chairs, hands interlocked, our eyes on the inky horizon speckled with stars.
It’s peaceful. Familiar. It takes me back to all those nights we sat in my brother’s backyard, a notebook in my lap and a guitar strapped around his torso. A connection bloomed. Fate intervened. And a love story unfurled, just a seedling at the time.
Now we’re here, not so different than we were then. Not entirely.
He still plays like the world might end mid-chord, I still write like I’m tryingto stitch myself back together, and somehow we still fit, both of us made of broken parts that only make sense when they’re touching.
I glance over at him, lit by moonlight and memory. “Did you know Leonard Cohen spent five years writing ‘Hallelujah’?” I say, breaking the silence. “He wrote something like eighty verses. Sat in a hotel room in nothing but his underwear, banging his head on the floor because he couldn’t get it right.”
Chase stares at the twinkling sky like he’s trying not to fall apart. “I didn’t know that.”
“I didn’t get it before,” I continue. “Why someone would keep going like that. Keep pushing when it’s all pain and silence and dead ends. But now I do.” My hand squeezes his. “Because that’s what you’ve been doing, Chase. Every day. Fighting to rewrite a story you think already has an ending. Trying to make peace with something that was never fair to begin with.”
He leans closer, rocking back and forth. Forward and back.
I swallow hard, tears stinging. “Maybe it’s not about finding that secret chord or perfect verse,” I finish, twining our fingers together. “Maybe it’s about finding the courage to keep singing anyway.”
Chase lets out a shaky breath, jaw tight, eyes still locked on the night canvas.
The silence stretches between us. Heavy with the weight of everything we’ve survived to get here.
I rest my head against his shoulder, emotion trapped behind my eyes, my throat, my ribs. My gaze follows his, locking on the sea of stars. “What do you see right now?”
He’s quiet for a long time. So long I almost think he won’t answer.
Then, finally, brokenly, he says, “I just see…pieces.”
And it guts me, how much pain lives in those four words. How much tragedy.
How much beauty too.
Because pieces are still pieces.
