My shampoo and conditioner in the shower.
But it’s my presence in this apartment that makes it mine. For the good and the bad, I’ll be here for the memories made within these four walls. As long as this is where Jae and I are, I’ll call this place my home.
I hear quiet footsteps through the entryway as I stand in the kitchen. That damn love of my life. I’ve never loved someone the way I love him.
“What are you thinking?” he asks, his frame filling the doorway. Jae’s hair has gotten much longer over the summer, and it flops in his face. I’m obsessed with running my hands through it.
My shoes tap along the floor as I walk over to him, my arms reaching out for him, and he automatically wraps me into a hug where I breathe in his scent.There’s something so addictive about him, I can’t stop inhaling him.
“I was just worried about how much I’m not worried.” I laugh and look up at him. His brown eyes are alive and sparkling. Jae’s hands travel down to my waist, wrapping behind me.
“There are so many mysteries inside you I’ll never understand, Riley.”
“I’m not worried, for real. I promise.” I smile sheepishly and plant a kiss on his cheek before leaning back on the doorframe across from him, and the old hardwood creaks from my weight. “I’m feeling pretty peaceful, actually,” I admit.
“You are?” Jae questions my statement. “What have you done with the real Riley?”
“Yeah,” I confirm with a grin.
I pause for a minute, to make sure I say what I really want to say.
“I’m happy I’m here,” I tell Jae.
“I’m happy you’re here, too,” he answers, with a kiss to my temple. He takes my hand and walks me to the stoop, our iced tea sweating on the steps, but I pull him back into the vestibule.
“Jae.”
“Yeah?”
“I love you,” I tell him, sincerity covering any fear. “I’m in love with you. I just want you to know I’d choose you a thousand times over. I’ll always love Grant, but I would choose you.”
“I never doubted you, Riley.” Jae’s smile is empathetic.
“I just had to say it aloud.” I’m not going to cry this time, but I preemptively bat my eyes. “I just love you so much.” It makes it more real when I say it. I place a kiss so delicately on his lips when he wraps a hand around the back of my head to pull me in closer. I get a taste of his tongue and then he links an arm around mine and pulls me towards the stoop.
“Let’s go outside,” he whispers into my mouth.
The sun finally melts into the sky, and Jae’s sisters are all arriving for a late dinner. Mae and Umma pet Lily, Izzie leans on her car parked in the space in front, and Kelly is talking on the phone, sitting on the curb. There’s a mountain of cabbage waiting to be turned into kimchi in our refrigerator, and I look forward to Jae’s sisters telling me how I’m doing it all wrong.
Since meeting Jae, the worst thing I’ve decided about grief isn’t the crying, the lack of intimacy or the paperwork. It’s the tearing apart of a family. If it’s just the two of you, it tears your family in half, one part never to return.
I had never been close to my parents, and Grant was the only one I could count on for so long. Group therapy had been no replacement. But there was Stuart.
Meeting Jae gave me a family back, and I didn’t know how much I needed it until I was sitting on the stoop of a new apartment, watching my dog get loved on, watching two girls bicker over a borrowed sweater, and watching my future mother-in-law count radishes.
I’m still not one to be good with explanations, and lord knows it took me long enough to figure out that grief doesn’t have an explanation. It doesn’t have to have one.
The fortress around my heart has been knocked and kicked down, not just by Jae, but by me. By months, years of group therapy. By my own hard work. I took my grief and turned it back in on itself. On the outside, nothing has changed. I paint. I kiss him, and I cry about it.
When does grief turn into guilt? When does guilt turn into punishment?
Guilt is grief. Grief is a testament to how deeply you loved. And if you’re lucky, you loved deeply and thoroughly. You don’t deserve to be punished for being human.
I don’t dream about losing him.
I don’t dream about choosing between them.
The two paths of my life that had forked, are now intertwined. Grant’s cabinets hold Jae’s pots and pans. Grant’s brass sconces light up Jae’s bedroom.Our bedroom.
