Like no time has passed at all.
He comes through before I can say anything.
Doesn’t wait to be invited.
He never does.
And then he sees me.
He puts me on the bed.
Lies down beside me.
Doesn’t explain. Doesn’t ask.
Just — here.
• • •
The way I was for him. When we were eleven. When the sirens were outside and everything had gone wrong and he came through my window and I didn’t say a word.
Just stayed. He learned it here. In this room. And now he’s giving it back.
• • •
“Are you real?“ I say.
I reach up and trace my fingers along his jaw. He has stubble now. This is new. I file this away for later.
He doesn’t answer. Just pulls me in by the back of my head, my face against his chest, and I can feel his heartbeat under my cheek. Steady. Real.
So I let go.
I cry the way you cry when you’ve been holding it for too long. Not gracefully. Not quietly. The shaking kind, the gasping kind, his shirt in my fists, the whole weight of the day and the last two years and my mom’s yellow cardigan on the hook by the door and the good and the granola all coming out at once.
I cry for every moment I was somewhere else when she was right here.
• • •
He holds me through all of it.
His hand moving slowly through my hair. Steady.
Present. This is his language too — not words but this.
The staying. The weight of him beside me. The way he doesn’t try to make it smaller or stop it or fix it.
Just: here. I’m here. I’ve got you.
And I realize he’s crying too.
I pull back far enough to see his face.
His eyes are red. His jaw is set but something underneath it has given way. He’s not hiding it. He’s just — letting me see.
• • •
She was his too.
