He pauses, his chest heaving with the effort of remaining present.
“I was… I was lucky.” His fingers flex once against mine, then go still again. “I know that.” His eyes close for a brief moment. “They were good to me.” His head tilts slightly, remembering, holding onto it. “They gave me space when I needed it. Stayed close when I couldn’t handle being alone.”
He leans heavier into my palm, the heat of his forehead seeping through my skin. “They simply let me exist in the wreckage. They gave me room to bleed without demanding I heal on their schedule.”
I run my fingers through his hair, again and again, keeping the touch gentle, unhurried, letting him lean into it.
“But other people…” His gaze drifts, a harder edge cutting through the grief. “Other people weren’t like that.” His mouth twitches, a broken hint of a smile that doesn’t hold. “At school, teachers would pull me aside. They’d say things like—‘You’re strong.’ ‘Your parents would want you to focus on your future.’”
“Parents of other kids…” His lips press together before he continues. “They’d say it was tragic. Really tragic.” His head tilts, a flicker of bitterness there now. “And then they’d follow it up with ‘life goes on, doesn’t it?’” His head dips, a faint shake, disbelief still sitting heavy in it. “‘You can’t let this define you.’ ‘You have to move forward sometime.’”
His shoulders draw in, the weight of it all pressing down again. “As if I was choosing this.”
He leans in, his frame vibrating with a tremor that feels as old as his grief. “And if I ever mentioned them—if I said, ‘my dad liked this song’ or ‘my mom hated raisins’—everything would change. Faces would tighten. Smiles that didn’t reach anywhere real. Someone would rush to fill the space, change the subject, move on.”
His fingers curl faintly against mine, then loosen again, restless. “I could feel it every time. That shift. That… weight dropping into the room.” His jaw clenches. “Iwas the one doing that. Bringing everything down. Making it uncomfortable.”
He lifts his head then, finally looking at me. His face is streaked with tears, eyes red, lashes wet. Another tear slips free, tracing down his cheek. My gaze follows it, watching it fall.
“So I stopped.” The words come out thinner now, worn down. “I stopped talking about them.”
His gaze holds on mine, open in a way that feels almost unbearable to witness. “Because every time I did, someone tried to fix it. Tried to tell me what to do with it. Tried to show me where it was supposed to end. They all had this idea… that there was a point where it would be done. Where I’d be okay. Where I’d move on and leave it behind.” His head dips again. “There isn’t one.”
It hits me all at once, heavy and sharp in my chest, a mix of grief that isn’t mine and anger that burns anyway—at everyonewho tried to rush him through it, who tried to shrink something this vast into something manageable.
He sniffles. “I thought if I kept to myself, they’d leave it alone. But when I went quiet, they started worrying I wasn’t ‘processing.’ And when I spoke about them, I was ‘dwelling.’” His mouth tightens. “There was no guide. No way to get it right. No right way to be a boy whose whole world had ended.”
My chest tightens, a deep ache settling in. All I can think is how alone he must have felt, and how I don’t want him to feel that way again.
His head turns, his temple resting into my palm, leaning into the contact, drawing from it. Eyes close. “So I did something else. I stopped giving them anything to work with. I filled every gap. Talked more. Made jokes. Kept everything moving so fast that nobody could stop long enough to ask the question I couldn’t answer.”
His eyes open and find mine—glassy, red-rimmed, still wet. I don’t bother hiding that I’ve been crying too.
“But, Nora—” My name tears out of him. “Iwantto talk about them.” The admission comes from somewhere deep, pulled up with effort. “I want to say their names. I want to remember the ordinary things—the stupid things—the things that didn’t matter to anyone else but mattered to me.”
His brows pull together, pain and longing colliding. “I want to tell someone and have them just listen.” His voice drops, almost pleading. “I don’t want it turned into a lesson. Or something that needs fixing. I don’t want it pushed into a box with a timeline on it.”
His grip on my hand stays light, but present, his whole body leaning into this moment, into me. “I just want someone to hear me.”
A heavy warmth settles deep within me, fierce and protective, making me want to protect every word he gives me and keep it safe exactly as it is.
“I still cry. I miss them every day.” He pauses, letting the words exist without softening them. “I don’t know how to stop. I don’twantto. Time didn’t take it away. It didn’t get easier. The feeling didn’t go anywhere. It stayed exactly where it was. It will always stay—becausethey’regone.”
He exhales slowly after that. The tension he’s held for a lifetime finally leaves him, set down in the space between us.
I take him in.
His jaw is unclenched. The hard lines of him softened, everything in him quieter now, stilled. A grown man brought back to the same shape grief carved into him years ago.
Grief does that. It strips time away. It takes you back, again and again, to the moment everything broke. Age doesn’t protect you from it. Experience doesn’t soften it. It reaches past all of that and holds you there.
And he’s there now.
I see how much it must have taken for him to get here. To sit in this. To open his mouth and let any of it out. Every word dragged up from somewhere deep, somewhere he’s kept sealed for years.
This wasn’t easy. It wasn’t natural. It cost him.
And I understand that.
