I was about to leave with Ben, who was starting to bristle with impatience, when the woman said, “How can I find you?”
I glanced back at her, confused.
“I need to make sure Will is okay but then… I want to help. I want to do what you do.”
My heartbeat had finally slowed down, but now my chest felt tight. Full.
Right.
Like I knew exactly what I’m supposed to do—finally, at last.
Ben and I could keep doing this. Helping people who need it. Finding those who want to share our fight. Opposing oppression wherever we find it.
“We’ll come back this way in a couple of weeks. We’ll find you.”
The woman nodded. Smiled. “I’m Vella. I didn’t know it until right this moment, but I think I’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”
10
Years later,I’m thinking about that day as I cry into Ben’s chest. Because the path from that afternoon to today has been one difficult climb with no stops or detours.
My sobs are silent and nearly tearless. Mostly angsty shaking. When I’ve recovered enough, I start to pull away, but he won’t let me.
“Ben,” I mumble, my face still buried in his old T-shirt.
“Give me another minute, baby. I never get to do this.”
It washes over me with such a flood of pleasure I can’t fully process the words. But I lean into them hungrily.
Like all this time, I’ve needed onlythis.
I slouch against him for several minutes as he holds me tight. My body relaxes, and my mind grows hazy.
Until I actually fall asleep.
I only knowI went to sleep because I’m aware of waking up slowly. It doesn’t always happen that way.
Often I wake in the morning with a jerk, adrenaline pushing me into abrupt consciousness as if the world might have fallen apart while I was unaware.
But right now I wake up slowly. Conscious first only of being warm and cozy. Then of strong arms still wrapped tightly around me. Then that there’s a heart beating near my ear.
Maybe it’s mine.
It feels like mine.
It’s beating slow and leisurely like the pulsing of my blood.
After another minute, I’m awake enough to shift my body. There’s a big, hard, warm thing beneath me. I’m somehow sleeping on it.
I sleep on the ground a lot. At least half our nights are spent in a tent with nothing but a thin mat to soften dirt and grass. But this isn’t that.
This is hard but yielding. And it has a definite shape.
One I know down deep in my gut, my core, my spirit. One Iknow.
I mumble something—a wordless question—and it mumbles back. Just as incoherently, but I understand the response anyway.
It’s Ben.
