That was what I built. The life I left behind. Soulless. All those years packed up in a few hours. I worked so hard for all of it, and I left it all behind. It was surprisingly easy for me to lock up and turn my back on all of it. Or is this what freedom feels like? Mostly elation with just the smallest amount of missing the bars because it was routine, and routine felt somewhat safe.
“We had separate bedrooms,” I blurt. Wizard didn’t get weird about it at the house, but I know he saw, and nowI’mweird about it. Also. Obviously. “We have for a while. Like, years. I… I’m not sure why I want to say that. It just feels important. Maybe some part of me was trying to make it all right a long time ago, not just now, when it’s all crashing down. That’s me though, isn’t it? I never could smell the fire for the smoke, or see the forest for the trees, or whatever those dumb sayings actually mean. I was always so blind, making all the wrong choices and sticking with them.”
Here I am, heading back to the one place I was in such a hurry to leave. I’m about to hit all my memories face-first. There are the ones that are precious, though, because they were framed around Wizard and others around Reginald, Wizard and James’ grandfather. I thought I had at least a few things figured out, but the reality is that I have one suitcase left of my past life and a whole lot more questions than I do answers.
“You put everyone else first,” I mumble, toeing my sneaker into the crumbling pavement. “You always did and you still do.”
Wizard’s knuckles whiten on top of his knees, he’s got his hands clenched so hard. “I don’t think that I’m the only one.”
“No. I never put anyone else first. That was the problem. We all eat what we’ve prepared for ourselves. This is my meal.”
“Your meal is gonna be the sandwich you asked for and some delicious tea and nothing else. You hear me, Esme? You’re allowed to feel how you want to feel. You’re allowed to be sad, or angry, or confused, or even hopeless, but don’t think for one second that you deserve any of this. It’s okay to think you wantsomething and then find out maybe it’s not all you thought it would be.”
I lean so hard against the truck that my hipbone starts to throb. He’s wrong. It’s not okay.
“There’s no shame in starting over. You’re holding up a fuck of a lot better than most people would. No matter what happened, what the details were, what the years were like, that’s the past. Tomorrow is fresh and you’re allowed to go after it for yourself.”
I bite the inside of my cheek until my mouth floods with copper. I have no right to allow this man to be so good to me after I watered down our friendship to one day a year, a token hug, a few nice words. We were like two bodies passing each other, barely brushing up against one another. That, after being friends who saw each other every day, who spent so many of our free hours together.
Wizard apparently is fresh out of fucks for the fact that I haven’t said a word. He fills the silence for me. “You’re allowed to ask yourself what you want and to maybe give an honest answer. I know you don’t like Hart, but Hart with the club is a lot better than when we were growing up and we didn’t have that in our lives. It’s full of great people. It might even be tolerable for a little while, until you want to move on.”
“I miss Reg.” Okay. On the list of things I shouldn’t say after not saying a damn thing at all, that one hovers near the top.
Wizard isn’t one of those people who can’t talk about the past—obviously. He makes a sound in his throat that passes as agreement.
“Me too. Always.”
“If I have regrets about anything, it’s about you and him. About not coming back to Hart as often as I should have.”
I don’t know much of anything. I’m not sure how this is going to play out, or where I’m supposed to go from the next step and the one in front of that. I do know that I’ve missed having someone there who cares… who gets me. I’ve missed feeling safe and understood. I feel Wizard’s magnetic field. He’s a law of physics all on his own, sitting up there on the tailgate, boots nearly scraping the ground because he’s so tall.
I sneak a look at him and marvel again at the man that he became, in every way. A man who fearlessly helps others. A man not afraid to speak his mind or open his heart. Also, a giant of a man who is so far from the teenager who was all knobby knees and gangly awkwardness. I loved that boy. I’m not sure where to put my eyes when it comes to the man. I don’t mean to let them rake over his long legs, up thighs so huge and hard that his jeans strain against the muscle like soft denim butter. I take in his tight waist with the abs straining against his t-shirt, his unzipped jacket hanging open at the sides and fitted against his broad shoulders.
I keep going, finally looking all the way up, into his face.
His eyes haven’t changed. There’s still the same soul shining out of his eyes, looking right back at me, drenched in summer moonlight and gas station lights.
His Adam’s apple bobs with a swallow. I don’t know why, of all things, that feels the most unguarded. It’s not like Wizard ever tried to put up walls. He didn’t. He hasn’t. He’s unequivocally let me right back into his life.
All my usual avoidance tactics have been stripped away. I don’t have work to bury myself in. I have no excuses. Nodistractions. I’m heading straight down an undetermined path with a big blank open space at the end, and I amterrified.
“Wizard, I—” Whatever was about to come out gets washed away when Odin and Atlas churn out of the double glass doors at the front of the gas station.
Odin waves two paper bags madly overhead. Atlas balances two drink trays.
“Sandwiches!” Odin calls. “Get your sandwiches here.”
Wizard slides off the tailgate and lets Odin spread everything out, pulling squares, rectangles, and what look to be wraps or burritos out of the bag. Atlas sets the drink trays down.
“We got a bit of everything. Dig in, kids.”
Kids. I think Atlas is younger than all of us. The little happy dance he does as soon as he unwraps a sandwich and bites into it still has my lips turning up.
A few nights ago, I thought that it would be impossible to ever smile again, but here I am, at some random gas station, with my choice of sandwich and drink, and three giants surrounding me with a truckload of shit I’ll never have to look at again.
One man is scary, the other looks like an extra straight off a movie set, and the third? He was my soulmate, if soulmates aren’t actually a romantic notion at all, but a person who gets you straight down to your molecules. I didn’t know two of the three existed before this morning, and the third, I’d basically cut out of my life forever.
Here they are holding me up, all three of them, with smiles and laughter, sandwiches and tea, and with the exactwords that I needed to hear in order to start healing my shattered soul.
