“Yeah, but I’m not,” I defend. “It wasn’t a choice I made in a good headspace. I was… It was a rough summer. I was drinking…a lot. She hangs around some of the same people I do and had been on me ever since she heard about my breakup.” I chew on my cheek, trying to finish my poor excuse without vomiting on the sidewalk. Truthfully, her hand in mine is the only thing making this bearable.
“I wasn’t interested at all. I had pushed her away a bunch of times, but one night, she was just…there. And I was… I don’t know.” I shrug, and the motion feels pathetic. I let go of her hand. It feels wrong to touch her while discussing touching someone else. “I just wanted to feelsomethingso I could prove I was moving on. I was drunk and hurt enough to think maybe I would feel better if I just let it happen that night.” It sounds even more awful when I say it out loud. I almost think it would have been better to lie and deal with the aftermath of that than the current stomach churning I’m enduring.
“Did it?”
“Did it what?” My voice is covered in guilt and disgust.
“Did it make you feel better?”
“No,” I sigh.
She doesn’t say anything right away. She just nods thoughtfully and nibbles on her bottom lip. She grabs the near-empty cup from my hand and tosses the last of our ice cream in the bin behind me. Then she starts walking again. I fall into step beside her silently.
“I didn’t think it would.” Her voice is light, forgiving. My eyes settle on the ground, tracing the uneven cracks of wet concrete.
“No?”
“No. You can try and numb the hurt, but…” She pauses. “Pain doesn’t work that way. You can’t fill the void with meaningless action or barrels of whiskey and hope it’ll all go away. Pain is something you have to feel. Loss is something you have to grieve. Your soul has to go through the waves of it all, one aching step at a time. And then, one day, you get to forgive yourself.”
My eyes snap to her. “Myself?” I ask, confused.
I’ll admit, there were moments where I thought of forgiveness—something I’ve yet to find space for in the bitterness that fills me—but of all the times I’ve thought of it, never once was it toward myself.
“Mm-hmm.” She meets my gaze with a softness in hers. “For not being able to change what happened. For wishing you could. For holding yourself hostage in it all.”
Her words sink in slowly, like stones being tossed into a still lake. I can feel the ripple of them spreading through me, unsettling something I’ve worked hard to keep contained.
I swallow, my throat suddenly dry. “How do you forgive yourself?”
“Thatis the million-dollar question,” she says with a faint smirk. “But until you do, you’ll keep running from the moments that make you feel alive again. Hiding from them,” she says knowingly.
I stop walking, my chest tightening at the realness of her words as they cut deep.
The truth is I’ve hated myself for being so stupid, for missing all the signs, and then letting it all go without so much as an argument.
But therealtruth is that it hasn’t held the same weight it used to.
Not since I foundher.
Right now, in this moment, I feel more alive withherthan I ever have before. It's as if I thought I’d been breathing all along, only to just now feel the air in my lungs.
There’s danger in that, I know. The risk it takes to admit this relief is something I’m not ready to jump into.
Because no matter how much she brings me to life, I know I’m still barely floating above the tide—andthat’sthe point. That’s what I want to avoid falling into ever again.
This part of me she’s bringing back is the same one I buried. I can’t forget it was for good reason.
Track 9
“Autumn Leaves” Nat King Kole, 1955
JAKE
FOR THE LAST two months, Alana and I have met up almost every day without fail. Honestly, I hadn’t realized how often it had become—how easily I’ve folded her into my life.
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings have always been spent training at the boxing gym, then home to shower and eat, but now I skip lunch. Instead, I meet Alana for an hour or two before her afternoon classes and my late-night shift at Donn’s, grabbing a bite wherever we have time for.
Tuesdays and Thursdays I take an early run before we have class together, and we usually meet at the coffee shop or the library after if she doesn’t have work.
