Page 311 of Breathe Like Hell

Micah and I climbed into his truck, and he jammed the key in the ignition, the engine rumbling as he backed out of the garage.

“Norman.” He pointed to the glovebox.

I pulled the latch to open it and got out the cassette for Norman Fucking Rockwell by Lana Del Rey, then carefully stuck it into the slot to play it. Micah adjusted the volume knob as the song started. But it wasn’t the first song on the album that began to hum out of the speakers. It was the third song.

Venice Bitch.

One of my top favorite songs ever.

I stared over at him, my eyes already welling with more tears. “Micah.”

“Masters?”

“You did this. Before you knocked on the bathroom door, you got in the car and listened to the first two songs then stopped the tape, so it would be here.”

“Yes. Of course I did.” He gave an easy smile, glancing at me, pine trees blurring past the windows. “I know you. I love you.”

I didn’t even know what to say to that.

This still didn’t feel entirely real to me. How had I gone from a life of quietly-ignored birthdays to a life where the person I loved knew exactly what song would make me happy after crying? Where he would go out of his way to get it ready for me to listen to?

It was a level of thoughtfulness I’d never even considered possible.

“Come here,” Micah murmured, extending his arm. “Lay down.”

I laid with my head on his lap, my legs bent up on the bench seat, my eyes closed and the sound of guitar and synth drifting endlessly around me. Shimmering and distorted, melancholic below its sweetness. Grateful tears slid quietly from below my eyelashes, brushed away by Micah’s thumb.

“I’m sorry for always crying so much,” I whispered.

“It doesn’t bother me. You’re very pretty when you do.” By the way his voice sounded, I could tell he was looking down at me. My cheeks flushed pink.

It didn’t take very long to get to my favorite beach, and Micah let me change into his shirt so I wouldn’t have to rip my own. He efficiently tore a large slit up the center of the back, ignoring the guilt spilling from my lips. I’d inadvertently destroyed so many of his clothes. He didn’t seem to care, though.

We went down the rocks together, winter wind ruffling my shirt, tangling in the lengths of my hair. This had been my beach with Anthony first, but it didn’t belong to him now. I’d rewritten all those memories, digging the tip of my knife in over the old words, carving new ones, deeper and deeper.

I used to wonder if sharks remembered things the way I did, used to write down poems about carving through my brain with their teeth, but I didn’t now. They left their blackened teeth on the gritty beach, maybe like memories or maybe like nothing at all. It didn’t matter. I left my black feathers here the same way. Sometimes overcome with bad memories, sometimes overcome with nothing at all, living only in the present moment.

I am not the sum of my memories, not the consequence of everything that’s ever happened to me. I am loved. Steady and unflinching.

Micah had been practicing invisibility with me, so I cloaked myself, then allowed my wings to expand and catch the wind. It was much easier than before.

Micah did the same.

I couldn’t sense his Sigeian presence the same way he could sense mine, but I knew he was with me as I soared over choppy waves, over bursts of saltwater spray, until I reached the large dark rock emerging from the water, the one I’d spent years staring at while I prayed for a different life. With my wings gone, I allowed the invisibility to slip away, my boots solid on the damp rock. I had a different life now.

Micah stepped up behind me, his arms looping around my waist and his chin resting on the top of my head.

“My Heaven on Earth,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to my hair as we stared out at the expanse of ocean around us.

“This rock?”

“No. You.” He squeezed me tighter.

Me.

I turned around so I could hug him and press my face to his bare chest, feeling him breathe, hearing his heart beat, thinking about how I might’ve never felt this again if things had been different. He might’ve been lost to an unreachable void forever, his forest perpetually out of my grasp.

But he’d tied me to himself two decades ago, and that thread was stronger than death.