Page 178

Somewhere inside the castle, Ryan was getting dressed after calling me mi hada.

I lowered my eyes to the page before two words became more important than everything else he had said.

I know what you offered me this weekend. Your body, your attention, and the chance to experience the version of us we never allowed ourselves to become. You warned me none of it meant forgiveness. You made Sunday part of the agreement before you touched me.

I heard you.

The problem is that I hear everything else too.

I hear it when your voice changes before you say my name. I feel it when your hand finds my waist in rooms where everyone can see. I see it when you look at my body without hiding how much you love every curve I once tried to erase. I felt it when you cleaned me, pulled the sheet over me, and reached for my hand after there was nothing left you needed from my body.

Then you called me your fairy.

My vision blurred. I blinked until the words sharpened again.

I didn’t say anything because I knew what you would do. You would tell me it slipped out, remind me sex wasn’t a promise, and close whatever door I thought I saw opening.

I’m not asking you to open it because of one name.

I know loving me doesn’t mean you trust me. You loved me when you left. That is the part I finally understand.

My pen slowed against the page.

For fifteen months, these letters had given everything I wasn’t allowed to send him somewhere to go. They held apologies, grief, anger, stupid things I wanted to tell him about my day and entire pages written after treatment sessions when I finally understood another piece of what I had done to us. Ryan made his boundary clear, and the journals let me respect it without pretending losing him didn’t hurt.

Treatment had taught me that pain wasn’t an emergency. I could miss him until my chest hurt and still eat dinner. I could regret the study without punishing my body for it. I could wake up the next morning, open my boutique, laugh with my friends, and continue building a life I wanted.

None of that made me want him less.

I looked at Lowell’s poem again.

When I go away from you.

Six words, and now I understand why you hated the poem.

The world keeps moving while the person you love remains somewhere behind you. You wake up, work, laugh, eat, sleep, and survive until everyone assumes survival means you moved on.

You did all those things in Milwaukee.

I did them in Kimball Falls.

We stayed alive in the same world while every mile between us kept carrying us farther apart.

A tear struck the page, and I wiped it away before it could spread the ink.

I’m not afraid you stopped loving me.

I’m afraid you learned how to leave while you still do.

The alarm on my phone erupted beside my hand, startling me hard enough that the pen dragged a black line beneath the final sentence.

“Fucking shit.”

The screen read 5:35.

Cocktail hour started almost six minutes ago, and I still smelled like grilled meat, sex, and a shower I had intended to take twenty minutes ago. I left the journal open on the bed and stripped off the stained shirt on my way to the bathroom.

The shower removed flour from my hair, smoke from my skin, and Ryan from absolutely nowhere my body remembered him.