by Gray, Ace
One, fucking Facebook. That’s the only way he would have seen. Two, no shit. Seeing your ex happy never makes anyone happy.
You deserve so much more than her.
Wait, what? I re-read that sentence a few times over. Did he say I deserve more? It makes absolutely no sense. She could do better, I’ve always known that. Tanner should too. Shouldn’t he?
She’s going to tell you a lot of things about me, about how I didn’t love her right, how I didn’t love her hard enough, but what she isn’t going to say is that she never let me.
I swallow the scratchy lump in my throat. Or at least try.
I won’t pretend I was perfect but for a while she loved me enough to make up for that. In that way she has—I’m sure you know what I mean. When she decided not to anymore, there was nothing I could do. Nothing left to hold on to. So after trying to tread water for a long damned time, I let us drown. After all, some things are better off dead.
Here are some of the letters I had hung on to—proof that once she DID love me that much. I send them to you as nothing more than a warning. There are two sides to every story. Mine is that she loved me fiercely until she didn’t anymore, and the hole she left when she blasted me right out of her life may never heal.
Best of luck. Hope you’re more resilient than me.
Tanner
I try to take a deep breath and can’t. This has to be lies. It has to be complete shit. And yet there’s this distance… I shake my head. That’s not what’s happening to us. We are not repeating their mistakes. I refuse to believe that.
Except he’s describing exactly how she loves me. Well, loved me, before she pushed me away.
I gasp and the iron band of Tanner’s words wrapped around my chest still won’t let my ribs expand. My vision swims and I steady myself against the table. My fingertips brush one of the photos. These are her words, cut open and bleeding onto the page right in front of me. Even if they are for Tanner, I start to read.
To the man who keeps me close despite it all,
You picked up my too much in your hands today. You picked it up and held it. Twice. You pulled me in for that hug that is just the other side of the bricks you’ve put between us.
And it felt so good.
It felt like I could breathe. Like I could balance. Like I was home.
You feel strong, sturdy, and my fingers now know the texture both of soft sweatshirts and ancient pilled fleece. They know the feel of gray and navy blue. They know the feel of you.
But it’s funny, I can’t remember what you smelled like. There have been a handful of hugs, some of them so tight, so real, some of them wide, angular, and forced—during none of them, have I remembered what you smell like. That it bothers me is too light a phrase. Cuts down deep into the depths of me is a little more apt.
The sound of your voice strums chords inside me. The shape and feel of your body make my bones hum. Your eyes are an ice blue that will forever be the ice and snow and clouds that roll in. But your scent…
Dear Worth Your Weight in Gold,
I would buy you the sun and the moon, ya know. The constellations too. I’d buy them and hand them over like they mattered not at all. Well, none of them besides Gemini. That set of stars is something for me to keep. Something more precious than gold or money. That constellation is something made of memory. Precious, perfect, and pure.
Money can’t buy THAT. I can’t put a dollar amount on the moments, the heart beats between us. And I wish I could make you see. Make you feel how little the money matters and how much YOU do. Because, holy fuck, you do. Beers don’t, coffee doesn’t, burritos either. Oysters, paella, bottles of kriek… they are a small price to pay for YOU!
You are worth bronze, silver, paper, and gold. You are worth the words I write or carve into my heart.
Today I watched your lips as you spoke. Word after word after word. Syllable after syllable that formed all these magnificent shapes. You’re left side is so full, you’re right so thin. Together they are bewitching in their alphabet. In in their shapes. I would pay for that shape. For that memory. For you.
But that’s not the way currency works. Instead I’m the one whose coffer, purse, cup is full. Full of the coins in the shape of your mouth. Full of the reward that is your words. Full of the feeling they both give me, and the fantasy of taking those lips between mine and kissing you as if you are my poverty and my fortune all at once.
Dear Made My Life Today,
One sentence. Just one singular sentence is all it takes to change the world. Well, my world anyway.
This week has been a good one. I’ve been able to keep my head on straight despite the constant U-turn that is you. I’ve been deep in my skin and let my laugh lines wrinkle my face. I’ve taken care of me. I’ve pulled back the psycho I become when it comes to you. (I stand by the statement that she only comes out because of this constant feeling of deep unending loss when it comes to you. She’s trying to protect against it. Against this loss barreling down the tracks at a life altering speed. I mean, she knows the half smiles, the crooked lips, the shit talking, the sweet talking, the fantasy and the reality are slipping through her hands like sands through an hourglass…)
Despite it all I’ve stayed sane this week.
Until that single sentence.
I look forward to those moments—our moments—each time that we have them. The conversation crackles. Your smile consumes. It feels like wonderful fucking vomit inducing jitterbugs. I mean, if I puked something out, it would be the make up of you anyhow. The words, the moments, the color of your eyes, and your smile. And today was no different. Easy. Fun. Fulfilling. And goddamn so filling.
There’s more to that last letter but I can’t keep reading. If I thought I couldn’t breathe before… I know how pale I look, how bone white I’ve gone.
The brand of love that Mina has given me was supposed to be mine and mine alone. Part of what I loved about her was how she loved me. I notice how the past tense has slipped into my mind and I don’t even stop to correct it.
The betrayal wasn’t mine for reading these letters. It was hers for tricking me into believing we were something special.
To Mina,
I refuse to write beloved or dearest wife or something else like that—my vows are to you. To Mina McLennan, soon to be Larrabee. My vows are to who you are at the very core of it all. You and I have stumbled enough times for us to be cut and scraped down to the bone and with that much exposed, I can honestly say I’ve seen all of you.
And good god do I love you.
As I stand here today, I can’t imagine a day that I won’t. Through all the bad and all the hard. Even when things get dark or hard, you are a soft light I cling to and I swear those times make me want you more. Love you more. Because it’s all another piece of you. Another day I get to spend with you.
How lucky am I to be loved by you?
Even when I’m insufferable while losing at disc golf. (I really don’t mind losing to you. Sort of.) Or laughing at your angry face. (It really is cute, what can I say?) Or even when I’m realizing that I broke your heart and that I have the power to do it again.
For the record I love you just as much. Maybe more. I don’t know how to tell you all the time but it’s there. Alive beneath my skin and thumping through my veins. I don’t know how to show you all the time but the plans build up in my head. My hands itch to create the world you deserve.
I love you Mina.
I lay in bed, long ago giving up any respite from the emotion churning in my head and heart. I can’t manage more than staring at the ceiling, trying to blink away the words burned behind my eyelids. Her words for him. Her words that I thought were only so beautiful for me. What am I going to say to her? What am I going to do? I’m no closer to an answer now than I was two hours ago when I read the few bits I could stomach.
The door opens downstairs and her footfalls fill the silence. I can’t tell if it was the absence or her filling it that’s more deafening.<
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Her steps grow closer, moving up the stairs. Moving toward me.
I close my eyes and turn on my side, away from her, just before she opens the door.
“James,” she calls, whisper quiet.
I force my body not to bend to my name on her lips.
She audibly sighs before sitting on the bed. I try and let my body jostle with her but I’m too rigid, too freaked with her beside me. Her that I love?????
After a while she settles in beside me and her fingertips glide down my upper arm where it pokes out beneath my t-shirt. That touch is my touch. It’s a touch she hasn’t used in weeks. I can’t help but groan.
“I’m home,” she says softly, burrowing herself against me.
I turn on instinct and wrap myself around her. It’s not until she twists away from me, now my little spoon, that I can open my eyes again. They bore into the cascading locks of her hair but see her words for Tanner even as she lays with me. Every inch of my skin burns where I hold her, but I stay still. I’m angry, hurt, heartsore but I’m not ready to lose her. Not yet.
From somewhere I can hear a clock ticking. I’ve never noticed it before so maybe it’s just an internal one ticking to the downbeat of my heart. The heavy hurt that comes with each one. I won’t let go of Mina—she doesn’t sleep well when I do—but the reminder that she was there, nestled in someone else’s arms, their heart, is sharp right now. I keep my eyes fixed on her dark hair as I ask myself over and over, can I get through it?
When the darkest black shifts to softer gray outside the window I’m no closer to an answer to any of my questions. I’m no closer to knowing my own heart either.
I pull out from under her neck as carefully as I can and move just as gingerly across the mattress. I slide on sweatpants and walk in my zombie state to the kitchen, grateful for work looming on the horizon even if it’s still a few hours away. The kettle feels wrong in my hand, so does my beat up forest green Hydro flask tumbler that Mina bought me years ago.
My fingers run over the dent I put there myself when I threw the cup against the wall after learning that she had feelings for me. Man, did I handle that wrong. When I told her I wasn’t coming to her birthday, I said it would be inappropriate but what I really meant was that I couldn’t watch her across the kitchen island with her fiancé. Not knowing that she shared my feelings but was still someone else’s. A few shitty texts proceeded to push her away so thoroughly I lost her. For three years. All the things I wanted to text her, tell her, ask her advice on became smoke ghosting away on the wind. That dent is the reason I can’t say anything about the letters Tanner sent. Not yet.
I sigh and sag onto the bench at the dining room table, idly wondering if I can rewind time and un-open the package. But then again, would I? Would I want to be blissfully ignorant? I wouldn’t mind bliss right now, but ignorance has never been my thing.
The book where I tucked the letters seems like it’s glowing white hot. I wonder if Mina will notice or if it’s just my imagination. If she does notice, is it my secrets that book is hiding or hers?
My head sags into my hands.
“You’re up early.” Mina’s scratchy voice makes me jump.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I mutter, unsure whether my voice will give me away.
“I’m sorry,” she says because it’s what’s she supposed to say.
The acid churns in my stomach because I don’t believe her. She’s saying what she’s supposed to say, doing what she’s supposed to do, to get through this hardship. But how long does a hardship last? How long do I accept going through the motions as fine?
When does Tanner become right?
I want to ask but I know she’s not ready to answer. If I ask, I’m just helping drive that wedge a little deeper between us and I’m not acting rashly this time. I’m not losing her like that.
But then she slides onto the bench next to me, pressing her body against the length of mine and leaning her head onto my shoulder. Her pinky finds mine below the table and wraps around.
This.
This moment is what I’ve been craving. One full of us and our intimacy. Of our understanding of each other and the depth of it. Mina was always the one who knew it best and without her, I’ve… well I found the letters.
I want to lose myself in the moment. In her. In her finding her way back to me but now there’s so much in the way. Now I can’t believe it’s for real or going to last. Now I can’t believe it has anything to do with me.
“I’m sorry I’ve been distant,” she confesses. “It just hurts so much right now. I don’t know how to be okay without my mom.” She plucks at my heartstrings with those words.
Had this been yesterday, I would have reassured her. I would have told her that I’d make it okay. Today…
“I’m here,” I manage because it’s true. And I’m staying. For now.
“I know.”
She twists to kiss the cap of my shoulder. Then lower on my chest. My eyes flutter shut when she kisses me again. My breathing hitches in my throat. I didn’t anticipate this, having to love her when she’s broken and I’m hurt.
But as she rises and slides into my lap, her thighs hugging mine, her chest brushing mine, I do what I always do. I swallow my emotion down and lift her up onto the dining room table. I lay her back then go down. With her knees hooked over my shoulders I resolve to make her go numb.
Just like me.
“Have you set a date?” Aspen asks as she stands over me polishing the tap tower as I work on the lines below.
“Nope.”
I find myself asking whether I even want to. When things are like this, jumbled all up, there’s no way I can commit. Not to a woman that may or may not love me. Not to a woman that may or may not keep at it.
“I thought for sure it was planning keeping you up at night. That shit is a bitch.” She laughs.
“Definitely not.” I try to keep the edge out of my voice.
“So what is it?” she presses. “I can see the bags under your eyes.”
“It’s just…” No. I’m not going to say any of it to Aspen. She doesn’t need to know about Mina’s mom, the letters, or how very lost they both make me.
“It’s just the stressful part, now, ya know?” She crouches down to my level. “It gets better.”
“That’s a slogan developed for kids that are suicidal.” I look over. “I don’t find that funny or comforting when it comes to marriage.”
“James, you’re always so serious.” She smiles and gently rubs my shoulder. “I just mean that any time you redefine what you are, settling into the new shape is hard. It’ll be okay, you guys fit, no questions. You two just went from furious to forever in a matter of minutes.”
My hands hesitate but otherwise I try not to let Aspen know her words have stirred something me. Particularly because I don’t know what it is. There’s truth in what she says but there’s also a whole lot of you know nothing. Then of course there’s that anger that I feel despite it all. I can’t help it. I keep getting hung up on the fact that I thought Mina loved me and only me like that.
“We’re fine. We’ll be fine. We were always forever, we were just the last to know.” I shimmy out from under the tap tower and stand up.
“Oh my God,” Aspen swoons. “That is the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.” She mirrors my every move.
“No it’s not.” I shake my head. “It’s just the truth, Aspen.” Well the truth minus a little bit.
“You kill me sometimes,” she shrieks. “It’s okay to feel things, James.”
“I do feel things, all the time. I feel a lot of things right now.” That might be the most truthful I’ve been in my life about my emotions, but I say it with a snark that keeps us from having to delve in.
“Stop that right now.” Aspen picks up on my underlying meaning. “Girls love to hear guys talk about their significant other. It reminds us true love exists.”
“You’re married, don’t you know it exists?” I turn toward h
er, eyebrows pinched, and head cocked.
“Oh sure, sure.” She waves me off and tries to dart out of the small well behind the bar.
I step in her way. “That is the farthest thing from convincing.”
She sighs and crosses her arms on her chest.
“Spill, Aspen.”
“Jonas is my best friend, my partner in every way,” she says as she automatically twists toward the hallway leading to his office.
“And that isn’t true love?” I cross my arms to match.
“Not the kind that brings you to your knees in the middle of the street,” she says with a wistful smile, recalling one of the worst points in Mina’s and my relationship. One the entire town witnessed. “You guys need each other. Like, will you even be able to breathe without each other? I’m not so sure. I’m also not sure I could survive that sort of beautiful madness. That wasn’t the love I was looking for.”
I’m about to counter her and say I wasn’t either but it’s a lie. Maybe I wanted it a little quieter and with a little less drama, but I wanted someone to love me so completely they couldn’t dream of being with someone else. I wanted to fit so perfectly that I was sure. I wanted that—and thought I’d gotten it—only to have it tarnished. Or is it? Are we just settling into something new like Aspen said.
“Tell me what you love about him,” I prompt, wondering if, like she said, hearing her talk will somehow remind me. Somehow clear things up.
“I dunno.” Her gaze drifts away and her smile brightens while her cheeks turn rosy pink. “I love how driven he is. How passionate. I love his unwavering optimism and his terrible jokes.” She chuckles at some unseen memory. “He has great taste in beer and…” Her voice trails off.
“And, what?” I ask, still searching for something to help Mina and I make sense.