by Gray, Ace
I shake my head and try and try to shake that thought. I’m really trying too.
“This is my favorite spot.” Mina steps up to the rock beside me, her warmth just a hairsbreadth from me.
“It’s beautiful,” I agree as I reach out to brush my fingers down her arm.
“This isn’t actually Lost Lake. It’s about a mile and a half from here. This is just the slough.”
“This is not just anything.” I look around again, noting the crystal clear lake that betrays each color of the stones below. The reflection of the high peaks behind with the traces of last year’s snow still deep in its crags and the crystalline blue sky above is almost as grand as the view itself. This is as close as I get to spiritual, deep in the heart of a cathedral that can’t be carved by hand. “This is awesome in the true sense of the word.”
Mina’s pinky finds mine and wraps around. “That’s one of my favorite things about you, ya know?”
“What?” I turn when I ask only for words to die on my lips. She is beautiful in a sweatshirt and jeans, her hair loosely braided and the wisps falling out rustling in the wind. The shades of nature are reflected back in her hazel eyes.
“I was going to say, that you only use words when you truly mean them. Like awesome when something really is awe inspiring.” A rosy blush creeps up her neck and blooms across her cheeks. “But I think I’m changing my answer to the fact that you can look at me like that after everything.”
After everything.
She doesn’t even know the half of it. I sigh, keeping my secrets sealed inside me and the serenity around us. Why do they keep coming up? Why can’t it all just die? I know the answer is me. It’s those letters burned into my brain, it’s my inability to let the past go and trust the future. I want to but I just wasn’t made that way. I keep analyzing it all, adding bits and pieces of evidence to this column or that one, trying to arrive at a solid, logical answer.
I just can’t find it.
“Let’s go put up the tent.” I jerk my chin toward the flat spot we’d discussed earlier.
“You know I’ve always figured that putting up a tent should be required before you get married. If you can get through it without screaming at each other you’re good to go.” She starts laughing.
“I think we got this.” A tent will not be our downfall, of that much I’m sure.
“When Tanner and I…” Mina says only for her eye to spring open wide and her mouth to snap shut.
His name bottoms out in the pit of my stomach. Speaking of our downfall…
My body tenses up. Waiting for the words that will come next, for whether they could erect a tent or if they digressed into a shouting match. I’m morbidly curious actually, as if it will have some bearing on our course. But I can’t ask, I can’t tell her the reasons that I need to know.
“You know what? Forget I said anything.” She laughs nervously, and I nod absently trying desperately to do just that. I’ve been trying to for weeks now.
Forget she said things so beautiful and gut wrenching about Tanner before she said them about me. Forget she said them and they fell apart anyway.
I try and forget about them the entire time we set up the tent—with no fighting might I add. I try and forget as we unload chairs and coolers. As I get a fire started. And all throughout the idle conversation we have in between.
The thing about trying to forget is that it’s just another form of fixation. Like when my parents would say something was off-limits, the desire to make it on would take a wild hold of me. It is the singular thought that comes to front and center. The echo of when Tanner and I… becomes even louder in my head. The questions of what were they like together and how long until that’s us are too. And if we’re headed for the crash, the fail, wouldn’t it be better to preserve what we had? The moments, the memories, rather than smashed hearts and bitterness tinged glasses.
I stare into the flicker and lap of the flame on the logs. It mimics the passionate words between her and Tanner, both fiery and fading. Isn’t that our pattern too? Her and Tanner and me and her and what happened, what is happening, consume every bit of my thoughts. Her words—his name on her tongue—keep whistling like a tea kettle, louder and louder, until I can’t live in the shrill of it anymore.
“Did you and Tanner fight?” I ask as I close my eyes, lean back in chair and sip a beer. “When you put up the tent?” I don’t open my eyes, I don’t breathe, until she answers.
“No,” she murmurs an eternity later.
I open my eyes to the stars as I sink deep into the chair. Deep into that answer.
“Maybe once or twice when it was about more than a tent but…”
But no. The answer is no. Not that I expected anything different. She said yes to him. Oh, God. She said yes not I guess so.
“Did you love him?” I ask before I have a chance to think through my words or their ramifications.
“Is this really what you want to talk about right now? By the fire?” Her voice is weak.
I look over and the pain and sorrow that makes her so tragically beautiful is back, illuminated in dancing shadow. She knows as well as I do that this has been brewing, she never lost her ability to see deep into my heart. She just had to stop looking for a moment.
“Did you love him?” My voice cracks.
“Yes.” She takes a giant gulp of her beer as my heart tumbles.
My pulses quickens, and my chest gets a little tight. I stand up and wheel away from the fire only to freeze when she jumps up.
“But not like you, James. Not like this.” She reaches out for me and I step aside just enough that her hand falls to her side.
“Just enough for the good to be good, but the bad to fall apart, right?” I ask softly into the night. “You stopped talking to him, stopped sleeping with him.” There’s no accusation in my voice. “That’s why we’re even a thing because you couldn’t, or wouldn’t, talk to him.” The realization hits me like a wave. “I knew you craved conversation, affection, connection, but I always thought it was his fault.”
“For a long time, it was,” her voice breaks.
“But then you shut him out, didn’t you?”
She doesn’t answer. Over the crackle of the fire, her tears add a layer to the quiet night. I don’t even really make the decision to go to her, to hold her, I just know that I need to. She curls into my chest and clutches at my sweatshirt. I hold her tight for heartbeat after heartbeat before she speaks.
“I didn’t mean to. I didn’t even make the decision to. It was a self-preservation kind of thing.”
I nod, my chin resting against the top of her head. “Like you did with me when your mom was sick.”
Her tears renew against my chest and I curse myself for saying it. Except that she can’t answer, which means I had to say it.
I hold her long enough that my back aches and I have to shift my footing. But I don’t let go. I worry that if I do, she’ll crumble. We’ll crumble.
Or I’ll realize that we already have.
“Come on.” I shepherd her toward the tent. I hold her tight as I unzip the flap, then her sleeping bag, and even as I help her shimmy in.
She reaches for me, pulling me into a desperate kiss that tastes of salty tears. I know it’s a plea to forgive her, to put this all behind us, to realize the differences, but… I can’t. It isn’t. I don’t know that it ever will be. That it ever was.
“The fire, Meen,” I say softly, opting to kiss her forehead then shuffle back out of the tent.
I stare at the dying embers, lighting orange with each small shift of the wind, and realize this is us. Dying out. She pushed me away, she wouldn’t let me touch her, how long before she talks to someone else? Falls for someone else? Before I don’t measure up?
This was always too good to be true. I should have known. Being loved like I hoped she loved me wasn’t going to last.
I dump water on the fire and listen to it hiss, furious as it extinguishes. That hiss is as familiar as
the sound of my heartbeat. I know it will be my companion after this, the new echo in my ears when her words have faded away. It’ll just be me and the sound of desperate flame, dying.
I stir the ashes in the pit and douse the fine soot with more water. When not even steam rises from the stone ring, I turn for the tent using only the pale light of the moon as my guide. My fingers hesitate at the zipper, recalling how it used to be a simple brush of them against her skin that, for a brief moment, said everything.
At first, Mina doesn’t move as I climb in beside her. But then she turns to stare at the roof of the tent. And then she starts talking.
“When I met Tanner, I was…” Her voice trails off, sad and broken in a way far deeper than I’ve known. “I didn’t love myself.
I reach out and brush my knuckles across hers.
“I’d battled eating disorders for longer than I care to admit, believing that if I was skinny, I would be pretty, and I’d be loved. Tanner came along and—”
“Loved you.”
“I wouldn’t go right to loved but he made me feel seen.”
I know first-hand what a heady and addictive feeling that is. It’s one of the reasons we’re here.
“If I’d paid attention, I would have seen the signs, I would have known how hollow that love would have ended up.”
I don’t say a word.
“I thought it was love, and at first it felt so intense and beautiful and passionate, but now I know it was validation mixed with the feeling of saving someone. It made me feel needed but it was never real. Not for him. It was about what I gave and how that felt, not what I was given.
“And when I needed someone, when my world was falling apart, I tried to go to him. I really did. But he was so used to getting by that time that he wouldn’t give. Anything. I was alone and it broke me. Every single fiber of me hurt, and my marriage was an illusion. There was no one coming to my rescue. I couldn’t eat, again.” She sighs and it gives way into a small whimper. “But then there was you.”
My heart leaps against my chest.
“I didn’t want you to mean anything. I wanted things to get better with Tanner, I wanted him to finally understand what I needed—what I screamed and cried and begged for—but, never. Not once. There was just this giant void where love once was.”
“And I filled it up.”
“Until you told me I was too much.”
What I wouldn’t do to take back those words. Or at least I’ve always thought that. Maybe, in the end, I actually meant them.
“James, when you told me that, everything shifted. My heart was already broken but I started to rebuild it and I rebuilt it in a way that I finally felt worthy. Not whole, but worthy.”
“Of me?” I ask, hope still puffing up my chest.
“Of loving myself.”
Pride swells in my chest. I always knew she was worthy and to hear she feels that way too… I remember how she would slink into the brewhouse, so timid, eyes wide, and that beautiful tragedy hanging around her neck. Just because I found her breathtaking like that didn’t mean I loved to see it. I told her to stop apologizing, I reassured her, answered her texts so that look I loved would disappear.
So that I would have no reason to love an unavailable woman.
“I tried to bring that strength into my relationship…”
“You don’t have to keep going,” I offer with another brush of my fingers.
I honestly don’t know if I can hear more. Each word is the opposite side of the coin Tanner threw me. Her view on the way things went wrong are all cut in the shape of justification for them falling out of love. I feel for her, I do. I know she hurt, I remember the agony I’d catch on her face some days, but now I’m sitting around waiting for that to happen to me.
“I’m tired, James.”
“I know.” Because I am too.
“I want to feel worthy again, but I don’t know how. I let you down when things went bad with my mom but…”
“You didn’t mean to. You didn’t even make the decision to. It was a self-preservation kind of thing.” I use her words.
“I’m sorry.” Tears are edging back in her voice.
“I’m sorry too.” I find her fingers and lace ours together in the small space between us. “I’m sorry that I’m not enough for you.”
I didn’t sleep and honestly, I’m not sure Mina did either. I’ve spent the last thirty minutes listening to her breathing, it’s more rough and choppy than restful sleep should be. After last night, I wouldn’t expect her to be peaceful. She tried to tell me I was enough but the words never came out right, they were all misshapen by tears and torment.
“How do we move forward, James?” Mina breaks the early morning still as if she knew I was waiting, listening.
“I don’t know.” I don’t turn toward her, instead following an arcing seam across the dome of the tent.
“I want to move forward,” she murmurs.
“I want to too, but I don’t know if I can.” I swallow the hard lump in my throat.
“You can. We can.” Her knuckles find mine and brush gently. I close my eyes and try and talk my lungs into expanding for a full breath.
“I’m always going to be waiting for the next time you shut me out. I’m always going to worry that it’s going to be the time we can’t recover from, like you and Tanner.”
A single sob rips through the tent even though she tries to stifle it.
“I won’t. We’re different.” Each word trembles and I finally turn toward her. Tear stains, old and new, mar her face. Her hair is spread in every direction. Sadness has hollowed her face. She’s beautiful. She’s the version of her that has always been uniquely mine.
“It’s already been so hard, and it isn’t supposed to be hard right?” I push some of the wet from her cheek. “This is all my damage, my inability to communicate or feel things like a normal human. Not you, Meen. You hear me?” I wrap around her.
“I love you in spite of those things.” It’s the first time she doesn’t burrow into me. “Because of those things.”
“For now. Later they become the reasons that I can’t be there the way you need. And you deserve someone who can be everything to you.” I press my lips to her forehead.
“We’re different. I swear to God we’re different.”
“I know but different isn’t always enough.”
She doesn’t answer this time, opting to simply let tears flow down to her pillow. I try and etch each detail of her into my mind. I love her now more than ever. I need to remember her open and raw and vulnerable. I need that memory so when I’m old and lonely, I remember the woman who loved me exactly as I was enough to break her heart.
“But you’re my soulmate,” she whispers.
I almost say it back. I never believed in that stuff until now. Now when the pain is equally as real keeping her as it is losing her. My soul needs her happy—I know that now—but we’ll destroy each other if we stay together.
She starts to slide my ring off and I clap my hand over hers. “Don’t. Please. Keep it.”
“What if I don’t want it?”
Somehow that’s the knife to the gut. That she wouldn’t want to look back someday and smile at the jewelry that I felt personified her. But I have to swallow that pain. I have to swallow all of it. I won’t end up scorned and bitter like Tanner. I won’t let her either.
“Then sell it. Buy new skis or something.”
Tears renew down her cheeks, sobs shaking her shoulders as she pushes out of the tent. I almost call out after her, asking her to stay. To forget it all. If it were just her and I, I would, but it’s her and Tanner and me and Jenna and her family and Courtney and so so so much pain.
So I don’t say it. I don’t say anything. I just start breaking down camp exactly like I broke us.
“You can stay here for a while,” Mina says as she hauls her backpack out of the truck in her driveway.
“No. It’s your house, Mina.”
She fli
nches when I say her name then she turns and throws her bag in her car. “It is but I don’t want to be here right now.”
“Okay,” I say softly. “I’ll be out in a few days.”
“You’ll never be out. Don’t you see that? You’ll always be a ghost by my bookshelf touching me for the first time. You’ll be in my bed. Everywhere. I’ll never shake you.” Her words become unsteady and her shoulders start to heave.
I want to tell her she will. I want to tell her that it’s me that won’t but that I accept that. I can’t wake up every day wondering if today is the day I lose. Even if winning means Mina. The knot builds in my throat again, and I feel the hot sting of tears in the corners of my eyes and I don’t say anything.
“I’m going to my parents’ place. I’ll text when I’m coming back,” she says grabbing a few more things.
“I’ll be gone. I promise.” My voice breaks.
When I say that, she breaks again, as if the thought of me gone still breaks her heart. As if I hadn’t already.
“I don’t want you gone,” she manages, her entire body full of defeat where she sags beside the driver’s side door. “I want you here. With me.”
I shoot her the saddest smile I have when I answer, “Just for now.”
Two days without Mina and I feel like I got hit by a bus. Everything aches—even my eyelashes seem painful—but I drag myself out of bed. I have to keep going. Forward.
I didn’t expect the pain of losing Mina. I mean, I lost her once, no, twice already, so I thought I knew how I would feel but it was different then. She wasn’t really mine to lose, she wasn’t my fiancée. My heart didn’t beat in the shape of her. Then I was a little lost, I thought about her too much, I almost texted her a million times.
Now…
Now I am unmoored, my heart beats her name, and there are a million texts typed out but unsent on my phone. I don’t know how I’m going to live without her. The thought of her smile lost to me or her sarcasm never sharpened on me, pins me flat against the bed. I don’t know how to rise against the weight or fight against the pain.