Page 80 of On the Way to You

Kalo slept between us, her body a little furnace that I curled into, and every now and then my eyes would drift to Emery. I watched him sleep, his breath peaceful and calm, though the two lines between his brows were still present, as if he couldn’t escape his thoughts even in his dreams.

He stirred around five, moving to lean against the headboard as he rubbed his eyes.

“Hi,” I whispered, unsure of which man was waking up beside me.

“Hey.”

Emery reached forward to rub behind Kalo’s ear, his eyes catching on the winter wonderland unfolding outside our window. I thought maybe he would say something now about it, or ask if I wanted to go outside. I thought maybe he was okay again.

But he only sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face before kicking the covers back.

“I’m going to shower.”

I closed my eyes as he closed the door, effectively putting a physical barrier between us where a metaphorical one had already existed all day. When I opened them again, they landed on his journal laying unassumingly on the bedside table, the pages pressed flat onto the wood, leather binding stretched open.

Don’t, I warned myself, curling into Kalo more. She rolled over, offering me her belly, and I ran my fingers along her silky fur, eyes still glued to the journal.

I wanted so many opposing things in that moment. I wanted to read the journal, to read what he was feeling last night, to find something within the pages to bring him back to me. I wanted to respect his privacy, trust that he would talk to me in time, and spend the evening being there for him in whatever way he needed me to be. Everything I wanted seemed at war with something else I desired equally, and I weighed my options as I heard the shower turn on in the bathroom.

It was, for all intents and purposes, our last night together. At least, our last nightguaranteedtogether. Tomorrow we would drive into Seattle, to my new home, and I didn’t know if he would stay once we got there. I didn’t even know where his final stop was, or what it was that he “needed to see.” I only knew it was somewhere in Washington, and that I’d had the time of my life on this journey with him, and now it was ending, and I didn’t want to lose him.

I pressed my fingers hard into my temples, massaging the muscle there, my eyes closed as I tried to find the easy answer that eluded me. But there was no easy answer, no simple solution, and as sick as it made me feel reaching a hand out until I felt that leather binding, I couldn’t stop myself.

I was an addict, fiending for comfort from his words, chasing the high that came from finding a new layer of him buried in those pages.

Pulling the book into my lap, I ran my hand over the page bookmarked, the entry he was writing last night before bed. Kalo put a paw on the pages with a whine, as if to tell me to reconsider, but I’d already had the first taste. There was no turning back now.

I remember the first time a girl told me she loved me.

It was Melissa Rickman, and we were seniors in high school. She told me she loved me after we’d been dating for a little over a month. I just stared at her before finally asking, “Why?”

That night, I talked to my dad about it, and I asked him to tell me how he knew he loved Mom. He’d sat on the edge of my bed with this far off look in his eyes and this goofy ass smile. He told me there was one night where Mom invited him over to her apartment because she wanted to cook a meal for him.

But she was an awful cook, he’d told me, which didn’t surprise me since she still is. He said watching her try to make a meal for him was the most endearing thing. He said she was making something so simple, a pasta dish, but the sauce was all over her apron and splatted on her face.

He said at one point, she’d given up, placing her hands on the counter and hanging her head as she started to cry. All she’d wanted was to do something special for him.

Dad said in that moment, he knew he loved her.

It was nothing crazy, nothing she said or did that really stood out, just seeing her standing there with pasta sauce on her face and tears in her eyes. He loved her. It hit him simply and without fuss, and he didn’t tell her until a full six months later.

I told Melissa Rickman the next day that I didn’t love her, and she broke up with me, which was fine.

I’ve written about love in this journal before today, always with the firm belief that it didn’t really exist. I’ve always believed it was a fantasy, something we cling to as humans to make this world a little less lonely. Because it is fucking lonely.

But tonight, I walked with Cooper in downtown Grants Pass, and we were just talking and drinking hot chocolate and looking at Christmas lights when she tripped a little. She spilled hot chocolate on her scarf, and her little face crumpled at the sight of it. She was so devastated by that splash of brown on her otherwise blue scarf, and I found it so fucking adorable that all I could do was laugh and pull her into me and kiss her. I mean physically, there was nothing else I could have done in that moment. I couldn’tnotkiss her.

And I’m not saying it’s love, but it made me think of my dad, and my mom, and that damn pasta sauce.

I’m not saying it’s love, but it was something… different. Foreign. Intense.

I smiled, biting my lip as I traced those words with my fingertips before moving on.

I haven’t said a word to her since that moment, because as soon as her lips left mine, I remembered that Seattle is just seven hours away. I remembered that our trip is ending soon… mine in a very different way than hers.

I’ve deceived her. I’ve hidden the truth from her, afraid of how she might take it, of how it might break her, of how it might break me, too.

But if nothing has changed, if the plan remains the same, I have to tell her soon.