Page 58

“When I was a kid, I loved riding the train,” I tell Rafael, seating myself over his lap and resting my palms on his chest.

“Where would your family take you?”

“Everywhere.” An ache settles into my chest as the memories start to filter through the cracks in the walls I’ve spent so much time building and repairing.

“On the rare weekends when I didn’t have a game, my parents would take Rachelle and I on a day trip or sometimes for the whole weekend.

My maman would pull out a map and draw a circle around the area we were allowed to pick from.

It was usually something just a couple of hours away.

We’d take turns with each trip, one of us picking a random location within the boundaries. ”

Rafa smiles, his dark eyes glinting, crinkling at the corners as he listens to me. “What kinds of places did you end up visiting?”

“It was sort of a mix of everything. After we figured out where we were heading, Maman would start planning. She’d pick out a place to stay or a park to visit.

Sometimes there were concerts or theatre productions we’d wind up at.

As long as the weather was nice, we were always outside.

Maman would bring her kit, and she’d set herself up wherever we were, painting an image of Rachelle and I playing, reading, arguing ,” I tell him, a sad, wet sounding laugh slipping past my lips.

Rafael reaches up with both hands, pushing the fallen strands out of my face and tucks them behind my ears. “I wish I’d gotten to meet her,” he admits, and my heart can’t take it. It crumples, dissolving into dust in my chest.

“She would’ve loved you.” My voice is watery, and my chin quivers.

“I hope so,” he whispers.

We spend the next hour sharing stories about past family trips, and the little pieces of Rafael I’ve been collecting feel like treasures.

It’s like when I was a kid and I’d collect shells by the shore or take flowers from a field home to press and dry inside books. It felt like I was taking these tiny bits of a whole experience with me to remember, setting them aside to look back at later and marvel in their beauty.

And as much as I want to believe we’re good for each other, and that these feelings we have growing will last, it’s really difficult to feel confident in that.

I’ve never experienced anything like this in my life.

Is it the newness of it all that’s heightening these feelings?

My heart says a firm “No”, but what if my intuition is wrong?

It wasn’t long ago that we were at each other’s throats. My dad used to say that the best love is one formed from passionate flames that continue to burn like flameless embers. Low and slow. Always present but never dying.

I take a deep, calming breath, forcing the sudden jumble of anxious thoughts to clear like cobwebs from my mind, but the spider is quick to rebuild them.

I might not be confident enough in my own capacity for love to be able to give myself over to him, not completely, but in the same way that he’s fighting his demons, I’ll do the same with mine. He deserves at least that. We deserve that.

Fear is the only thing holding me back. Fear of about a million things, but the constant worry that my mental health could nosedive for the worst and he’d be here to witness it, leaving him vulnerable to the ups and downs of my moods—it doesn’t feel fair.

Most days, I worry that I can’t even take care of myself, let alone nurture an entire relationship.

At a baseline, I have an unsettled feeling that I’ll lose myself in my mental illness, and with the addition of Rafael in my life, that feeling is threatening to drag me under in the same way I worry it might take him too.

No. That’s not entirely true. When I force myself to reflect on how I’ve been feeling lately, I’m hit with a wave of warmth, like sitting on a beach under a golden horizon.

Sure, there are still bad days, but having Rafael by my side has been relieving.

I just hadn’t wanted to fully admit that until now.

“ Mi vida ,” he says, speaking in a low tone against my ear as he smooths my hair over my shoulders and drags me back to the present, “you’ve got that cute little line between your brows that you get when you’re overthinking.”

Heat crawls up my neck, pooling in my chest at the thought of him watching me, studying every flicker, every shift, every crack in the armour I’ve spent years building.

And in that moment, I feel the weight of it all, the weight of this disorder that isn’t just mine to carry, but his now too.

He knew that this was what he signed up for the moment it started to feel real for him too.

And who am I to make that call, to push him away when all I really want is for him to stay?

He’s free to walk away anytime, and part of me fears he will.

But I know this silence won’t save us. I have to start speaking, even if the words shake. Even if they’re not enough.

Just not right now.

“Sorry,” I say, clearing my throat. “I went off to a different place for a little bit.”

“Do you want to talk about it? Because I want to listen if you do.”

I shake my head. “Later. I promise. I think that right now, we’ve done a lot of sharing, and while I like that, it’s not something I’m used to to this degree.

I need a little more time to ruminate with my own thoughts before I share them,” I admit, wanting to be clear in my intentions without jumping into an explanation that might be too hard to sort through given the newness of the circumstances surrounding the thoughts. “But I will share them with you, Rafa.”

“That’s okay. Take your time. I’ll be here when you’re ready.” He rearranges us so I’m seated with my back pressed to his chest. “Tell me what you need right now.”

I rest my head against his shoulder, closing my eyes and settling in.

“ You. Right now, I just need you and some silence to dissociate for a while.” I twist to face him for a moment, ensuring our eyes are locked before I agree to something that I hope I don’t regret later.

“I’ll come back to you in a little, I promise. ”

A hint of a smile touches his lips before he says again, “I’ll be here.”