Page 131 of The Long Way Home

Thirty-Three

Magnolia

I run there, which helps, I think.

Running makes it harder to feel how nervous I am and disguises my presumed nervous sweats with the fact that I’m actually also just a bit sweaty.

Exercising is a bit like a panic attack, don’t you think? At least symptomatically. Out of breath, sweaty, heavy breathing — I’d be all those things anyway doing this.

It makes me feel quite sad to think that he doesn’t know.

I always thought he knew.

Because I know he loves me.

It’s been one of the great burdens of my adult life knowing that I love him and he loves me and we just cannot for the life of us figure out how to be together. Needs me? I’m not so sure, but loves me? I’ve always known that.

They’re right in lots of ways about the history. There are those attachments — Bridget’s trauma bonds, the willow tree, all the ways we’ve hurt each other to feel close to each other, all the ways he saved me when we were little, literally and metaphorically, the oysters, the bad men in Greece, the losers in London night clubs with busybody hands, the teachers, Marsaili, shitty boys in school with big mouths full of lies. I have all these ties to him. First boyfriend, first kiss, first love, first time, first everything, really. How he was my teacher and my partner in so many key life areas. My best friend and my family and my pillow and my quilt. Each of them are like bricks laid in the house I built to love him, but the point is really that house I built isn’t a monument to a love I used to have. It’s a house I want to live inside of still.

I text him.

Beej

9:37pm

Can you come downstairs?

Now?

Yes.

??

Ok.

And then I stand there, out the front of his apartment, pacing.

I’m a ball of nervous energy when he walks out the front.

I go light-headed when I see him, and not just because he’s perfect. Even just in his black Maison Margiela flipped logo hoodie and logo-print track pants from the Rhude x McLaren collab, he’s perfect standing over there with that low brow and a deep frown.

My bravery’s knees start to buckle when I think about how once upon a time he only used to smile when he saw me.

When did that stop?

When did I stop being his happy thought? Because he’s still mine. Even when I’ve hated him I’ve loved him.

On my worst nights in New York, when I was my saddest and my loneliest, I didn’t go out and sleep with those boys I don’t really know. I lay in my bed and thought about BJ. I wrapped the thoughts of him around my lost heart like a blanket, let them warm me up, let them tear me to pieces, let myself feel the weight of losing him. And for all the pain and all the sadness, for all the shitty things that happened, I still find myself not regretting it at all because he loved me. It’ll be what they put on my tombstone, I think.

He Loved Her.

I hope that’s what they’ll say about me.

He folds his arms over his chest and looks at me, the familiar twinkle of concern in his eyes. “You okay?”

“Mmhm.” I nod, still pacing.

He frowns more. “You sure?”