Page 91 of The Same Backward as Forward

I?’m in the stone room on my hands and knees, but this time, I am not shaking. There is no nausea, no voice telling me that I am a disappointment.

I can stand. I cansee.

The lines on the walls, which looked so faint before, are crisp before my eyes now. I can see the maze—all of it, all around me. It’s dizzyingly complicated. Impossibly so.

My instincts awaken with a whisper:Look for the start. Look for the finish.

My chest rises and falls with steady breaths. My body is warm—no fever, no chills. Just warmth. I scan the perimeter of the maze on the walls, then the ceiling, then the floor. All told, I find three broken lines, three openings, possible starting points in this impossible maze. It takes me longer to find the maze’s center, but finally, on the ceiling overhead, which is low enough for my fingers to skim the stone, I find what looks like a small star.

“The center of the maze.” I say the words out loud. “Three starting places. One ending.”

And all I need to do is find the path.

I wake up with my body curved around Hannah’s, the rise and fall of my chest a perfect match for the rise and fall of hers.Hannah shifts in her sleep, her cheek nuzzling my chest. My skin is not bare. When we came inside, I left it to her to remove my shirt or not—and she didn’t. But with Hannah’s head on my chest, the thin fabric of this borrowed shirt feels like nothing.

There is a deep ache almost everywhere in my body—more than anache. Refusing to recognize your own limits comes with a cost. My body says I went too far. I feel weaker than I would ever want to admit to being. But what does that matter when she is here?

Hannah ishere, and so am I, and all I can think with her head on my chest is:This was it.I am not fool enough to think or evenhopethat what happened between us will ever happen again. This night, this moment, my body curved protectively around hers…

This is it.

And it isenough—more than enough, more than I could have ever dreamed of: the warmth of her body and the warmth of mine and knowing that, for a single moment in time, she needed me and I was everything I could be for her.

Thatis enough.

I breathe in the smell of her hair. There is no real light inside this old lighthouse, but my eyes were made for seeing her even in the dark.

Hannah the Same Backward as Forward. Hannah, through and through.

The muscles in my throat tighten one by one. I do not want her to regret this. I do not want her to regretme.

But for now, all I can do is close my eyes and let myself hold her and breathe.

I’m standing on a white sand beach, and there she is, backlit and laughing and holding a hand out to me. I can feel each grain of sandbeneath my feet, warm against my soles. I can feel the kiss of the sun on my skin.

But more than all of that, as she holds out that hand, I feel her.

I wake up alone. Hannah’s absence should feel like a shock to my system, but it doesn’t.Just one night.That was what she needed from me, and now she is gone, but knowing that doesn’t stop my hand from reaching for her, my eyes from searching for her. I listen in vain for the sound of her breath.

Nothing.

It’s morning now. The light streaming through cracks in the lighthouse walls is proof enough of that. I wonder how long ago she left, but the part of me that will always be an addict, the part that should be begging formore, more, more, more, more… Even that part of me says:This was enough.If I was what she needed, if I succeeded at making her see herself the way that I see her, even if it was just for one night…

That is enough.

I push the lighthouse door open. Even though I am not expecting to see Hannah there, even though I know quite well that she is gone, I still scan my surroundings, looking for her. I wind my way around the lighthouse, toward the ocean, just in case.

And to my utter shock, there she is.

She stands on the point—a jut of land overhanging the rocky beach below. The sound of waves breaking on the shore drowns out everything except the howl of the wind. Her face is aimed skyward, lit by the morning sun.

She is the single most beautiful sight that I have ever seen.

It takes me several seconds and three halting steps toward Hannah to realize that she is crying.

Because of us? Because of me?Even I’m not egocentric enough to automatically assume that to be the case. There are depths to Hannah that have nothing to do with me, layers of grief that I have no right to peel back.

Her mother has cancer.