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I hand it back, then sit beside him, my body turned toward his. More than anything, I want to hold him, to touch him, but I don’t. Not at first.
He takes another drag, and I watch his mouth as he slowly exhales the smoke before throwing it over the railing and opening his arms to me. “Come here,” he says.
I fall into him, burying my face in his chest, breathing him in for the first time in forever, and finding that it’s exactly the same. Whatever has always been there is still there, and maybe when I couldn’t touch it, I could stuff it down into this box and pretend it didn’t exist, but it never went away.
It’s home. And it’s what’s been missing. This is the feeling I was terrified I’d have to live without.
And I know I still will. Because Ty is right—I’m late. Much too late. I grind my teeth together and try to keep my breathing steady, try to keep myself from crying again, but it doesn’t work very well.
“It’s okay,” he tells me, running his hands up and down my back. “Let it out; I can take it.”
“I messed up,” I cry. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“You ripped my heart out, Mel,” Ty says. “Maybe you didn't mean to, but you did.” He tilts my chin so we’re face-to-face and wipes a tear from my cheek. “You know, I thought it might actually kill me, and for a long time, I was disappointed that it didn’t.”
“Do you hate me?”
He sighs. “No, Mellie, I don’t hate you. I tried to…for a long time. I even thought that if I ever saw you again, I might hate you. But…look at you. How could I hate you? I don’t even think I can blame you.”
“I do,” I tell him. “I hate me; I blame me.”
“You shouldn’t,” he says. “I don’t want that. Mel…look. What happened to you—to us—I didn’t know how to navigate it either. I should have never let you go. I wish I’d come down there and dragged your ass home when you stopped answering the phone.”
“I wish you would have,” I say. “Why didn’t you?”
“It felt…selfish. You’d just gone through this nightmare, and I just wanted to give you what you wanted, and you said you wanted space. I just wanted you to get better. I didn’t expect you to just…disappear.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell him again. “I didn’t know how to cope, so I just didn’t. You don’t have to forgive me. But I want you to know that you never did anything wrong and that I know you didn’t deserve it. And that I still loved you—every single day. I was just so broken, and I didn’t know how to fix it. I’m doing better—really, I am—but I am stuck…in this.”
His eyes search my face, my words, trying to find their meaning. His brow furrows when he believes he’s found it.
“Is that why you’re here, then?” he asks. “For me?”
I nod. “Yes.”
He stands and paces back and forth in front of me. “Mel,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re too fucking late!”
“I know.”
“I’m having a baby!”
I swallow a lump in my throat. “I know. But…do you ever think about us? Do you ever wonder what it would be like if things were different?”
“I think about it all the time, but it’s been three years, Mel! I’ve been right here for three fucking years. You knew where to find me; you’ve known my phone number by heart since you were eight years old. You could have asked me to take you home. You could have called me, and I would have done anything you wanted. I would have been your friend if that’s what you needed. Anytime. But now, I—”
“I wasn’t going to ask,” I tell him, then gesture toward my bags. “I was just going to leave, but you’re here now, so I thought maybe—maybe it was a sign.”
“No. I can’t, Mel,” he says. And I can hear it—the girl in the coffin screaming, my heart splintering into a million tiny fractures as my ribcage caves in around it. “I have obligations now. And from the looks of it,” he gestures toward my left hand, “so do you. And you know what? I don’t trust you to stay.”
“That’s fair,” I say softly.
“I’m sorry…”
“Yeah, no, it’s…” I pause, trying to gather myself. “I’m…an idiot. I should go.”
“You’re not an idiot,” he says. “Do you want to…go grab lunch or something?”
“No, I don’t—”
