Page 151 of We Drank the Dawn

“Hey Sarah, me again. I wanted to talk to you about Cooper. After you left, Cooper and I bickered a lot and didn’t get along well in the beginning. And then Tag sent us to a rodeo in Austin together and we had to share a tent. You’ll never believe what happened…”

“Hey Sarah, I miss you…*deep sigh*...I really really miss you. I’m beating myself up today for stuff I can’t change because it’s in the past. My dad keeps telling me to stay focused on the here and now, but it’s hard not to get stuck in regret when I think about how long it’s been since I’ve held you…

On and on, I listened. He told me about riding a horse for the first time and how Cooper had become one of the greatest friends he’d ever had and how he was trying to fix his relationships and how he’d been jogging a lot at night.

“I was thinking of some of the adventures we’ve been on. We’ve made some really great memories together. One of my favorites…*laughter*...oh, this still makes me laugh, but do you remember when we tried to movie hop?”

Alone on my bed with puffy, stinging eyes, I cackled like a maniac.

“You thought it was so awesome to be rebellious and see two movies for the price of one. But I felt guilty and snuck out of the second movie to pay for it.”

His laughter hit my broken heart like a healing balm. I had missed that full laugh. The way his head tipped back and the sucking breath he always took after letting it all out.

“I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t be a cool rebel like you.”

Oh, I remembered. I would never forget. When he came back, he wouldn’t look me in the eye and I just knew he paid for our tickets. I poked and prodded him until he finally admitted it. I remembered just laughing and falling in love with him all over again.

Then we moved to the back row and made out for the rest of the movie.

Some of the messages I listened to twice because they were just so precious.

“So, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…I think I saved Wren’s life tonight.”

My heart stopped as I listened to him recount the story, his voice tight like he’d been crying.

“I don’t know, Sarah. It was like, all of a sudden, I stopped resisting the fact that I couldn’t see anymore. I felt numb to everything before, but now, I can feel everything I used to see, and I don’t know how to help you understand what that is doing for my mental health.

“But, I think that’s the reason I was able to run after her. I didn’t doubt myself or try to put together what was happening in my head. I already knew because I was tuned in. All the way.”

There was a second message from the same night.

“I helped put Wren to bed.” He puffed a breath and I couldn’t tell if it was annoyed or sad. “After spending so much time with her, I wanted to know what all went into tucking a baby in bed. So Bea showed me. We gave her a bath and changed her diaper and I helped put her pajamas on. Bea turned on a little sound machine and sang a song she made up called Little Bird. And then she gave me a bottle and let me feed her and rock her to sleep. I even put her in her crib.”

Thinking of Peter doing all those things made feelings storm my chest.

“There’s a lot to say about children in our future. Hopefully, we will have that conversation one day. But, I will say, rocking a baby to sleep made me feel like maybe…maybe I could be a dad.”

Hope declared war in my fatigued heart.

If I wasn’t weeping before, I was then.

Peter voicemails went on to discuss the way he’d been practicing on a barrel in order to get on a bucking horse. I thought he was crazy, wanting to ride in a rodeo like that. But it sounded like he was having a good time.

“I got on a bronc today. Sarah, I can hardly walk. *soft laughter* But, man, that was fun. I can listen to the horse’s muscles with my legs to kind of predict what she might do. My whole body has to respond to her. It’s hard to explain…its almost like her movements travel through me, like a wave. Maybe it shouldn’t be fun, being terrified like that, but it’s a blast.”

Another one held a very somber tone.

“Hey Sarah, I’ve been thinking. Your list has bound us together for a long long time. From the very first day I laid eyes on you, I wanted you to have anything you set your heart on because the light shining in your eyes did something to me, deep in my chest. And that checklist anchored me when I was a young man who couldn’t think too much about a future that might not exist and helped me experience the present moment to the fullest degree. And when I learned about your family and your parents and saw the cage you lived in…I don’t know…I guess I made it my goal to break you free. And then…every time something bad happened to me, I got scared that I’d become another cage…another way life trapped you. I convinced myself that you wouldn’t be happy if I held you back, but I realized something…this is hard for me to talk about…I think the truth is I wouldn’t be happy holding you back. Because somehow my worth got tangled up in what I could give you.

“Every time I doubted my ability to give you the beautiful life you wanted, I delayed or pulled back instead of just doing what I should have done from the very beginning…”

He took a deep, quaking breath and I did, too.

“Which was give you myself. My whole terrified self. As wonderful as our adventures are, they aren’t what make life worthwhile. They’re just added blessings, you know? Extra stuff we’re lucky enough to experience. Because you could stand on a mountain peak and bask in the beauty of a perfect sunrise and it won’t mean a thing if, at the end of the day, you don’t trust that I’m going to choose you through the darkest nights and the brightest days and every moment in between…” His voice broke. “It’s been easier for me to gift you with the joy of a moment than the hope of a future because the future has always felt uncertain…but, essentially I’ve sacrificed your security to preserve my own…and I’m never going to stop regretting that I’ve spent so long doing that. I love you, Sarah. I…adore you. The first time I held you in my arms, I knew I’d arrived. I’d caught the sun.” He laughed through his tears. “That was it for me—the dream of all dreams. You with me.”

He took a deep breath, his tone a little lighter. “We’re going to make it through this night. I believe that.”

His message reiterated the things Martha had said. It was if he’d been learning all the same things, having similar conversations.