Page 25 of Gorgeous Misery

The future has finally caught up with her and she knows it.

I want to tell her everything. I want to spell out the last twelve years so they add up to something more than this right here. I want her to understand how much she means to me, but I don’t know how to say it without it coming off gross.

Loving her has always felt wrong, but not loving her, that has always felt evil.

And I’d rather be wrong than evil any day.

So instead I tell her sweet things. That’s all it was gonna be. Just a list of very sweet things.

“You are sweet, beautiful, perfect, and whole. You are everlasting, transcendent, exceptional, and extraordinary. You are remarkable, exquisite, priceless, and sublime. You are flawless, marvelous, divine, and sensational. You are heavenly, powerful, glorious, and delightful.

“You are lovely.

“You are gorgeous.

“And I will never let you go.”

And then I made her say it with me.

And that was our real beginning.

After her seventeenth birthday I wrote her letters and left them at the desk in Mount Pleasant.

Because letters that begin with the words ‘Dear Wendy’ make sense to us.

They’re not wrong or evil, they’re just… hello.

And I had to make up for the time we were spending apart.

I had to make up for it or she would lose her way.

So my letters were two things at once. Something to guide her and a memory. A nice memory to soothe her soul.

Dear Wendy,

You are sweet, beautiful, perfect, and whole. You are everlasting, transcendent, exceptional, and extraordinary. You are remarkable, exquisite, priceless, and sublime. You are flawless, marvelous, divine, and sensational. You are heavenly, powerful, glorious, and delightful.

You are lovely.

You are gorgeous.

Do you remember that day at the airfield? Because I do. It was probably one of the worst days of my life, and that’s saying something because I’ve had so many bad days.

But it wasn’t you who made it bad. I need that to be clear.

It wasn’t Lauren, either. Even though she was only four months old and she had been inconsolably crying for nearly six hours that day.

It was me.

I have never been one of those people who thinks about giving up. I would never, ever be my brother in that respect. I would never let anyone put me out of my misery. And I don’t care what anyone thinks—he didn’t make Sasha shoot him in the head to save her. He didn’t even do it because of some misplaced sense of saving himself.

He made Sasha kill him so he could quit.

I’m not a quitter. This is my point.

But that day, out in that airfield, standing in the pouring rain in front of Chek with Lauren screaming in my truck, I wanted to walk out.

No. I wanted to run. Because that’s what I do. I don’t quit, I run. From all of it. And yeah, I know what you’re thinking. I’m no different than Santos then.