“I left. I get it.” My front teeth pull my bottom lip in to keep myself from saying anything for a second, and then I stop and talk myself through my thoughts. “I don’t think I ever understood how much your father leaving affected you. I should have. More importantly, I should never have run away.” My head shakes as the knuckle of my forefinger swipes my bottom lip dry. “I always thought with running away I was protecting myself. I’ve learned it’s done the opposite.”
“I wasn’t trying to replace you.”
“I know, you were trying to forget me.”
“I never could.” Max takes a short step forward, closing the uncomfortable gap between us. His hand slides along my jaw and settles against my cheek where I lean into it. “You were in my dreams…” his head shakes, “…nearly every night for so long.” His tongue wets his lips and his eyes drop again, like he’s ashamed or afraid to tell me more. “In my dreams it felt like you were really here. Like I was talking to you while experiencing us all over again. It was like some crazy illusion my mind made up so I could survive.”
“Si l’amour n’est qu’une illusion, alors qu’est-ce que la réalité? If love is nothing but an illusion, then what is real?” It’s a French proverb that hangs in my grandparent’s house in France, and for the first time in my life, I understand the words as I repeat them to Max.
“We can do this, right? We can go back to you and me.”
“I don’t think we ever stopped.”
Max’s head shakes. “Never.”
We hardly leave the confines of his room for the next four days, as we discuss all that’s happened in the time that we’ve been apart. Max explains that he basically failed his first year of medical school but managed to convince the dean not to kick him out of the program after he agreed to tutor college students in science and math courses that he had excelled in. I tell him about Kitty, working at the lab, and of Fitz, along with the ghosts that I’d brought with me when I left.
Between stories we become re-acclimated in every other way possible, spending countless hours into the night, and entire afternoons, kissing, touching, and making love to fill a thirst that seems impossible to quench. Few moments pass that we aren’t touching or lying against one another, dependent on one another.
Eventually we leave the boundaries of his room and spend a couple of days becoming reacquainted to our old routine with several new modifications. We spend time with Kendall, Jameson, Landon, and Wes, and now Tim. It’s so easy and natural that it confirms what I’ve already known for years, I’m in love with Max Miller.
I’ve found me, but I’ve always been his.
“Love doesn’t make the world go ‘round, Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.”
–Franklin P. Jones
After Ace returned, she took her time before finding out what secrets Clementine held. I didn’t push her. I knew that although she’d grown a lot in the time she’d been away, it didn’t make facing the loss of her father any easier. We spent several weeks doing nothing but spending time together. Many of those weeks were spent at our moms’, a concept that hurt us both to say aloud. Sunday dinners resumed, and with them I saw Ace flourish as she grew more comfortable with the fact that David wouldn’t be there to offer the humor and safety that I now recognize he provided her with. I can tell she misses both, but God is she strong. She doesn’t need the security anymore, though I occasionally try to fill that void, more because I never want to see her hurt than the fact that she actually needs it.
Her sisters and mom were nearly as happy as I was to have her back. She isn’t the axis to their world like she is mine, but she is their sun, creating warmth and balance to the family.
I know Kyle was a little perturbed about my presence initially. He ignored me, refusing to acknowledge me for the first few weeks. Ace pleaded with me to allow her to talk to him, to try and explain things so he could understand. I assured her she was free to explain anything she wanted to him about her own experience, but that I wasn’t willing to try and justify anything I’d done. I knew that Ace forgave me for Erin, and for giving up on her, but I knew that Kyle never would, and I didn’t expect him to. It took me a long time, and multiple conversations with her, Landon, Hank, and eventually Fitz of all people, to be able to forgive myself. Kyle however forgave me first. We were at home for a long weekend, and although I hated being apart from her at night, I appreciated that she planned the times because it helped me repair and rebuild the relationship with my mom that had also suffered during the time Ace was away.
I was installing a new mailbox for Muriel after some asshat knocked hers over in the middle of the night. She cried when she found it, and I didn’t know if it was because it held memories or because she didn’t know how to repair it herself. Kyle drove up and parked his truck beside me. I could feel him staring at me as he got out.
“She loves you.”
I turned to see his expression, because his words shocked the hell out of me, and I wanted to see if there was rage or something more behind it. There wasn’t. He was staring at me like Ace sometimes does when she’s trying to gauge how I’m feeling.
“I love her. I love her to the ends of the earth.”
He nodded a few times and then scratched his jaw, turning his attention to the mailbox. “I know you do. Don’t let her do that again.”
I nodded, unable to find words because his caused such an influx of fears to course through me I couldn’t articulate my own name.
After that, things became easier and easier between the two of us, yet the fear he awakened seemed to haunt me. Anytime Ace was late or didn’t reply instantly to a call or text, I started to feel a panic rise within me that I had to work to control so I didn’t come across as a controlling asshole.
When Ace came back that day in July, holding her Converse out to me, my muscles were so tightly wound as I waited for some kind of indication as to why she was standing there. As soon as I saw the envelope clutched in her hand, I said a silent prayer to David to help me, because if she was coming for any other reason, I wasn’t going to let her go. I’d have tied her to a chair until she was done processing. I knew Kendall wouldn’t have been opposed.
When she made it clear she was back and that she still loved me, I’d never felt happiness like that, it was like a giant glacier that had built around me melted.
I insisted Ace move in, reasoning with her that there was no point in wasting the money on a second place—I wasn’t going to stay without her. I wouldn’t. Money wasn’t a concern to her and she debated that I might need my space from her periodically. I assured her endlessly that I’d never get my fill of her and refused to even discuss the option again.
I came home to find my bed—now our bed—covered in an overstuffed chocolate comforter with white and green designs that she used the word embroidered to describe when she showed it to me.
For the longest time, I felt like she was living out of the most minimal space possible which had me keyed up. I was always terrified she’d change her mind, pack up and go, and Kyle’s words compounded that fear.
One day when she was bringing her shampoo and conditioner out of the bathroom to store in a tote like she lived in a dorm or something, I panicked.
I managed to raise my voice and sound pissed off for about ten words before I told her my fears in a much quieter voice. Neither of us had realized that I was so on edge.
After that, Ace stopped packing up her things. I even have a box of tampons in the cabinet under the bathroom sink, next to fingernail polish and makeup.