Ever since Camee’s funeral, I’ve done nothing but live. Block out what hurts. Forget what’s bad for me. Enjoy what is. It was the only way to deal with all the terrible memories, and I never wanted to stop. But now, while the past rolls over me like a storm that uproots trees and knocks out power lines, it happens anyway.
‘Why are you so afraid to leave the moment?’ Nyla asks me again, and I realize we’re still standing on this porch.
Her fingers curl gently around my arm. Almost tenderly, as if she wanted to comfort me. But I don’t need anyone to comfort me, just as little as I need this conversation.
My own thoughts feel like lies. Lies I’ve been telling myself for far too long and can’t believe anymore. But between these lies, something glitters that might be the truth.
What if it were okay to share the memory with Nyla? What if I needed her and the way she sees our world? If she could show me the way out of the dead end my life has become?
But what if that would be the worst thing that could happen to me? The thing that would finally ruin me?
‘And why are you so afraid to live the moment?’ I manage to reply in the midst of the chaos Nyla is causing inside me.
For a while she is silent, looking torn. ‘It could destroy my life,’ she answers at last.
In her eyes I recognize the same feeling that I am experiencing. And I know that right now she has answered not only my question to her, but also her question to me.
Living in the moment could destroy her life. And leaving the moment, facing everything that is waiting for me in yesterday and tomorrow, could destroy mine.
Chapter Twenty-Five
NYLA
A watery sheen glimmers in his eyes, and in them a darkness that answers every one of my questions.
Jaden is no hero. He is a shattered soul that holds its fragments together with the help of a superhero costume.
That’s how he breathes.
That’s how he manages to keep going.
Involuntarily, I reach out my hand to him.
It could destroy my life. That was my answer when he wanted to know why it’s so hard for me to live in the moment. But even as I spoke the words, they felt wrong.
Before my mind’s eye I saw Jaden and myself. How we dance in the rain. How we stroll laughing through the fair. How we enjoy the view of the harbor together, take in the glitter of the ocean, chat without a care.
The memories of it are everywhere inside me. Moments full of happiness, detached from time and space. Moments like this one, in which we are so close to each other, feel each other, truly see each other.
Enjoying what is right now is not as wrong as my fear made me believe. But using it as an excuse not to have to face what hurts is.
And what if it’s no longer a life?That’s what he asked me the other day, and only now do I understand what he meant by it. He’s stuck, unable to look back or move on.
Now I gently touch his cheek. ‘Maybe it’s not the pain outside the moment that destroys your life at all, but the idea that it could if you let it in.’
He places his hand over mine and stops my thumb, which had started stroking his cheek all on its own. ‘Maybe,’ he says.
It’s only one word, a single word, but it means everything. That he doesn’t deflect, doesn’t crack a joke, doesn’t escape the situation. That he yields, opens up, and allows this thought feels in this moment like a whole new world.
One in which together we are more and have more than each of us alone.
The fear disappears from his expression, replaced by longing. The same feeling that is shining in me too, and not just since today. The longing for us.
His fingers brush against mine. ‘I don’t know how to get through pain.’
His voice is only a whisper, yet it hits me right in the heart. As if in a trance, I rise up onto my tiptoes and let my hand wander to the back of his neck. ‘I’ll help you.’
He gives the slightest of nods, and I know how big this silent step is for him. This conversation has scared him, yet he hasn’t looked for any excuses.