32. Epilogue 1 #2
I think that’s okay though. I know I want to be with Noah, and I know he wants to be with me, and it’s all I need to know for now.
Finally, I have someone who roots for me, who believes in me.
Who sees me, not for who they want me to be or for who I pretend to be, but for who I truly am.
He used to hold me captive, yet I have never felt more free.
Strangely enough, I’m the one who feels the most vulnerable after a session like this, even though he’s the one who offered up his control to me. Over the past few months, I’ve started to feel like I’m the needier one of us. The weaker one, if you will, but even that feels okay.
I don’t need to be strong. I just need to lie here, with Noah, breathing in, breathing out.
I’m free to leave at any moment, but my heart still binds me to wherever he is.
I need him too much to ever leave, and he needs me too.
I can see a future where we’re both ready to accept help outside of ourselves—therapy, medication, that sort of thing.
Proper methods to handle my addictive tendencies. But we’re not quite there yet.
For now, I just try to be honest, and it helps that I feel safe enough to tell him the truth. On my bad days, I crave it so much I want to cry.
Last night was the end of such a day. We were lying in bed, trying to sleep, and my voice came out unnaturally loud in the quiet darkness.
“Noah?”
“Yeah?”
“I still think about it sometimes. What if I never stop thinking about it?”
“You don’t have to stop thinking about it,” Noah said. “Just take it one day at a time with me.” He turned around, eyes steady in the darkness, and in the midst of them?…?a light guiding me home. “There is no future laid out for us, Asher. We have to make our own.”
“But what if?…?what if I fail? What if I use again? Would you hate me for it?”
“I could never hate you. Not for that, not for anything.”
Tears surged at the back of my throat, and I nudged closer, closer, closer still. If it were possible, I’d open his chest up and crawl into his body, among all that warm, soft tissue. I think I’d feel safe there.
“Thank you,” I said.
“For what?”
“For just being here. For being alive. With me.”
“Of course.”
Despite his words, there is nothing certain about this, nothing we could ever have predicted. But it’s right. I choose him—not because he’s my only option, but because he’s the only option I want . Are we the healthiest couple in the world? No. But we’re better together than we are apart.
“I think I’m ready,” Noah says.
“For what?”
“To return.”
Return? A jolt of anxiety courses through my chest, but then I remember. “Oh.”
I asked him a few weeks ago if he wanted to go into the forest behind the school, where my brother and his friends subjected him to that horrible event. I thought it would feel cathartic for him, and through it all, I’d support him, of course. I’d hold his hand, be there if he wanted me to.
He hasn’t brought it up since, but maybe getting his nipples pierced triggered something buried inside him. I smile at the thought.
There’s not much to smile about where we’re going though. It’s horrible. But I want to see it with him. I want to confront it together.
“Tomorrow,” Noah says. “We’ll go tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
He tries to turn to lie on his side so I can spoon him, but doing so makes him gasp in pain.
“Oh, right,” I say. “You’ll have to sleep on your back for a few days.”
He makes a frustrated noise. “But?…?how are you going to hold me?”
“Like this.” Lying on my side, I wrap an arm around him, careful not to bump his piercings, and I fit my hand to the side of his throat. “There.”
He sighs in relief, and like this, we can both find enough peace to float off into sleep.
The next day, we cross the schoolyard, Noah with his hands in his pockets and his long, billowing coat flowing freely in the spring air. It’s been an unusually cold winter, followed by an unusually cold spring, but we’ve lived through it, even though the basement still lacks proper heating.
We reach the end of the schoolyard with its basketball hoops and brick walls, and finally, we enter the forest.
I remember playing here as a kid, between the dense trees and the damp moss. That was before I got more interested in spending the breaks smoking cigarettes with my friends.
Noah leads me further and further into the woods—so far, I start wondering if he’s lost his way. Then, by a small glade, he stops and points to the patch of soil at our feet.
“This is where it happened.”
There’s no sign of it now. Too many years have passed, and too many gusts of wind have erased any evidence of the grave a couple of kids dug to bury their outcast classmate.
Still, I can see them all: my brother, standing among his friends as they grasped Noah’s arms and pinned him to the ground. As they beat him, kicked him, and tried to bury him alive. Had they not been interrupted, would they have gone through with it?
I still wonder if it’s really true, what Noah told me about the wolf. How she saved him. How she chased the bullies away. It all seems so otherworldly—stuff that doesn’t happen in real life. What happened with the bullies shouldn’t have happened either. None of it should have.
“Are you okay?” I take Noah’s hand, squeezing it gently.
“I’m okay. It was a long time ago.”
“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“Yeah.” He lets out a deep sigh, shoulders slumping as his long fingers close around mine. “You’re right.”
I lift my gaze to the forest beyond the glade, where a gray mass shifts behind the trees. Paws trampling earth?…?Yellow eyes among the bark?…
My mouth falls open. “Noah,” I say urgently. “Noah, are you seeing this?”
“Seeing what?” He keeps looking at the ground, so I pat his shoulder.
“It’s her! The wolf.”
“Hm? No, it can’t be. She’s long gone.”
By the time he lifts his gaze, the wolf has disappeared, and I start doubting I even saw her in the first place. Was she a phantom? A ghost? No?…
“I promise! I saw her. She was there.”
Noah stays quiet as he keeps peering into the now empty woods, and I squeeze his hand in exasperation.
“Don’t you believe me?” I ask, voice thin.
Noah turns to me and smiles. He takes both my hands in his and lifts them to his mouth, kissing my knuckles. “I believe you.”
My lower lip starts to shake, and for some reason, I feel like crying. “She was beautiful.”
“I know.” Noah wraps his arms around me, hugging me tight.
Afterward, we turn around and leave the woods behind, with all its memories—horrible ones, beautiful ones. We leave them all, hand in hand, not knowing where we’re going, but knowing we’re going there together.