Chapter Nineteen
I’m going to the park for a bit. I’ll be home for dinner. I love you.
-El
Ellis almost didn’t go.
That was the truth of it, bare and unflinching. He stood in their shared apartment with his coat half on, keys in his hand, staring at the door like it might decide for him whether he was capable of one more emotionally loaded thing today.
Issaky would be home in thirty minutes and he knew if he didn't leave now, he never would. Ellis knew he could've asked Issaky to go with him. It was probably the smartest thing to do in all honesty, but Ellis wanted to do this himself.
He looked over at the stack of letters that sat on the small kitchen table where he’d placed them the night before, squared carefully, aligned as if order might make them less heavy.
They were thick in a way that paper shouldn’t be, dense with years and words and a man who had loved fiercely and imperfectly and all the way through.
Clyde’s handwriting stared up at him from the top envelope, looping and familiar, the way it always made Ellis feel like someone was speaking softly just out of frame.
He exhaled and finished pulling his coat on before grabbing the stack of envelopes and heading out the door.
The park was only a few stops away, close enough that he could have walked if his legs didn’t feel like unreliable things lately.
It wasn’t the same park–not Ruston Way exactly–but it might as well have been.
Same cold air off the water, same bare trees standing patient and skeletal against the sky, same benches that had seen too much human tenderness to bother pretending otherwise.
Washington parks had a way of holding memory without announcing it, like they understood that grief didn’t need spectacle.
Ellis arrived early. Of course he did. He chose a bench facing the water and sat with the letters on his lap, both hands resting on them as though they might get away if he loosened his grip.
The wind moved across the surface of the bay in small, restless patterns.
Somewhere behind him, a dog barked. A couple walked past holding hands, their conversation indistinct and unimportant in the way other people’s happiness often was when you were carrying something fragile inside your chest.
He wondered, briefly and irrationally, what Issaky would say if he were here.
Something gentle. Something grounding. Probably something that acknowledged the weight without trying to lift it away.
Ellis had learned, over time, that Issaky didn’t rush him out of feelings.
He sat down inside them with him instead.
The thought warmed and hurt in equal measure.
Ellis checked his phone. No new messages. That was fine. This wasn’t something he needed to narrate in real time. This was something he needed to survive on his own first.
He heard footsteps on the gravel path and looked up. Jack looked older than Ellis imagined him, which didn't make sense considering Clyde was in his eighties.
The older man's hair was gray at the temples, his shoulders a little more sloped, as if time had gently pressed its hand there and left it. He wore a dark coat and carried himself with a particular carefulness.
When Jack spotted him, his expression shifted into something tentative but warm. He lifted a hand in a small wave.
“Ellis?” he asked when he reached the bench.
“Jack.” Ellis stood, unsure whether to hug him.
Jack solved the problem by stepping forward and wrapping Ellis in a brief, solid embrace–not lingering, not awkward, just present. The kind of hug Clyde used to give, Ellis realized suddenly, the kind that said I’m here and I’m not going anywhere, even if life suggested otherwise.
They sat quickly and looked out over the water. Ellis liked how little Jack seemed to talk.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable so much as respectful, as if they both understood that whatever came next deserved a pause before it arrived.
“I’m glad you reached out,” Jack said finally. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”
Ellis nodded. “I wasn’t sure either.”
They both looked out at the water and Ellis felt strange, sitting there with someone who knew Clyde in a way that overlapped but didn’t mirror his own experience.
Jack hadn’t raised him. Jack hadn’t been the man who showed up with strawberry spritzers or taught him how to parallel park or made speaking about his diagnosis feel like a victory.
But Jack had loved Clyde, deeply and enduringly, and Ellis could feel that love sitting between them like a third presence.
“How have you been?” Ellis asked.
Jack huffed a quiet laugh. “Depends on the day.”
Ellis nodded. That answer felt familiar.
“I moved,” Jack continued. “Smaller place. Closer to the water. I thought it might help.” He shrugged. “Sometimes it does.”
“I think Clyde liked the water,” Ellis said.
Jack’s smile softened. “He loved it. Said it reminded him that things could keep moving even when they didn’t feel like they were changing.”
Ellis swallowed. “That sounds like him.”
They shared a look–brief but weighted with recognition.
“Did you ever go sit on that bench,” Jack asked slowly, nodding in the direction of the dock. “That awful bench near the marina? The one that was always damp no matter how long it had been since it rained?”
Ellis snorted before he could stop himself. “The one that smelled like old fish and metal?”
“That’s the one,” Jack said, laughing. “Clyde insisted on sitting there every time. Said it had ‘character.’”
Ellis shook his head. “He said that about a lot of questionable things.”
“Like that chair he refused to throw out,” Jack added. “The one with the busted leg.”
“He said it just needed patience.”
“And duct tape.” Jack scoffed, not unkindly.
Ellis laughed then, a real laugh, and was surprised by how easily it came. The sound startled him with its normalcy. It felt like something was unlocking in his chest.
They spent a while like that–trading memories, small and unremarkable on the surface but luminous in accumulation. Clyde burning dinner and insisting it was “charred on purpose.” Clyde misplacing his glasses while they were on his head. Clyde crying openly at movies he pretended not to care about.
Grief, Ellis was learning, wasn’t only the sharp ache of absence. Sometimes it was the quiet warmth of remembering that someone had existed at all.
Eventually, Ellis's hands found the letters again. “I brought something,” he said.
Jack glanced down. His brow furrowed slightly. “What’s that?”
Ellis hesitated, then lifted the stack and held it out between them. “Clyde’s letters. To you.”
Jack stared at them.
For a moment, Ellis worried he’d misjudged everything–that this was intrusive, that he was reopening something Jack had carefully stitched closed. His chest tightened, preparing for regret.
Then Jack laughed. Not dismissively or rudely, just genuinely. “Oh, Ellis,” he said, shaking his head.
Ellis blinked. “What?”
“These,” Jack said, gesturing to the letters. “These are copies.”
Ellis frowned. “What do you mean?”
Jack leaned back on the bench, looking out at the water again. “Clyde never sent me anything he didn’t also keep for himself. He was terrified of losing words. Said they were proof.”
“Proof of what?”
“That he’d been honest,” Jack said quietly. “That he’d loved fully.”
Ellis stared at the stack in his hands. “So… you’ve read them.”
“Every single one,” Jack said. “When they were written. When they were mailed. When they were re-read on nights I missed him and didn’t want to say it out loud.”
Ellis's throat tightened. “He never told me that.”
Jack smiled sadly. “He didn’t tell you a lot of things. Not because he didn’t trust you. Because he didn’t want you carrying weight that wasn’t yours yet.”
Ellis looked down at the letters, at the familiar handwriting, the careful dates. “I thought… I thought you should have them.”
Jack shook his head. “No. You should.”
Ellis looked up. “But—”
“Ellis,” Jack interrupted gently. “Clyde wrote those knowing you’d find them someday. Maybe not all at once. Maybe not like this. But he knew.” Jack paused. “He wanted you to have proof too.”
Ellis swallowed hard.
“I kept my versions,” Jack continued. “They’re safe. They’re mine. But these?” He nudged the stack back toward Ellis. “These are yours to keep. Or burn. Or tuck away. Or read again when the world feels too sharp.”
Ellis nodded slowly, emotion pressing behind his eyes. “Thank you.”
They sat in the quiet that followed, the kind that didn’t need to be filled and Ellis couldn't help but let a tear fall.
He had just been telling Issaky last month that he wished he had something physical from Clyde.
And then Issaky had gotten that plaque and that had helped.
But these letters? These pieces of paper and twine and old ink? These were exactly what he needed.
Eventually, Ellis spoke again. “Do you ever feel…angry?”
Jack considered that. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “Not at him. At time. At the fact that love doesn’t make anyone immortal.”
Ellis exhaled. “I keep thinking I should be past it. Or better at it.”
Jack turned to him fully then. “There is no ‘past it.’ There’s just with it.”
Ellis frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means you learn how to carry it without letting it hollow you out,” Jack said. “You let it change you without letting it end you.”
Ellis absorbed that, quietly.
“I saw you once,” Jack added after a moment. “With your partner. Issaky, right?”
Ellis's heart stuttered. “You did?”
“Briefly,” Jack said. “At the record store. Clyde pointed you out like you were the sun.”
Ellis smiled despite himself.
“He liked the way you looked at Issaky,” Jack continued. “Said it reminded him of the love we had. The brave, unapologetic kind.”
Ellis's chest tightened. “I’m trying,” he said softly. “To be brave that is.”
Jack nodded. “That’s all anyone can do.”
They stayed until the air grew colder, until the light shifted toward evening. When Ellis finally stood, tucking the letters back into his bag, he felt…steadier. Not healed or finished, but less alone inside it.
He turned to go, not knowing how to say goodbye and not really wanting to.
“Ellis,” Jack called.
Ellis paused before turning around. “Yeah?”
Jack met his eyes. “Love doesn’t end because someone dies. And it doesn’t survive unless you keep showing up for it. Even when it’s hard. Especially then.”
Ellis felt the words settle somewhere deep and true.
“I will,” he promised.
Jack smiled. “I know.”
Ellis walked away with the letters secure against his side, the water whispering behind him, and Clyde’s unchanged love moving forward with him into whatever came next.