Bash #2
Lydia lets out a heavy breath.
“Bash,” she says, slowly finding the right words to give me. “You were just a child. You cared about your sister. You cared about your friend. Those things aren’t crimes. The only person who did something unforgivable and is to blame is him.”
“I know,” I say. “I do. In my head, I know that.”
“I know you know,” she says. “But guilt is a stubborn liar. It wears many masks. ‘You should have seen’ is one of his favorites. But not seeing isn’t the same as looking away.
And loving someone—two someones—doesn’t make you complicit.
It makes you human. A good one. One who cares…
a lot. It isn’t your fault, none of it. Sometimes really messed-up stuff happens in life…
things we can’t control, and things you can’t keep carrying around as if you could have. ”
I hear her words, the same words I’ve tried to tell myself, but a part of my brain still loves to try to reject them.
“Also,” she adds, “he counted on you not seeing. That’s what people like that do. They take advantage of opportunities and look for the weak spots.”
“For so long after, it was all I could think about. All I thought about was what I would have done differently if I could go back in time. And then I started to drink to stop thinking. But no matter how hard I begged my brain to stop, it continued the endless loop of thoughts of what she went through and different outcomes if I had done something.”
“You were drowning,” she says. “People who are drowning don’t swim pretty. They fight. They grab whatever’s closest.”
“I still wish I could go back,” I admit. “Make different choices.”
“Me too,” she says, and the way she says it makes me think of all the things she carries too. “We can’t, but we can decide what we give to the people we care about now. You’re doing that. With your mom, with your dad, with…me.” The last part is almost a whisper. It wrecks me a little.
“I’m grateful for you,” I tell her, feeling a wave of something new I can’t name, and want to keep.
“I’m not that special,” she says softly, and I hate the doubt in her words.
“That’s far from the truth, Lydia.”
“I don’t really understand what you see. Most days, I see…just a mess, a bunch of emotional baggage, a lot of trauma attached to my forehead like I’m a walking billboard that says, ‘Stay away, this one isn’t worth it’.”
I hate the way she says it, the way I know she actually believes that.
“I see you,” I say. And the words come easy because they’re true.
“The girl who laughs with her whole face when something finally gets her. The girl who has no idea how amazing she is, how bright she is, even when she’s the only thing shining in a dark room.
I see somebody worth taking my time for, somebody worth being afraid of losing, someone worth being careful with. ”
There is a faint noise on the line that sounds like a mix of laughter and tears. “You know…you’re the only one who has ever said things like that…and I didn’t immediately question if you meant them. You almost…make me believe them myself.”
“Good. You need to know they’re true,” I tell her.
She stays quiet for another beat. “I miss you,” she says. “I’m ready to be back.”
“Is it weird that all I’ve thought about since I left campus is going back?” I ask like I’m really just admitting it to her.
“If you’re weird, I’m weird too,” she says back, laughing quietly.
“I think I owe you a couple of coffees by now, too.”
She laughs. “I’ll be waiting for them with a fake eye roll and an appreciative smile.”
After a while, we both go quiet because neither of us wants to hang up first. I stare at the ceiling and decide to risk it a little.
“Hey,” I say. “Can I read you something? A verse. It just…made me think about you the other day.”
There’s a silent beat. “A verse, like…from the Bible?” she asks, half-teasing, half-bracing.
“Yeah. Promise it’s nothing lecturey,” I say. “It just…sounded like poetry to me.”
“Okay,” she says, softer. “Read it.”
I flip through the page where I tabbed it and find the lines I’ve underlined several times now.
“It’s from Isaiah 43,” I start. “It says—
‘Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you.
I have called you by name—you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.
When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned.
And the flame shall not consume you.’”
Lydia exhales. “I…didn’t know the Bible sounded like that,” she says. “I thought it was just…a big rule book…and God yelling at all the bad people.”
I smile. “There are some rules, but not like you’d think. Most of it is rescue stories, people way messier than us getting found. Love that keeps wading into rivers and fires.”
She’s quiet for a second longer. “Could you read it again?” she asks, voice small.
I do, slower this time. When I finish, I hear her sniffle a little and then laugh at herself for getting emotional.
“It’s sweet,” she says. “And…weirdly kinda healing. Can you text it to me?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks,” she whispers. “For the poem that isn’t a poem.”
“For you, it can be a poem,” I say.
She laughs, softer now. “Okay. Night, Bible Boy.”
“Night, miracle girl,” I say, and we hang up, smiling up at the same night sky, six states apart.