Chapter Twenty-Eight Kami
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Kami
At first, I was paralyzed. It was as if I’d seen a ghost. I examined every inch of his body, trying to find in him the guy I’d left lying in bed years ago—that weak, angry, irritable, bitter man who didn’t know how to love me when I had set everything aside to bring him back, to make him live again.
It wasn’t easy to reconcile that image with the person I saw now, but there he was, no denying it—tall and strong, with green eyes and tousled brown hair. It was Thiago, standing there before me, a cane in his right hand.
I felt…everything. I was flooded with emotions. But most of all, I was angry. I was angry because I couldn’t be with him, because my life had changed, because he was no longer part of it, and most of all, because he was the one to make that decision, not me.
“Kam, can I—?”
“No,” I cut him off. “You can’t.”
His green eyes looked me up and down and came to a stop on my face. He looked lost. Utterly lost.
“Just let me try and explain—”
“I don’t want you to explain anything,” I responded, gripping the door so tightly my fingers started to hurt.
“There’s nothing for you to say, nothing at all, because what we said in the past is what got us here, and dammit, if you look at me again and you open your mouth, my whole life will turn upside down and I can’t, I just can’t, OK? I’m sorry.”
I tried to close the door, but he stopped me. “Please. Give me five minutes. Just five minutes.”
I shook my head.
“I’m going to Europe, Thiago,” I said, voice trembling.
“I’m going for three months, and the last thing I want right now is for you to make me question something I’ve been planning a long time, something I deserve after so much pain, after all the studying and hard work, missing you and knowing you were never going to come back, waiting for you to call me and show up at this fucking door. ”
“Kam…”
“It’s too late!” I shouted, losing my composure. “I’m sorry.”
I tried to control myself, but I had to shut the door. I almost caved when I saw the sorrow in his eyes. I almost dropped everything to throw myself into his arms, but something inside me told me that I had to go on with my life. I couldn’t abandon my plans.
And I didn’t—at least, not for a while.
* * *
I traveled across Europe: in France, I walked along the Champs-élysées and climbed the Eiffel Tower.
I went to London and Scotland, and by the time I left, I’d even picked up the accent.
I went to Berlin and soaked up the history.
In Italy, I ate pasta until I thought I’d burst. I went to Prague and Luxembourg and enjoyed the beaches in Spain and learned to love that soup from Andalusia they call salmorejo.
I fell in love with the sea in Greece and ran through the Austrian mountains like Empress Sissi and her sisters.
I rode on airplanes, trains, cars, and sat on the back of motorcycles.
I grew, I thought, I matured, I cried, I yearned, I laughed, I met people I would hold forever in my heart, and when it was over, I knew that despite my pledge, despite all my efforts to let him go and close the door at last, I couldn’t.
It didn’t matter how many miles I put between us, how many seas separated us. In my head, Thiago was still there, sorrowful, asking me to talk, and I was still there shutting the door in his face.
I thought he deserved it; I thought it was what I was supposed to do. But who are we to deny what our heart yearns for?
Had he been wrong to push me away?
Of course, but I had been wrong to abandon myself to try to save him, because you can’t forget who you are.
He had done the right thing afterward; he had focused on himself, on getting better, getting stronger, while I was carrying around all that hurt and sorrow, forcing others to feel my pain.
And in the end, all I managed to do was get lost along the way.
That trip to Europe opened my eyes, it helped me understand that nothing is the way you read in books, that there’s no manual about how to love someone or how to get over a trauma.
Every person is different, and the same decision could be good for one person and terrible for another.
The only truth is that you have to live, because life is over in the blink of an eye and loving is meant to be something good, something that fills you with peace, something that makes you run off to the airport, jump in a taxi, pay a fortune to show up at a door not knowing what you’re going to find there.
All I could do was hope—hope that he’d open the door for me. And when he did…
When he did, all I could do was take one step forward. One step toward him and cover his mouth with my hand and say what had been stuck in my throat since he showed up at my door.
“Don’t say anything. If there’s anything you want to tell me, anything at all—tell me with kisses.”