102 Ginger
102
Ginger
It was hard to find a simple little spoon in that modern minimalist kitchen. It didn’t even have handles on the drawers. It seemed like it had never been used. Holding Leon in my arms and feeding him a late lunch, I looked at the high ceilings, the impersonal furnishings. I’d never have thought such a house could belong to Rhys. I’d known him as a person who could live anywhere in the world: in a wooden bouse by the ocean in Australia, which he must have adored; in an attic in Paris with a view of the moon; in an apartment in Ibiza, simple, but nice and comfortable. But where he lived now, this house…it was for someone else.
It terrified me to think that he had changed. Too much, maybe. That the way I’d trembled when we touched wasn’t enough. That we couldn’t just pretend those two years had never happened. And that even so, I still loved him in an irrational, crazy way I couldn’t understand…
I looked at the shelf near the TV, full of books. I knew all of them well. I could recognize them by the spines. They were the ones I’d published those past two years. Organized in order of publication. Without a speck of dust. Well cared for, proudly displayed, and they made me blink as I tried to suppress my tears, imagining him buying them every month.
I remembered his emails. The ones I’d read waiting to take off, with Leon sleeping in my arms. In those messages…he was him. Completely. Anxious, lost, angry at times, insecure at others, destroyed, sensitive, open, depressed.
Rhys. Just Rhys. No filters. No armor.