support me. I had fifteen years with my adoptive mom. I was able to share twelve lucid years with my adoptive dad. I have great friends and amazing coworkers. I have love in my life.”
“But how can you feel loved when the very people who brought you into this world obviously didn’t love you?” I ask, heartbroken over the thought of a little boy completely tossed aside by his parents. It reminds me of another child I know that was abandoned by someone who, by default, should have loved her, too.
“There are certain things in life that everyone has a right to, Maggie. Being loved is one of those rights. If someone—or some circumstance—has taken that from you, you can’t just wait for it to come back,” Ran says, his voice calm, like the truth he’s speaking keeps him steady and assured. “You can’t even ask for it. You have to demand it. You have every right to.”
I swallow back the deluge of tears that threaten. “Your parents were awful.”
“You’re absolutely right, they were. They were horrible.” Ran drops his head onto the pillowed back of the couch and the hazy stream of light from the streetlamp outside the window curves over his features. He’s beautiful. I never realized that being broken could be beautiful. It never made me feel beautiful. “They sucked as parents, Maggie. Hell, they sucked as human beings. Forgiving them doesn’t mean I don’t still think they’re awful. It doesn’t excuse them from that.”
“Then what’s the point?” I slip my head onto the couch too. “What’s the point in forgiving them if it doesn’t change anything?”
“Because it changed me. I don’t feel awful anymore. Yeah, maybe they were horrible, screwed up junkies, but at least I’m not a screwed up man that’s unable to love because I harbor so much hatred in my heart there’s not any room for love to exist.”
Everything he’s saying I’ve heard before, hundreds of times. I’ve read about it in books and seen it portrayed in movies. It’s not a new concept he’s telling me—the idea that forgiveness frees the forgiver more than the one actually in need of forgiveness. But I’ve never seen it living and breathing, sitting and embodied right in front of me.
When Ran’s head rolls to the side and his hair brushes my cheek, I don’t pull back like I would have ten minutes ago. Back when I wanted to throw things—both in the form of physical objects as well as spiteful insults—at him. It’s as though there’s been some shift, some turning point where the anger I felt for him morphed into feelings that I don’t even have words for. It’s strange to think how similar those emotions are—hatred and affection. They’re both forms of passion, and that’s what I feel: passionate over this equally broken man sitting beside me.
So I don’t recoil when he moves closer. Instead I lean into him, slinking my body down on the couch so I fit along this curve of his, needing to be closer to him. I haven’t felt this close to anyone in a long time, and I’m surprised that my actual body wants in on that closeness, too.
“Maggie,” he exhales against my hair, slipping his arm behind my back so he can draw me in.
I press my side to him, very aware of every inch in contact with him.
“But what do you do when your heart isn’t filled with hate, but it’s absolutely broken?” I choke on the hiccup that accompanies my words.
Ran sifts his free hand through my hair, pressing back the strands that hang near my eyes. He glides his fingers under my chin and turns it toward him so my face is angled upward. I want to reach out and graze his jaw with my fingernail, to feel the shadow of stubble that clings to it on my fingertips. I actually want to feel much more than that. Those lips that spewed flirtatious compliments don’t look so sarcastic and shallow now. They look soft, supple, and I imagine they’d feel the same pressed against mine. I imagine they’d carry that same tender warmth and vulnerability as his words. That they’d respond and reply to mine with careful, cautious measure.
“Maggie?” Ran leans closer, murmuring against my skin. When his lips feather against my cheek, I want to turn my head so they meet my mouth instead. “I told you I wasn’t in the business of healing people, right?”