lived through it. I know that a brief explanation of what a person meant to you and how they died doesn’t begin to cover it for the person who lost them.” He took a fist and hit his chest. “I know this pain.”
Words failed me completely as I stared at him in shock.
“I’m not a complete bastard, Rose. I’m dying a little each day without you. I just don’t know how to handle this because I have lived it. I know what you’re battling. I know how you feel... about him, how you will always feel. And now I know why you’re so scared to love me. But mostly, I don’t know if I’m the right man to walk in his shadow.”
I nodded as the tear across my chest increased tenfold and my throat stung unbearably.
“I have to go,” he said as he looked at me with regret. There was absolutely nothing I could do for him. His insecurity and jealousy stemmed from a deep scar he’d suffered long ago. Just as my paranoia and panic about his wellbeing had moved me to act irrationally and had pushed him away.
There was no quick remedy for our fears: my fear of losing and his fear of rejection.
I could tell him how amazing he was, how perfectly we fit. I could tell him how much I wanted him every day, how good he made me feel, but I knew it would be in vain. He’d been there right along with me. I couldn’t force him to believe in what we had. He had to come to that conclusion on his own.
I couldn’t stand to watch him leave me a second time so I made my way to the door, my back to him, keeping my tears inside. I could fall apart all on my own. I’d perfected the art.
“I’m not sorry, not for any of it,” I said softly. “No matter what decision you make, I’ll never regret giving you my heart. You’re the only man in the world I want to have it.” I looked back at him, freely saying the words that felt so right. “I love you, Jack.” I looked at him for another few seconds, both scared and beautiful, as he watched me but no decision came. “Love doesn’t have to hurt to be real. You reminded me of that.”
I closed the door behind me and walked back to the party. Minutes later, as I reluctantly danced with the new lab tech underneath a blanket of Jack’s stars, I watched him leave through the doors where I met him.
“I feeled it move, Aunt Wose,” Grant reported as he wiggled his fishing pole. “I have a fish?”
“No, buddy,” I said, watching his bobber closely.
“I feeled it move!” Grant insisted as he pushed the pole toward me.
“Grant, look at your bobber, see it?”
“Wu huh,” he said, watching the red and white plastic bobber as it sat perfectly still, afloat in the motionless pond.
“When that goes underwater, you know a fish has swallowed the worm. Then you jerk really hard, okay?”
“Otaaay,” he said in a singsong voice, excitement clear in his features.
“Grandpa teached you how to fishing?”
“How to fish,” I corrected. “And nope, it was Grandma,” I said, thinking of the time my mother had taken Dallas and I out on the lake at her old house in Colorado. My father had been busy with a project, and my mother had taken it upon herself to make us one with nature, though she refused to bait the hook and laid that burden entirely on me.
“Grandma!” Grant said, seemingly tickled at the idea of my mother fishing. He laughed heartily, and I looked down at him, his little, bare feet swinging off the dock. He was such a beautiful boy. I got just as tickled at his laughter and joined him just as his bobber went under.
“Aunt Wose!” he said with big eyes.
“Okay, buddy, jerk hard,” I said, setting my pole down and wrapping my arms around him to show him how to jerk at an angle. When it seemed we’d hooked the fish, I started reeling it in. Grant let go of the pole and stood in my arms, far too excited to do the rest of the busy work. When we’d pulled the fish in and it began to struggle on the deck for air, Grant began to cry.
“No! No, I don’t wanted it to died!” he insisted as I pulled the hook from the fish’s mouth and held it