give her a kiss that ended up on her mouth. When he turned his attention back to me, his eyes were brighter than I had ever seen, but his lips were flat, not in a mad or sad expression but more… resigned, I guessed. “I will always want you to be with me, do you understand? I know this isn’t a decision you can make in a day or a week or a month, Lenny. I know what you have here, but that doesn’t mean I’ve lost hope that one day you’ll make that decision,” he said, gazing right into my fucking eyes. That same index finger as before made a loop around the shell of my ear, his gaze bright.
“Time and distance… that’s nothing for us, is it? Whatever time we have together, I will cherish every minute of.” That finger dragged over my cheekbone, and his expression went to the next level with the understanding and patience reflected in it. “My body is leaving, but the rest of me will be wherever you and Mo are, Lenny. I’d hoped I’d made that clear.”
Oh, this son of a bitch and his fucking words.
I pressed my lips together, soaking up every single one of his sentences and saving them for later. Later when I would need them. Later when he wasn’t around to say them in person and remind me that he felt the same way I did.
Later when I was going to miss the fucking shit out of him.
I loved him, and I wasn’t going to make him feel bad about this. I wasn’t. Not ever.
Sometimes you had to do the right thing for the right person, even if it hurt.
“I can’t leave just like that, Jonah,” I told him, not meaning to whisper the words out, but that’s how they arrived into the world. Weak. Sad. “I want to be with you. I’m going to miss you, but you’re leaving in four fucking days, and—”
He placed a hand on my thigh and squeezed it. “I know.”
“I’d have to find someone else to manage this place. Train them. And there’s Grandpa Gus and Peter too. I love them too, and I can’t just leave them like that either. Mo and I are all they have, and they were all I’ve ever had for most of my life,” I whispered to him, my eyes burning just a little but more than enough because they weren’t used to it. “But I’m going to miss you so fucking much, and I don’t know what to do.”
It wasn’t my imagination that his eyes were getting glassy, and it definitely wasn’t in my head that I heard his voice get just a little hoarser as he said, “You didn’t ask me to stay.”
“No, and I wouldn’t,” I told him. “I love you, and I’m not going to make you pick. You don’t do that to someone who means the entire universe to you. Grandpa Gus told me once that when you love someone, you threw them up into the sky to fly, Dimples. You don’t just open your hand to let them go. Because you know who they are, and they know who you are, and that’s all that matters. You don’t hold back someone you love. Even if I don’t want to go so long without seeing you, you have to go.” It was my turn to reach over and cup his lean cheek. He’d shaved, and I could just barely feel the prickles of his beard growing back in. “And I was just looking into it. Literally, right before you walked in, I was reading up. I can stay in the country for ninety days at a time on a tourist visa, and I don’t know if you knew this or not, but I’m the boss of this place, and I bet they could survive without me for a while once I train the assistant manager to do more of the things that I do.”
“Yeah?” he replied, those golden-brown eyes sparkling, or at least to me, it seemed like they were. He slowly eased forward until his forehead was against mine, and Mo was there, digging a hand into my hair until we were both giving her kisses on each cheek. After a few moments, it was his turn to whisper. “I’ve looked it up too, and there’s a better option as well.”
I moved the pad of my thumb right under his fat bottom lip. “What is it?”