cabin and hers. Her blue jeans fit her just right, and she fills out the plain white V-neck T-shirt in a way I’ve not noticed, until now.
“Nathan?”
I kick at the grass. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry I freaked out.”
“Don’t apologize to me, Nadia. I told you, more than anyone else, I get it. No apology is ever necessary.”
“Can I apologize in advance for the fact that I think I need some space for a few days? To…think?”
“No,” I say. “You can’t apologize for that.” I leaven it with a smile. “I’ll still bring you coffee. I’ll just leave it on the porch like I used to.”
“I can make my own,” she protests.
I snicker. “No, you can’t.”
“Nathan.”
“Kidding. I mean, you can’t make coffee for shit, but I’m just teasing. And it’s fine. Take whatever time you need.” I let out a slow breath. “I’ll be around.”
“I know you will,” she says. “I just need to—”
I hold up a hand. “Explanations are as unnecessary as apologies.” I take the burden of ending the exchange on myself. “I’ll see you when you feel talking again. No worries.”
She wants to say more, but I go inside, because it’d just go around in circles.
Shit, I think I need to think, myself.
Heart Work
He brings me coffee in the morning. I leave him offerings of food in return—I’m relearning how to cook. I used to be good at it, used to love it. I used to cook on the weekends, when I wasn’t working. Every once in a while, Adrian would get a hankering for something in particular, and I’d oblige. But now, I’m cooking for me.
I make biscuits, the way Mom used to make them, light and flaky and buttery. Beef stew, with thick chunks of meat and big wedges of potato and slices of carrot. Chili, as taught to me by my college friend Tanner, who learned Tex-Mex chili from county fair cook-off winners. I even figure out the trick to my aunt’s bread, which took a whole day of try, try, try again until I got it just right. I bake pies and cakes, pain au chocolat from an internet recipe, which is nowhere near as good as it was in Paris, of course.
I make some for me, and some for him.
I told him I needed to think, but really, I’m just scared.
I like him.
I like his coffee. I like his big, rough, strong presence. I like the occasional Louisiana twang in his voice. I like how he’s so smart despite having never been to real school. I like that I can sit on my beanbag chair late at night, reading, and hear him on his porch playing his guitar. I hear him playing Ed Sheeran and Harry Styles and Alan Jackson and Tim McGraw and songs I don’t know. I hear him play that one tune he wrote, for his wife I assume. He plays it a lot, and seems to be adding to it, perfecting and polishing it. I like that he can sit in silence with me and not need to fill it. I like his eyes, big and deep and brown. I like his hands, which are the size of dinner plates just about, scarred and weathered and lined like a map of the world carved into old hickory.
I hate that I like these things. That I’ve noticed them.
That they’re lessening the pierce of sorrow.
I hate that it’s easier to wake up, now, and that it seems to be, in some ways, directly attributable to him. But it’s not, not entirely. I’m sleeping, and eating, and relaxing, and I’m not dehydrated constantly and I’m not stressed out about work. These things help. I’m learning that waking up and missing Adrian is just part of living, not the entirety of me. I’m learning that if I read and bake and cook and paint and walk along the shore in the Georgia fall sun, that I can go hours now without missing him so bad it hurts.
I’m learning to sit through the missing him, to let it dwell in me, and that eventually, the sharpness of it will subside. Like being hungry in the middle of a long shift with no opportunity for lunch—ignore the hunger, and it fades. It’ll still be there, later. But your body seems to just go, oh, we’re not eating now, huh? All right, I’ll wait.
Sorrow, with the space of weeks and months between the event and emotion, seems to function much the same. It hurts, hurts like a motherfucker.