Ask me anything.”
I shake my head. I can’t think of anything to ask. And then something occurs to me. “Why do you even like me? I must be miserable company.”
A gentle laugh, a shake and a huff. “Because I’m just as miserable company. We get each other. We don’t have to pretend.”
I tilt my head to look up at him. “Why did he pick you?”
He exhales slowly, through his teeth. “I can only guess.”
“Try to guess, then.”
“Why don’t you try to guess why me? You know him better than I do.”
“You said it, I think—because you know what it’s like to be where I am. You’re the only person who could understand well enough to be around me in a way that would ease me out of my shell.” I feel the rightness of it as I say it; I rest my head against his chest again, close my eyes and let my thoughts flow. “And…I think in some ways, because you’re nothing like him.”
He nods. “Yeah, I can see that.”
“I mean, in a lot of ways, you’re total opposites. It makes it easier to…I don’t know—to be around you, because nothing about you reminds me of him or makes me think of him. You’re totally you.”
“I didn’t like feeling like I was lying to you, Nadia. So many times I’d sit there, those silences we have sometimes, and I’d be trying to figure out how to tell you, and it always just sounded…I don’t know, crazy. Like, unless I showed you everything, would you even have believed me? And…he told me not to tell you. Or, not to show you the book because he felt like you weren’t ready yet, but…I guess that seems like the same thing. Amounts to it, in my mind.”
“I’m angry at him,” I say. “For so much.”
“Tell me.”
“For leaving me. He promised me he would never leave. Before I knew he was sick, I knew something was wrong, and he promised me he wouldn’t leave. And he left. He left me. He left me. And now this. Setting me up with you, giving you the book, when I would have killed for another word from him, for anything from him. I’m mad at him for trying to force me to move on. He sent me here, let me wallow in my grief for a whole year and then sent me here. And I thought it was a coincidence you were here, but it was him all along. He schemed this whole thing. To make me move on.”
“And you don’t want to move on.”
I shake my head. “No, I don’t.” I feel my wet dress sticking to my chest and thighs. “Moving on feels like betraying him. And I guess part of me now is thinking, like, he did this on purpose, because he knew me so fucking well that he’d have known I would be angry at his meddling in my life even after he’s dead, and he’d know that that might push me away from him. From the not wanting to move on.” I laugh bitterly. “It’s so complicated.”
“But it’s not all that complicated, if you boil it all down.” He shrugs.
“Boil it down for me, then.”
He touches my chin, and I look up at him. “You’re left with a few simple things. One, you’ll never forget him. You can’t and won’t ever replace him, who he is to you, what he meant to you, what you had together. Two, he’s gone. The brutal truth is, he’s dead and you’re alive. The memory of him isn’t him, and I know you know that on a brain level, but on a more visceral level, you’re not there yet. You still think you can hold on to him by refusing to let go. Three, you’re young still, and you have a long life ahead of you to fill however you want. He wanted you to fill your life with happiness. I’m guessing he wrote you a letter too. No, I don’t want to read it—it’s yours. But I can guess that he said something along those lines. Because he did know you, and he knew you’d resist.”
“That feels like more than three things.”
“More simply put, then: you’ll never totally forget him or replace him, you can’t and won’t and shouldn’t. He’s dead, and nothing is going to change that. You have a life to live, and only you can choose what to do with it.”
“Easy, right?” Sarcasm drips from the two little words.
“No.” No elaboration,