Medicine Man

My back comes unglued from the wet bark and I stand up straight.

I haven’t forgotten his voice. Not at all. It comes to me in my dreams, but I still get goose bumps hearing it. Rich, low and dense. It hits me right in the middle of my chest and sucks out all of my breath.

“No.” I shake my head, finding that spot on my left wrist where the tattoo is and rubbing it to calm myself.

Simon’s gaze catches my action and I stop.

He looks back up at my face and thrusts his hands inside his pockets in his signature move, and the breath that he sucked out of my body smashes back into my chest, and I almost gasp.

Clearing my throat, I say in my most normal voice, “I thought everyone was gone.”

“They are. Why were you hiding?”

“I wasn’t,” I say quickly. “I mean, I was. Uh, I didn’t know if…” I lick rain droplets off my lips. “Well, I didn’t know if you knew I was coming. If Beth told you or what? Or if you wanted me here.”

His eyes take me in, but only my face. He doesn’t look anywhere else and I do the same. I scan his stubbled jaw, his strong brows, his stubborn chin. Nothing about him has changed.

Not one thing.

He’s still perfect. Who knew perfection could make you want to cry?

He smiles his typical lopsided smile – it looks sad though – and ducks his head. “She told me, yes. I wasn’t expecting you to come, however.”

I rub my wrist again, now that he isn’t looking at me. “I’m sorry about your dad.”

Simon nods, grief flashing over his features. Suddenly, I wish that I had the right to walk up to him and hug him. Ask him things.

What happened, Simon?

A muscle jumps on his cheek and he says, “He developed a clot in his lungs. Due to inactivity. It’s fairly common in Alzheimer’s patients. Especially, at an advanced stage.”

I’m so shocked that for a second I think, maybe I said it out loud. But I know I didn’t. I didn’t say anything.

Blowing on my bangs, I blurt out, “I know. I mean, Beth told me he had Alzheimer’s. But that’s it. She didn’t tell me anything else.”

“I know. She didn’t tell me, either.”

“Tell you what?”

“That she’s been in touch with you all this time.”

I didn’t think she would tell him. But now I wonder if he’d have stopped her from contacting me, had she told him.

Doesn’t matter. I’m moving on.

Then I remember I have flowers in my hands. I thrust them forward. “I brought flowers. You know, for him.”

He throws me a little nod. “Then you should give them to him.”

I move.

Moving is good. Moving means I’m not staring at him and watching him watch me. Maybe he’s thinking that I might attack him again. Maybe he thinks I’m still unstable.

I’m not.

I won’t do it again. No matter how heartbroken I become.

Broken heart is more dangerous than a disease of the mind, though. They give you a pill to make your brain happy, but they haven’t yet made a pill for heartbreak.

So there. That should teach everyone who wants to fall in love.

With lowered lashes, I glance at him. He’s looking straight ahead, his face clean and smooth, except for that stubble. No sign that he got attacked by a silver-colored hurricane. Not that I was expecting to find a sign or whatever.

But it feels like it never happened.

We reach the grave and I bend down, putting the flowers on the side. On my way back up, I catch something. The grave next to his father’s.

It says: Alexandra Lily Blackwood.

Oh man. That’s his mother.

I bite the inside of my cheek with a sudden onslaught of pain. Fisting my hands at my sides and closing my eyes for a second, I wonder again. Why don’t I have the right to touch this man? This tall, restrained, grief-ridden man.

When I open my lids, I find him staring at me and my heart kicks up a notch. The gray in his eyes is so deep, so vivid and so alive.

Is that what Beth meant when she said he comes alive when I’m close?

“My dad had reserved the space right next to her when she passed away. I didn’t know,” he says.

“Maybe he knew.”

“Knew what?”

I know Simon is looking at me, but I can’t look back, so I stare at the graves of two people who were so important to him. Quite possibly, the two most important people of his life. Now they are gone forever.

If I’m hurting this much for him, I don’t know how he’s coping with all this. I don’t know how he can stand there, all alone, with his shoulders so broad and straight.

How is he not breaking down?

“That she was waiting for him,” I say in a small voice. “She was good at that, right? Waiting. Maybe he knew about it, but he didn’t know how to go back to her. After everything he put her through. So, he chose this place. To finally go back to her in death because he never could in his life.”