Medicine Man

She shakes her head, digging her nails in my chest. “No. I don’t want you to make it right. I want you to leave.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t make me leave, Willow.”

“I don’t need you. Even though I cry every night. Even though I dream about you every night and I don’t listen to my therapist who tells me to date. I’m still fighting. I’m still living. I’m a fighter. You taught me that. So why should I care?”

Twin tears stream down her eyes and seep into my fingers. “You don’t need me, yes. You don’t need anyone. You can be whatever you want to be, Willow. But I do know one thing.”

“What?”

I wipe her tears off, as I say, “When you smile, it doesn’t reach your eyes. When you laugh, you don’t throw your head back and do it with abandon. So I’m asking you. Begging you.”

“Begging me for what?”

“To let me be the man who can make you smile not with your lips, but with your eyes. I am asking you to let me be the man who makes you want to laugh with abandon.”

She trembles. You do know that nobody and no one has ever made me happy, right? What makes you think you can?”

I rest my forehead against hers. “I can because I am not no one. I am me. I believe. You make me believe. In magic. In fairy tales. In fate. In falling and rising. In the fact that I can do it. I can be what and who you need me to be. You make me believe I was born for you.”

She gasps like she can’t comprehend that I remember her words. I wish I could laugh at the absurdity of it. Absurdity that I could ever forget anything she’s ever said to me. I’ve filed it away, her words, her expressions, her touches in the furthest corners of my heart.

“I never should’ve attacked you. That wasn’t right.”

“I never should’ve said those things.”

“I didn’t know how to deal with what you said to me,” she whispers, brokenly.

“Let me fix it.”

She licks her salty lips. “That’s what you do, don’t you? You fix everything.”

“Not everything, no. Not anymore. Just the things I broke.”

“Like my heart.”

“Like your heart.”

Sighing, she rests both her hands on my chest and whispers, “Just one. One chance.”

“Fuck…” I groan, clenching my eyes shut, as if she breathed new life into me.

She digs her sharp nails into my flesh and I open my eyes to find her glaring at me. “But if you blow it. If you fucking blow it, Simon Blackwood, then I’ll hate you forever.”

I smile, finally. “I won’t let you hate me. I’d die before that.”

She swats at my chest. “Don’t talk about dying.”

Her glare widens my smile, and I ask her what I should’ve asked her right from the beginning. Maybe I would have, if she weren’t my patient and I wasn’t too trapped in my past.

But as I said, I’m going to fix it.

“Will you go out with me?

Her eyes search mine, as if again she can’t believe I said that. I can’t fault her. I haven’t been fair to her. I’ve let her fight alone for too long but I’m going to change that.

She slides her arms around my neck. “Out as in?”

“Out as in out. On a date. With me.”

“Haven’t we had this conversation before?”

“No.” I shake my head. “Because like an asshole I never asked you. But I’m doing it now.”

All my life I’ve wanted to be better, more, but I’ve only now realized that being better isn’t materialistic.

It isn’t about achievements on the outside. It’s an inside thing. Being better or more is personal, individualistic. It’s about growth. It’s about me.

“You’re not an asshole. You never were. You’re just an idiot.”

I chuckle. “Yeah, I’m that.”

As I look into her pretty eyes, I know that every day I’ll strive to love her better than I did yesterday. Every day I’ll strive to be a better man than I was yesterday and that’s the only better I care about. Loving her is my purpose. It’s the thing that runs in my veins, alongside my blood.

Loving Willow was what I was born to do.

Slowly, she smiles and says, “Fine. Pick me up at seven tomorrow night.”

I love the rain.

I’ve always loved it. It makes me think of second chances. How the water flows down and washes everything away. It leaves things clean and crisp.

A clean slate.

It’s very hard to get that, especially in real life. Nothing is ever clean. Nothing is ever wiped off. But there’s a thing called moving on.

I’m doing that.

I took Ruth’s advice. I’m dating.

It doesn’t matter that I’m dating the same man we talk about during sessions but whatever. I’m moving forward with him, the one who makes me happy.

He also makes my kids very happy.