“I still miss you,” I whisper into the frigid breeze. “I still think about you, and I often wonder what life would be like if you were still around, if you were still here.”
Rationally, I know I’m just talking to bones. But inside my heart, I hope Adam can hear me. I hope God is carrying my voice to the heavens so Adam knows I’m thinking of him.
“Four years is a long time, but simultaneously, it feels like no time at all. I’m sorry it’s been a while since I’ve come to see you. But, just know, you’re always in my heart. No matter what.”
I stare across the vast rows of gravestones before finally moving my gaze back to his.
“I feel bad I haven’t responded to your mom. She’s reached out to me so many times, yet I haven’t answered her,” I whisper, and a soft sigh leaves my lungs and billows into the air in a white puff. “Sometimes, it’s just easier not to think about you, you know? Sometimes it’s just easier to be distracted by my everyday life and not think about the wonderful memories of you that hurt my heart. But I promise, I’ll call her. I’ll go see her.”
A bird crows in the distance, and I look up toward the sky to see it flying from the big oak tree and across the cemetery. I follow his path until he’s just a blip in the sky, a tiny black dot my eyes can hardly see.
“I’m still at Great Elm,” I whisper and look back at Adam’s name. “I’m still teaching music, but I’m not…” I pause and realize just how sad it is that I can’t even admit the truth—that I’m still not playing the violin. That the day Adam died was the last day it was in my hands.
And when I open my mouth to tell him something else, I can’t get those words out either.
God, my life is a fucking mess right now.
I’m a fucking mess right now.
Instead of saying all of the things racing through my mind, I find myself rambling inside my own head.
I’ve met someone, Adam. I’ve met someone, and he’s an artist like you, a painter, actually, and his paintings remind me of the silly photographs you used to take of me.
Do you remember when we got the heart tattoos and you forced me into taking that ridiculous picture to commemorate it? As if a tattoo wasn’t commemoration enough.
Well, one of the paintings…it looks exactly like that photograph, and I don’t understand why.
He seems to understand everything I’m feeling and thinking just by looking into my eyes.
It terrifies me. He terrifies me.
I inhale a deep breath and run one gloved hand across the top of his gravestone.
Who I am when I’m with him terrifies me. I cheated, Adam. Had an actual affair.
I shake my head in the cool wind.
I went against everything I thought I stood for. But I didn’t feel like there was an option. It felt inevitable. Like some kind of otherworldly force was pulling me toward Ansel, and I was powerless to fight it.
And the worst part of all? The hardest part to admit to myself? I don’t want to take it back. Not for a million years.
I don’t regret what I did. And if I could do it all over again, I would. Because the way Ansel makes me feel, the way he made me feel when he was making love to me, it was…it was everything.
I never thought I’d fall in love again, Adam, but…
The frigid wind taps at my bones and my ungloved fingers burn, and I realize, unless I want to go back home with fewer limbs, I need to start heading back to the car sooner rather than later.
With my hand on Adam’s gravestone, I shut my eyes for a long moment, taking in cold breaths of air, until I find the strength to say goodbye.
“Forever sweet dreams and until we meet again,” I whisper and stand to my feet. I blow him a kiss and turn on my heels to trudge back through the grass-covered snow.
When I reach the Zipcar I rented to come out here for the day, I slip inside and click the engine on. Cold air blows out from the vents, and I turn up the thermostat and rub my palms together.
Shit. It’s cold.
I don’t know how long I was out there, but my body feels like a thick block of ice, trying to thaw itself out.
While I wait for the engine to warm up enough to head back home, my phone vibrates inside my purse, and I grab it to check the screen. A text.
Ansel: How was the music lesson yesterday? Did you make it there and home okay?
I shut my eyes and swallow back the fresh tears threatening to flow from my lids.