“I’m not saying never, Maggie,” he said, squeezing my hand. “I just can’t be someone’s father right now. I can’t conceptualize it. I mean, I just started talking about my brother. I think having a kid right now would wreck me.”
I had convinced Asher to open up about his brother, and in turn, he shocked the shit out of me. What was supposed to be a super-sexy Men’s Health cover shoot and interview became an issue about Asher’s struggle with depression, where he shared for the first time the truth about his brother’s death. It turned the magazine upside down, in the best way possible. The editors crafted the issue around mental health. I was so proud of him, and all I could think about when reading that article was how attentive and caring of a father he’d be one day—partly because of all the loss he carried for too long. What I didn’t know was that Asher didn’t want to be a father because of all the loss he carried. And I couldn’t make him feel like his decision was wrong. I couldn’t, because he believed it was right for him.
“One day, maybe I’ll be ready to have kids—”
I shook my head.
“No. Please don’t—don’t make promises for tomorrow that you might not keep. I watched Summer’s marriage fall apart because she wanted so badly to promise someone something that wasn’t right for her.”
He cupped my face with his hands, wiping my tears away even as they kept falling.
“You were supposed to be it for me,” he said, his voice breaking.
I watched Asher’s chest constrict with the loss, and he kept his warm eyes on mine, tears streaming down his face. All at once, I couldn’t stop sobbing. He wrapped his arms around me tightly, our bodies clenched in sadness.
After a short while, I pulled back and ran my hand over his strong jaw, kissing his cheek, his lips, holding his face in my hands.
“I love you so fucking much,” I whispered, the truth of the statement splintering me in half. “You’ve—you’ve changed my life—not just once, but twice. You’re the first person who looked at me and really cared—and you made me really care. You taught me the purpose of loving someone, and seeing the world through your eyes is a goddamn privilege.” I caught my breath, heaving tears. Asher choked back a sob, keeping both my hands in his as he watched me continue. “You’ve given me the chance to have a family. And I wish it was with you, but I understand. I really do understand,” I said, the words coming out small, because the feelings were so huge that they could have swallowed us both.
I understood more than he knew. Up until a few years ago, I didn’t think children were for me. It wasn’t until I unpacked my father wound with my therapist that I started to realize that I desperately wanted a child. I hoped, for Asher’s sake, that he would dive into the deep wound left by his brother, even if it meant deciding that children still weren’t for him. I knew I couldn’t wait around for that answer, nor would I ever want to resent him for taking his time to get there. He deserved more than that. And so did I.
Asher pulled me toward him and kissed me, hands in my hair, tears and longing everywhere. Asher Reyes kissed me like it was the end. It felt like falling off a shooting star—gorgeous and devastating.
We held each other until the sun rose. It was the hardest goodbye of my life, by far.
I couldn’t help but think, as I held Asher that night, tears in both our eyes, massive, full love swelling from both our bodies, that maybe I had misunderstood my mom. Maybe this was what happened to her. Maybe she got so much love in that short time from my father that it was enough. Maybe their breakup didn’t leave a void inside her. Maybe their love filled her up, so much that there wasn’t actually a hole. There was boundless untamed love that they explored—that much I pieced together from their stories—especially from the way my dad talked about my mom. I would call my mom and ask her—I owed her that much. Actually, I owed her a lot more than that.
The love of your life doesn’t have to last forever. I would live the rest of my life knowing that loving and being loved by Asher Reyes—twice in this lifetime—was more than enough.
55
SEVENTEEN
I STARED AT THE PHONE, frustration bubbling, pacing back and forth in my tiny dorm room. It was 8:07 at night. Asher had said he’d call at eight. He was never late. He was late.
Already two months into my freshman year, life wasn’t going as I expected, so while Asher being late to call me wasn’t a crime, it was coming on the heels of my crippling loneliness. I hadn’t made a lot of friends at NYU, and everyone in my music classes had the kind of talent I had thought made me rare and sparkly. Not helping was my roommate, Summer Groves, a horrible excuse for a person. Cold and mean, she acted like I had done something unfathomable to her the second I greeted her with a wide smile on our first day on campus. I was thankful that she was at some random rally tonight, not here to flick her eyes at me as I melted down over my boyfriend’s lack of calling.
Long distance, the time change, and Asher’s and my differing class schedules and commitments seemed impossible to navigate. I found myself saying no to going out and making friends, just so I could spend my dinners talking to him on the phone. This wasn’t how I’d pictured college. Asher had a rigorous schedule at USC, the theater program left little time for fun—let alone spending hours on the phone with his girlfriend. And my schedule at NYU, with my major in music production, didn’t exactly leave idle time, either.
I knew we were drifting apart. I knew it, yet I didn’t want it to be true.
I jumped, my flip phone buzzing in my hands. I flicked it open.
“Hey,” I said, a little coldly.
“I’m sorry.” Asher sighed on the other end of the line.
“It’s okay.”
I sat on the edge of my twin-sized bed, swinging my legs back and forth.
“This is hard, Mags. This is harder than I thought.” His voice was thick, as if he was wrestling with something.
I could feel a wave of pain throbbing under my lashes, bubbling, waiting.
“Do you—do you not want to do this anymore?” I asked, my voice small.
“It’s not that. I don’t not want to do this—I just—I can’t only see you twice a year and talk to you when the timing—when we feel rushed, and it sucks for both of us. That’s—that’s not a relationship. That’s not fair to either of us. I don’t know what to do,” he said.
I swallowed the tears, my hands trembling.
“Yes, you do, you just don’t want to do it. So I’ll—I’ll do it for you,” I cracked.
I pictured him pacing outside his dorm at USC, the gorgeous cream fountains and green palm trees in view, his olive skin bathing in the sun, his face filled with sadness. I wanted to hold him, I needed him to hold me, and I knew, the way you just know, that we wouldn’t be holding each other anytime soon, or maybe ever again. And with that brutal thought, my chest caved in, and a special kind of loneliness filled all the spaces he had ever touched. My hands, my arms, my knees, my neck, my heart, my soul—I was consumed by a heavy, dark cloud.
On the other end of the line, so was he.
“Mags,” he said quietly, his voice breaking, his tears audible even through mine. “I don’t want to do this,” he cried.
I tugged myself into the fetal position, holding the phone to my cheek as I buckled, the cries guttural. I’d felt rejection and sadness when my father broke his promises—but his lack of fathering never felt like something that I was losing, like a loss that was permanent. His just felt like a temporary disappointment. This pain was splintering.
Losing Asher Reyes was losing a part of me I would never get back. This was heartache creating a hole inside me that no one else could fill.
No one else but him.
56
THIRTY-NINE
I WENT THROUGH FOUR ROUNDS of IUI to get her. Two years ago, I was sitting in my gynecologist’s office going over the overwhelming process of IVF when she stepped out of her office to grab my new lab results from a nurse. She smiled wide.