“That’s easy enough to say, but Carter’s been the only person I could rely on my entire life. He’s always been in my corner, and now he’s not, and I don’t know what to do with that, or who to be without him here. So much of me is tied into him.”
Hank’s quiet for a moment as he considers my words. “Well, it may be true that you two are tied together, but it’s simply not true that you don’t know who to be without him. You’re your own person, Jennie. Always have been.”
“Then why is he the catalyst that brings every single person I care about to me? How do I know whether these people genuinely like me for me, or if I’m just a convenience because I’m always there?” The questions escape before I can swallow them back down.
“Have some of the most important people in your life found you through your brother? Yes. But so what? I believe life puts us in the path of those people we need, that we’re going to stumble across each other one way or another. Let’s not put stock in how it happens and just be grateful that it does, that our lives are filled with the love of the people who bring us happiness and comfort, the ones who make us laugh, who can change our entire day with a smile or a hug.”
Damnit. There go those sneaky, leaky tear ducts again.
“Are you crying again?”
“No,” I cry, drying my face with the neck of Garrett’s hoodie. “I don’t cry. Ever.”
“Right. You Becketts are all very stoic, emotionless people. It’s what makes you all so cold and detached.” Hank hesitates. “Let me ask you something, Jennie. How did you and Garrett fall in love? It surely wasn’t love at first sight; you met him years ago.”
I smile as I think back on the last few months. The countless awkward encounters, the shameless flirting, the first kiss I was never expecting. The quiet nights spent on the couch, wrapped in each other. The hot chocolate, the dancing, the handprint ornaments. The hushed conversations late at night beneath the covers, the envy I’d never felt before, the desire to make something mine. The struggles and the tears, mixed in with all the laughter and the smiles. Crossing boundaries and pushing limits one step at a time. Two strangers who became best friends and then more, so much more.
Slowly, and yet suddenly, there he was.
One day Garrett was a stranger, a man who blushed every time I spoke to him, who couldn’t string a handful of words together to form a response. And then suddenly, he was everywhere, everything, opening up to me, showing me the man beneath the shy exterior, the incredible friend, the compassionate brother and son. He drew me in, and with each bit he gave me, he showed me a place he had to hold parts of me too.
So I tell Hank exactly that.
“Sounds like Garrett being in your life has everything to do with all the pieces of you that made him want to stay, Jennie. Not the person who brought him to you.”
Hank is right. Garrett didn’t fall in love with me because of Carter. He didn’t choose me out of convenience. Carter put him in my life, and Garrett embraced me.
“You are worthy of every single thing you desire, Jennie. Don’t you ever, ever give up your dream, whatever that dream may be.”
My dream? I don’t think this is it, not here.
My dream is at home. It’s letting myself be loved by the people who want to love me, the ones who make me feel so full and beautiful and spectacular that I feel like I’m bursting.
I once read that there are different types of love. The ones where you learn, where you grow, realize what you need. That you’ll fall in love over and over, until finally, you arrive at your destination. You find the one you’ve been searching for and everything just…fits.
But I can’t imagine a better love than Garrett. Together, we’ve done it all. We’ve learned, grown, realized our needs and expressed them. He gives me everything I could have ever imagined needing, and I think I do the same for him too.
And a better fit? How could I possibly find someone whose edges so perfectly melt into mine, taking all our small, shattered pieces and making us one?
I’ve spent my time looking for my place in this world, but the more I see, the more I realize everything has been right under my nose this entire time.
Why would I keep looking? All I’d be doing is wandering farther away from the very people, the place that fills me with happiness.
I’ve given too much of myself to feeling stuck. Wedged between the desire to fulfill my craving for acceptance, for genuine connection, and the desire to hide. To hold onto all my special pieces, afraid that if I gave them to the wrong people, they’d take them, crush them so effortlessly in their fists, and I’d be left a shell of who I am, insignificant and unrecognizable. But if I keep them all to myself, I’m still me when they leave.
And now I’m standing here wondering about the only question I should have ever cared to ask myself: Why is loving myself less important than the idea of other people loving me?
Garrett once told me I wasn’t made to fit in, that it wasn’t possible for me to hide in the shadows. So why was I constantly trying? Why had I become an impostor in my own life? I never doubted my talents. I had all the confidence in the world when it came to dance, my ability to wow. And yet, so often I’ve been ready to fold myself in half to fit somebody else’s idea of who I should be, to be someone that everybody else deemed worthy.
Just to be somebody that I deemed worthy. Worthy of love, acceptance.
I’ve lived too much of my life under pressure. But maybe all that pressure was coming from…me. The people who mattered never asked me for more, or different. They saw all of me, and they opened their arms and embraced all the pieces, the stories, the fears, the nuances that made me who I was.
Maybe I’d grown accustomed to being alone. To the thought that I wasn’t just right for anyone, any relationship, friendship or otherwise. Maybe I convinced myself I was okay with that. The solitude had become a peaceful reprieve for me. It was my quiet place to rest, to take off all my masks, and let myself be without fear of rejection.
But what if falling in love is when being with that person is better than the comfort of the solitude? What if love is when you embrace it together, the chaos of your mind, and make it better than you ever thought it could be?
Because in the middle of my storm, the center of all my chaos, Garrett waits with open arms, ready to shatter me with a love so unconditional, one I didn’t know existed before him.
And suddenly it clicks.
I can stand on my own, but I don’t have to. I’m allowed to be one part of a whole.
I’m allowed to choose love.
CHAPTER 42
POUND TOWN
GARRETT
“Should I call her? I should call her, right? Yeah, I’ll call.”
I pick up my phone, thumb hovering over that sunshine.
“No,” I groan, chucking my phone on my bed. “I shouldn’t call.”
“I’m scared,” Jaxon whispers from the doorway.
“Me too,” Adam whispers back. “I’ve never seen him talk to himself before.”
“I’m not talking to myself, you fucking turkeys.” I stuff my sweatpants and hoodie inside my carry-on bag. “I’m talking to you two donkeys.”
“It’s one or the other, Andersen,” Jaxon says, an irritating smirk on his face as he watches me pack for our flight later tonight. “Turkeys or donkeys. We can’t be both.”
“You’ll be whatever the fuck I tell you to be.”
Adam’s eyes sparkle with amusement. “Gare-Bear’s a prickly bear this morning.”
“Thanks,” I grumble, snatching the granola bar he hands me as I strut by.
“For fuck’s sake, Garrett, just call her.”
“I can’t. She needed space to do this on her own.” Yanking open the fridge, I pull out the orange juice, guzzling straight from the jug. “I don’t wanna bug her.”