“Because we’ve done this a time or a hundred. So many memories up here.”
I look around the land below. I know what this looks like at dusk, like now, and also as the morning sun rises behind me. I know what it looks like at midnight when the world sleeps and what it looks like at six a.m. when only a few trucks pass along the road below as people begin to come to life and head off for their day.
“We’ve celebrated birthdays up here. Remember when you and Jiggs turned twenty-one and he decided he was going to try to swim that lake to celebrate?” Ty laughs.
“Yeah, in January! He almost got hypothermia,” I remember. “Or when Cord started a fire that one night after you won the basketball Sectional and it got away from him and almost burned that field?”
“I forgot about that,” Ty laughs. “I think he threw gas on the fire to start it. He really should’ve tried Boy Scouts as a kid or something.”
“What about when my parents passed away and I couldn’t stop crying? You brought me here then, remember? And let me just have my tears and screams away from everyone?”
“Yeah,” he says, nodding. He looks at me over his shoulder, his dark eyes peering at me. “Remember when we celebrated our first anniversary in this very spot? We were too poor to go to dinner, so we packed bologna and cheese sandwiches and came here instead?”
My heart fills in my chest at the memory of our sandwiches and cherry flavored drinks in paper cups, the best we could do. “You know,” I say, “I think that’s my favorite anniversary.”
“Mine, too,” he grins. “It was really simple then.”
“When did everything get so complicated, Ty?”
He shrugs, his face falling. “I don’t know. But it sure as shit did.”
The wedge that’s been between us starts to slice its way down, parting us in an invisible trench. Sometimes it makes me feel safe and I’m thankful for it. But now? I’m clamoring to make it go away.
“Ty?”
“Yeah?”
“What are we doing?”
His mouth falls, his eyes leaving mine and heading across the lake to some place, some memory, some thought I’m not privy to. He slips off the back of the truck and faces the lake for a long minute. When he turns to me, he’s resigned to a decision.
“I tell the boys on my team that we don’t quit,” he says, his tone steady. “I’m always reminding them that we set our eyes on a prize and we work our tails off until we get there. Regardless of how painful, even though it might hurt, we get to the finish line.”
“Sounds like good logic,” I say, swallowing a lump that’s suddenly lodged in my throat.
“It is. In theory. But I’m rethinking it now.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and squares his shoulders up to me. “Sometimes you have to let things go. Just because you start on a path, even if you’re balls-to-the-wall at first, doesn’t mean you should stay on it. It’s less quitting, I guess, and more adjusting. Moving on to the next thing you think you want.”
He knows I’m dying for him to expound, that I’m terrified that he means he’s decided my recent rhetoric is right. Even though that’s what I’ve asked him to do, I can’t bear to hear it come out of his mouth. He knows this, yet he doesn’t go on. He waits for me to respond.
With a voice shakier than I’d like, I give in. “What are you moving on from now?”
Slowly, inch-by-inch, the corner of his mouth upturns. With every movement, every flinch, my heartbeat picks up.
“I quit pretending like I don’t know what we’re doing,” he says. “I’ve tried to ease back into this because I think that’s what you want. I’ve slept on that fucking futon in Cord’s room with that stupid dog licking me in the face every morning long enough.” He smirks, cocking a brow. “Baby, I’m coming home. If you don’t like it, too damn bad.”
“Ty . . .”
“Don’t ‘Ty’ me,” he snickers, walking towards me. With each step, a flutter ripples through my belly. “All this shit will only make us stronger, like a scar that has healed over. That skin is stronger than the area around it. It’s been to war and won. That’s us.”
My heart skips a beat as he takes my hand.
“I won’t even bring this up five years from now and remind you how silly you were thinking you were going to divorce me. I’m yours, E. You’re mine. We are two people that get it right most of the time, but, on occasion, we fuck up. I’ll take full responsibility for causing this, but I’m also taking responsibility for ending it. Honesty, transparency from here on out, but there is a here on out, Elin, because I’m done living without you.”
Tears wet my eyes and I blink them back as quickly as they form. This is it—do or die. I either accept this and tell him my secret or I push back. And I know if I choose the latter, that might really be it.
“It’s not that simple,” I sniffle, wiping my nose on the sleeve of my shirt.