Page 164 of Only After We Met

“You’re my anchor. I needed time to understand that. But remember how you asked me about this tattoo when we saw each other in London last time? Well, I got it for you.”

I saw it despite the darkness. A little anchor on the back of his hand, near the half moon and the musical note. I ran my fingers over it and wanted to cry. I realized that everything was different here, tonight, under the stars. We were ourselves, but different. We were ourselves beyond lust, beyond desire. We were what was left afterward, under all those layers that come together sometimes but other times get mixed up and cover things. We were trust, care, friendship, love, knowing each other.

But we weren’t in the right moment.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Which?” I asked.

“If you still feel me…”

“You know I do, Rhys. You know I always will.”

“Then…”

We couldn’t stop touching each other, even if just subtly. My fingers in his hair, his hand on my face, his arms around me…

“You need to put yourself back together right now,” I said. Hisexpression was bitter, so I grabbed his hand. He could barely look me in the eye. “I love you, Rhys. But I want you to be okay. And you need to go see your dad. You know that, right? You need to because I know you, and I know if you don’t, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

Rhys lay back, looked into the sky, and rubbed his face with his hands. I watched his chest rise and fall as he sighed and rested a hand over his heart.

“I’ll be there on the other side of the screen.”

“I’m going to fucking need you…”

“I know.”

“Shit.”

“What are you so afraid of?”

“I don’t know. Him saying something that hurts me again. Or not knowing how to forgive him or ask for forgiveness. I talked about this with my mother…” He shook his head. “Until pretty recently, she thought I didn’t know. That was the one thing my father asked me before I walked out the door. Not to tell her. And I didn’t. I don’t know why. I guess because my mother had such a hard time when she was sick, and I didn’t want to pour salt in the wound. I know, Ginger. It’s been like a snowball, just getting bigger and bigger. When I was a kid, I didn’t understand how families could spend so many years together and just up and stop talking, but then I grew up, and things got complicated. And pride came in. Mine. His. And the years passed, and then I got what we’re looking at now. Something just completely shattered.”

“You can still fix it.”

“He’s dying, Ginger.”

“Exactly. For that very reason.”

“What if it doesn’t work out?”

“Well, Rhys, then at least you tried.”

“I missed you so much,” he told me.

“I missed you too.”

I rested my head on his chest. He kissed my forehead, then looked back up into the sky, and I did too. The moon was a slender sickle, barely visible.

“The third book I decided to publish,” I went on, “was about the tie between two people. I remember this one phrase about how it didn’t matter how much time had passed, how many changes the people went through in their lives, that bond was still there. A thread that trembled, got pushed and pulled, frayed, but never broke. Maybe that’s what the thread that unites us is like, Rhys.”

“I hope so, Ginger. I really do.” He squeezed me, then whispered in my ear one of my favorite phrases fromThe Little Prince: “I wonder whether the stars are set alight in heaven so that one day each one of us may find his own again.”

105

Ginger

We spent the next two days in a bubble. We only went out in the evening, to take a walk on the beach as the sun was hiding behind the horizon. We’d have an ice cream on a patio somewhere. The rest of the time, we enjoyed ourselves as if we were on vacation and the years before had been a fleeting mirage.