Page 147 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
I traced an abstract pattern with my fingertip across his shirt. The soft fabric soothed me just as much as his body heat enveloped me in its warmth.
The words didn’t come in order. They came out wrong—fragmented, out of order, slipping through my hands faster than I could hold onto them. My voice halted, my throat squeezed, as I forced out the words to address the grief I’d been holding at arm’s length for far too long.
The suitcase.
The closed door.
The way I’d been here for months and still avoided certain parts of the apartment, like they might reject me if I stepped too far inside. Like I was borrowing space that wasn’t mine. Like I hadn’t earned the right to stay.
He listened without trying to fill the gaps. His hand kept moving on my back, slow and even, and I focused on that while I found words for things I hadn’t said to anyone.
"I don’t know how to be here sometimes. I’ve been here for months, and I still don’t know how to live in this place.”
He tucked my head beneath his chin. His heartbeat was steady against my cheek. “Tell me about her.”
“She always liked you, you know. Back when I thought you were insufferable. It used to make me furious.”
The low sound he made, something between a laugh and an exhale, was the kind I wished I could bottle up to keep accessible for the hard days.
“And she read everything.” I went on. The words were starting to come easier. “Nonfiction. Fiction. Anything. And she kept books in every room. She had this system for organizing them that made complete sense when she explained it to me and that I’ve never been able to reconstruct. I tried after she died, and got so frustrated I packed up half of them and put them in the second small room.” I sniffed. “Maybe I was too hasty packing things up. But it hurt to look at them.”
“That makes sense.”
I sniffled.
“How did she get into this type of work?” he asked.
“She believed in all of it,” I said. “The card readings, energy work, crystal healing, astrology, Human Design, and the idea that people come into your life for reasons that aren’t always visible yet. And with the same matter-of-fact certainty that people believe in the stars in our sky, she believed all of these things. They were just facts.”
He stayed. Listening, without an agenda, without preparing what he’d say next.
“When she was about eight years old, she was in the shower and raised her arms up high, and something grabbed her wristsand wouldn’t let go.” I felt him still. “She pulled, and it took a few tries before it released her. She said at first it scared her. But then she realized she could sometimes see people that weren’t physically in the room, or feel them. Not always. Sometimes it was just a sensation, but she knew early on there was more to this world than what most people let themselves look at.”
“Can you?” His voice was genuinely curious.
“Not like she could. She always said I had the ability, but I never really worked on it like I should have with her.” An ache settled in my stomach. “I always thought we had more time.”
The words settled between us, and I appreciated that Marc didn’t rush to fill the silence. We both let it be for a long while. Long enough for me to live in the good moments we’d discussed and not stay buried beneath my grief.
“She had a way of drawing people to her,” Marc said softly, after a while. “I remember that. Even just passing her on the street.”
“Everyone did. Her shop did so well because of it. People came in for crystals or a card reading and left feeling like they’d known her for years.” My throat tightened. “Some days I just want to call her. Ask her what tea I should be making. Tell her about—” I stopped.
“About us,” he said. Not a question.
“She’d have something to say about it,” I said. “She always had something to say. Usually something annoyingly accurate.”
“Glamma and she were close,” he said. “She might have stories. Things she’d want you to know.”
Something in my chest eased slightly at that. The idea of Aunt Jem existing in someone else’s memory and with someone I could actually sit with and ask. “I’d like that.”
He held me through the inner turmoil that followed.
“I keep thinking she’s going to come back,” I finally admitted. The thing I hadn’t said to anyone. “I know she’s not. Logically, Iunderstand that, but I can’t make my body believe it. And as long as my body doesn’t believe it, I can’t get rid of any of her stuff because if I do, it means I’ve admitted—” My voice frayed at the edges. “If I go through her things and make space for myself, it means I’m accepting she’s gone. That I’ll never walk in here and hear her voice or smell her cooking or —” I pressed a fist to my chest. “She was my person and without her I don’t always know how to?—”
“You have me.”
Three words. That meant everything.
