Page 87 of A Bittersweet Summer
When Gus first got sick, I knew that there was a good probability that he wouldn’t live to see old age. What I didn’t know was just how soon his presence would be ripped from my life. The worst part is that I feel like we’d just gotten to a good place—unburdened by the worries of our childhoods.
Or maybe Gus has always worried; he was just better at hiding it than most.
I question if he knew—how he felt right before. Did he see things the same way I do? Did he feel the shift in our relationship when he passed? Was he in pain?
I cling to his words.
Those are thingsyouwanted, Cass.
You made decisions for yourself, this time.
I wipe the sleeve of Wes’s jacket over my chin, catching the moisture before it falls any further.
It’s just made you extra happy. You’re like… happy, happy.
I pull my knees to my chest, burying my sorrow there as the tears fall faster. My shoulders shake, and I can’t stop the heaving sobs.
Loneliness. I feel so alone. I’m not, but something about losing the one person who was raised the same way you were—the one who experienced the same childhood memories, makes me feel like a piece is missing.
We all need some happy, Cass. It gives us something to cling to when the inevitable black cloud reappears—makes us less sad when storms come.
Dragging my face across the sleeve, I sit back up, picking up the crochet hook again to finish off the last row.
I’m being realistic.
When I pull the last loop and snip the yarn, the screen door opens. Wes must be taking lunch early—or he’s worried about me.
“Hey,” his voice is so soft as he glides across the living room, crouching next to me. My face is in his hands, thumbs gently running over my cheeks. “Hey,” he says. “I’m here.”
When he presses a soft kiss to the tip of my nose, I take a deep breath and don’t feel so alone. I’m drawn into the scent of hay and freshly cut grass. Wes holds me there, keeping me safely tucked in the warmth of his arms.
“I’m alright,” I reassure him. “I finished Gus’s blanket.”
I should have done it sooner—should have done all of it sooner. I hadn’t felt the urgency when Gus was alive—not knowing what waited at the end of the road.
While I could go on regretting every decision I made, I’m not sure it would have led me here. Maybe things needed to happen exactly the way they did.
I look up at Wes, whiskey-colored eyes filled with sorrow—as if my pain has become his. I hate to see it mirrored there, but I cling to him all the same. He’s a steady anchor—rooted in the soil beneath Miller Run like the Willow by the pond. Unflappable—unmoving. It’s the kind of steadiness that I didn’t have growing up. Where my family was filled with uncertainty and anxiety, I found myself drowning in the pressures my mother put on me.
Here, Wes is something different. There’s no expectation for me to be anything but what I am—to feel anything but what I feel.
It makes me want to dig my own roots down and mingle them with his—hold on to the home he’s created. Miller Run has been my place to heal, and Wes?
He’s the soft place in which I can land.
He looks at the stripes of brown and tan. “I see that,” he says, offering a wan smile. He sits next to me, our backs against the base of the couch.
His boots are still caked with mud, and I see the tracks he added all the way through the house. “You didn’t even take your shoes off,” I comment.
Wes lifts the blanket, analyzing it. “I have not thought about shoes in a long while,” he says before pulling the blanket over our laps. “He’d love this, you know.” When he swallows, I rest my head on his shoulder.
“It took too long,” I say, closing my eyes.
“That’s okay, Cass,” he says. “It really is okay.”
“I’ll be fine, you know,” I whisper. As my head rests on Wes, I know it to be true. Grief is a universal experience—at some point, it touches us all. It still doesn’t take away the pain. “I just need to feel it for a minute.”
Wes presses a kiss to the top of my head, and I settle into him. “Take a minute then,” he whispers. “Take an hour. Take a day. Just don’t stop talking to me.”
