Delicate

by K. L. Cottrell

  As surprised as I am about their intuition, all I can do is nod again.

  A beat passes before she adds, “It’s okay, you know.”

  My heart tries to lift and fall at the same time.

  I whisper, “That’s what Cece said.”

  “Aw. I’m glad you talked to her.” Another pause. “I can only imagine how difficult this is for you, Noelle. My sweet girl…. And for Beckett too. He and Cliff really were so close.”

  I realize my eyes have reopened and fixed on the wall clock across the room. Two o’clock on the dot, it says.

  My mom’s words play back in my head.

  ‘I can only imagine how difficult this is for you.’

  The spike of impending tears up my throat almost makes me whimper.

  The confession that surges up after it does.

  “Something’s wrong with me. Something is different about how he makes me feel, ‘cause nothing—nothing else has ever felt like it. It’s so similar to Cliff, but at the same time, it’s….” I shake my head, unable to keep my voice from wavering. “How can I say that? How can I say I’ve never felt this way before? How can I feel like I’ve never cared about someone like this before? What about—about how much I loved…?”

  Now she really goes quiet.

  It seems like she stays that way for entire minutes.

  However, the clock is still on two when she speaks again.

  “Honey, I think you can say and feel that ‘cause it’s true.”

  Again with my heart not knowing how to react.

  “What you and Beckett have…it developed from terrible heartache. From a truly terrible challenge of life. Because of that, you have done something to each other that no one else ever has. He’s been part of your life in ways you never needed anyone else to be. Not even Cliff.” She exhales into a hum. “So, no, I don’t think you ever have felt quite like this before. It’s new in a big way.”

  The breath I take here seems to go deeper than the ones before it.

  Deeper and…

  …and more satisfying, I think.

  That explanation hadn’t occurred to me before. That perspective.

  Is this what Ceceli meant when she said our hearts healed into something different together? Is this why I feel Beckett in places even Cliff hadn’t reached? Because Cliff was there when life was a dream and Beckett was there when it wasn’t?

  I drag my eyes away from the clock to look at my mom.

  With warmth in her hazel eyes, she nods like she can hear the questions in my head.

  “Your two loves aren’t the same,” she says. “No two loves ever are, but especially ones like these. Your relationship with one of these men is not the same as your relationship with the other. Cliff was Cliff, and Beckett is Beckett, and they both bonded with a different version of Noelle. It’s okay that there have been two versions of you, honey—that’s the way it works when we’re changed by something. Even if we hang on to a lot of who we were before, we never escape change completely untouched. Life always alters us somehow.”

  I don’t know what to name the emotion swelling through me.

  It’s enormous.

  Moving.

  Breathtaking.

  Now an earnest look comes into her eyes. “Putting down the pain of the past so you can welcome the peace of the future is okay.”

  My building tears are turning the sight of her wobbly, along with my chin.

  Her heartening words pitter-patter against my distress again, again, again.

  “Yeah?” she checks lightly, rubbing at my shoulder. “Do you believe me?”

  I’m back to nodding.

  This feels like the clarity I’ve needed and not known how to find for myself.

  “I’ve been—” my left fingers start twisting at my right ring finger, “—I’ve been thinking about taking this off.”

  She must catch what I mean, because I can make out her nodding with me. “That’s okay, too, Noelle.”

  “It is?” I drag in another oddly satisfying breath. “It’ll make—make me sad—you know, in a way—but leaving it on makes me feel so weird, Mama. Like…especially when I’m with Beckett, it makes me feel like….”

  Her hand leaves my shoulder to brush at my hair. “Like your new happiness can’t grow that last little bit until you make room for it?”

  I hadn’t been sure of how to word it, but she has hit the nail on the head once again.

  Hot tears start skipping down my face. I’m in danger of nodding my head right off my shoulders.

  “Yeah,” she murmurs. “Well, that’s true.”

  She tugs me toward her, and I accept her hug.

  “You’re not cheating on Cliff somehow.” As she rocks me back and forth, it seems like she’s finally growing emotional too. “Beckett isn’t betraying him. This hasn’t been some test of loyalty that you failed to pass. It’s just how things unfolded for you both. It was so unfair that you lost him like you did, but you’ve picked yourselves back up and that’s what he would’ve wanted, however it might’ve looked. He would’ve wanted both of you to be able to be happy…even when it comes to you being ready to move on. He would’ve wanted you to do that with someone who has what it takes to love you the way you deserve.”

  The truth of those words hits me so hard that I fully burst into sobs.

  ‘Take care of my girls, Beck.’

  “He does,” cracks out of me. “Beckett does.”

  I’m not sure if I’m saying it to Cliff or to my mom.

  She’s the one who replies, “I know.” After another a second of rocking me, she sniffles. “I know he does.”

  I cry it out.

  The heartache.

  The shame.

  The doubt.

  My mom hugs me over these slow minutes, assuring me that everything is all right—that I’m all right, and Beckett too. She says my heart couldn’t have chosen a more worthy man, and she knows Cliff would agree.

  God, what that does to me.

  I’ve never told her what he said to Beckett right before he slipped away from us. She can just sense how much he trusted his most beloved friend.

  And I do believe that that trust hasn’t been destroyed, that Beckett still hasn’t let Cliff down even by feeling the way he does about me now.

  When I think about what he has done with Cliff’s last request…

  …what he has done with me, with Theo…

  …not just because he was asked to, but also because he loves us so sincerely….

  Thinking about all of it fills me with so much pure love that it’s hard to breathe around.

  But I don’t mind.

  For the first time, I don’t have anything nagging at me, hissing that my emotions are wrong and that I need to get them under control somehow.

  I only know this one thing now: I’m done fighting us.

  These things my mom has said have rung so true. There’s still sadness panging through me, but it isn’t as sharp as it has been up to now. It seems to have been soothed, like a wound that promises to heal even if it’ll take a little more time—even if it’ll leave a scar behind once it has gone.

  “Thank you,” I whisper thickly. “Thank you, Mama.”

  “Nope. No need to thank me.” She sniffles again, then sighs and squeezes me. “Moms don’t need thanks for loving their babies. You know that.”

  Actually, yeah, I do.

  She also sounds like Beckett talking about Theo.

  Between this and how much clearer my chest is starting to feel, I can’t help smiling a little.

  —

  Cliff and Beckett used to joke that after they died, they wanted their ashes spread somewhere in the vicinity of Wings by Del. It was as funny an idea as it was gross; for quite some time, I secretly worried they weren’t joking about it at all.

  One pre-Theo evening when we were bored, the three of us went for a drive and ended up a little bit outside of town, where a few winding roads eventually took us to the lake. We didn’t w
ander far since it was getting dark, but we still managed to find this one spot: a stone picnic table set off to the side of a tiny clearing in some tall trees, making for what could’ve been a camping spot if it weren’t so small and tucked away. And from that picnic table, we could see part of the water—enough to glimpse its beauty, but not enough to be blinded by the reflection of the lowering sun.

  The wind sent the most pleasant breeze through those trees, through that spot, through our conversation. I remember that.

  I remember Cliff toying with my fingers while he and Beckett laughed about something in the boisterous and unapologetic way only they ever laughed together.

  And I remember that when we decided to head back to the car, we walked toward the water first so we could enjoy the view just for a second. It was so quiet and beautiful that Cliff admitted he wouldn’t mind his ashes being spread out there when his time was up.

  “Feels good out here, doesn’t it?” he had remarked. “I had no idea it’d be this nice, but we’ve had such a good time.”

  I don’t remember what Beckett or I said about that, but Cliff….

  Currently, I find one corner of the stone table has been broken off somehow. The benches still look fine, though, so I sit on one.

  This place still looks as though people don’t pay it much attention.

  The spot of lake that I can see from where I am still looks the same too—in view just enough to tease the open stretch of sky-mirroring water nearby.

  I sat on this very bench the day Beckett and I brought Cliff’s ashes out here. He sat on the other one.

  We both just…sat.

  Until he said, “This is what he wanted, huh?” in a tone that carried agonizingly fond memories.

  I agreed, “Yes, it is.”

  We wept then.

  It wasn’t easy to leave Cliff here, even though we knew he really did wish us to.

  I wouldn’t say it’s easy to visit him now, on this day that has already been wringing at my heart, but it definitely doesn’t hurt as badly it did back then. Honestly, it doesn’t hurt as badly as any of the other times I’ve been here since that day, alone because bringing Theo felt too hard; birthdays and anniversaries and Father’s Days he missed were much worse.

  That sadness from my mom’s house is still with me, though.

  Which is why I’m here.

  Talking to Cliff won’t snap it away, won’t make it disappear, but it’s another step toward letting go and continuing to heal.

  It’s a step I feel ready to take.

  My heart is open right now, and I don’t want to slam it shut.

  Maybe it was visiting with my mom that did it. Or maybe everything that’s been happening in general, including what Beckett and I have admitted and the things Ceceli said. I don’t know. I just know I want to talk to him.

  My eyes drift around to the trees, the dirt, the water.

  I recall putting his ashes everywhere we thought would yield whatever he might want in the afterlife: seclusion, a nice walk through the area, an uninhibited view of the lake.

  I recall the great evening the three of us spent here with all three of those things.

  “Hi, Cliff,” I say into the still air.

  All that reaches my ears is the semi-distant song of some bird.

  It dawns on me that where I’m sitting is where Cliff sat while he played with my fingers and laughed with his best friend.

  Without warning, I’m overcome with immeasurable grief.

  I drop my face into my hands, but they don’t muffle the sob tearing out of me.

  The bird keeps singing.

  The memories keep rolling.

  Different ones soon join them: when I met Cliff and Beckett, and when Cliff kissed me for the first time and then cutely confessed to hating the flavor of my lip balm because he thought coconut anything was the worst, and when I learned I was pregnant, and when he proposed to me under the stars, and when he told me he loved me just before he passed away.

  Some of them make me laugh through my crying.

  Some make me cry so hard it hurts my entire body.

  But they have one thing in common, and…it’s that they run their course.

  Before long, I’m able to come back to the here and now. My crying turns to sniffling. Lifting my face to the open air feels more comforting than hiding it away.

  The bird has quieted.

  I let out a tremulous sigh.

  “Most of the time, I like to think you’re still with us,” I say. “I really like it. When we miss you particularly badly, or when Theodora is being the most adorable human to ever exist, or when it’s a special day of some kind and we know you’d enjoy being here to see it.”

  I lift my fingertips to brush at the edge of the stone table. The cool, rough feeling of it on my skin is bizarrely nice.

  “Other times, the thought of you watching us keeping on is painful. Like when Beckett gets to do things with us that you’ll never get to do. And when it shows that Theo loves him a little bit more on any given day than she did the previous day. And when he and I are…together. When we’re together in the ways we didn’t want before but now we do.”

  The threat of tears is coming back. Not with the same force as before, though, thankfully.

  I blink at it, keep skimming my fingertips along the table, drift my gaze over my surroundings.

  For a minute, it seems to be all I can do.

  Then some of my mom’s words come drifting into my mind.

  “Maybe you haven’t even bothered watching us all grow so close. Maybe it isn’t something you were afraid of because you really did just want us to heal somehow. However we could. Maybe all you cared about was that we would have each other after you were gone. That we wouldn’t be alone.”

  The gentlest breeze stirs around me, sets a light whisper into the leaves of the trees.

  I swallow at the lump in my throat, blink harder at the burn in my eyes.

  It’s getting harder to make my voice work, but I push on.

  “Either way—whether you’re mad or not—I wanna say I’m so sorry and make sure you know I loved you with all my heart. We were the holders of each other’s heart. And I wanna tell you I still love you, but that you’re…a memory now. It can’t be helped. You’re a marvelous, unique, brilliant memory that we will always cherish and never forget. You’ll always be with us in some way.”

  Closing my eyes causes them to overflow, so I wipe at my cheeks with weak hands.

  “You just can’t be with us the same way as before. And even though all this hurt has changed our lives so much, I want you to know that none of this is about replacing you or—or trying to outdo what we had or finding something better than what we had. I don’t wanna do that. I-I can’t do that. It’s not possible to replace you. I just wanna be happy with Beckett because of who he is. He has been such a balm to me, Cliff. And to Theo.”

  The words hang on the air.

  The breeze goes on whispering.

  The birdsong rings out again.

  And the longer I sit here listening, feeling, existing…the calmer I become.

  It feels like my heart is lightening up out of its heaviness and like my thoughts are coming loose from the mess they were so tightly knotted into.

  Because those last things that poured out of me were full of truth.

  Beckett may have been Cliff’s brother in spirit, but at the end of each and every day, what I share with him doesn’t actually have much to do with my late fiancé. We haven’t actually gone behind his back or done something unforgivable. What happened is life didn’t stop for us like it did for him, so we had to trudge along with it, and following our feet somehow turned into following our hearts.

  It’s not about replacing what I lost.

  It’s not about erasing what I felt.

  What it’s about is letting myself grow into the version of Noelle who is thankful for what she had and appreciative of what she’s found.

  ‘We’re good people to
o.’

  Beckett told me that.

  I didn’t not believe him when he said it, but I definitely do believe him now. I really understand what he meant.

  We aren’t trying to forget Cliff or rejoice in his passing. We don’t want to hurt him or anyone else, but we also don’t want to hurt ourselves by forcing friendship that doesn’t fulfill us anymore. Refusing to be true to ourselves will only bring on fresh misery.

  We aren’t bad people, because it isn’t heartless to move on. It’s just what happens.

  The breeze picks up. Between the temperature out here and me being in the shade, I start feeling just a touch chilly; I fold my arms over my chest and look up at the shifting leaves above me.

  Once they’ve settled again, into my mind floats a memory that involves Theo. It’s a recent one from when I was carrying her to bed—on her birthday, I think? After she snuggled herself to sleep against me, yeah.

  “Time is strange, Cliff.” I turn my head to rub at my nose with my shoulder. “I said it to Theo the other night ‘cause I can’t believe she’s five already, and I’m thinking about it again now. It just…drags us along. Everyone. Whether it’s crawling or taking off running, it keeps going, and we have to go with it. Sometimes it puts us in places we didn’t think we’d end up in. Or places we didn’t think could even exist.”

  Upon sighing, I realize how tired I am.

  I wish there were other arms around me right now. Sweet little-kid ones. Warm ocean ones.

  After another stretch of quiet thinking, I murmur, “We didn’t plan for it to turn out like this. We didn’t mean to fall in love in the wake of such tragedy. I…God, I hope you know that.”

  But almost as soon as I’ve said it, a sense of steadiness begins to rise through me.

  I remember who I’m talking to here. Remember what kind of person he was, what kind of heart he had. And I swear—it probably sounds silly or crazy, but it’s true—the feeling I’m suddenly awash with is reminiscent of his hugs.

  Although more tears spring to my eyes, the sadness isn’t to blame.

  Just the serenity.

  “No,” I amend, “I don’t hope you know we didn’t plan it. I know you know we didn’t. Because you know us.”