Page 86 of Fragments of You

“Nash—”

“I know you’re not coming back,” he interrupts before I can say more. “Truth be told, I don’t want to be here either. My home is wherever you are, P. It always has been. There isn’t a place on this earth I wouldn’t follow you. All you have to do is ask me to.”

I don’t know what to say.

On one hand, it’s all I want. For him to move to California, for us to start our lives together. But I’m also not forgetting the fact that this is the first time I’ve seen him in four years. There are a lot of things we need to figure out before I ask him to leave everything he’s built behind.

“Have you seen him?” I don’t want to ask, but in some weird way, I feel like I need to.

“Felix?” He doesn’t need my confirmation, but I give it to him anyway.

“Yeah.” I nod softly, keeping my gaze out the window. We’ve talked about him in our letters, of course, but he’s never really said anything about him that didn’t pertain to the past.

“Here and there. He doesn’t speak to me. He’s smart not to.”

“Is it weird that I feel bad for him?”

“Not at all. Because that’s who you are.”

“Being back here, it feels weird.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know. It just feels strange. I expected everything to come rushing back the second I crossed the town line, and while I have thought about things more than I have in a while, it also feels like a lifetime ago. I don’t feel the pain I left here that day. I realize now it was never the town but my inability to let go of what happened here that was holding me back. And now that I’ve moved on and found a place where I truly feel like I belong, all of this —I gesture around at nothing in particular—“it all just feels so much smaller and insignificant.”

“I think that’s what people call moving on.”

“I guess. But there are things that happened here that I don’t want to let go of. Like you—our carefree summer days. Lazy afternoons swimming in the pond. Evenings filled with catching lightning bugs and counting the stars. Those are things I will carry with me always.”

“Me too,” he quietly admits.

“Do you ever think about those two crazy kids?”

“Every day.”

“We were quite the pair back then, weren’t we?” A smile touches my lips.

“We still are.” I feel his eyes on me for a brief moment, but when I glance his way, his gaze is back on the road. “You haven’t told me about seeing your sister again. How did it go?”

I had expressed in my letters leading up to this trip how nervous I was to see Celine again. Nervous and yet hopeful.

“Better than I could’ve hoped for.”

“Really?” He seems surprised, and really, who can blame him? I’m surprised myself.

“I’m not saying we’re going to be best friends anytime soon, but maybe, just maybe, we can learn how to be sisters again.”

“I’m sorry, you know. For the part I played in the Celine and Felix mess. I should have told you the second I found out, but by then, I was so fucked up, I don’t even know if I actually cared.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“But if I had told you, if I had intervened...”

“Don’t do that to yourself. We can’t change the past. Besides, you weren’t yourself back then. Remember what you told me they teach in your meetings—the only way forward is to forgive yourself and move past the things that were beyond your control.” I don’t say it, but I’ve used that mantra on myself a few times. You don’t have to be in recovery to appreciate the message.

“You’re not hard enough on me, you know that, right?”

“Maybe it’s because you’re hard enough on yourself for both of us. Have you ever thought of that?”

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