Page 94 of Our Hearts Knew Better

“Are you eating?” I nudge back with some emphasis, and she spins toward the counter, then spins back to me with a plate of her own.

“I am.” She proves it by taking a bite, and I manage a smile, blinking down at the steam rising from the meal that does make my mouth water.

But I still don’t have an appetite. My stomach is too sick, with a more pleasant side effect of bubbly, to eat. Bubbly anticipation and bubbly paralysis.

I needed a mom as I held onto the box of my mom, so I didn’t stop moving until I ended up here. The box is on the mini bar, too, next to my other hand. It’s like a limb. I can’t let it go. But I can’t open it, either. My fingers freeze on the tape when I try, thinking I won’t recognize a piece of her, and shaking over what that could do to me. Or I’ll become too overwhelmed with flashes of the little memories I have, blinding me with grief all over again, when I’m already rotating through the stages.

“This is Elliot’s favorite,” Isolde says, her lashes wet, a small lift in her lips as she takes another bite, licking at the ketchup on her fork.

“Yeah,” I say back, my smile now a more natural tug to hers. “He used to try to take the whole thing so none of us could get any.”

Memories of Elliot flash randomly, and when they do, Isolde talks in the present and I talk in the past. She doesn’t correct me, as she’s stopped correcting Levi. He mentioned she did that before she started therapy and worked on accepting their different ways of dealing with their loss. Levi had to work some too. Neither of them are wrong, especially given the specific situation. It makes sense to both hold on and let go.

Two different realities that still sometimes clash, but Levi and his mom take such care with each other. It’s given me that sweet-and-sour feeling when I’ve seen it, a fullness in my chest for them, with a tangy need to have that in my own life, in my own situation.

“He loves to tease,” Isolde says low, and I swipe some ketchup onto my finger like it’s icing and suck it off, just to get a fix and put another lift in her lips. I still can’t take a whole bite, but she’ll make me take the meatloaf with me.

She has a couple secret ingredients that, to this day, are still secrets.

The tape calls to my fingers again and I touch it, wondering if my mom has secret ingredients in her recipes as my mouth now waters for those. I know her recipes are in here. They have to be, I think, as both a fact and a demand of my father.

Isolde traces a frayed edge on the box, her chest deflating slow with her exhale. “It must’ve been so hard for your father to have to do this.”

To have to…put my mom in a box.

Isolde speaks with sympathy, a kind of soft pity, like she can’t relate. Because she can’t. But also like she won’t have to relate. She won’t have to do this with Elliot.

I slide my hand along the tape to hers, two of our fingers touching like a hug, as I picture some of the things of his that are still in the spots he left them before he sailed the Gilligan and never came back. The things Isolde is leavingforhim. Unwashedclothes. Unwashed dishes. She even has some of his other favorite foods in containers in the fridge for leftovers, as if he’s going to eat them, maybe not realizing a lot of them have spoiled.

Levi has to see all of this, too, when he visits his mom, every day. And as I think about it, I can feel the stab of loneliness those different realities can breed. But at least, for them, while they’re facing their own direction, they are in the same boat, holding to each other.

I cansayAdam and I are in the same boat, but it’s more like we’ve been floating on the shrapnel of our life together, separated, witnessing the other get smaller and smaller as we’ve drifted.

Isolde gives my finger a squeeze before she drops back against the counter to take another bite of her meatloaf. “Are you gonna open it?” Her smile is one I’ve felt on my own lips too many times, and still do, something a bit mechanic, but her eyes are encouraging.

My jaw bobs around a response I can’t find, when theclickof the front door reaches us and feet pound toward us.

Levi sighs like he’s relieved when he sees me. My own breath catches as our eyes lock, then rushes back in at once as he stops close beside me. He reaches out his hand like he’s reaching for mine, before that hand falls like another sigh onto the mini bar, but still near mine. Stopping himself like he did the first time we were in this kitchen together, before he eventually stopped stopping.

Before he then stoppedanyphysical contact.

The perking of my spine turns back into a slump.

“You weren’t answering your phone,” he says, with a half breathless concern in his voice. “So I called Floyd, and he said you left. I was worried…” The word’s a trailing off as his eyes scan my body like he’s looking for wounds. Every part of me that his gaze touches comes to attention under his focus.

His search travels back up, slowly, like he notices, until our eyes are locked again, a small flutter in his lids.

“And ready to rip into him?” I follow his trail with a low tease, one that tugs the corner of his mouth, but that he still takes seriously.

“I will if I have to. Do I have to?”

“No,” I assure him, and this time, we both sigh with relief, mine from his presence, his worry for me, his protection over me.

As his eyes shift to his mom and they go into a greeting hug, I give myself over to the warmth of him, let myself feel it for this moment.

Levi

Mom’s hugs aren’t a bolt to my bones anymore. Her arms became a vise after dad’s crash, holding me tighter and longer, to keep me on land, so I didn’t go missing at sea too.

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