Page 51 of Befriending the Bear
But now there’s someone who waits through the silences. Who doesn’t flinch when my voice catches or trails off. Who holds my hand like it’s not an inconvenience but a privilege.
And tonight, I sent him away.
Not because he did anything wrong, but because he did everything right. Because he offered me a future, and I looked it in the eye and told it I wasn’t ready. But that’s not true. Not really. I am ready. I’m just afraid. Of losing again. Of failing again. Of being happy, even briefly, and then having to survive the absence of that happiness.
But I’m more afraid of returning to the quiet I used to call enough. Of closing the door and pretending I don’t hear someone knocking on the other side of it.
I don’t want to be a ghost in my own life anymore.
I want to be someone who dares the echo to answer.
I want to be someone who answers the knock.
And then the tears came. Quiet ones, at first, gently drifting down my cheeks, blurring my vision. On their heels came the deeper ones, the kind that pull from your chest and make your breath catch. And then the violent sobs arrived, like I’d cried in the days after Marcus had died. They seemed endless, bottomless, senseless, yet they tore through me, one after the other.
When the tears finally stopped, it was nearly one in the morning. I sat in the middle of the spare room rug, legs folded beneath me, laptop cooling beside me, my sleeves soaked through with tears.
Outside, the town had long since gone quiet. No more distant car doors or porch lights flicking on, no more dogs barking at shadows. Just the hush of Forestville wrapped in November’s chill, and me, sitting in the center of a silence I no longer wanted to live in.
I hadn’t cried like this since…since…
I’d lost count. Somehow, sometime in the last few weeks, I’d lost count, and I had to do the math. Seven years, five months, and eight days since Marcus had died.
So why did it feel like it had happened yesterday? Why was the pain back in all its brutal vengeance?
Fraser. The thought of losing Fraser had brought it all back. It shouldn’t have. It couldn’t be the same, grieving my husband of fifteen years and processing the loss of a relationship that was never officially labeled. Yet…
I pressed a hand to my chest. I could still feel it, the echo of Fraser’s warmth, the solid weight of his arms around me in the dark. That stupid, stubborn man who’d limped his way into my life and didn’t leave when things got hard. Who looked at me like I was whole. Who listened, even when I couldn’t speak.
And I’d pushed him away.
But I wasn’t the same man I’d been seven years ago. Or even seven weeks ago. Back then, I would’ve let the fear win. I would’ve folded inward, retreated into quiet, maybe written a poem about it and called it survival. I would’ve called it enough.
Now? Now I wanted more.
I stood slowly, knees stiff, back aching from hours spent hunched over the keys and crying. I padded down the hall to the kitchen, poured a glass of water with shaking hands, and stared out the window. The wind had picked up again, rustling the last of the leaves on the maple out front. The porch light across the street flickered and went dark.
I looked at the clock. Ten past one. Fraser would be asleep by now. He’d left hours ago, and he was an early riser, like me.
But if I didn’t do it now, if I allowed myself a night of sleep, I might lose that spark of courage inside me. I sat back down at the table, phone in hand. I opened my messages with Fraser, thumb hovering over the keyboard. I didn’t need to craft a speech. All I needed was honesty.
I’m sorry. I was scared.
I stared at it. Deleted it.
I don’t want you to go.
Deleted that too.
I don’t want to be left again.
No. Too sad. Too passive-aggressive and victim-like. I was the master of my fate and the captain of my soul, and all that. Though if William Ernest Henley knew how I would apply those last lines of his famous poem, he might regret ever writing it.
If I couldn’t say the right thing, maybe I could say something true.
Seven years ago, I lost everything. I never expected to find something again. And now that I have, I don’t know how to hold on without breaking it.
My thumb hovered over send, but then I added:
