Page 60 of The Forbidden Summer
With a heavy heart, I sink down onto the edge of the bed, the sweatshirt balled up in my hands.
For a long time, I just sit there, clinging to a piece of him. Feeling the minutes stretch and pull, thinner and thinner, until it feels like I might snap right in half.
I lie back on Van’s half of the bed, boots dangling off the edge, not bothering to undress. The memory of him, the absence of him, presses down on my ribs until I can hardly breathe.
Eventually I close my eyes. Somewhere between waking and dreaming, I hear them again, the ghosts.
Estelle’s soft laughter in the kitchen.
Young Van’s bare feet thudding across the porch.
The life I had.
The life I could have had.
The life I might still have, if fate is kind for once.
A gust of wind rattles the windowpane, and I jolt upright.For a moment, I think the sound is a knock, my heart hammering so hard it deafens me.
But it’s nothing. Just the night playing tricks.
I sag back down, exhausted beyond reason, and finally drift into a shallow, aching sleep.
Dreams find me, vivid, clinging fantasies. Van’s smile, the warmth of his hand sliding into mine, the soft press of his lips.
The way he looked, sunlit and alive, carving sculptures that stole the breath from my chest with his talent.
I should have held on tighter.
I should have followed him.
What if letting him go was the biggest mistake of my life?
Van
It’s like walking through a dream where everything’s familiar but nothing feels right.
Being home—thishome—instead of at the cabin with Père is a quiet kind of ache. The days stretch out long and empty. The walls are the same color. The furniture hasn’t changed. But it all feels... hollow. Like someone hit the mute button on the world.
I wake up expecting the sound of him moving in the kitchen, humming tunelessly while making coffee. I half-turn in bed like I’ll find him there beside me, warm and half-asleep, only to remember he’s miles away. That ache lives in my chest, deep and dull, and it flares whenever I reach for something andrealize he’s not here to hand it to me with a quiet smile and a joke I pretend not to laugh at.
I miss his touch in the way you miss a body part—not with drama, but with a constant, background awareness. My skin remembers the shape of his hands, the press of his palm against my back, the way his thumb would trace circles absentmindedly when we sat close. Nothing touches me like that here.
Even sound is different. His laugh—deep and husky, cracking through the stillness like sunlight through clouds—is gone. All I get now is silence, broken by familiar noises that used to comfort me but now just feel like ghosts.
I catch myself narrating things in my head, like I would if he were near.Père would like this,I think.He’d roll his eyes at this.I keep imagining his responses, craving them like food I can't quite taste.
It’s not just missing him. It’s being homesickforhim. For the version of myself I only seem to be when I’m with him. Everything feels a little dimmer without his light. And I realize, I don’t just want to be near him. I want to beknownby him. Every day.
And that’s the ache: knowing what it feels like to belong somewhere, and being just far enough away that I can’t reach it.
Père’s always been home to me, even when we were separated by state lines.
I wonder if he’s thinking of me, the way I think of him, without meaning to, without trying.
Maybe he’s lying in bed right now, staring at the ceiling in that soft glow of early morning or the deep blue hush of midnight. Maybe his hand drifts to the other side of the bed, still half-expecting to find me there. Skin warm. Breath deep andeven. My leg slung over his without thought, the way I always did.
Is it cold without me? Is it too quiet?
