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She had wanted to learn how to love him since that very first day, she thinks. Since the day she laid eyes on unruly black hair and wide green cat-eyes. He had been a wild child through and through, and she had wanted to know him.
Her eyes had chased him across the classroom and the playground all the time, drawn in by the way his mouth moved around rambunctious laughter, quirking to the side when he teased his friends and other girls. When his disinterested gaze had finally landed on her and turned into something sharper she let it happen, because at least now he was looking. That twinge of happiness, of finally being a part of something even if it wasn’t exactly harmless teasing, sweetened the dull ache of loneliness she had come to know intimately.
Sometimes she thought to herself that she was too young to be going through this. She was too young to have to hide her pain away from her mother and her sister. Too young to know that life was this unfair, that no matter how kind and genuine she tried to be there would be people who didn’t like her for something she had no control over. Her smiles became smaller, dimmer. When her friend left she didn’t blame her. She didn’t blame anyone, really, that part of her that had been forced to grow up too quickly understanding that sometimes that’s just what happened.
And still, she watched him. When she saw him squatting next to her at the playground she could physically feel her battered heart swell. The pebbles stung a little where they struck her but she still smiled at him, hoping he would be kinder without others to cheer him on.
Then he threw sand in her face, and she decided to end her wishful thinking.
When she saw the chalk marring the surface of his desk, when she grabbed a rag and started scrubbing at the stupid, hateful words, when he found her and grabbed her and tears spilled down her cheeks and onto his collar as they pushed and shoved at each other in the deserted, golden-lit classroom, his eyes confused and frantic and hurt, fingers pulling at her hair, all she could think was,
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
Looking at him now, years later, the confines of a stuffy classroom that smelled like chalk and children long behind them, he is all uncertain smiles and sloped shoulders. His hair is as feathery as ever pushed away from his face but he has bags under his eyes, now, still green and cat-like but so, so tired. He’ll most likely never walk the same carefree strut again, and her heart aches to think of the person he could have been if she hadn’t landed in his life. But his hands are graceful as he signs and talks at the same time, easy as breathing after all the years he’s been by her side. His face is soft when he looks at her, his lips gentle when he brushes a kiss to her forehead.
On his bad days, recently few and far between but still ever-present, she knows he still thinks he doesn’t deserve to be here with her. He’ll pull away from her hands quicker, take a few more heartbeats to meet her eyes, and her heart will break all over again but she won’t let it show. Instead she’ll take his hands, lace their fingers together so they have to be silent, tuck her head in the space between his neck and shoulder, and just feel his pulse flutter against her cheek. His bad days are her bad days too, and vice versa- their past too tangled up to ever fully separate.
Some days she leans against the balcony, feeling the night breeze in her hair, and she feels his eyes on her. He’s watching her, making sure. She lets him do it because they both know it’s not necessary, that she’s well past that point in her life, but it comforts him to be able to see her and it’s comforting to her, too, knowing he’s there, and so their unspoken agreement fills the room until she comes back inside and curls up next to him on their bed.
She doesn’t really know what he went through when she wasn’t there. Maybe she should feel vindicated that he had to suffer the same way she did, but all she felt when he showed up in front of her was happiness, strange relief, and a bitter ache to see her wild child (because he was hers, was always hers, even in just her thoughts) as this lonely, quiet, careful boy. His smiles were wobbly, his mannerisms awkward, always questioning his place in the world. So she decided she would be the one to give him a place, next to her.
It wasn’t about forgiving, or forgetting. How could she forget what he had done, the things she went through, that had shaped her into the person she was? How could she forgive when there was nothing in her mind to forgive? How could she ask him to apologize when she had been apologizing to him all this time? She realizes now that he needed to apologize for himself, but back when they were younger, when all she could think about was herself and everything felt like the end, she refused to admit forgiveness went both ways.
And she had really meant for that last lovely, lonely summer to be the end. She thought it would be a fitting happy ending to the stupid, bittersweet whirlwind that had been her life, one last taste of sweetness in the wake of everything she had ruined. His smile, softer now, less awkward, as he talked about a future together in the vaguest of ways. The tiny tilt to his head as he signed see you later, the fireworks blooming in the night sky. The way the straps of her sandals pinched between her toes as she walked away from him. And then his hands grabbing hers, squeezing too tight as sweat tried to slip them apart, the drop of sweat falling from his nose in a sad, cruel mockery of her tears during that fight in the classroom, and her heart plummeting with him as he fell, noise tearing from her throat as she realized all too late how much there was to live for and how little there was left without him.
I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry.
I’m going to fix this.
It was her turn to ask for forgiveness, and she finally understood.
They’re together now, in every sense of the word that matters. She’s stopped saying sorry for everything, and she knows guilt and pity aren’t why they’ve stuck by each other. Maybe at first it was a confusing cocktail of remorse and wanting to be better, wanting to repent for mistakes they’ve made, but she looks at him now and she just loves him, messy past and all.
He’s sleeping now, cheek mushed against the pillow. Short dark eyelashes frame his closed lids and his feathery hair is mussed against his forehead. Collarbones peek out from his shirt and his arm is slung over her waist over the covers, tucking her into him, and instead of apologizing for everything she just promises him she’ll always be there. She might have made a place for him first but he has carved out a place for her, smoothed out the harsh edges of the hole she had created when they were children and fit himself around her.
The clock on their nightstand reads 11:58.
Tuesday’s almost over, but they’ve got the rest of everything ahead of them.