After yoga, we ended up staying the rest of the day in Big Sur, eating lunch by the river and hiking the falls. We got up close and personal with the redwood trees, and Kalo found more than a few furry friends as we explored.
The next morning, we took our time driving the rest of the way up the PCH, stopping once we reached Legget before traveling on to Grants Pass the next day. Our afternoons were mostly spent driving or hiking the areas we passed, and our conversations grew deeper with each day. Emery talked more in those few days than he had the entire trip, and I wasn’t tempted to read his journal anymore. Hearing the stories of his childhood and his thoughts on life from his own lips instead of those pages was better than I imagined, I only had to give up my need to know what he wouldn’t tell me — like what would happen when we reached Seattle.
“One day, I was just sitting in my bedroom and I noticed this mug of pens on my desk,” he told me when we’d finished our drive up the PCH. We were standing at the northernmost point of it near Leggett, our eyes on the setting sun over the coast. “And I remember being instantly annoyed. Why the fuck did I have so many pens? I needed one, maybe two, just in case the first one broke. But I had seventeen. Why?”
I’d laughed, shrugging. “We just collect things over the years, I suppose.”
“Exactly. And it wasn’t just pens, it was everything. I looked around my room that night at all this… stuff that I didn’t need. So, I went into the kitchen, grabbed an entire box of trash bags, and locked myself in my room for the rest of the night. I cranked my music, started at one corner, and by three o’clock the next morning I’d bagged up seventy percent of my shit to donate.”
I’d nodded, understanding him more than he knew. “I had that same kind of clarity when I was packing up to leave with you. I was standing there in my room trying to figure out what to take with me when I realized I didn’t need any of it. There was nothing there that I couldn’t leave behind and never think about again. So, I stopped packing.”
Emery had slid his hand into mine then, fingers running over my palm before he laced them with my own. “I think when we let go of the materialistic shit we think we need, the stuff we grew up looking for because we thought happiness existed under their price tag, that’s when we start living a better life. A free, meaningful existence.”
“Very Gemini of you,” I’d teased, and he’d just lifted my fingers to his lips, kissing them with a playful grin on his lips as the last of the sun dipped away.
That’s how easy it was, talking to Emery. Nothing was off limits — politics, beliefs, childhood, future wants and needs. Sometimes we’d talk about something I’d never discussed before and I’d find new beliefs, ones I didn’t even know I had. He made me think before I answered, before I chimed in with how I felt about whatever topic we had on the table.
Emery pushed me. He challenged me. He opened me up.
The more I learned about him, the more I wanted to know. He told me about his family, about growing up in the affluent neighborhood he called home in South Florida. I asked him about his friends, of which he had few, mainly because, in his own words, not many people stick around and put up with my shit for long. It seemed his closest friend had been his grandmother before she passed, so I listened to his stories of growing up with her, of the memories he would have of her forever.
And, for the first time, he talked about his brother. Not just to me, but to anyone — ever. He told me he didn’t realize how much he needed to talk about his brother, about the hole left before he’d even been born, until we’d talked about it the day we left Vegas. He was letting me in, more than anyone before me, and I took that gift with more appreciation than I could express.
We talked about me, too — not as much about my past as about what I wanted for my future. Emery sat with me in the business center at our hotel in Leggett helping me fill out applications for apartments and serving jobs near the school. On that same day, I’d received a call from Tammy saying there was a letter at Papa Wyatt’s from Bastyr.
I’d gotten in.
We celebrated with a dinner that was way too expensive, one Emery insisted on, and then we spent the night tangled in the sheets, bringing each other pleasure with our hands, our mouths, our bodies. It was my favorite way to spend a night now that I knew what it felt like. It wasn’t just sex with Emery — it was passion unleashed. It was every fantasy I’d ever had answered in a language I didn’t know, one I was learning to speak with every new touch.
For the first time in the twenty years I’d been alive, I was happy — truly, one-hundred percent happy. I hadn’t known happiness like that existed, the kind that fills you from the heart and bleeds into every day. I’d dreamed of leaving Mobile, of attending Bastyr and living in Seattle, of finding a boy who made my heart race, and living in a world where every day was new and exciting and fresh.
Now I was awake, and my life was even better than the dreams.
Emery had been fine the night we spent in Grants Pass, holding me under one arm as we strolled the downtown area where they’d already hung Christmas lights even though Thanksgiving hadn’t passed yet. We both sipped on hot chocolate, sharing stories of what the holidays were like for each of us growing up before we retreated back to our room.
But once we were there, Emery grew silent, that storm that had been quieted stirring again behind his golden eyes. I watched them change right in front of me, the bottoms of them lined in black, the tops shadowed by bent brows. I wanted to reach for him, to ask him to talk to me, but I knew he just needed to be alone. So, I turned on the television, lazily rubbing Kalo’s belly as he wrote in his journal beside me, working through his thoughts. We both turned in early, and I didn’t crowd him as we slept, only reaching one hand forward to press heat into his back and let him know I was there.
He tossed and turned that night, and when we woke the next morning, he declined my offer for breakfast, telling me he was just ready to get on the road. It was cold and gray that day, so we both bundled up, leaving the top up on the car and the heat on low as we cruised up through Oregon.
It was only four hours into Portland, our next planned stop, but Emery drove slower than usual, even stopping at one point at an intersection when we didn’t need gas or food. He just got out of the car, walked about ten feet in front of it, and stood there, his hands in his pockets, eyes on the sign that told us how much longer it was until the next city. I took the opportunity to walk Kalo, and then we were back in the car, and if it was even possible, Emery seemed even more distant than before.
My weakness was thrown in my face the last two hours of that car ride, because all it took was another bad day for me to eye his journal, desperate to be inside his head. We were too near to the end of our trip for him to pull back, but I didn’t know how to tell him that, to express my own feelings without disrespecting his.
We were about ten miles outside of Portland when the silence became too much. I turned in my seat, arms crossed over my middle, heart picking up speed as I opened my mouth to ask what he was thinking, but the question died in my throat. Something caught my eye on the windshield, and when I leaned forward to inspect it, another flake joined the first.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered, rolling down my window and sticking one hand out. The flurries fell harder, one of them landing on my palm before melting away. “Emery! Look!”
I glanced back at him, his eyes still dead as they landed on my hand out the window.
“It’s snowing,” I said, giggling. I wiggled my fingers, hanging my head out the window with my mouth open wide.
Emery didn’t smile, just pulled his attention back to the road, steering us between the slower cars until we pulled off the highway and into the parking lot of the hotel we’d call home for the night. It was only three in the afternoon, the sky gray, ground slowly being buried by the snow. He grabbed our bags from the back, slinging one over each shoulder as Kalo tumbled out of the back seat and onto the cold ground.
She paused, nose in the air as she sniffed before trying her paws on the wet ground again. The snow scared her and she jumped back, bending to sniff it next and getting a whiff of powder on her nose. She shook it off as I laughed, then she took off, hopping through the fresh snow as I ran after her.
“It’s my first snowfall!” I hollered back at Emery, dipping down to grab a handful before throwing it in the air. I hoped he’d bite, hoped he’d take the chance to let me in, even if just a little. “Come on! Drop the bags, we’ll get them in a second.”
“I’m tired,” he answered, not even looking at me. Kalo stopped short, her tail still wagging as my hands fell to my side. “I’m going to lie down for a while.”
“Emery,” I pleaded, and he closed his eyes at his name on my lips. I went to say something more, but found I had nothing more to say, so I simply closed my mouth again, asking with my eyes for him to stay.
He opened his eyes again, glancing at me briefly before adjusting the bags on his shoulders and heading inside the lobby without another word. I swallowed back the hurt I felt, trying to understand he couldn’t help it, but his coldness stung more than the snow on my bare cheeks.
As I put Kalo’s leash on and led her toward the lobby entrance, I couldn’t help but remember what Emery had said to me.
He was right.
Everything is quiet when the first snow falls.
I laid in bed with Emery, even though I wasn’t tired in the slightest, just listening to the quietness of our hotel room as the snow fell outside. I’d opened the curtains over our window, my eyes catching snowflakes as they drifted down from the sky, eager to join the others already painting the ground.
Kalo slept between us, her body a little furnace that I curled into, and every now and then my eyes would drift to Emery. I watched him sleep, his breath peaceful and calm, though the two lines between his brows were still present, as if he couldn’t escape his thoughts even in his dreams.
He stirred around five, moving to lean against the headboard as he rubbed his eyes.
“Hi,” I whispered, unsure of which man was waking up beside me.
“Hey.”
Emery reached forward to rub behind Kalo’s ear, his eyes catching on the winter wonderland unfolding outside our window. I thought maybe he would say something now about it, or ask if I wanted to go outside. I thought maybe he was okay again.
But he only sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face before kicking the covers back.
“I’m going to shower.”
I closed my eyes as he closed the door, effectively putting a physical barrier between us where a metaphorical one had already existed all day. When I opened them again, they landed on his journal laying unassumingly on the bedside table, the pages pressed flat onto the wood, leather binding stretched open.
Don’t, I warned myself, curling into Kalo more. She rolled over, offering me her belly, and I ran my fingers along her silky fur, eyes still glued to the journal.
I wanted so many opposing things in that moment. I wanted to read the journal, to read what he was feeling last night, to find something within the pages to bring him back to me. I wanted to respect his privacy, trust that he would talk to me in time, and spend the evening being there for him in whatever way he needed me to be. Everything I wanted seemed at war with something else I desired equally, and I weighed my options as I heard the shower turn on in the bathroom.
It was, for all intents and purposes, our last night together. At least, our last night guaranteed together. Tomorrow we would drive into Seattle, to my new home, and I didn’t know if he would stay once we got there. I didn’t even know where his final stop was, or what it was that he “needed to see.” I only knew it was somewhere in Washington, and that I’d had the time of my life on this journey with him, and now it was ending, and I didn’t want to lose him.
I pressed my fingers hard into my temples, massaging the muscle there, my eyes closed as I tried to find the easy answer that eluded me. But there was no easy answer, no simple solution, and as sick as it made me feel reaching a hand out until I felt that leather binding, I couldn’t stop myself.
I was an addict, fiending for comfort from his words, chasing the high that came from finding a new layer of him buried in those pages.
Pulling the book into my lap, I ran my hand over the page bookmarked, the entry he was writing last night before bed. Kalo put a paw on the pages with a whine, as if to tell me to reconsider, but I’d already had the first taste. There was no turning back now.
I remember the first time a girl told me she loved me.
It was Melissa Rickman, and we were seniors in high school. She told me she loved me after we’d been dating for a little over a month. I just stared at her before finally asking, “Why?”
That night, I talked to my dad about it, and I asked him to tell me how he knew he loved Mom. He’d sat on the edge of my bed with this far off look in his eyes and this goofy ass smile. He told me there was one night where Mom invited him over to her apartment because she wanted to cook a meal for him.
But she was an awful cook, he’d told me, which didn’t surprise me since she still is. He said watching her try to make a meal for him was the most endearing thing. He said she was making something so simple, a pasta dish, but the sauce was all over her apron and splatted on her face.
He said at one point, she’d given up, placing her hands on the counter and hanging her head as she started to cry. All she’d wanted was to do something special for him.
Dad said in that moment, he knew he loved her.
It was nothing crazy, nothing she said or did that really stood out, just seeing her standing there with pasta sauce on her face and tears in her eyes. He loved her. It hit him simply and without fuss, and he didn’t tell her until a full six months later.
I told Melissa Rickman the next day that I didn’t love her, and she broke up with me, which was fine.
I’ve written about love in this journal before today, always with the firm belief that it didn’t really exist. I’ve always believed it was a fantasy, something we cling to as humans to make this world a little less lonely. Because it is fucking lonely.
But tonight, I walked with Cooper in downtown Grants Pass, and we were just talking and drinking hot chocolate and looking at Christmas lights when she tripped a little. She spilled hot chocolate on her scarf, and her little face crumpled at the sight of it. She was so devastated by that splash of brown on her otherwise blue scarf, and I found it so fucking adorable that all I could do was laugh and pull her into me and kiss her. I mean physically, there was nothing else I could have done in that moment. I couldn’t not kiss her.
And I’m not saying it’s love, but it made me think of my dad, and my mom, and that damn pasta sauce.
I’m not saying it’s love, but it was something… different. Foreign. Intense.
I smiled, biting my lip as I traced those words with my fingertips before moving on.
I haven’t said a word to her since that moment, because as soon as her lips left mine, I remembered that Seattle is just seven hours away. I remembered that our trip is ending soon… mine in a very different way than hers.
I’ve deceived her. I’ve hidden the truth from her, afraid of how she might take it, of how it might break her, of how it might break me, too.
But if nothing has changed, if the plan remains the same, I have to tell her soon.
Or walk out of her life like a ghost.
Which is better — to tell her the truth, or forever let her wonder?
That is what plagues me tonight.
My stomach dropped as I finished the entry, fingers already flying back through the pages to find something more. I’d gone in with the intention of feeling connected to him, of finding reassurance until Emery came back to me. But all I’d found was a new source of anxiety, a new reason to question everything.
What was he hiding?
Could he really just leave me, just… ghost me, as he’d put it? What was his plan, to tell me he would be back, only to leave me without the intention of ever seeing me again?
Thoughts tumbled over themselves in my mind as I flipped, back and back, looking for something, though I didn’t know what. When I flipped past a worn page, one that was dogeared in the right-hand corner just enough to look out of place, I paused. I think I knew right then, in that moment, on that bed as the snow fell quietly outside that I was about to find answers to questions I never meant to ask, answers never meant to be found.
I flipped back to the marked page, eyes glancing at the date before focusing in on the first sentence.
Grams died today.
A shiver sped down my spine, from neck to lower back, the snow suddenly seeming like it was falling inside of me instead of outside the window. There were dried tear stains on the pages, blurring some of the ink. He’d cried when he’d written it, or perhaps when he’d read it, or maybe even both.
I couldn’t imagine Emery crying at all.
I steeled a breath, blinking my eyes a few times before I continued reading.
Grams died today.
I wrote that sentence three hours ago and then I walked away, because writing it makes it real, and of all the things I wish weren’t true, that sentence is at the top of the list.
It’s like a knife has been jabbed into my throat, the blade rusty and dull, and now I have to somehow learn to breathe with it there. I can’t remove it, can’t shove it in farther to finish the job — I just have to exist with an infected wound, with a clogged airway and a constant reminder of the loss of what was.
She’s gone. She’s never coming back. And I’m still here.
Mom and Dad know I’m not okay. They didn’t even want me to go in to see her at the end of it all, when she was literally on the welcome mat of Death’s door, but I pushed past them and forced my way in. I had to see her one more time, had to hold her hand while she crossed over.
She didn’t even look like Grams on that hospital bed, her body frail and weak, all the machines hooked into her. Her organs were failing her, one by one, for no other reason than that she was tired. Life had been long and she was tired.
Grams asked me for something.
She told me she understood how I felt, which I already knew. She was the only one who ever understood my depression, who ever empathized because she, too, battled with it. She’d been my war buddy, the one I could swap stories with to feel a little less alone. But on that bed, with her hand in mine, she asked me to take a trip.
She wants me to get in my car and take a road trip across the country. She mentioned a few spots she wants me to hit, one of them being an old diner in Mobile, Alabama, where she and Gramps stopped once. She said he ordered the steak and eggs, and being there with him was one of those moments when she loved being alive, when she looked at him and felt it in soul, in her heart, that she was meant to be there with him. Another stop she wants me to make is at a healing institute in California, and there are a few other miscellaneous spots along the way.
She begged me to make that drive, to see the country.
She said if I travel across the United States and don’t find a single thing that reaffirms my love for life, if I spend that time alone and find I’m still a victim to the dark thoughts in my head, that she will understand if I choose to no longer bear them.
There’s a place she loved in Washington, a place of wonder. She said if I make it there and I still feel the same, that I can end it all. I can find my peace and join her on the other side.
But only she believes that last part.
I know there’s no heaven waiting for me, no hell, either. There’s just life and the nothingness that exists after we’re done here. She wants me to give life one last chance, one last shot to dig its nails into me and latch on, giving me a reason to stay. And I know her, I know she thinks I’ll find something. She doesn’t think there’s even a slight chance I’ll actually make it all the way there without changing my mind, otherwise she wouldn’t have suggested it at all.
So, tonight, I’ll load up the car. And in the morning, I’ll go.
But I know the truth.
I know I won’t find anything on this trip.
But it was her dying wish, so I’ll go. I’ll drive and I’ll stop at all the places she wants me to. I’ll keep my eyes and mind open, and at the end of it all, I’ll finally find peace. I’ll finally let go.
Grams told me she wasn’t scared with her last breath, and I squeezed her hand, telling her I wasn’t either.
It isn’t death that’s scary. It’s living without actually living at all, breathing without purpose, existing without essence. Soon, it will all be over, and I won’t have to apologize for how I feel, or explain why I feel it. I’ll walk into Death’s arms willingly with a smile on my face, and that cold embrace will be the warmest I’ve ever been.
I’m not scared.
I never have been.
I covered my trembling lips with one hand, the other still holding the journal as I shook my head in disbelief. Tears were running hot down my face, joining his already on the pages, the snow falling inside of me like a blizzard now. Every part of me was ice, the kind of cold that hurts, and all I could do was stare at that page, at those words, at the truth I was never supposed to find.
“What are you doing?”
My entire body shook at the sound of his voice, my fingers still on my lips as I lifted my eyes to his. He was standing in the bathroom doorway, towel tied at his waist, a menacing scowl branded on his forehead as he glanced at the journal before turning on me again.
Two more tears fell in sync, one hitting my hand as the other hit the page.
“You can’t…” I choked, a sob ripping through my throat as I tried to speak over it. “Please, Emery, don’t take your life. You can’t. Not after…” I shook my head, my emotions strangling me, rendering me speechless as tears flooded my eyes again before pouring down. I’d never felt so desperate in my life, yet so frozen. “Not after this. Not after us.”
“This is my fucking journal,” he seethed, crossing the room in three sweeps before he ripped the book from my hands. He slammed it shut, shoving it back in his bag before standing to face me again. “What the hell were you thinking? Why would you ever think it’s okay to read that?”
“I was just trying to reach you,” I cried, throwing the covers off me and standing. I took a step toward him, but he backed away, holding a hand up to stop me from advancing any farther. “You’ve been so cold and distant since last night, and we’re running out of time. I wanted to know what you were thinking.”
“You should have asked.”
“And you would have told me?” I challenged, nose flaring as my stomach rolled on itself. I shook from head to toe like a pine tree struck by lightning, the snow falling away, the wood charred and naked beneath it.
“In time, yes.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
It came out as a whisper, my plea almost as silent as the snow falling outside.
“I thought you understood. I thought you were the first person to respect that sometimes I just need time. I was in that shower thinking of how I would tell you, and I came out here with all those words finally making sense, and then I find you with my fucking journal in your hands like it’s one of your goddamn books. I have never—“ He shook his head, hands flying up into the air. “How could you do that, Cooper?”
My lips quivered again. “I’m sorry, I just… I was so desperate for you to come back to me. I thought I could find something…”
“What?” He took a step toward me, but I didn’t back down. “What could you possibly have hoped you’d find?” His eyes went wide, the words hanging there on his lips. “Wait…”
Emery swallowed, his eyes flicking back and forth as he ran a hand through his hair, glancing back at his journal and slowly finding my gaze again.
“This isn’t the first time, is it?”
I blinked, freeing another set of tears, guilt creeping up from my gut in a slow tide.
“Tell me you haven’t been reading my journal this entire time,” he demanded, his voice cracking as he moved into my space. His chest met mine and I looked away, eyes on the carpet as he towered over me. “Tell me!”
But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t lie to him any longer.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” He blew out a breath of anger, raking his hands through his hair before letting out a frustrated growl. “It was all a lie. It was all a fucking lie. I trusted you,” he spat, and when I looked up to meet his eyes again, I wished I hadn’t. “I trusted you!”
“Please, it wasn’t a lie,” I pleaded, moving forward and into him. I tried to wrap my arms around his waist but he threw me off, making me lose my balance and fall back onto the bed. “Emery, everything between us is real. I invaded your privacy and I’m sorry, but I never did it to hurt you. I wanted to know you more, to understand you. I loved what I read in there. And I know that doesn’t make it okay but those are your deepest, darkest thoughts, and they didn’t scare me. They made me want you more.”
“They were never meant to be read! Do you not understand that?” He ripped clothes out of his bag, pulling on briefs under his towel before shedding it on the floor and yanking a sweater over his still wet hair. “You played this innocent card with me this entire time and all the while you were betraying me, stabbing me when I didn’t even know you had a knife at all.”
“Emery, it’s not like that.” I frantically wiped the tears from my face, standing again, desperate to gain composure and make him see. “I’m sorry, I never should have read it. I wish I could take it all back. But it doesn’t change the fact that everything between us is real. It has been since the moment we met and you know it. I know you know it.”
“Yeah, because you read my fucking journal.”
“I did! I did read it, and I know how you feel about me.”
When his jeans were on, he yanked the zipper up, turning on me with heat rolling off him in waves of steam. “You know how I felt about who I thought you were. I don’t fucking know you, Cooper.”
His words sliced through me, my heart bleeding out in front of him.
“You know me,” I whispered. “You know me more than anyone else. And I know you. And I lo—“
“DON’T,” he roared, shoving the last of his belongings in his bag before slinging it over his shoulder. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence. You don’t love me, you don’t know me, and you don’t get to think either of those things just because you read the thoughts I’ve written in that book.” He swallowed, his voice breaking at the end. “You lied to me.”
“And you lied to me, too!”
He froze at that, only his chest moving with his heavy breaths, his nose flaring. The same guilt that seeped through me crept across his face then, both of us caught in the sticky goo of truth. We weren’t perfect. We didn’t mean to hurt each other, and yet it was all we’d done.
I took a step forward, my hand finding his forearm. He didn’t flinch, so I wrapped my fingers around his warm skin, praying he’d feel me in that moment.
“We messed up, both of us. But we can start over. Just… let me in, and I promise, I will never lie to you again. We can make it through this. You can make it through this.” I sniffed, squeezing his arm. “Please, just trust me. Believe me.”
His eyes found mine then, the gold shaded with doubt, and his face twisted as he pulled his arm from my grasp. “How can I?”
And there it was, the gust of wind that broke what fragile house we’d built. The blizzard came quick and without warning on the heels of a day of sunshine.
I’d lost him.
“You’re close enough to Seattle, I think you can figure it out from here.” He ripped his eyes from mine, adjusting his bag on his shoulder as I reached for him again, his name rolling off my tongue over and over again, each time more desperate than the last. “Don’t follow me.”
He broke our connection, slamming the door closed behind him as I fell to my knees. The most painful scream of my life shredded my vocal chords as I cried out for him one last time, face collapsing into my cold hands when I realized it wasn’t enough to bring him back. I crawled to the door, using the handle to climb to my feet, opening it with numb awareness as my heart beat in my ears.
Thump.
My bare feet in the snow, Emery shutting the trunk.
Thump.
My voice muted by the snow, Emery’s hand on the wheel.
Thump.
Our eyes connecting, memories striking me like a whip.
Thump.
My knees hitting the snow, vision fading to black as the car drives away, taking my bruised and bleeding heart with it.
He left just the same as he’d come, all at once, never expected, a tide that washed me clean before leaving me raw and bare in its wake. He’d asked me that first day what made me happy, but I couldn’t answer him. Now that I finally could, he was too far away to hear.
“You,” I whispered, the truth of it cracking the last whole piece of my heart, and then everything went dark.