“We will begin today with alternate-nostril pranayama.”

The fuck?

Early Sunday morning, Dani and I joined the rest of the folks at the yoga retreat in a session outside on the grass overlooking the ocean. We arranged ourselves on mats so as not to get wet from the slight morning dew. The frothy waves of the Mediterranean crashed down below us in a secluded cove while the just-risen sun winked in the pinky-blue sky.

I’d had a cup of coffee and some toast, so I suppose I was awake, but I had no idea what alternate-nostril pranayama was. Even in English. I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hands.

Ana, the instructor, continued talking. “We breathe in one side of our nostril, closing the other. Then we breathe out the other nostril. We repeat in reverse.”

I glanced around at the rest of the class, waiting to see what they thought of this. Dani nodded, totally on board with this weirdness, her fairy hair secured with a black headband.

“And, begin.”

Seriously?

But all around me, people closed their eyes and tried to breathe in the most unnatural way possible.

“Controlling the breath gives one mental clarity. Calm, centered breathing grounds one in the body.”

Finally, I tried it. I pressed my nose shut on one side with my thumb and breathed in. Then I held the other side shut and breathed out. After a few tries, I got the hang of it, and found myself looking forward to the next inhalation or exhalation.

“One of the things that yoga can do is bring things to the surface. We store so much in our bodies. We store our history. Quite literally, your cells are what you were. You’re always forming new ones. You can alter them.” Ana prattled on, in thickly accented English. “So with the breath, with awareness, you can release the past and create the new.”

We continued for a few minutes, then Ana instructed us to go back to regular breathing. Set free to breathe regularly, I found myself paying more attention to the air I took in and let out. She had given me awareness of the way my body felt with oxygen running around through the intricate systems that made it up.

Yeah. It felt good. Some of the crap that had been going through my head about the last few weeks, about Degan’s death, well, it seemed to fade. Not that it went away. Not that I was all healed by breathing.

But for once, I thought of something else. What it felt like to breathe, to experience this moment. And all I had going on was to listen to my breath, the way it scraped in the back of my throat and escaped out of my body.

In the dewy morning, I felt alive. More alive than I ever had before, my body tingling and my senses aware, just from breathing.

Something so simple hit me so profoundly. I could breathe while Degan couldn’t, but he hadn’t died in vain. He’d died so I could do this. I could take another breath.

And each one was for him.

If I fought against my breath, if I kept myself from living in any moment, if I tried to kill myself, if I wasted any moment—then he would have died for no reason.

I couldn’t let that happen. His life was too important. His sacrifice was too important.

Every day counted.

With the breath in my lungs and the gentle ocean breeze skimming my arms, I began to understand what Ana was talking about yesterday. How the way through distressing emotions like grief wasn’t through it or to get over it, but to assimilate it into the body. This grief would always be with me. I’d always miss him. But maybe I could learn to live with it in time.

It wasn’t like I was totally healed. I needed help. I needed therapy. I probably needed medication.

But it was going to be okay. If I stayed in the moment right now, if I kept breathing, I was breathing for him.

A peace came about me that I hadn’t felt in a very long time. Because even before his death, I’d lived for four years in an artificially violent situation. One where the threat of being shot was constant. We had to be vigilant, constantly.

And we couldn’t ever fully relax while in the field.

I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, letting myself enjoy the early morning sun. The rays heated my arms, and my breathing stayed deep and calm.

It felt strange, this peace. Like nothing I’d ever experienced. I was so used to waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something bad to happen. I knew that I had experienced just about the worst thing anyone could ever experience—the murder of my best friend in my arms—and now I was determined that no matter how uncomfortable, no matter how bad I felt, I’d do my best to live, really live, for him.

But I heard a rustling. I popped open my eyes to see Dani getting up and walking quickly away, her face red with a sheen of sweat on her forehead.

I excused myself and darted after her. Once I caught up with her, I wrapped my arms around her shoulders, but she shrugged them off.

“Are you okay?” I asked, jogging to keep up with her.

“I’m fine.” She tugged at her tank top and adjusted the waistband of her yoga pants.

“Babe. You aren’t fine. What is it? What happened?”

Wiping her eyes with the back of her hands, she didn’t answer my question. Instead, she took off running toward our room, so I had no choice but to chase her. When we got there, she opened the door, allowed me to step in, but slammed it quickly behind me.

“Danika. What’s wrong?”

She flung herself on the bed and wailed into the mattress. “I can’t do this!” I sat on the edge of the bed and touched the small of her back.

“Can’t do what? Yoga?”

“No!” She flopped over, her eyes full of tears, and sat up, wrapping her hands around herself. “You don’t understand!”

“What don’t I understand? What’s going on? What did that exercise dredge up for you? It’s okay to talk to me. I’m not going anywh—”

“I can’t handle this.” She made a sweeping arm gesture around the room. “I can’t live with this pain. It hurts too much. I can’t breathe.”

“Dani. It’s okay—”

I knelt on the bed to hold her, but she stood up and thrust out her chest, her elbows away from her body. Then she pointed at her heart. “I was the one who yelled at him.”

“Yelled at who?”

“My brother,” she whispered. “The last memory I have of him is me screaming at him.”

I stroked her forearm lightly. “I don’t think you should be so hard on yourself. He never mentioned it. And I know he emailed you after.”

She shook her head vigorously. “No. I should have done something. Done anything to stop him from going. I was right, and I was so wrong.”

“Babe. What are you talking about?”

“He’s gone. He’s gone.”

“I know—”

“And you have no idea what I’ve lost,” she hissed, jabbing a finger in my chest. “I’ve lost any connection to a family. I’ve lost the hope for a future with an uncle who could play with my kids. I can’t meet his future wife. I can’t congratulate him on a new job. I can’t bring him a wind chime for his new house. I can’t play UNO with him anymore, even with his stupid house rules. You know he always let me win? I wanted to do that until we were eighty.”

“Danika, I know. He was my friend, too.” But she kept going, the words coming out of her like they’d been pent up for years.

“No more walking in the redwood forest with him, picking flowers and crossing streams. No more pizza and dumb pictures in a photo booth. No more teasing him about his haircut or eating Cocoa Puffs for breakfast. No more Degan,” she sobbed. “Why bother? Why bother living when someone so precious was taken away so senselessly. So stupidly.”

“I know, babe. I know.”

Tears streamed down my face, and I didn’t care that she saw. Men cry. I wanted to gather her in my arms, but she seemed to need space.

She rasped out in a halting tone, “What if he died not knowing how much I love him? I was the one who had yelled at him. I was the one who pushed him away. I’m the guilty one.”

“There’s no guilt for saying what you believe—”

“You came back the hero from Afghanistan, but my brother didn’t,” she whispered. “And whenever I see you, I think of him. That makes me want to stay with you—but also stay far away. He’s always going to be between us.”

So that was it.

“I know, babe. I know. It’s eating me alive that he threw himself in front of that bomb and saved me. It should have been me, not him. I could have saved him. I should have done something.”

“I don’t know why he did that,” she whispered.

“It keeps me up at night. If he hadn’t, we wouldn’t be suffering like this.”

Her tear-stained face tilted up to mine. “Trent. I never cried as much as I have around you. Because of you. It scares me. I don’t like these feelings.”

“I don’t like them either. But we have to process them.”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t. I’m a lot happier when I just go somewhere new. Leave all this shit behind and start fresh.”

Panic struck me. “Dani. Wait. This is the hard part. Feeling the bad shit. But it’s like sets of waves on the beach. One hits, and then another, and then another. But there are spaces between sets. And eventually, I don’t know. I guess eventually you just decide to get out of the water and into the sand and only go in the water on calm days.”

She sniffled. “I don’t know if I can wait for eventually.”

“So what does this mean for you and me?” I asked, not wanting to know the answer.

“I don’t know.”

“You said you forgave me. That you’d let me in. But I don’t think you know what that means.”

Her fingers flew to her cheeks, and she started pacing. “I meant it, but I’m all confused.”

“I want to be with you,” I said. “I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t care how much you throw at me. I know you’re hurt and you need to get it out. But you can’t go through this alone. You can’t process grief by yourself. No one can. Let me help.”

“I don’t want to be alone. And I don’t want to be with anyone—you—either,” she whispered.

And my stomach sunk to the ground. I reached out to touch her hand, then withdrew. “You can’t mean that.”

“Right now, I don’t know what I mean.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

Fuck.

I swallowed hard. “You have to know. I’m still gonna keep my promise. If you need me to keep my distance from now on, I will, but I’m not going back on my word.”

“What promise?” She stopped pacing and stared at me.

“To Degan.”

“What promise to Degan?”

“When he died, he made me promise that I’d find you. That I’d tell you he loves you. That I’d keep you safe.”

I also promised to tell her that I loved her. This didn’t seem the right time.

But Dani looked at me with eyes like saucers and a quivering mouth. “That’s why you’re here,” she whispered, dawning realization spreading across her face. The wrong realization. “Duty. Because you promised him. Not because you really want me.”

My stomach lurched, and I felt nauseous. “Dani. Absolutely not. I’m here because of you.”

“You came here to tell me he died. You did that. Now you’re free to leave,” she spat.

I shook my head. “No. I want you in every way.” Again, my words were failing me. Why couldn’t she see that we were meant for each other? That being together was easy? That we complemented each other?

She threw herself on the bed and muttered into the mattress. “If I allow myself to be happy with you, then I’m betraying his memory.”

My hand flew to my chin, rubbing it. “How do you figure that?”

“If he hadn’t died, you wouldn’t be here.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is. You had no reason to go to Spain unless you had to be the messenger.”

“Dani. I can prove it to you. I’ve wanted you my entire life—”

“No,” she said, not listening to me. “This isn’t working.” She flopped over. “Fuck. I’m so torn. There are so many reasons why we can’t see each other. But I want you just as badly as I don’t.”

“Where does this leave us?”

“With you staying away from me, so I can have my brother’s memory in peace.”

They say that grief isn’t linear, but that there are stages. Shock. Denial. Rage. Bargaining. That you can dance in the stages like a dancer in an old movie going up a flight of stairs. Up and down, not content to stay in a stage. Or you can decide that one is your thing and camp there.

She’d crossed into bargaining. And part of that bargain was getting rid of me.

* * *

We left that retreat early, unwilling to go back to the group session and process any more. Instead, we packed our bags and said goodbye to Ana.

Silently, we drove back to Granada and returned the car. My chest held heavy weights, and the back of my throat ached. When I walked her to her apartment, she didn’t invite me up, and I didn’t ask. Even though I wanted to.

But I had to remember that maybe she wasn’t mine.

After I dropped off my things, I came by. She reluctantly buzzed me in.

I stood at her doorway. “I know you want to be alone. And I will do whatever I need to for you to be safe and happy. But if you cut me out of your life, you need to know what I think about you. So here’s what I’d tell you if you never speak to me again.”

And I handed her my letter from boot camp.