Besides chair yoga before the surgery, I hadn’t really taken Cole’s advice to find ways to exercise.
“When you started dancing again,” I said, wanting to know more about what’d happened between meeting her and moving here. “It helped?”
“I don’t know. But at some point after I got back into it, it felt safe enough to look at the world again. To not look at my feet in the hallway and instead risk looking at the people around me.”
The truth, even when it was hard.
“I do miss it. Not as much as walking on my own two feet, but yeah….” I combed my hand through my hair. Cole would probably squeal in delight if I asked him to go with me in the morning.
“Hydrangeas stain,” I said, moving closer to better see the dark smudges on her fingertips when she frowned at them again. “You’re not supposed to put them in wedding bouquets or use them for boutonnieres because of that.”
The instant intrusive thoughts were the worst mixture of happiness and horror.
Wedding bouquets.
Ireland in a dress, carrying blue flowers.
But would Pops be there?
Would Beck?
“Huh.”
I blinked out of the spiral and watched as she turned her hand in the sunlight between us.
“Your Grams had them?”
“What?”
“Hydrangeas.”
Oh.
I nodded. It was harder to picture Grams and her gardens now, after so many years, and that felt worse than it had before.
“Well,” she said, pulling me back yet again. “Next time, we can ask Pops about them.”
My heart thrashed as the important things became clear above the mess that was everything else.
Next time.
We.
I never knew affection could be so painful. That falling in love would be like this, unfolding alongside the most difficult moments of my life.
But that was undeniably what was happening here.
What had already happened.
“Do you feel guilty for wanting them to remember?” I whispered.
Her smile was sad. “Yes.”
“Does it get easier?”
“Yes. And I feel guilty for that too. You might too.”
A breeze swept through the courtyard again, and I closed my eyes against it, inhaling deeply. Maybe I needed to see if Cole wanted to go to the gym soon. I didn’t want to spend the rest of the day twisted up like this.
