The Counting-Downers (23 page)

With every press of his lips, every touch of his tongue, every stroke of his fingers, he is becoming an intrinsic part of me as I do the same to him. Our molecules melt together until they are one.

Behind us on the beach, people continue with their days and lives as if the world has not just been altered in a fundamental way.

Their world may be the same, but mine never will be. And neither will his.

We are forever changed, forever united. From almost-us to always us.

We kiss with our eyes closed but our senses open, infusing the spaces between with the elements of the other.

“HI, DADDY, LONG time no speak.”

A breath of wind blows a strand of my still-damp hair away from my face and I’d like to think that it’s my dad replying to my words.

Maybe I’m just so desperate for a sign that I imagine ones where none exist, but I often believe that my father is the wind, invisible but powerful, always with me, the constant force surrounding me, and pushing me forward whenever I’m standing too still.

As in life, so in death.

“I’m sorry I haven’t visited for a while. It sounds like a terrible excuse, but I’ve been so busy lately. Not too busy to forget you, but too busy to come here alone.”

I wait with futile anticipation for a gentle caress of air but none comes.

He’s still, silent, watching, and waiting for my next words.

“I’m in love.”

I speak directly to the retreating sun, which is casting a magenta haze across the surface of the sea. The last time I watched the sunset with Tristan, the colors of the setting sun were a fiery wash of crimson, orange, and yellow. Today, the pink sky bleeds into purple casting an ethereal glow on the slow-waving water.

“I guess wherever you are, you already knew that, but I feel like I should tell you anyway.

“He’s perfect, Daddy. Perfect for me anyway.

“But I guess you already knew that too.

“I just can’t shake the feeling that you sent him my way.

“You always taught me that there was no such thing as coincidence, and meeting a new soulmate on the same day I had to say goodbye to my original one is too lucky to be true.

“‘You know it’s Fate when your rational mind can’t explain it. If the answer is ‘I don’t know,’ it’s destiny.’
That’s what you always used to tell me. Well, I can’t come up with any other explanation for finding Tristan so soon.

“Most people are lucky to find one soulmate in a lifetime, to find two before the age of twenty makes me blessed beyond belief.

“So thank you.

“For whatever role you had to play in it, whatever favors you cashed in, whatever promises you made to the angels, whatever helping hands you provided, thank you.

“I love and miss you more than you could ever know.”

This time a large gust of warm wind brushes past my face and shoulders, causing me to smile skyward even as tears cascade down my face.

“I’m scared, Daddy,” I whisper after a while. “I’m scared to love him when I know one day soon I’ll have to say goodbye to him like I had to say goodbye to you.

“I find myself squeezing him just a bit too tight. Holding him a bit too long.

“I almost wish I didn’t know his number.

“It’s far away enough to lull me into a false sense of security, but close enough to taunt me with every passing second.

“I can’t even bring myself to think about our future, I just want to freeze time forever,” I say to the silence. Looking down, my eyebrows raise in surprise when I realize I’ve been fiddling with my stopwatch without knowing.

“I wish I could find a way to keep us in the present, to keep
him
forever.

“If I thought it would work, I’d say a prayer on a million shooting stars, blow out a billion candles, and dream on a thousand dandelions. If it would stop the passage of time. If it would bring you back. But I know it won’t do either of those things.

“I can’t do anything and that’s what hurts the most. I’m being crushed under the weight of my powerlessness.

“You made me believe I could do anything I wanted in life and it was the biggest lie you ever told me. No matter how hard I try, I can’t control time.”

And even though I’m sitting in the stillness, I swear that through my sobs, I can hear my dad whisper in my head,
“But just because you have to say goodbye doesn’t make you love him any less.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I answer to the invisible. “And that’s part of the problem; I never had a choice but to love him. Just like I never had a choice but to love you. When I realized I’d have to say goodbye, it was already too late.

“I loved him before I knew him. I missed him before I met him. We were soulmates long before we were strangers. And now I have to balance a lifetime of
‘I love yous’
with a single goodbye.”

Thank goodness, not a single soul is around because I’m full out weeping now. To the naked eye, I’m just a desolate girl with questionable levels of sanity, talking to herself.

Maybe I am those things.

But right this second, I don’t feel like I am.

I’m nothing but a scared and soul-stricken young woman, coming to terms with reality, and asking her vanished father for advice.

“Are you happy wherever you are, daddy? Are people nice wherever it is you’ve gone? Are you taking care of yourself? I know it’s crazy, but I worry about you. I know you don’t have a body to fail you anymore, but I worry about your spirit.

“I hope you’re okay. I hope you can hear me. I hope you miss me like I miss you. Because I miss you so much.”

The answering silence almost appears affronted at my final question, making me smile at what my dad would say if he was sitting next to me on this bench.

He’d chastise me for asking a question when I already knew the answer.

If there’s a place people go when they die, I know wherever it is, my dad would be in the front row, watching and missing me even more than he did when he was alive.

How I hope there’s a place people go to when they die.

The idea of never seeing my dad again, in whatever form he’s taken now, in never feeling Tristan’s calming presence once he’s left this lifetime, is too hopeless to contemplate.

I may not have a God, but I do have hope.

So clinging to that hope like a life raft in the stormiest of seas, I watch as the wind propels the waves onward and let it comfort me. No more words are spoken, but my silent father gives me the strength I seek.

The strength to love a boy who will one day disappear.

The courage to prepare myself for the longest goodbye.

And the hope that one day,
maybe, possibly, perhaps,
we’ll all be together again.

“YOU HAVE TO keep quiet, okay?”

“He can’t know you’re here. It’s our little secret.”

A shuffle followed by a thud is the only response I receive.

“You okay back there, bud?”

I take the yelp as an answer in the affirmative.

The excitement flowing through my bloodstream is so potent, it’s a struggle to sit still in the car. Some people love receiving presents, while others love giving them. I
love
giving them.

I always sense I’m more excited to give someone a gift than they are to receive it.

This is no exception. As my biggest present yet, I can’t wait to see the look on Tristan’s face when I gift him with the adorable Alaskan Husky puppy in the backseat.

I’ve just brought him home from the animal shelter I started volunteering at last week. I’d spoken to my mom and Tristan about how best to divide my free time and they’d both agreed that it was better to volunteer for one or two charities and make a big difference, rather than do a little bit for a lot of them. I can always mix things up and work for different charities next year. If I’m still alive, of course. I know better than to talk about plans for the future as if they’re guaranteed.

I love working at the shelter so far, it’s at once heartbreaking and heartwarming. I try to focus on the positive and the joy the animals bring, but hearing about the treatment some of them have received at the hands of their previous owners has tested my fundamental belief in human goodness. It’s tough to remain carefree in the face of cruelty. It’s also hard seeing how long each of them have left and knowing the ones that will end up being put down in a few days or weeks.

My mom is allergic to cats and dogs, which is the only thing preventing me from taking all of the animals home with me like I want to.

While a lot of the pets in there started life as an unwanted present gone wrong, I know Tristan will take good care of my four-legged friend in the back. If he doesn’t want him, my mom will just have to take allergy medication every day, because I’ll adopt him.

The second I looked at him on my rounds of the shelter, it was love at first sight. Pleading, arctic blue eyes looked up at me, pulling on my heartstrings with their guileless gaze. He jumped up and down, as if begging me not to leave him behind, and I was unable to ignore such a request.

I’d been searching for the perfect gift for my boyfriend’s birthday anyway. Like so much in our story, this felt like another piece of interference by Fate.

I love being able to call him my boyfriend.

We’ve only been an official item for two weeks since that day in the sea, but I know we’re ready to parent a pet. I was his long before I was his
girlfriend
.

More than that, I hope that the excitable bundle will be the perfect solution to Tristan’s loneliness. Tristan’s so isolated up in the forest that I worry about him so much. His only real friends seem to be the ones I introduced him to. I don’t mind sharing them at all; it just makes me sad he doesn’t have any of his own for me to meet.

Our unnamed puppy can love, protect, and entertain him when I’m not around to do so.

Speaking of the puppy, I glance in my rearview mirror and watch with amusement as he peeks his mischievous head out of the aerated gift box which I’ve placed him in for the element of surprise. He meets my gaze in the mirror and crouches down, lowering the lid of the box with a thump.

I laugh out loud at his antics, especially when I hear him do it again. I’d be happy to play rearview peekaboo with him if I wasn’t driving and worried about crashing. He’s a dangerous distraction.