Love and the Sea and Everything in Between

chapter thirty-nine

I sit in the corner of his room, the furthest corner from his bed. His journal is open in front of me and my palms and fingers are stained with ink.

Two days have passed since Jeremiah was here and I haven't said a word since. I spent yesterday in the waiting room to give Adam's parents some time alone with him. It's hard for them, now, to see him on that bed. We can never tell whether he's living or dying. It all looks the same from where we stand.

Adam's journal is the only thing in this world that's keeping me sane right now. I write letters to him, filling the blank pages with the pieces of my heart that have belonged to him ever since we met.

I read his entries over and over, never growing tired. Every time I read them, it's like he's talking to me, like he's right here with me – and it helps.

My eyes linger on one line in particular. My heart is the moon and hers the sun. And our gravitational pull will be a force to be reckoned with.

I turn to the blank page I left off on and begin to write.

What is the sun without her moon? What is the sea without the pull of the cosmos? You are my better half, Adam. My moon. Remember the day I got my tattoo? I do. I didn't realize, then, how deeply connected it would all be, but I do now.

You complete me. Don't leave me. Without you, there's a hole in my heart that only you can fill.

Come back. You're the "cuttle" to my "fish".

As I finish writing, I hear the door open. I stand to meet Oliver, who's startled to see me when I stand.

We stare at each other a moment before his eyes shift to the floor. I don't say anything. My anger has receded for now, replaced only by a deep emptiness that I can't seem to fill.

"I wanted to come see how he was doing," he says, looking up at me. "I wanted to tell him..." He pauses, as if he can't seem to find the words. "I wasn't a good friend to Adam. I did things and I made choices and even though I thought they were the right ones, I think... maybe, somewhere deep down I knew they were wrong." He stops and turns away from me, taking a step toward Adam. He freezes at the foot of the hospital bed and looks at him, silent for a moment.

I just watch Oliver. I have nothing to say. I know Adam blamed himself for what happened between him and Oliver. He blamed himself for everything.

"I wasn't a good friend," he repeats. "But Adam was. He didn't talk a lot. Not to me, anyway. We just kind of... were. It's like, just being friends and hanging out together was enough for him. He didn't need or want anything from me except to know that I was there."

I notice how heavy his words are, the sorrow spilling from the tip of his tongue.

"I remember, once, we took a walk through downtown San Francisco. We didn't say a word. We just walked through the streets, through the night. And it was enough just to hang out, you know? Neither of us was after anything from the other. All we needed was to know the other was there." He fingers the footboard, staring straight down. "I guess he was stronger than me. Because I stopped being there and he never did."

I hear a sniffle and he rubs his face with his hands and sighs. "I wish I could've been more," he says. "No. I wish I had been more."

I know Oliver isn't talking to me or to Adam. It's a release – a release of all the agony stored deep down inside thanks to a world that stifles any hint of human noise. Like when I write in the blank spaces of Adam's journal. Except the whir of the hospital room is Oliver's blank page. So I let him release it all and I don't dare interrupt the sound of his beating heart.

"I will never have another friend like Adam. There was something in the way he looked at you. It's like he knew something – everything – and he understood it all. Like he didn't need you to tell him if something was wrong, he just knew and he was there." Oliver shakes his head. "I was stupid. I let a great friend – one of the most loyal friends I've ever head – slip from my grasp. And for what? Because I thought I had to choose sides between Jeremiah and him?" He scoffs, scratching at the nape of his neck. "There are no sides in life. There are no sides with friends or family or lovers. You either care about someone or you don't. That's it. It only gets complicated when we forget what love is. And that's learning to put someone else before yourself. Love is selflessness."

Oliver takes a sharp breath. "Jeremiah was wrong for thinking it was okay to ditch Adam. I was wrong. When you love someone and they love you, you don't just get to walk away – not without leaving everything in ruins. You fight for them. You fight for them even when it hurts. Because that's what love is." His hand is clamped tight in a fist, his knuckles white, as he punches lightly at the air. "Adam loved everyone. Even when he hated you, he loved you. Because when you love someone – truly love someone – that love doesn't just go away. It becomes an open wound. It's still there, but it hurts, and the memory of it hurts." He wipes at his eyes. "Maybe that's why he did it... tried to kill himself. Because he couldn't bear the weight of loving people who stopped loving him back."

I blink. My heart aches at the thought of it all. Adam was a boy with so much love to give, and he felt like so little was given back. No wonder, I think. I don't think I could bear it either. And then I realize that I am bearing it. Every day that passes that Adam is still in that coma, I bear the pain of his absence.

Love is like an open wound. It's ugly, it's painful, and people try to forget it's there. They try to cover it up with hate and anger and bitterness, but it never goes away. And sometimes, they love without ever being loved back for so long that their love turns into something else. It becomes deformed until it no longer looks or sounds or feels like love. It becomes the hate that, for so long, you covered it with. But that love never goes away because even when you think you hate that person who hurt you, you still worry about them. You still hope they never have to go through what you're going through. You still hope they have the best life possible. You still want to see them happy and successful, even if it hurts you that you aren't there with them.

That is love.

And it isn't the most attractive analogy, but true things rarely come gift-wrapped.

"Adam never deserved this," Oliver whispers, his voice breaking. "He never deserved to be left alone, forgotten and abandoned. How does anyone get along thinking that's okay? How does anyone justify abandoning someone who would've loved them with all they had?" I see the turmoil in Oliver's face, the inability to understand such cruelty.

My eyes burn, but I don't cry. This isn't my story. This isn't my blank page. This is Oliver's.

He presses his hands to his face, his fingertips massaging the bridge of his nose, and takes a deep breath. "If you get through his, Adam, I want you to know how sorry I am. I want you to know that I never meant to hurt you. But I did. And I hope you can forgive me." Letting his hands fall to his sides, he turns, giving me one last glance before leaving Adam and I behind.

Leaning into the corner I had been sitting in only moments earlier, I slide down the wall until I'm on the floor again. I run my fingers through my hair and look at Adam, lying on the bed, unmoving, but still breathing.

I sit there for a while, watching the rise and fall of his chest and I wonder if he hears.

I wonder if he hears the sound of my broken heart.

I wonder if that's enough to bring him home.

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