Page 55 of The Bright Side of Brooding
“Pish, Nicholas. You’ll find her when you find her. Until then, you be a man who knows he’s worthy of a good woman.” Her gray eyes hounded me, like she could see in my mind and all the doubts that swirled there.
“I will.”
She narrowed her eyes—suspicious, but only in that motherly way she had. “Will you?”
I didn’t say a thing.
“You will find someone, my dearest, who loves you. You’ll find someone who loves the warrior and the poet. And until you do, you know I count having you as my grandson as the very best and most beautiful part of my life.” Her voice shook a little, but she cleared her throat and pressed her lips into an exaggerated, large smile.
I blinked away the memory and rolled to my side—I didn’t remember lying down on the bed. It hurt, so much, to think of her, and yetnotthinking of her didn’t honor her memory. The woman had been a grandparent to me first, but then she’d become a guide, friend, and in so many ways, a parent.
Could Summer possibly be the person she was so sure I’d find? I’d never cared about anyone enough to wonder. It’d only been surface-level relationships at best. With her, from the very beginning, everything had been different. But that didn’t necessarily mean she evenlikedme, not in the way someone needed to in order to spend a life together.
I pushed up off the bed and fumbled through brushing my teeth and changing clothes. Minutes later, I sat with my back against the headboard and began to write. As the words etched onto the page, my chest loosened. My breathing evened out, and the sharp edge of grief softened to the familiar and ever-present ache.
What a strange pairing—the veritable elation of time spent with Summer entwined with the staggering brutality of loneliness. Not simple aloneness, but this hounding sense that I alone carried the genetic legacy of my family. And more, that no one else had known me. Knew me.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Somewhere, the voice spoke, and as it often did, it sounded a bit like Gran. My resistance to it, though, had flagged. I accepted that I wanted Summer to know me—the parts of me I didn’t show others or that they didn’t bother to see. I longed for that, and not just generally, but from her. As usual, my feelings no doubt outpaced hers, but maybe she’d come around.
And in order to do that, I would make my intentions very, very clear.
