Page 43 of Almost Perfect
Then I looked around to see what he must be seeing. Dishes towering in the sink and on the counter. A pile of papers and magazines on the bar. Sweatshirts strewn across the back of the couch, and a few errant socks dumped next to boots lining the hallway. Lucky for me, he couldn’t see the bedroom. He’d probably die just so he could roll over in his grave.
“You’ve got an interesting… method.” He said this as he eyed the sink.
“No doubt rather different from yours.” I grabbed a sweatshirt and my jacket from the back of the couch.
“A bit,” he said tightly.
I glanced at him while pulling on boots. Was he actually bothered? He definitely portrayed himself as tidy and particular, so if his aversion to clutter and a sink full of dirty dishes ended up being a dealbreaker, I couldn’t say I’d be shocked. He’d warned me just the other day.
At the same time, if my superficially slobby approach to life was a problem for him, there was no way he could handle my actual reality, which was the definition ofhot mess.
And why would that matter?
Instead of getting stuck there, I smiled up at him. “Ready?”
He nodded and led the way to the door. We tromped through the snow in silence, and about halfway to his house, I had to stop.
A few feet in front of me on the path, Wyatt must’ve heard me halt, because he did too, and I felt his attention shift to where I stared.
The sun’s rays shot up into the sky from behind the peaks in front of us, lighting the pale blue with warm egg yolk brightness. Everything else was silent. The snow blanketed the world, shrouding it in chilled quiet and peace.
The rising light and heat combined with the muted, still world around us made a word burst into my mind. A word I’d never thought would apply to even a moment in my life, and one I’d certainly never experienced.Serenity.
I’d run so long on the need to fulfill my obligations, to avoid missing out on opportunities, and to gather up every bit of “the good life,” as Candy had once called it, before my moment in the sun inevitably waned. Candy had assured me I’d get my ten minutes in the spotlight and no more. Toward the end, that’d been a kind of mantra, as the last album I released while she was alive tanked in review after review.
By then, the shade had been encroaching for a while. I’d felt the cool touch of darkness, and I hadn’t found it as terrifying as I’d always assumed it would be. That relentless ambition and borderline desperation for more success had tapered off to a stuttering drip.
In this moment,thissunlight, it was so pure. So brilliant and beautiful andreal.
Emotion jetted through me, clogging my throat. I cleared it, but tears pricked at my eyes, and I felt the jaw-tightening that accompanied the need to cry.
“You okay?” Wyatt’s low voice rumbled in the silence.
I jerked my head down in a nod, knowing that if I spoke, I’d start blubbering. And this man had already seen me cry one too many times. I’d already done enough crying in the time I’d been here to last a lifetime. I didn’t want these tears, and yet I wasn’t fighting them. They weren’t evidence of grief or loss or frustration or overwhelm like so many of the others had been.
They were tears of gratitude. Tears of hope. Signs of healing and moving forward.
Cool fingers at my cheek turned my head toward him. His brow furrowed, his eyes searched mine and noted the tear tracks, no doubt.
“What is it?” The words came out soft and so, so gentle.
“I’m just…” My voice shook, and I cleared my throat. “I’m thankful. For this moment.”
It sounded cheesy as anything I’d ever said, but that was the truth.
The last few years had been one failure after another. My confidence had been battered, and in many ways, it was right for that to be the case. I’d screwed up. I’d made bad choices. I’d listened to the wrong people. I’d let my desire formorecontrol me until I didn’t recognize my life.
And in the aftermath, I’d hidden myself away up here to finally come to terms with that and let myself process it without having anyone else spin the experience.
Walking behind Wyatt as we made our way to his house for waffles, seeing the sun’s rays arching into the sky and lighting up these mountains that called to me as my forgotten home… this was a moment when I could see how much I still had. Not in wealth or fame or success, but in the simplest and perhaps most important way. I hadn’t lost the ability to stop and witness beauty, enjoy life.
It’d been so long since I’d done anything like that. Some of that had come with softening—grieving, writing, sharing a bit of myself with Wyatt. My heart had thawed enough to open.
When my eyes met his, a shot of…something… slipped through me. He swayed forward like he had the day before, and my fingers tingled.
“It’s beautiful,” he said just above a whisper.
My heart clutched, now more attuned to feelings Wyatt incited than ever. His willingness to stop with me, not keep plowing ahead, worked like warm water over ice. He melted me.
