Page 70 of Lighting the Lamp
“I know.”
But I have to do this alone because this thing with Alise is mine and always has been.
I remember the first time I realized it. I was sixteen, and she had a notebook in her lap, a Sharpie stain on her fingers, and was curled up on the porch swing like she belonged there. I sat beside her and asked what she was writing. She said,“Just stuff I don’t want to forget.”She didn’t know she was already becoming one of those things to me. Something etched into me so deeply that no amount of time or distance could erase it.
There’s the time I saw her cry, and she swore she was fine, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of my hoodie like it was a shield. The way her laugh cracks open something warm in my chest. The quiet moment last Christmas when her fingers brushed mine as we passed the mashed potatoes, and she looked at me like she wanted to say something, but didn’t. Every memory feels louder now. If everything is falling apart around me, if she’s slipping away, I want to be the one who stays long enough to feel every piece break. I want the ache. I want the sting. Because she’s worth it.
“Thanks, Cole.”
“Anytime,” he says. “Call me if you need anything or if the light goes out.”
I glance at the porch and grin. The light is still glowing faint against the morning light, steady just like her. Even when she’s quiet and hurting, Alise never stops burning.
“Yeah, I will,” I murmur before hanging up, the silence wrapping back around me like a second skin. It settles into the truck with me, makes itself at home in my ribs as I pull up her name on my phone, my thumb hovering over it.
Tiny Terror
I’m still here.
Delete.
I meant every word.
Delete.
You don’t have to be scared alone.
Delete.
I remember her smile at the rink the other night and how it made my knees weak. The way she always hides her yawn behind the back of her hand, like it's something secret. The sound of her breath hitching minutes before I kissed her.
I set the phone down on the passenger seat, too tired to hold on to hope and too wrecked to let it go. Then I lean forward, press my forehead to the steering wheel, and whisper her name into the stillness. She won’t hear me, but maybe the light will. Maybe it always has, and that’s why I can’t make myself leave. Because the only thing worse than losing her… is walking away before she knows I stayed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Beau
Idon’t remember falling asleep. One minute, I’m staring at the porch light like it’s a tether to everything I can’t say. Next, I’m blinking awake in the hard light of the afternoon with my spine twisted sideways and the seat belt buckle digging into my ribs, like even my truck is trying to shove me out.
My heart stutters when I notice the porch light is off, like it wasn’t just a light bulb, but a sign from Alise that everything will be okay. I stare at the spot where that warm glow used to be and feel the cold creep in under my skin. I tell myself to breathe. In. Out. In. Out. Slow and steady. I try to convince myself that if I keep counting—four in, six out—I won’t fall apart before I make it to the damn clinic, but my body doesn’t want to listen.
I peel out of the driveway on autopilot, tires crunching over gravel that sounds way too loud in the stillness of the afternoon. I grip the steering wheel tighter than I need to, hands aching from it. I should go home, shower, and pretend I got a full night’s sleep instead of passing out in my truck like a wounded animal. But my appointment is in an hour, and there’s no pretending today.
Today is the day I find out if everything changes. If the exhaustion, bruising, and all the damn swelling that won’t godown all become a name. A diagnosis. My new reality. My stomach knots so tight it makes me nauseous. I haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon, but even the thought of food makes me want to hurl. I roll down the window, needing air, needing something real to hold on to. The wind rushes in, cold and clean, but it doesn’t clear my head.
Everything feels muted, like the world knows I’m about to unravel and it’s trying to give me space to do it, but space is the last thing I want. I want her. Her voice, her arms wrapped around me like they’ve always known the shape of me. It feels like proof I’m not too much, even as part of me braces for the moment she decides I am. God, I didn’t even mean to fall asleep in front of her house. I should be worried about what the doctor will tell me. If it’s the end of my career and life as I know it, but all I can think about is how I want Alise by my side. To hold my hand and tell me everything is okay, even when, deep down, she knows it’s not.
I open my messages to her, thumb hovering over the screen like an idiot. There’s a text I half-wrote at some point. when the cold set into my bones and all I wanted was to hear her voice.
Tiny Terror
You don’t have to come outside. I just need you to know I stayed. I always will.
I never sent it because I was too afraid it would scare her off. The second she responded, I would have broken and asked her to come sit beside me and hold my hand, like that would somehow keep me from falling apart. But that would’ve ruined everything, wouldn’t it?
How do I explain that I reach for her when I’m weak because she makes me stronger? She’s never been a crutch; she’s been a tether. A steady place to land when the ground gives waybeneath me. A breath of calm when everything inside me is chaos. And the most important thing is that she lets me fall apart in her presence, not so I can stay broken, but so I can put myself back together. So I can be strong for her when it matters, for the people I love, and for the world that keeps asking more of me. Yes, she’s been all of that for as long as I can remember. But not because she carries my weight, but because she reminds me I can carry it myself.
Alise isn’t someone I want only when things are hard. She’s someone I need when things are good, too. I don’t just want her when I’m hurting; I want her when I’m healing. When I’m laughing. When I’m building a life that feels like peace. She’s not my escape; she’s my home.
