Page 28 of Can't Refuse Him
For him.
For me.
To move on and overcome my past. I needed to say the words. And mean them.
“I forgive you.”
It echoed around us and hugged him.
He gasped. A real, ragged sound.
“But not because you deserve it. But because we both need it.”
He nodded. Trembling.
I stepped closer. My voice is quiet now. Bitter. Human.
“You should have beenkinderto me. Not just at the end. From the start. You shouldn’t have treated me like something to hide. Something to use. Something you could just throw away.”
“I know,” he said again, softer.
“Because I was never trash.”
His eyes met mine. And he said it, not with excuses, not with deflection. “I see that now.”
“It’s too late for me, but you are still alive, Mark. You need to go live your life and stop living in regret and in the past. I am fine. I have accepted my fate.”
The memoryscape trembled. Cracked at the seams. Light bled in from the real world.
I looked down at our still-touching hands.
One last surge passed between us. And I knew he felt it too. Not peace. Not healing.
But truth. Truth about my death. Truth that he and I were never meant to be together. Truth that I was going to be OK. That I am OK.
And that is exactly what I had needed to move on.
Chapter 15–Bin A Long Time Coming
Ididn’t move for what had felt like hours. He and I sat on the floor of my janitor’s closet. I had come in on the weekend, as we had devised. No one else is here but me, him, and the howling wind and rain outside. It is a perfect backdrop for what had been a very emotional story.
I take a deep breath as if I had held the air in my lungs the entire time. I rub my eyes; they were dry from not blinking.
Eddy had just…told me everything.
Not just in words, but in a sort of psychic data dump with full surround sound. Tragic lightning. Overdramatic musical score. And bonus trauma projections.
He showed me who he once had been when he was alive. What he became. And what he had to do to get here.
I am half-wrapped in my janitor’s overalls; the arms are tied at the waist. Covering my chest is just a thin singlet. It is quite warm in the janitor's office, even for a dreary day.
He stands up across from me now. Tall, hot, and glowing in the dark in a low-budget afterlife kind of way. He truly is fromthe seventies. He is still the same bin-dwelling spirit to me, still moving like one. But something about him had shifted.
The weight on his shoulders had gone. The quiet around his eyes is now full of noise.
He looks like he has finally let it all go. And I knew from my own burdens that telling someone is the first step in forgiving yourself.
“I am glad you got to speak to him,” I murmur.
