Well, what do you know?
“I told you,” Sway says, leaning into me so he can speak quietly and just for me.
I loop my arm in his and smile at him, making his face soften. “Yeah, you sure did.”
“You” by Louyah
Liv is fretting.
I know she’s worried about what is coming, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t as well.
The closer we get to the hotel and see how much Hope Town has changed since I left, the tighter my chest becomes. It feels like someone has reached into my chest and started squeezing.
That feeling hasn’t let up once since, either.
Davey left a little while ago and took Liv with him to get some provisions for the room—snacks, drinks, and a few toiletries we left behind. In reality, I needed her to go out so Sway could work his magic and take me the final step back to the man I was. Or as close as I can get. I’ve changed a lot over the years, but not enough that I won’t look pretty close to the man I was with some careful help of his hair tools. Older, harder, and weathered with the pain I’ve experienced in the time I’ve been gone has changed me. I wore my hair and my beard as a mask. A mask I need to shed not just for this reunion but also to be myself for the woman who owns me.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want her here. I seem to always want her with me. This, though, I needed to do alone. I’ve told myself it was because I didn’t want to turn her fretting into a full-blown worry session, but I know the truth now. Watching him through the mirror, I need this moment with my old friend just as much as I’m betting he does. I needed to face the past, myself, and be able to let him go.
“You sure about this, handsome?” Sway asks for the fifth time, still brushing his comb through my long hair. He’s been playing with it a lot more than he’s been brushing it, though.
“Needs to be done, Sway.”
“You know … ” He starts, trailing off while reaching to grab his scissors from where they had been resting on the tall cart that Davey rolled in for him when they arrived earlier. The silence ticked by. The whole time, he kept running his hands through my hair. Would have been weird, but damn, if it wasn’t relaxing.
I give him the time he needs and look over at the cart again. Sway says it holds everything he might ever need, but I’d put money on it holding a bunch of glitter in half the drawers.
“For so long, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on you. In the platonic sense, you dog.” He laughs when I look at him funny in the mirror he set up in this makeshift salon in the corner of the room. “Don’t you get old Sway wrong, you hunks are still oh-so hunky. Only now I have a hunky man of my own, and honey child, no way would I stray from my man no matter how hard you tried to get me.” He tosses his head back and hoots loudly at his own joke.
“Tell me about your husband. How did you meet?” I ask, too full of nervous energy to join in his hilarity but also genuinely wanting to know about his life now. I’m not touching the flirting bait he always loved to toss at myself or one of my former friends. Shameless. That’s just who Sway is. It’s oddly refreshing to know that hasn’t changed in the years that I’ve been away.
He keeps cutting my hair, not speaking. I watch as the long length falls with each snip.
Brush. Snip.
A blond piece falls to the floor.
Brush. Snip.
Pieces of the man I have become fall away to the floor with each bit of hair he releases to the floor.
Brush. Snip.
Pieces of the man I had been before fall into place with each cut he makes.
I was transfixed as I watched each piece he cut and the dance with the man I was and am warring out in the mirror. Each piece flutters to the floor, his pink-tipped fingernails twinkling all the while he is unaware of how mammoth this moment is. Who am I kidding … he knows. Hence the silence.
“He took Emmy’s place at Corps Security, honey buns,” Sway says softly. He doesn’t stop cutting and I look away from myself to focus on him and his dreary tone. I have just a moment to try to recall if I had ever heard him sound so … normal when he speaks again. “When you … well, when you died, honey.” He stops, dropping his arms to his sides and looking at me in the mirror.
Half my hair is still long on one side.
The other just looks like a mess.
Doesn’t matter, though. I can already see the change in my face.
Jesus.
What a mind fuck.
“After that, Emmy didn’t handle the aftermath that well. Most everyone will say that is the understatement of the millennium, but I digress. It was hard on everyone, but she carried a heavy load. She ran, but that dark prince of hers ran after her. Not saying it was perfect after that, but Maddox didn’t let her go, and they both healed a lot while they traveled their bumpy road. He didn’t give up on her, not once, no matter how hard she made it.”
“Where did she go?” I question further, not able to keep from prying even though I have a feeling that his answer will hurt.
“She went home.”
I sit up straighter in my chair and turn around to look at him.
“You don’t mean …”
The sad look in his eyes says it all.
“I do precisely mean that. Right to those horrible people genetics claim are her parents. Don’t worry about anything except the knowledge that her man was the best kind of persistent.”
“Something tells me it wasn’t remotely as smooth as you’re making it sound.”
“Well, life rarely is. Wouldn’t you say, Coopie?”
My eyes close, and I let that stupid fucking nickname wash over me.
“Point is, honey buns, when she left here, there was a void. We all felt it just as heavily as we felt when losing you. She just up and left without trusting her family. Some could say … there’s a few parallels there, hmm?”
“Can’t change the past, Sway,” I grumble a little harsher than I had intended. His words hit hard, his aim true—right to the gut, simmering and burning, just as they were intended to do.
“Not saying you should. What I was hoping you would see is that no matter what her reasons were then and how those of us she left behind felt about it—” He gives me a pointed stare before continuing. “What matters is that she eventually came home, and this family healed a little. We weren’t as solid as we were, but we will be now. Marinate on that, stud. Sounds familiar, darlin’, and I know you see that. There’s a whole hell of a lot to say about getting the missing piece back and feeling that peace when it slides into its spot after being missing for so long. There’s not a lot of room for anger when you’re weeping for joy, falling on the grateful knees you’ve spent all that time praying for a miracle on.”
His words slam into me.
Not softly, either.
He’s wisdom and learning about Emmy eases some of the trepidation I had felt about what’s to come. Solidifying what I thought to be true before leaving Boston—the one that drove me back to Hope Town—I’m not the only one who needs this. I’ve felt that missing piece that losing them left behind. The void and vastness of my family within that spot inside me has burned bright with pain since the day I left them.
I can only imagine what it feels like for them.