Emery was quiet as I dressed, taking my hand when I was ready and grabbing my yoga mat and a long towel on our way out the door. I cocked a brow, curiosity piqued, but he just squeezed my hand.
I watched the dawn break behind the mountains, the sky softly lightening to a cerulean blue as we drove. We weren’t on the road long before Emery pulled off to the side, parking and grabbing my mat from the back seat.
The waves were calm below us as we hiked down a bit, finding a plateau where Emery laid out my mat, taking the towel and spreading it out a few feet to the left. When he turned to me, I swore the sky lightened more in that moment, the golden hues of the morning racing to match that of his eyes.
“Usually when I have a bad day, people push me,” he said, swallowing. “My parents, my therapist. No one ever understands that I can’t talk about it when I don’t have anything to say. Even Grams, she wanted me to write, and for the longest time I couldn’t. I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can write, but even that is hard sometimes because honestly…” his voice trailed off as he tucked his hands into the pockets of his athletic shorts. “Honestly, I don’t see what the point is.”
I frowned, stepping into him and wrapping my arms around his waist, my head falling to his chest. He sighed, hugging me in return, his chin propped on my head.
“I can’t tell you how much it meant to me that you didn’t leave, didn’t get mad, didn’t look at me like I was broken or sad or like you pitied me. I gave you nothing, but you understood.” He pulled back, the sun rising a bit in his eyes as they found mine. “You’re the first person to do that. You’re the first person to make me feel alive, Cooper. In a long time.” He shrugged. “Maybe ever.”
My heart swelled at the same time guilt seeped low into my stomach. I had left him alone, let him have his bad day, all the while using ammo from his journal to break down his walls a little more. It was an unfair battle, one he didn’t even know I was fighting.
“I’d like to practice with you,” he said, nodding toward my mat. “If that’s okay. I know yoga is important to you, and I know it helped you get through the hardest time of your life. I thought maybe it could help me, too.”
It was a resurrection, the way my heart stopped in that moment and kicked back to life with a new beat under my chest. To someone driving by, it would have seemed so insignificant — Emery’s towel spread beside my mat, the two of us enjoying a morning yoga session before getting back on the road. But I knew it was more, I knew it meant he was healing, and I was a part of it.
We started in a seated position, our hands at heart center, faces turned to the west as the ocean mist drifted up the rocks to greet us. The sun rose behind us, the water sparkling a deep blue under its shine, our backs warming as it rose higher. With every new stretch, every new breath, I felt our connection grow stronger.
Emery Reed wasn’t a stranger anymore.
Looking back, it doesn’t surprise me that I didn’t see the storm rolling in from the east, the clouds billowing up higher and higher behind the mountains. All I could see was the sunshine, all I could feel was his heart beating, and mine matching the rhythm, falling into sync without so much as a second thought of what would happen next.
We laid down in Savasana and I meditated as if that moment alone was enough to banish any worries I had before. I found a reassurance that wasn’t actually present, a promise never spoken.
I thought I couldn’t lose him.
But I could, and I would, in a way I never even imagined.
After yoga, we ended up staying the rest of the day in Big Sur, eating lunch by the river and hiking the falls. We got up close and personal with the redwood trees, and Kalo found more than a few furry friends as we explored.
The next morning, we took our time driving the rest of the way up the PCH, stopping once we reached Legget before traveling on to Grants Pass the next day. Our afternoons were mostly spent driving or hiking the areas we passed, and our conversations grew deeper with each day. Emery talked more in those few days than he had the entire trip, and I wasn’t tempted to read his journal anymore. Hearing the stories of his childhood and his thoughts on life from his own lips instead of those pages was better than I imagined, I only had to give up my need to know what he wouldn’t tell me — like what would happen when we reached Seattle.
“One day, I was just sitting in my bedroom and I noticed this mug of pens on my desk,” he told me when we’d finished our drive up the PCH. We were standing at the northernmost point of it near Leggett, our eyes on the setting sun over the coast. “And I remember being instantly annoyed. Why the fuck did I have so many pens? I needed one, maybe two, just in case the first one broke. But I had seventeen. Why?”
I’d laughed, shrugging. “We just collect things over the years, I suppose.”
“Exactly. And it wasn’t just pens, it was everything. I looked around my room that night at all this… stuff that I didn’t need. So, I went into the kitchen, grabbed an entire box of trash bags, and locked myself in my room for the rest of the night. I cranked my music, started at one corner, and by three o’clock the next morning I’d bagged up seventy percent of my shit to donate.”
I’d nodded, understanding him more than he knew. “I had that same kind of clarity when I was packing up to leave with you. I was standing there in my room trying to figure out what to take with me when I realized I didn’t need any of it. There was nothing there that I couldn’t leave behind and never think about again. So, I stopped packing.”
Emery had slid his hand into mine then, fingers running over my palm before he laced them with my own. “I think when we let go of the materialistic shit we think we need, the stuff we grew up looking for because we thought happiness existed under their price tag, that’s when we start living a better life. A free, meaningful existence.”
“Very Gemini of you,” I’d teased, and he’d just lifted my fingers to his lips, kissing them with a playful grin on his lips as the last of the sun dipped away.
That’s how easy it was, talking to Emery. Nothing was off limits — politics, beliefs, childhood, future wants and needs. Sometimes we’d talk about something I’d never discussed before and I’d find new beliefs, ones I didn’t even know I had. He made me think before I answered, before I chimed in with how I felt about whatever topic we had on the table.
Emery pushed me. He challenged me. He opened me up.
The more I learned about him, the more I wanted to know. He told me about his family, about growing up in the affluent neighborhood he called home in South Florida. I asked him about his friends, of which he had few, mainly because, in his own words, not many people stick around and put up with my shit for long. It seemed his closest friend had been his grandmother before she passed, so I listened to his stories of growing up with her, of the memories he would have of her forever.
And, for the first time, he talked about his brother. Not just to me, but to anyone — ever. He told me he didn’t realize how much he needed to talk about his brother, about the hole left before he’d even been born, until we’d talked about it the day we left Vegas. He was letting me in, more than anyone before me, and I took that gift with more appreciation than I could express.