His hand reaches up, fingertips feathering over the light stubble on my jaw. My eyes close, my breath hitches and I’m torn between shaking him off and begging him for more.
“The last few days have been a bittersweet agony. Knowing you’re here, you’re real, close enough for me to touch you, hold you.”
His gentle touch becomes firmer as his entire palm slides around my jaw, over my neck, and cups my nape.
I stand immobile, fighting the potency of his touch, eyes shut tight, breathing laboured.
My mind races and spins, unable to settle on any one thought. Rather, they all bubble and churn, screeching around in my head, demanding recognition.
He squeezes gently on the back of my neck, a single point of pressure to let me know he’s there, and that touch has a power to it that grounds me and anchors me to the present.
If what he believes is true, it would answer so many things about my life. How I’ve always felt I was missing something. I’ve always thought it was merely me not fitting in. I was unlike my family, different from most others in Lily Bay. Add to that my sexuality, and I attributed the gaping emptiness in my soul to being different from the norm.
I was the boy who loved to cook. The boy who surfed because he loved the freeing weightlessness of flying across the waves, not the attention of the many girls trying to catch my eye. The teen who could play rugby but would rather be in the kitchen with his mother. The young man who loved sex but hated intimacy and connection.
I was all those things and more. And what Macsen is saying right here and now is that there’s a reason for all of it.
And that reason is him.
Or, more accurately, missing him.
“Since the night you left, I’ve been searching for you. I knew we’d meet one day. It was inevitable, but I couldn’t help trying to expedite that moment because every day I spent apart from you was a day too many.”
It’s too much. Too much and not enough. His words, fuck, his words. They tear me apart and put me back together, only, like anything that was once broken and now fixed, I can feel the change inside me. I’m not the same man I was a few days ago. Hell, I’m not the same man I was an hour ago. I can feel it all. The only part of me fighting this is the logical bit of my brain. The bit that says this is some kind of crazy bullshit.
But inside my chest, deeper than even my heart, it knows what he’s saying is true. It knows him. It always has.
“You’re shaking.”
Am I?
I open my eyes, slowly turn my head to face him, and I can feel the slight tremors skating up my spine and over my skin. When my blue meets his brown, everything stills. Even the air around us.
“Let’s sit down. I know this is a lot. I know what I’m asking you to believe is—”
“No.” He frowns at my harsh tone, worry evident in his gaze. “I don’t want to sit. I want you to tell me one thing.”
“Anything.”
“Why do you remember me, but I have no memories of you, only hazy, flickering shadows of… something?”
His eyes close on an inhale, and when they open, that golden ring around his pupil all but glows.
“Because it’s my curse. To remember. I’ve never lived a life without you in it, and you can feel me because you’re the same. Each of your lives here, on this side, has always been with me. Our only difference is, every time you’re here, you forget me until I find you and make you remember.”
“You say that with such certainty, but how the hell can you be so sure, Macsen? We’re not immortal. We all have to die in the end.”
My parents, your parents. Gone.
“We die, yes. We all die. But in every life, and I’ve seen all of ours, we are always, always, together in the end.”
I wasn’t even aware of how close we now are. At some point, my forehead has found his, his hand pulling me to him, telling me to take solace in his touch.
“What are you thinking?” he whispers, the question tickling my lips.
“Things I shouldn’t be.” A confession, one that costs me, because if I admit this, I agree to make all this real.
“Tell me.”
I sigh, but it isn’t filled with weariness. It’s more one of acceptance, and as soon as I acknowledge it, the turmoil inside me evaporates like the morning mist over the sea when the sun finally rises.
“I’m thinking I’m crazy.”
“You’re not.”
“I’m thinking you’re crazy.”
He chuckles lightly.
“I’m not.”
I inhale his exhale, and it emboldens me. He gives me the strength to set my next words free.
“I’m thinking I’ve found the part inside of me that’s always been missing.”
His voice is thick with emotion when he asks, “Me? Am I that missing part?”
“Yes.” No hesitation. The word escapes my lips and becomes flesh, and bone, and truth. I give it to him. It belongs to Macsen. It’s his to hold and keep safe.
And that empty part of me—that Macsen-shaped hole—begins to fill.
Relief paints his features in smooth warmth, melting the tightness around his eyes, evening the creases in his brow, and for long moments we stand there and just… be.
This moment feels sacred.
A first, yet not.
The start of something that never really ended.
The first line of a new verse.
The opening scene after an interlude.
It’s the start, and the middle, but not the end.
Never the end. I see that now.
“Hiraeth.” The perfectly pronounced word slips from his lips and surprises me. Macsen had told me in our many conversations that he grew up an hour outside of London. I never thought to ask him why a southern English boy ended up with such a Welsh name.
He sees the confused wonder on my face and smiles.
“My mother was born here, somewhere in mid-Wales, I think. When I was a boy, she spoke of Hiraeth, how she yearned to return to the place she considered home. When she passed, my father said he believed her spirit came back here.”
“Did she tell you what Hiraeth means?”
Without thought, I reach out to take his hand, lacing our fingers together, needing another point of contact.
He shakes his head. “No, not really. And on the odd occasion I thought of the word as I grew older, all I could gather was it meant homesickness.”
“I guess that’s the literal translation, but I’m not sure there’s a word in English that encompasses it.”
“Tell me.”
“I’m not a fluent Welsh speaker like my mother, but most people in Wales understand Hiraeth. It’s a longing, a yearning for something or someone, for a place or a feeling that you remember but have lost. My mother always said it was an aching need to be where your spirit belonged. For some people, that’s the place they grew up but have now moved away from. For others, it’s a place they feel most connected, like the mountains or the sea. And for others it’s…”
My words stop, understanding crashing over me.
Macsen knows Hiraeth.
He knows the very fabric of the word.
“A person.”
The world tilts and shifts before sliding back into place.
“That emptiness inside me, your twenty-eight-year search.”