Page 102 of Yours, For Good

He understood how important a step it was for me to open up about this.

"She had me young," I said. "At eighteen years old, she lost her family somehow— I don't know if she left or she was kicked out. I felt like I was still a child when I lost her, and she was a mom at the same age."

Javier stopped the circling motion in the water. My legs fell slowly to their rightful place under me, but I didn't stand on the granite again. I let my feet float behind me, and Javier supported me with his arms still around me.

"I don't know how she did it." I swallowed the tears that threatened to fill my eyes. "She was a fighter. She called us luchadoras. She loved to say, pa'lante. A promise we made to each other to keep going."

Javier's face saddened for me. He didn't interrupt. He just kissed my forehead and listened.

It got harder to talk with every word I uttered, my throat tightening with emotion.

I rested my temple on his cheek. "I was her world. She never went out, never dated. The little free time she had went to me. We moved often but she said it was okay— we were each other's home."

It helped to have him close, so I was the one to squeeze him this time.

"None of that helped her when she got sick." I closed my eyes. "None of that helped me when I had to grieve her. All I could do was to keep going by myself. Always pa'lante."

He kissed my hair, the curve of my jaw. "I'm sorry."

"It's all I know, Javier. Wanting friends was the risk I could handle. Going for love— one anchor— a keystone again in my life that I could lose—"

"I understand."

The sun warmed my skin, and I took a deep breath. He let me pull the pieces I shared back together into their shrine in my heart. For several moments, all I could hear were the soft waves on the sandy shore and the wind playing with the trees surrounding the lake.

Some time later, Javier shared some of his own memories, a wistfulness to his voice as he balanced the scales.

"My grandmother always talked openly to me about losing the love of her life. Having to marry someone she didn't want and seeing the man she adored marry someone else. She would always show me the sadness she carried, yet an iron will straightened her back and kept her going. Her own version of pa'lante, I suppose."

He shook his head like it was still hard for him to imagine. I lifted a hand to his face.

He took a deep breath. "In the final decade of her life, the discontent mellowed. It turned to melancholy, then a sort of acceptance. All through her life she encouraged me to use the power I had for good, because I was a cis man in a generation that would let me do things she was never allowed to do as a woman."

I caressed his skin, leaving trails of cold water. He didn't say anything about it, but smiled.

"At the end," he said, "she told me I had to follow my heart but, if I couldn't, to at least learn to live a good life like she had. That was her cornerstone at the end— that I had everything to live a great life, just like she had. Just like she had fought for."

"Does it feel like a lot of responsibility? Is that why you're a philanthropist?"

"It just feels like the truth. I have everything I could ever need to live a good life. All I'm trying to do is do even better every day… and now, I'm trying to follow my heart. So far… my heart says it's yours. So here I am. Trying to follow where it takes me."

"Javier…"

"It's okay." He placed his mouth on mine; a tender, unassuming kiss this time. "I'll be here until you know if you want to catch up."

Chapter 40

Javier

NORA DIDN'T SAY MUCH afterwards. She studied me with the kind of seriousness I used to only see in the mirror. Maybe I'd brought down her optimism by being around her; if so, I deserved the limbo we were in for a whole new reason.

"You don't have to say anything right now." I gave her another kiss, with as much care as I could add to it. "Take your time. Even when you leave New York… we don't need to make it into a hard deadline if we don't want to."

Her arms came around my neck; her cold, wet skin left trails on my shoulders, and a shiver ran down my spine.

"If nothing else," she said, "all this understanding is going to spoil me rotten."

"I'd like to spoil you more."