Page 80 of Letting Go

"There in two hours."

I pack a few clothes and it takes longer than I planned. I still have to move more slowly than I'm used to. I also haven’t seen Chloe in two weeks. Two weeks. The fleeting phone calls are just not enough. I can't wait to hold her and feel her next to me. Just thinking about holding hands with her is electric. There's a tap on my door and Mateus is there.

"Just dropping in boss," he says. "Can I help you get ready? Speed things along?"

He putters around helping me pack, and we talk about the new offices, our new roles. Swinging my overnight bag into the passenger side, he does a quick send off and I'm steering toward the water.

When I pull into long-term parking Noah Tappen waves at me. I stop, and the window slides down. Noah leans in. "Hey man, how you feeling? Heard you took a bullet or two for the team."

The team. My team.

The Water Falcon is a great craft. Elegant, high speed, with a mix of both class and scrappiness. She doesn't mind getting dirty.

She starts right up, and we quietly chug our way through neon lanes, ocean water lapping softly at her hull. Gulls wheel above, hopeful that I'm a fish trawler with scraps and then calling in anger when they discover I'm not.

It's just as I'm steering the boat at the end of the breakwater, watching the lighthouse come up on the left, that I hear something behind me. It's the cabin door closing. I turn slowly, trying not to pull where the stint was, and there's Chloe. She's just standing there looking strong and healthy, her wavy, dark, brown hair in a ponytail. She's wearing tan, cotton capris, dark blue deck shoes, and a thick, blue, hand-knitted cable knit sweater that brings out the fine bone structure of her face and the blue of her eyes. The cuffs are folded back on themselves.

Glancing around for close craft, I cut the engine completely.

"Oh my God," I say, and then she's in my arms.

Chapter Twenty-One

Chloe

When I hear the engines cycle high, I know we're in open water. I've been sitting down here with half a bottle of wine knowing I should save the other half for him and happy that we have an extra bottle. I don't know why I'm so nervous. It's been nearly two weeks and I've been trying hard to not think about the future with him or any future with him. But I can't help it.

I love you.

My rational self says: he was shot and hurt when he said he loved me. I'm used to men making promises in the extreme.

But he also asked: Do you trust me?

At that moment, I said yes. These two weeks have been waiting to see if it was true. Did I really trust him?

When I finally left the hospital, Devon, Laurel, Travis, and Claire made a wonderful welcome home meal for me. Geo stopped in, always a sucker for a homecooked dinner he said. Travis seemed genuinely upset. For a kid who's always happy it's hard to see him unglued. I had to sit for a long time holding his hand. It was also hard to talk about what happened with Cory in the room and we had to be careful what was said. I realized there was a lesson there.

I also realized I didn't want transactional conversations with the people I love. They weren't trying to get something from me. Having to be careful also made me realize, not everyone speaks the same language at the same time. After everyone left that first night home, it was just Claire and me in the clinic apartment. She left for a moment to get a comb and a hairbrush and two elastics.

Maybe it has to do with her work with animals, but Claire's language is through touch. Especially when words fail her. "Let's French braid each other's hair."

She sat on the floor and I sat on the sofa. I first parted her hair on the side, then braided each, gathering more hair in half-inch increments over and over again, bringing six strands together, recombining them into three, coming down the center, and using an elastic to tie it off.

When I was done, she turned around. She just looked radiant. There were tears in her eyes.

"Your turn," she said. I sat on the hardwood floor in front of the sofa where she gave me the exact same braid. Careful with my temple and the side of my ear, her hands were soft and gentle. We didn’t say much. We didn’t have to.

When she finished, she scooted to the floor next to me, produced a glass of red wine for each of us and said, "We're the only two that know how to do this you know. Mom never braided the other girls. I think she got too busy."

"We should teach them."

"You should teach them. You've always been a better teacher."

"But you’re the smart one."

"No. I just learned how to study and how to take a good test. You always protected us, Chloe. Always. You did it naturally. Just like you did in the alley."

And that was that. We both started crying and then laughing and some huge dark cloud that had hung between us, simply lifted.