Page 224 of The Lies We Play

I close my eyes and listen to him breathe.

Chapter Thirty

Livia

Now . . .

Creed is there.

Not in memory.

Not in the private, humiliating archive where my mind has kept him for ten years, like a woman hoarding evidence for a trial no one has agreed to hold.

There.

In front of me.

On a screen.

He is older.

Of course he is. Ten years have passed since I last saw him in the Chelsea apartment, at our last goodbye. The goodbye that was not supposed to be a goodbye. The one dressed up as temporary because all three of us were still young enough to believe temporary meant life would give us the thing back once we were ready for it.

That was the problem with us, wasn’t it?

We kept calling things temporary because forever scared us less when we pretended it was a schedule.

A month at Halston’s place.

A road trip.

A semester.

A holiday apart.

A goodbye at the door.

We had a plan. A future. A version of our lives where the three of us made it out together, where love was not a thing we had to hide, negotiate, or survive around. We were young, and maybe that is the cruelest thing about youth. You can stand inside a life already cracking and still believe the sound is just weather.

That is when I learned how fast everything can change.

Not in the pretty way people say it when they mean opportunity or fate or some door opening at the perfect moment.

It changes like glass breaking in another room.

One second, the world still knows how to behave. The lights stay on. The city keeps moving. The person you love is tying his shoes, checking his phone, kissing you like he has every intention of coming back.

Then the next second arrives and takes him.

I didn’t know that yet.

That was the cruelest part.

Ten years ago, we talked about marriage. About forever. About children who might have Creed’s laugh, Halston’s eyes, my inability to leave a room without making a list. We talked about houses and names and what it would mean to belong to each other in public. We talked about souls, too, because at twenty-two I was still brave enough to believe in the dramatic parts out loud.

I told them once that we would find each other anywhere.

Even in the dark.