Love and First Sight(63)

What am I doing here? Isn’t it plainly obvious? I just drove across the country to see you, I think.

“I’m really sorry about your dad,” I say.

“Thanks,” she says. “It was pretty scary, but he’s going to be all right. He’s even promised to start eating better and stuff.”

“That’s good,” I say. “Yeah, really great.”

“But you didn’t answer my question,” she says. “Why are you here? How are you here?”

“We drove, actually,” I say. “Don’t worry, not me personally. Whitford did the driving.”

She doesn’t laugh.

“So…?” she prompts.

Right. She still wants to know why.

Why, indeed? To answer that question could take hours. To completely explain the reason, to tell her what I’ve learned. But in simple terms, she is the reason. But she’s also the one who taught me the reason.

See, I had been kidding myself with this idea that I needed to maintain my independence. In truth, my life has been dependent on others, or at least interdependent with others, since the day I was born. And my story has been woven together with Cecily’s from the moment I transferred to Toano High School. She’s the one who got me to try out to be cohost when I didn’t think I could, who helped me scroll through the announcement script. She’s filled the gaps whenever there were things I couldn’t do for myself. She taught me about art, about beauty, and about sunrises. And she’s filled the emotional gaps, too. Yeah, independence and self-reliance sound nice in theory, but in reality they are just synonyms for loneliness. And before I met Cecily, I was so tired, without even realizing it, so tired of being lonely.

I think through all this, and then blurt out, “Because, Cecily, I was wrong. I always thought I could do life by myself, that I wanted to live independently. But you taught me that if there’s no one to share your experiences with—if there’s no one to look at the painting with, no one to audition with, no one to go to homecoming with—then what’s the point?”

She’s quiet for a while. “Um,” she stammers.

“I love you, Cecily.”

The words just come out automatically, from some truthful part of me that is finally ready to say what’s inside. I don’t think about them; they just happen.

She gasps. “What did you say?”

“I love you,” I repeat, faster and more insistently. “I love you, Cecily.”

“Will…”

But I don’t care whether she loves me back, I just want her to know, right now, for this moment and to remember it always, that this is how I feel about her, and I say, “I’ve loved you for a long time. I loved you before I could see and after I could see. I loved you when I could only imagine your face and after I could look at your face. I love you completely, all of you.”

She’s quiet.

I’m breathing quickly, heavily, like I’m about to cry or start laughing. I feel like something inside my chest—maybe my heart, or my lungs, or something—is expanding and growing, and I need her to speak before it breaks open.

“Well, say something,” I plead.

“You love me?” she asks, pronouncing love like it’s a foreign word.

My chest relaxes a little, confident she has at least gotten this message. Even if I never talk to her again after this, she’ll know forever how I felt.

“Yes, I do,” I say.

“Really?” But her voice breaks at the word, and she falls into my arms crying.

“What?” I ask, unsure how she’s feeling.

“My whole life, I never thought—” Her voice falters but then the words spill out. “I never thought anyone would feel that way about me.”

“Oh, Ces.”

I wrap my arms around her and hold her face against my shoulder.

She grabs my hands.

“No cane?” she asks.

“My eyesight has improved a lot,” I say.

“That’s great!” she says. “Oh my God, Will, that’s so great. Can you see me, like, right now?”

“Yes, I can see you quite well. You have a beautiful smile.”

She bites her lip.

“I mean it,” I say. “I’m sorry for the things I said in the car that day. You’re beautiful. You always have been, and you always will be.”

She melts against my shoulder.

“You want to go for a walk?” I ask.

“A walk?” she says, as if waking up from a dream to find us standing on a porch in California.

“I’ve never seen the ocean, and since we’re so close, I thought, you know…”

“Okay,” she says.

She takes my hand, and we walk down the stairs and back out to the sidewalk toward the beach. With my free hand, I give a little wave toward the car to let them know everything is fine. Cecily seems so wrapped up in our walk that she doesn’t even notice all the thumbs-ups they flash in return.

We take off our shoes, walk out onto the sand, and eventually sit down near the water. We watch the deep green waves rise and then crash into light foam that spreads across the beach. I wonder how much longer I will be able to appreciate sights like this. I pick up a handful of sand and let it stream through my fingers. The grains are far too small to identify individually. Instead, they blend together like a streak of cream-colored paint.