Uniting the Souls (Souls of Chicago #6)(44)
“We were inseparable. We walked to school together since neither of us could drive and had almost all the same classes. Sean’s mom had decided over the summer that it was okay for him to hang out at my house so after school we did our homework together, alternating houses. He was my first real friend and I was his. We were very close and shared everything with each other, but I never had the nerve to ask him if he liked girls or boys, and he never really talked about either one.” I glanced up and saw Isaac and Hudson still listening.
“One night a couple years after we met, we were doing homework in my room. I was reading out loud from my history book and I looked up when I noticed Sean had stopped taking notes. He was staring at me with an odd expression on his face and then he leaned forward and kissed me.” I closed my eyes as I remembered the sweetness of that very first kiss.
“First kisses are the best,” Isaac said. I opened my eyes and saw him turning to look at Hudson with a dreamy expression on his face. I was glad that Hudson and I had both been able to share firsts with Isaac. Hudson smiled back at him, a soft look in his eyes and then he turned to me.
“What happened next?” he asked.
“Oh, I kissed him back. I’d been wanting to do it for two years and it was like Sean had opened a floodgate.” Hudson and Isaac laughed at that and I joined in. It felt good to laugh at the memories and I had them to thank for that.
“After that, it was pretty clear that we both liked boys and particularly each other. We agreed to be exclusive, which wasn’t very hard considering neither one of us went anywhere without the other. We were each other’s first everything and I loved him with my whole heart, so when he asked me to marry him on graduation day, I said yes.” I heard Isaac’s soft gasp and I looked up at him.
“You and Sean were married?” he asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Unfortunately, same-sex marriage wasn’t legalized in Illinois until several years later, but we had a private ceremony and exchanged rings. We made vows to each other before God and our families regardless of what the state said. So yes, we were married in all the ways that mattered,” I explained. Isaac smiled at me.
“After we got married we found a small apartment off campus and started taking classes at the college. Sean decided to major in law. He told me he wanted to do something that would make a difference for the LGBTQA community. He figured if he majored in law, maybe he could help change some of the laws like the one that kept people from marrying whoever they chose. I majored in education because I wanted to work with kids.” I smiled, thinking how I had still ended up doing that even if it wasn’t in a classroom.
“Towards the middle of our second year of college, Sean got sick. We thought it was just the flu, but after a while he just wasn’t getting better. The doctor ran a series of tests and I held Sean’s hand as he told us that the cancer was back. I remember feeling like I was staring down a tunnel at the doctor as he explained that the cancer had remained undetected for a long time and by the time it had presented itself in what we had thought was the flu, it was already at stage four.”
My chest felt tight as I remembered the hopeless feeling of seeing the man I loved dying and knowing there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it. I’d tried though, I’d begged and pleaded for God to take it away, to give it to me instead, but neither of those things happened. I rubbed at my chest to ease the ache and Hudson and Isaac moved to sit on either side of me on the couch.
“Do you want to stop?” Hudson asked and I heard the catch in his voice. I looked at him and then Isaac who had tears streaming down his cheeks and I shook my head.
“I need to do this. I need to tell you,” I told them. Isaac grabbed one of my hands and held it in his lap. Hudson wrapped an arm around my shoulder and laid his other hand on my leg. I took a deep breath, drawing strength from their closeness.
“Sean did everything the doctors told him to do. He knew all the dreams we had for our future; vacations, kids, buying our first house. He fought like hell to hold on, but eventually the cancer was just too much and I held his hand as he took his last breath. It was almost exactly six years to the day that we met.”
I gasped as the tears I’d been trying so hard to hold back came crashing forward and I doubled over from the pain of reliving the day I’d lost my husband. Hudson and Isaac wrapped their arms around me, whispering soothing words in my ears and letting me get it all out. Eventually, my sobs quieted, but they continued to hold me until I raised my head.
“Thank you,” I whispered hoarsely.
“Thank you for sharing that with us,” Hudson said.
“Is that why you started Agape House? Because Sean had wanted to make a difference in the LGBTQA community?” Isaac asked.
“Sean’s parents came to me shortly after he died and they told me that I had made their son happier than they could’ve ever hoped for. They said that they’d been so afraid of losing him after the first round of cancer that they’d held on too tight, nearly suffocating him. They told me that because of me, Sean had truly lived a full life. They gave me the remainder of the money they had set aside for Sean’s education, saying that they knew I would do something good with it, something to honor their son.
“I combined Sean’s dreams with my dream of working with kids and I started Agape House. Every teen that we’re able to help at the center, has Sean to thank,” I said proudly.