The canoe steadies as Lo goes still. He peeks down at me, through the collar of his shirt. His genuine smile begins to swell my heart.
“What…?” I breathe, slowly slipping out from beneath the fabric. I glance around, the wasp gone. We drift lazily towards the west bank.
Lo holds me to his chest, our limbs tangled up together. His face is sharp like steel blades built upon years and years of battles lost and won.
“These years…” he starts, and I know this is much more than a wasp. This is more than a bicycle. Whatever this is, it exists in our decades together. “These years have been epic, and not because it was easy—because it wasn’t always—but because you and me, we flew.”
My tears brim, and I see us fly beyond our lowest expectations for ourselves, all the hard parts where our addictions tried to weigh us down.
We flew.
“You made that possible, you have to know that,” Lo says, his voice lowering. “Without you, I just don’t know, Lil.” When his dad died, it’d been his lowest point in years.
“You’ve made it just as possible, Lo. I wouldn’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here,” I repeat the same sentiment. He helps me every day in ways that no one else could. No one else knows. It’s not just sex. It’s every emotion that’s tied to a low, to a really bad day.
I always turn to him like he turns to me, and we’re not enablers. No one says that we shouldn’t be together. No one tells us to split apart. Our souls are still wound together, still wound tight.
“You know what I tell your brother?” I take a deep breath, remembering the conversations I’ve had with Ryke. “I tell him, ‘Lo’s ice in the winter now. He won’t melt.’”
His eyes redden, welling, and he says, “Thanks to you.”