28 - Tomorrow, Ill Love You

28

Tomorrow, I'll Love You

I saiah was sculpted by some greater life force.

That's the conclusion I come to as I stare at his sleeping form. Without a shirt, I admire every inch—the curve of the muscles and the leanness of his body covered in ink. His face is serene and gentle, his lips slightly parted and his eyelashes fanning over his cheeks.

Raven is curled up on his abdomen as she has been since I fed her an hour ago. I rest my mug on my nightstand and sit back against the headboard with my poetry book in my hands. The one he annotated for me. The one with pages decorated with tabs and highlights and folded corners.

To no surprise, the pages are dotted with teardrops.

I run my thumb over my current page, over the pen scribblings in the margins that he left. Even so, I fan back to the dedication page, where he wrote, To Aurora, the dawn of every one of my days. There's something to be said for hearing—or in my case, reading—just how important you are to someone. To know that even apart, he felt this way about me. It's a gut-wrenching feeling. One that makes me both happy and sad. Happy that he loved me that much, even then. And sad that we were apart.

I bring my good knee up and rest the book against it, thumbing through the pages. His scrawl is on every page, some sections underlined, sections of entire poems rewritten, and personal notes to me. I love the way certain letters curl underneath and become this hybrid print-cursive mix. I love that it feels like something he needed to do. And I love that it's mine.

On "Still You", he notes he once called it "Still Yours" and wrote about all the ways I still had his heart, that part of him would always call me home.

On one titled "A.J.M", after my initials, he wrote it was once a prose poem. The final version is a long form, where the first word of each line spells out my name. The first time I read it, I could barely get through it. Once again, tears fall when I read his notes.

And it goes on and on. From "Surefire" to "Five Letter Word" to "Still Feel It All", I collect all of it and lock it away close to my heart.

"Rora?" Isaiah's sleepy voice breaks through the silence like a sunray through the dark.

I glance over at him, intoxicated by how beautiful and peaceful he looks. "Morning, sleepy head."

His eyelids flutter, remaining closed, but his lips turn up to a smile. Raven stretches out on his stomach and plops over to the end of the bed. Isaiah rolls toward me, stretching his long, tattooed arms above his head before his hand lands on my left leg.

"How's the knee?" he asks, like he does every morning, while his fingers gently press around it and run gently over the scar. It's such a gentle, thoughtful touch and one that he does without thinking. It makes my throat tight every time.

"A bit sore but okay. I have another MRI next week."

Isaiah kisses my arm in response but finally blinks those beautiful, brown eyes open. They widen when he sees the book in my hand, then the tear tracks on my cheeks.

"I feel like I've made you cry a disproportionate amount."

I snort. "No shit."

He sits up and pulls me to him, a gentle finger under my chin turning my lips to his.

"I have coffee breath."

Without a word, Isaiah practically crawls over me to grab my mug. He takes a long sip before he sets it down and returns to hover over my lips. "Happy now?"

Heat floods my cheeks. "I suppose."

"Good. I'll take that kiss any minute now, Miss Matthews." Isaiah's voice is raspy, and it sends a chill down my spine. My smile grows without thinking. I do as he says. Sinking into the ease of this—of this kiss. The kiss feels like the morning sun. Warm and gentle, growing stronger with every second.

After a moment, he pulls back, giving me three quick pecks before pulling me into his chest. His right arm snakes around until his hand finds my curls. "Did you read the last one yet?"

"No. I haven't read that one ever." Looking up at him, he raises a brow. "Emotional damage and all. Had a feeling."

Isaiah's lips quirk. His fingers roam over the sensitive skin of my neck. "Can I read it to you?" he asks, words soft in the early morning light.

With my heart puttering and pattering in my chest and my tear ducts on high alert, I nod and settle into his body. He takes the book and flips to the final poem, "Today, Tomorrow". Under the tangle of my curls, his palm settles on my neck, fingers firm and tangled in my hair. The touch is grounding and comforting, I think, to both of us.

Isaiah clears his throat and begins, "Today, I miss you."

The first line tells me I was right to be emotionally nervous. Isaiah's voice becomes tender with a smooth cadence as he reads. The first verse or two feels like that moment before something big: a break up, a jump scare. Something your heart races at without yet knowing why.

He continues, "Confusion looms like clouds in the sky, wondering where you have gone? And where have I? Hope is the guise of which I stand under. It blooms in the rays of sun you left behind, breaking wondrously through the dark sky of heavy silence. Left to my own devices, I ruminate, what day was it, when I left you?"

With one hand he holds the book, and with the other, he holds me. Every word has drawn me closer until I'm as pressed against him as I can be. Every time we discuss the time apart, in any capacity, pain is strung on the words like Christmas lights. My throat tightens as I try to hold the tears back.

"Today, I miss you because that is all that I can do. But if you let me, tomorrow, I'll love you."

His fingers tug at my curls as he sets the book down. My chest rattles as I inhale, and his arms wrap around tight, pulling me into him. I feel his breath on my neck, under the stray curls and the kiss he places on the hot skin. Turning, I pull his lips to mine.

A few stray tears slide down my cheeks, finding their way to our lips. It's more of an embrace than anything, holding ourselves to each other for all the years we didn't.

Isaiah pulls back, our lips still touching. His eyes glisten, but no tears fall. The unshed water illuminates his brown eyes that know me better than I know myself.

"Sometimes, when it felt especially unbearable regarding us," he whispers against my lips so quietly, I strain to hear him, "I told myself all I had to do was make it to tomorrow. That if I made it through the day, there was a chance I'd get to love you again."

My hand cups his cheek, running back and forth over a tiny scar on his cheekbone. My heart is beating heavily in my chest, and I know his is doing the same.

"It was silly. But the slim possibility of loving you again kept me going day after day, Aurora. You were everywhere. You are everywhere."

If this was a cartoon and I was a character, I would've exploded into heart-shaped confetti.

I exhale, kissing him again. Trying to show him all the things I'm unable to say yet. To kiss him until he understands that all my days were spent thinking of him, too. Even on the days I wanted to forget, he was there. Haunting me. And today, I'm more grateful than ever for him. For this.

Isaiah squeezes tighter, playfully nipping my lip, and the air in the room changes. Like he's bringing us back into the present, where we're tangled up in each other. A giggle—a goddamn giggle —leaves my lips. Despite the tear streaks and the emotions dancing on my nerves, the touch of his lips and teasing touch makes me smile.

His brown eyes find mine. "And now, I have you here." Playfully, he nips every inch of my neck, up to my chin, tickling my sides as he goes. "Right where I want you."

And that's right where I want to be.

I know I could do anything anywhere as long as Isaiah is by my side.

Requesting a trade has been on my mind more than I'd like to admit.

An ache spreads through my veins as I watch the team from the sidelines. Could I leave this team? Could I leave them? In front of me, soccer balls pass in and out of my view as they complete their drills.

There's an ache that I've had since I went down on the field, since my knee gave out on me. It's endless and constant. I want to be out there with my hair flying around my face, sweat on my nose, and my body burning with the exertion of something I excel at. But I'm here. On the sidelines. Wondering what my future holds.

Across the field, with a second group of girls, stands my dad. There's an ache there too, one fueled by anger. I'm not willing to stay here if it's going to destroy any hope of us having a relationship in the future. Or if it's going to make me more resentful.

But then, there's Isaiah. I won't do anything without asking him first. Not that I'm even sure if this is feasible, but I won't do it if he can't find another job or if he wants to settle here. Because I want to settle here. I don't want to leave.

Philly is home. This team, this field, my family—this is home.

But if part of my home is going to act like I don't exist, I can't stay.

Turning away, I finish my exercises on the sidelines as the team finishes up their drills. I approach the stands, where Isaiah sits with a notebook. He got here about thirty minutes ago after his class, with a notebook in hand and glasses over his eyes.

Brown eyes meet mine just as I stop, resting my hands. "You okay?" I look over my shoulder again at my dad, at the team, at my coach. "Rora," he muses knowingly.

"Yes and no." My teeth pick at my lip, but Isaiah leans forward, plucking my lip with his thumb.

"Just tell me."

I roll my eyes, though my stomach does its own gymnastics routine. "Would you hate me if we had to move out of Philly?" I sniff. "I mean, assuming you would come with me if you had to, or if that's not even something I should be think—"

"Breathe, Ro." Isaiah smirks. "Number one, I go where you go. Number two, why do you think we need to leave Philly?"

"I was thinking of requesting a trade." Shock filters down over his features, but he waits for me to go on. "I can't…I can't work with him anymore. It's always been hard, but it was manageable. Normal. But now, it's unbearable. I think about coming back and I'm overwhelmed by the fear of what he's going to think if it takes me a game or two or five to get back into the swing of it. Terrified of what happens if I'm not the same player. And that's not what I want."

I swallow, looking at my girls with big smiles on their faces, despite the hard practice. "I want to be excited to play again, to play with them. But I can't do that under his thumb."

"Have you talked to your coach?" Isaiah leans forward, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

"No. I wanted to talk to you first."

His eyes soften. "I'm not going to tell you not to do something if you think that it'll make you happier. If leaving is what you need to do, fine. But talk to your coach first. Let's take some time, okay?"

"Okay." I twist my lips. "Thank you."

"‘Course."

"What are those?" I point to the photos peeking out of his notebook.

"Elijah. He must've gotten my letter." Isaiah pulls them out, fanning them between his fingers.

It wasn't much of a letter—not that he had to respond at all. Mostly just expressed that he appreciated it and that he was glad he was doing well. I watched him write and erase, I love you, and I miss you , almost ten times. I was sure Elijah could probably read the words through the eraser markings. But I understood why he didn't, given how scary it is to be vulnerable with someone who's hurt you in the past.

"It's short. He said that these were all photos he took that he wanted to share with me. Postcards with notes on the back."

Handing them to me, I flip through photos of Elijah getting into med school, moving to Boston for his residency, photos of books he loved, movie tickets, meeting his other residents, getting a cat who looks scarily like Raven. It's memories upon memories of times where he writes he thoughts about Isaiah.

"You okay?" It's my turn to ask.

"It's fucking weird. Seeing all these things I could've been a part of." He runs his hand over his curls, and when it drops, I wrap my fingers around his wrist, resting on our tattoo. Under my finger, I feel his pulse increase and then slow, steadying. "I wish I could be mad. I want to be mad. But I can see how happy he becomes as the time passes. How he settles into himself and his life."

"It's okay if you are. It doesn't mean you love him any less. You can be mad at the people that you love, Isaiah," I say. He twists his hand, intertwining our fingers over the barrier. When he doesn't speak, I continue, "And it wouldn't surprise anyone if you wanted to talk to him. Doesn't make you weak if you want a relationship with your brother again, okay?"

Instead of answering, he squeezes my hand three times, and I squeeze his in response. The two of us read each other like pages in our favorite book. We could probably do it blindfolded on memory alone. It's a strange sensation being able to see and know someone with that kind of confidence. To know what they're thinking before they do.

In the haze, a whistle blows in finality.

"Go on. I'll be right here waiting." Isaiah kisses my cheek.

I walk backward towards the team, his kiss lingering on my cheek, as all his kisses have. He sits back, arm stretching out over the seat next to him. Even from a distance, the heat of his gaze singes my skin, setting every nerve ending ablaze.

Six years was a long time without him.

But I know that we have the rest of our lives because he'll wait for me. He'll follow me. And I him.

We will be there every step of the way for each other, for every tomorrow to come.