“Like eating candy for dinner instead of eating it for dessert.”
I smile. “Kind of like that, yeah.”
“So what happened?” she asks.
“Well… instead of listening to myself, telling my life’s story as I went along, I started telling my life it had tobea certain story. I started trying to write chapters before they’d even happened. And then, I got all turned around.”
Mia frowns. “You got lost,” she wisely summarizes. Then she says, “That sounds scary.”
“I did. And it was,” I admit. “But the great thing is—just like you might eat jelly beans for dinner one day andreallyregret it, but then, the next day, you can go back to eating a yummy, helps-you-grow dinner and then have jelly beans for dessert—I realized I could find my way out of it. I could stop telling myself the story I thought my life should be, and start living it again,thentelling myself the story afterward.”
“Sort of like remembering!” Mia says. “But with your ’magination.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s really cool.” She flops onto her back, tucking her hands beneath her head. She’s quiet for a moment, then says, “You know what word sounds like ’magination?”
“What word?”
“Magic,” she says, smiling wide. “Wonder if ’maginations are magic.”
I swallow the lump in my throat as I watch her dreaming, wondering, figuring out the world around her. “Yeah, Mia, I think they are.”
She peers over at me. “Can I have a new word, Thea Thesaurus?”
“Sure,” I tell her. “What word do you want? A synonym or antonym.”
“Cinnamon,” she says confidently, dipping her toes beyond the reach of the umbrella, wiggling them in the warm sun, then adds, “please. A cinnamon for…sunbathing.”
“Ooh, that’s a tricky one.”
I glance out at the ocean, the waves rolling in, crashing on the shore, dragging back out to sea; Argos digging in the sand, filthy and euphoric, wagging his tail. I peer down the beach at the two specks that are Alex and Jen, gradually drawing closer, Alex’s ball cap tugged low over his bedhead hair, Jen with her wide-brimmed straw hat.
I think of everything that brought us here, how I fought it, resented it, feared it, wrestled with it. How strange it is to look back on so much pain and realize, somehow, you’re grateful for it, because it was necessary and true, the dark forest youhadto stumble and claw your way through to finally emerge into the other side of your life.
“Apricate,” I tell her.
“Ooh.” Mia smiles. “I like that one.Apricate. Sounds like apricot.”
“It does.Apricateis one of my favorite words.”
“Why?” she asks.
“Because it comes from an old word that meansto open. And it makes me think about flowers blooming, turning toward the light; that delicious shivery feeling you get when you stretch out beneath the warm sun.
“It makes me think about how, to soak up what’s beautiful in life, you have to open yourself to it. You have to expose yourself. And that means not just to the beautiful stuff, but to the not-so-beautiful stuff. You can’t pick and choose. You’re either open or you’re not. But the sun’s worth that exposure. All beautiful things are.”
“I love it.” Mia stares up at me, a slow smile on her face. “I loveyou, Thea.”
I blink, stunned, tears filling my eyes. I feel like I’ve been bathed in a bucket of sunshine. “I love you, too, Mia.”
Mia turns back to the umbrella above her, wiggling her toes again. “Apricate,” she says, like she’s trying out the word, tasting it on her tongue. “Apricate.”
Trying to keep myself together, I peer toward Alex as he walks toward us. My heartbeat thunders, pounding out its truthful rhythm.
I love him. I love him. I love him.
This time, I don’t silence that voice or push it away or lock it up. I open myself up to it, my heart stretched out wide, exposed, reaching toward that beauty.