Chapter 17
We Belong Together
Elise
We had not spoken for weeks. Nolan would leave for South America in six days, and the approaching departure made every hour feel stolen.
May apologized for the argument that had separated us. I told her it was not her fault. Nolan and I had been frightened of distance long before anyone mentioned the tour.
I had lost weight and sleep. I could not practice without hearing the silence through the wall.
One afternoon, I found a package outside my door. Inside was the photograph Nolan had taken of me beneath the tree, a letter, and money for my graduate school deposit.
The letter said, “I know you can do this without me. That is why I’m helping. You deserve the future you chose, even if I am not standing beside you when it begins.”
I cried until the words blurred.
At sunset, someone knocked. Nolan stood in the hallway with a guitar case.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’m sorry, too.”
“Can we stop trying to solve the rest of our lives?”
“What would we do instead?”
“Use the time we have.”
He carried the guitar into my room. I had never seen him play. He sat on the wooden stool, adjusted the green-and-white Telecaster, and played the opening notes of “Hallelujah.”
I knew the song immediately.
“Leo taught you.”
“I practiced.”
His voice was soft and imperfect in the way that made it beautiful. He played for me, not for an audience, and the effort broke through every defense I had built.
When he finished, he looked up.
“I wanted you to hear it live,” he said. “Since we saw Jeff Buckley.”
I wiped my face. “You learned a song because I mentioned it once?”
“You mentioned it repeatedly.”
“That is not better.”
He smiled. “I love you.”
The words frightened me less than they had before.
“I love you, too.”
We sat on the floor with our backs against the bed. He told me the travel plans: Bolivia first, then the assignment would decide the rest. I told him about my graduate program and the apartment I had found near campus.
“You’ll be good there,” he said.
“You’ll be lonely.”
“Probably.”
“You could stay.”
“I could.”
“But you shouldn’t.”
He looked at me. “Neither should you.”
The answer hurt because it was loving.
“Do we belong together if we keep choosing separate things?” I asked.
“I think belonging is choosing each other without asking the other person to disappear.”
I rested my head against his shoulder. “That sounds like something you rehearsed.”
“I rehearsed the guitar. The rest is improvised.”
We laughed, and the room felt less like a place where we had lost each other.
For the next six days, we made no promises larger than the day. We ate at the diner, walked through the park, and took photographs of places we wanted to remember. Nolan kept the camera in my hands and let me photograph him.
At the airport, I held his face between my palms.
“Call when you land.”
“I will.”
“Write when there is no phone.”
“I will.”
“Come back when you can.”
“I’m coming back.”
We kissed until the boarding announcement interrupted us.
He walked toward the gate and turned once.
“Ellie!”
“What?”
“We belong together!”
People stared. I laughed through my tears.
“Then act like it!”
He disappeared behind the gate.
I returned to my room and placed the photograph of his hands beside my cello. The future was still uncertain. But uncertainty was not the same as an ending.
At home, I played the recording he had made of my cello. The tape contained mistakes, the scrape of my chair, and Nolan’s quiet laugh from the other side of the wall.
I listened until the tape clicked off.
Then I wrote him a letter.
“You were right to leave,” I began. “You were wrong to think leaving meant you belonged somewhere else. I want you to see the world. I want to see mine. I want us to meet again as the people we become.”
I told him about the graduate program, the apartment, and the audition I had scheduled for the fall. I told him I was afraid of becoming the girl who followed a man and lost herself. I also told him I was afraid of becoming the woman who refused love because it was inconvenient.
“I don’t know how to do this perfectly,” I wrote. “But I know I don’t want silence to decide for us again.”
I sealed the letter and placed it beside the photograph of his hands.
May found me there that afternoon.
“Are you eating?”
“I had coffee.”
“That is not food.”
She set a sandwich beside my cello. “You can be in love without becoming stupid.”
“I’m trying.”
“The Katie Reed story was cruel.”
“I know.”
“She wasn’t stupid. She was young and believed love required proof.”
I looked at the photograph. “I believed the opposite. I thought love required distance.”
“Maybe it requires honesty.”
“That’s what Nolan said.”
“Then listen to him.”
I ate the sandwich while May tuned my cello. The ordinary action steadied me.
That evening, Nolan’s first message arrived from the airport hotel.
“Landed. The room is ugly. I miss you. Tell me something true.”
I answered: “I am frightened. I am proud of you. I love you.”
His reply came a few minutes later.
“I am frightened too. I am still going. I love you.”
I read the exchange until the screen dimmed.
For the first time since he left, I understood that belonging did not mean standing in the same place. It meant carrying the truth of each other wherever we went.
I picked up my bow and began to practice.
The first measure was difficult. I started again.
The second time, I played through the mistake.
When I finished, I sent Nolan a recording.
His answer was immediate.
“That’s my girl.”
I smiled at the ceiling.
“Don’t get used to saying that.”
“Never.”
We belonged together, not because either of us had stopped changing, but because we kept making room for the changes.
The next morning, I mailed the letter. Before sealing it, I added one final line: “Come back when you can. I’ll be here, but I won’t be standing still.”
I placed his photograph above my cello and began the difficult work of becoming the woman I had promised to be.
Love did not make the work easier. It gave the work a reason.
That reason was enough to begin.
I opened the window and let the morning air into the room. The city was loud, unfinished, and full of people moving toward lives they had not yet learned to manage.
I picked up my cello and joined them.
Somewhere beyond the clouds, Nolan was doing the same.
I believed it.
I had to.
The promise was fragile, but it was ours.
I carried it into the morning, into rehearsal, and into every uncertain day that followed. It did not erase the distance, but it gave me something stronger than fear to carry through it.
Forward.