Chapter 12
ELSIE
I never knew I could want a man as much as I want him.
This vague but tiny glimpse of vulnerability I see in Brett’s face is something to behold, and as I watched him talk a little about his life, his losses, his journey, I wanted to reach out to him. To hug him. I wanted to pull him close into my body and share the memory of his misery, one I’ve felt so acutely myself in a strange city with no recourse, no mercy, no roads back home.
We’re a long way from Kansas, Toto.
Our Midwestern upbringing was sheltered in the most brutal of ways, and in a way, I know it’s taken Brett to fly far from our coddled Kansas City homes to find himself, to figure out what made his heart beat the hardest.
I knew what it was long ago. I always knew.
His absentminded scrawling. The art c
