If he stayed, then he would have to love Summer.
He would have to love Summer in the bright, eager way he threw himself at everything, the way he gave his heart without question and without shame, the way he cared so much about other people, the way he fought himself to be brave so often even when it did terrible and terrifying things to him. The sweet way he put up with Fox’s cantankerousness. The way he made Fox want to be bright, too, to remember how it felt to be someone who created things, who helped others, who touched and held and cradled others’ feelings tenderly instead of cutting them off so cold and living numb.
But if he had all of that, he...
He would just lose it again.
Just like he’d lost Michiko.
And if that happened again...
He wouldn’t survive it.
He wouldn’t survive that shattering of his heart a second time.
He sat on the shore of Whitemist Lake, staring into the water as he pulled up flowers, threaded them together, letting his hands move out of habit to give himself something to do. Something to keep himself occupied so his thoughts wouldn’t run in circles as endless as the loops he formed with delicate flower stems.
These hands...these hands had done so many things in his lifetime. Splashed about the shallows of Joudogahama. Drawn kanji in wet sand. Written line after line of intense studious work, throwing himself into his schooling. Learned herbs by touch and texture, by their scent when they bruised, by the softness on the underside of their leaves. Held slender fingers in his own, caressed hair back from a delicate face.
Slipped a wedding ring onto a slim finger.
Slid a wedding ring off his own, wrenching it away hard enough to rip his knuckles and not even sure, now, where he’d left it in his grief, his denial.
Touched the strong line of a tanned jaw, a muscular throat, the beat of a wild young heart and the powerful lines of a beautiful, lean body.
Stroked the shape of laughing lips.
Yes, these hands had done so much...
...yet they couldn’t seem to reach back to the one who was reaching for him so desperately with all his heart.
And that one wouldn’t let him run away, he realized.
When he heard the soft scuff of footsteps at his back, that familiar stride, before Summer sank down to sit next to him, close enough to make the blades of grass between them shift and tickle and poke against the undersides of Fox’s slacks.
Summer draped his arms over his upraised knees, looking out over the water, expression thoughtful. “Hi,” was all he said, quiet and neutral.
“Hi,” Fox said, and immediately felt more the clumsy old fool for it.
And rather than say anything else, he just...plucked up more flowers, and threaded them into the slowly thickening crown.
Summer glanced at him, darkened blue eyes on his hands, the work, before he asked, “Making a wish?”
“I don’t know yet,” Fox whispered, and wove another blossom in. “I just...don’t know.”
Summer let that lie between them for several long seconds, then looked away again, watching the water, his brows lowering. “I never made wishes here, when I was a boy,” he murmured. “With throwing the flower crowns in for the dead girl’s wedding so she’ll hear my plea. The story of Isabella always made me so sad. That she couldn’t be with the girl she loved, and they called her a witch...so she drowned herself. Don’t you think it just...hurts her, people asking her for things when she could never have what she wanted?”
“Perhaps that’s where the legend came from,” Fox answered. “Wanting to believe that someone who lost everything would feel for others’ plights enough to want to spare them her suffering.”
He almost laughed to himself, then.
If only he could claim such selfless reasons for his own denials.
If only he could say he was trying to spare Summer the pain he’d already known himself...instead of trying to protect his own shriveled heart.
He pushed the thought down, plucked another flower, ran his thumb along its fronded petals. “But Isabella was real. And her story is not at all what the legend says.”
Summer’s head came up sharply enough to make his tousled hair tumble across his eyes. He stared at Fox, with that wide-eyed curiosity that made him such a bizarre mixture of ingenue and minx. “She was real? What happened to her?”
“She died of old age many, many decades after her supposed suicide,” Fox said, tracing his thumb along the flower’s stem, then inserting it into the band of the crown, weaving it in and out until it was securely affixed, spacing the heads of the blossoms so they formed an even circlet among the green. “With her lover by her bedside. When the girls were forbidden to be together, they ran away to New York City, and lived long, happy lives as lovers and partners. Neither ever drowned themselves. They chose another path, instead.”
Summer inhaled audibly—then let out a soft laugh, pressing his knuckles over his mouth. “I... I like that a lot better. But...if you know the legend’s not real, why are you making a crown to make a wish?”
“Because,” Fox admitted, the words like spears in his throat, digging deep. “All I ever wanted was what she had. A long, happy life with someone I loved...and that was taken from me.” His breaths were barbed, his throat closing, and he clenched his fist against the crown, the stems in his grasp crushing wetly, the petals crumpling against his palm. “It was taken, and I don’t know how to get it back.”
He glared out at the water—but the water was suddenly somehow running together, the reflections of the gray, moody sky in the surface of the pond turning into fuzzy watercolor impressions, and he closed his eyes tightly, struggling to push it down, to
