He’d found them in a thrift shop. The three wise men. Chipped and old, well loved by somebody in their past. He’d ruined the first two with his lack of painting skills. Large fingers maneuvering awkwardly with that small paintbrush.

It took him two hours to paint the last one.

It was slow work. His mom would call it, painstaking work.  Filling in those little features with that too small paintbrush. It was all in the details and being patient was never one of his strong suits. He’d always been a bigger picture type of guy.

She loved the details.

She would break down every note in a Whitney song, and even though he didn’t know what she was talking about half the time, he’d listen to her words with rapture, a smile tugging at his lips, his gaze  wandering over her face, loving the way her eyes did that twinkling thing they did when she was excited. Liking how the words would tumble out of her mouth without pause. She made him appreciate the little things.

She made him want to spend two hours turning a biblical figurine into St. Valentine. Wrap it up in a bright red box shaped like a heart.

He saw her. Standing by her locker, looking like ... like hot chocolate on a cold, winter day. Like Heaven. Sometimes he was glad no one could see inside his brain when he looked at her. Sometimes he even embarrassed himself.

He snuck up behind her, fooling her with that shoulder tap move again. Five times in a row now. Tap on the right, shift to the left, her head swinging to the empty space where he should’ve been. But that was the thing about her, she trusted deeply. She trusted he would be there every time.

“I know it’s early but.” He couldn’t stop himself from smiling, from feeling proud as she reached for the box, wanting to tell her everything, trying to: “...it’s a statue of one of the three wise men I repainted to look like Saint—,”

“I told Shane about us.”

He processed the words slowly. They ricocheted through his brain before they screeched to a stop. Before they penetrated. Before he remembered that Shane was the size of a small building and would probably tear him from limb to limb. Before he realized that she said, “us.”

Us. There was an us now.

“Is he mad?” He didn’t really care but it seemed like the right thing to say.

“He was sad. He cried and said it felt like I punched him in his heart.”

He saw this MMA guy get punched in the heart once. The dude's heart had just stopped for a minute. But he'd soldiered on, he'd lived, and so would Shane.

He wouldn't make it through a second time. Not again. He’d lost her once already. Closed his heart up when he had to leave her. Pretended that nothing was wrong. There’s no crying in baseball. He lived by that.

There was no crying when his only choice was to go. So he’d locked it up tight, his heart. Far away where no one could touch it, where he could ignore how bruised and damaged it was, how much of it had been ravaged by their goodbye.

If it happened again, he could manage his heart. Lock it away even further so that he could stay alive. But what was the point of a working heart if the rest of him was broken? Because if he lost her again, he wouldn’t recover, he’d be breathing but living on life support.

He wasn’t going to lose her again, and he wouldn’t, now that she was free.

She was free.

It struck him like lightening, the joy. Blinding him to the sad look in her eyes. He dipped his head, his body rocking towards her instinctively. “I guess it means,” he said, smile unconstrained, “we can be together for real now.”

She stopped him, her hand pressed right over his heart. “No.”

No.

It sounded foreign to his ears. Not quite right.

“What we did—what I did to Shane was wrong,” she said it in a way that made him want to shake her.

No, he wanted to yell. How could it be wrong to love her?

“I lied ... I cheated. And it makes me feel awful.” She struggled with the words, they trembled on her lips, and for the first time he saw her sadness

It cut him at the knees, seeing what he hadn’t been able to accept before. Shane had mattered to her. He had meant something to her heart.

“I love you...” He held onto the words like a life preserver. Clutched them to his chest to stop himself from going under. “But being with you just reminds me of that... That I’m not the person that I thought I was.”

“We would never do that to each other!”

“I thought that I’d never do that to Shane.”

It was happening too fast. This goodbye.

And then she pushed the heart towards him – his heart – holding that thrift store statue that he tried to make perfect for her.

“When it comes to love I don’t know who I am.” He’d never seen her so unsure before. He wanted to tell her that everything was going to be fine. That they could work it out together but it was already too late.

“I can’t be with you.” He heard the words as if from a tunnel, distant but resonant. “I can’t be with you.”

He’d almost drowned once. By the cliff, at the lake where the older kids used to hang out, their yells echoing through the woods as they took that forty foot drop into the water below.

He’d been ten, damn cocky and showing off. Thinking he could do anything they did, better than they did. He back flipped in, hitting the water flat, barely hearing the crowing above him as he sunk underneath the choppy waters.

Somehow, he’d gotten a foot stuck at the bottom. Wedged right between two rocks. Surrounded by darkness, unable to breathe, lungs burning, chest tearing apart, he knew that he was going to die.

And then he was on solid ground, the sun on his face, gasping for air.

Standing in front of her, watching her hold his heart was like reliving it. Once more dragged down into that painful, suffocating emptiness.

Except this was worse.

He left her standing there with that stupid heart box, his head barely above water, trying to be tough. There was no crying in baseball.

She was singing “I Will Always Love You” in the choir room, her buttery brown eyes focused on his face. He tried to smile. Chin up. I’ll be fine, it said, but it collapsed under the pressure. How could he smile when she was saying goodbye?

He imagined her on stage, singing to him in a long red dress. She looked beautiful; she was always most beautiful when she sang. There, with just the two of them, she sang to him and for once, he could see all the details.

She loved him. She’d said it before but now it was clear in every note, in every breath she took. It emanated from her, from every pore, from the tips of her fingers. He could see it. He could feel it.

And it broke him.

He blinked back tears, his breath lodging in his throat. Breathe. He took a deep breath and it came out long and shuddering. He pressed his lips together, trying to stop them from trembling. Easy, man. Easy. Her voice washed over him, so beautiful, yet so painful, leaving tiny scars in its wake. And he felt it then, that drop of water making a solitary trek down his cheek.

He slid from his chair, on his feet just as she sang the last note, tears checked for the ten seconds it would take to walk out of the room.

And when he was finally away, outside and alone, he collapsed on his knees, let the water drag him underneath, and cried.