2022 Watty Award Winner ✨
In which a blind girl and a disfigured army vet attempt to find love and belonging in a big bad world.
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Olivia Harris is blind, and that's just the way it is. Naviga...
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IT'S ABOUT THREE and a half hours later when Connor manages to get off his shift. He messages Olivia to update her and then pulls his car into the parking lot of a local pizza joint to pick up some dinner for the two of them.
His eyes droop, his shoulders wired. He's tired and a little on edge from the crazy bustle of the last few hours — it was non-stop, go-go-go, and the stream of adrenaline kicking through his system is starting to crash.
But he and Olivia have... unfinished business. Maybe he has some energy left over after all.
Going out in public is still awkward and anxiety-provoking, even though it's been months since he's been submerged back into civilian life. Every time he steps out of his car, he braces himself for the way people react to him. Not with malice, he's come to recognize. They don't mean to stare or gape or cringe; they try averting their gaze politely and pulling their startled mouths into friendly smiles, but they can't help it. In those split seconds before their decency takes over, their discomfort has already sliced through his skin, making him feel less than, othered.
He's paying for his order when the door chimes open behind him. A pair of voices, a man and a woman. Viscerally, everything inside him pitches suddenly upside down.
He grew up with those voices. He'd recognize them anywhere.
The small store is too cramped to avoid what's about to happen.
"Connor?" Sylvia. James' mother. She sounds surprised in a happy but overwhelmed way. Connor's entire body goes cold. "Oh my goodness, Peter," she nudges at her husband's arm. "It's Connor." In the split second it's taken her to recognize him, her eyes have already swollen with tears.
He's enveloped in her spindly arms before he can even say anything. His throat burns, all his frayed edges raw and gaping. Guilt and shame and shock and pain, so much pain he can't see straight.
"Hey, son," Pete greets quietly, a warm hand on Connor's shoulder. "It's been too long."
It has been. Connor didn't make it to the funeral because he was hooked up to an IV, fighting for breath in the aftermath of the explosion. And then after, he shut himself off from the word, from these people who were like his second parents, because everything about them reminded him of the life he lost.
He didn't visit them once. He's a piece of shit. But they're smiling at him, watery, loving smiles that he doesn't fucking deserve. James should be here instead of him. Connor has pleaded with the universe countless times since it all happened, to go back, to make the rubble take him instead.
