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In the end, it takes four years, three months, and two days for them to find each other again.
It isn’t to say that the sea dividing them turned into a galaxy overnight, no. They send emails and fall asleep to Skype sessions and hold each other like they’re never letting go in those small, wondrous moments when and where they share the same space.
It sends more than a few partners into jealous rages on both their ends. Connell tells her he feels guilt when he tries to explain. Marianne does not. How do you explain to a person that you can’t envision a future together because every time you try, it’s not their face that you see?
It’s simple. You don’t.
Marianne knows it’s unfair and more than a little cruel, yet she can’t bring herself to care. It probably makes her a bad person, but there are worse people to be in the grand scheme of things.
On the calls that tumble from minutes to hours, in the heavy silence and the slight crackle in the absence of his voice, Marianne knows that Connell feels the same. She tells him that about the one time a boyfriend raised his hand a little too quickly, a little too full with intent. She tells Connell of how quickly she left, the door swinging wide behind her.
Connell tells her he is proud of her, tells her he misses her. That he loves her. And Marianne breathes in deep with the reassurance that while there’s a hole an ocean wide yawning inside her where Connell is meant to be, it is a far lesser evil than actively looking to be squashed under the weight of her own indifference and self-hate.
So nothing is permanent, until it is.
The day Connell comes home is muggy without being hot, cloudy without threatening rain. An entirely too miserable day for the amount of joy she feels.
He comes home, and holds her tight enough that she can almost forget the past four years. They exist somewhere else. Lorraine is behind them, radiating warmth and belonging and all of those things Marianne never knew she deserved. Lorraine is patiently waiting for Marianne to let go so she can hug her son.
She will be waiting a while.
A month passes, then two. Connell and Marianne hit the ground running, integrating themselves back into each other’s spaces as seamlessly as breathing. By the end of the third month, they find a flat in central Dublin that feels somehow perfect.
Joanna and Niall and Lorraine are all permanent fixtures, and more friends follow. One day her mother arrives at her doorstep with a black eye and an apology, and Marianne tentatively lets her inside. It’s not anything resembling a relationship, but it’s a start.
Connell starts a succulent collection that doesn’t stop until he manages to somehow step on one, and Marianne adds replicas of famous paintings just so she can watch Connell stare at them for half a day.
Their apartment becomes their haven, full of enough light and love to keep them sane even on their worst days. The future is stretching its arms wide, full of all possibilities and only one certainty.
It may have taken four years, three months, and two days for them to find each other again, but now that they have, they’re never letting go.