Here & Now by Melyssa Winchester, Joey Winchester

there, you always find a way to do what you just did so that I never have to doubt it.”
    “But you have doubted it?”
    She nods, but before I can start again she silences me with a squeeze of her own to my hand.
    “Yes, but not because of anything you did. I doubted it because there’s still so much I need to learn and to be honest, you’re kind of too good to be true.”
    “I’m not that good.”
    “Yes, Dillon you are. I saw it that first day, and every single day after that even when we weren’t hearing each other, you proved it. I didn’t give your heart back, it was there all along. This,” she says, lifting herself slowly from her seat until her hand is resting directly above where my heart beats for her. “This is good. It’s better than good. It’s pure and it’s strong and its right, even when you think it isn’t. I always knew it, I just thought that when you realized it, you wouldn’t need me anymore.”
    “I’m always going to need you.  I don’t want to imagine where I’d be if you weren’t sitting in class that day. I need you just as much now as I did then and I always will.”
    “I need you too.”
    Looking from our empty plates to her and back toward the door, I know what’s got to happen now. With the road this conversation has taken, the feelings we’re admitting to, things we should have been saying all along, it’s clear.
    It’s time for phase two of the night. The part where it ends with her in my arms and if I have my way, never letting go of her again.
    “Let’s get out of here. There’s something I wanna show you.”
     
    Cadence
     
    When Dillon said he had something to show me, this is not at all where my mind went.
    As far as dates go, I’m pretty sure there aren’t a lot of people that enjoy being brought to a cemetery. Spending time around the dead doesn’t scream enjoyment, but if what he’s going for is me having a renewed appreciation for my life, the minute my feet land on the ground and we start making our way through the gates, he’s got it.
    As we make our way down the winding path, his hand gasping mine tightly, he picks up his pace until we come to a stop nestled between two trees, a large gravestone with the name Murphy etched across it glaring back at us.
    I want to ask him why he brought me here, who this person is and what this means for the conversation we were having at the restaurant but he beats me to the punch.
    “You’re gonna think I’m crazy.”
    He has no idea.
    Turning into me, making sure my eyes are level with his lips, he adjusts his body just slightly and points down to the stone marker in front of us.
    “This is Bernice Murphy. My grandmother.”
    This is the only woman that by his own admission, he’s ever loved. The one person he holds on a pedestal because she’s the reason he even knows love at all.  Dillon brought me here so I could meet her.
    “I used to come out here two or three times a week after practice, if I wasn’t dicking around with the guys on the team or having to meet my dad for a fight. I started coming less and less after I got with Amy because I figured she was dead, so showing up wouldn’t matter anymore. The same way I was stupid with you, I was stupid with her.”
    I hate the way he talks about himself. He’s not stupid. So there’s things he doesn’t get because he had himself shut off for so long. That doesn’t make him stupid or wrong or a mess the way he thinks. It just makes him human.
    “I didn’t show you as often as I should have how much you meant to me. I just assumed you’d know and I did the same thing with her. I think if I really want to make all of that right, I need to start with the both of you.”
    “There’s nothing to make right, Dill.”
    “Yeah baby, there is. I bailed on her. If it wasn’t for the groundskeepers keeping it clean, this spot would look like crap because no one gave a crap. My dad stopped giving a shit the second she was in the ground and my mom was so