Chapter 10.

I couldn’t shake the idea of him - as much as I tried, as much as I wanted to keep myself on this independent path of redemption from my emotional three-year atomic warfare, I’d catch myself quickly reeling at his tenderness. "It’s a facade,” I said out loud in a desperate attempt to convince my heart to fall in line with my head. I look out the window and wait for the light to turn, watching almost impatiently as the perpendicular traffic speeds by. A red car, a truck, a school bus full of anticipatory kids all eager to go home, all eager for their constant. I rest my head against the glass and let out a heavy sigh. I can feel the warmth from the sun pressing through to my skin and in all my stillness I suddenly feel sick. My stomach’s in knots, twisting and turning and I can’t control this unbelievable ache as if I were on death row. I’m brought to the place of execution once more and stare out at the crowd. All the faces are recognizable - all the cuts and bruises and breaks were visible. Was I willing to sacrifice the safety of my torments - was I willing to sacrifice my own ugly, melancholy constant? I had known them for so long, and here was someone, some stranger, beckoning me to leave it all - to come into this new life of hope and peace and joy and real, genuine love. He was beckoning me to trust. “But what happens when you have no reason, at all, to trust anyone? Why should I trust when everything in this world desperately tries to convince us that nothing is in fact trustworthy?”

The light turns to green and I continue down the road feeling my emotions slide along their spectrum, with the tree-lined streets blurring across my view. Tears build up and I come to the next intersection and slow to a stop. I crumble onto the steering wheel neglecting any potential neighboring vehicle's judgements, and pull at my sleeve and bring it to my face. I pause. He’s standing there beside me, reaching out to me and pulling me towards him. His arms are strong and cradle me and I feel this deep need being met in one simple action. My insides reach back and grab a hold of the peace that he brings, giving me every reason to believe that he exists simply for me. I finally feel alive and worthy and purposed and hopeful. He whispers in my ear that he loves me, and I bury myself into his chest. I shake my head and the light, again, pushes me forward. I wrap my arm around myself in an attempt to soothe the ache that one unimaginable person has brought - I can’t be away from him, I realize. I don’t want to be away from him.

I pull into the driveway and put the car into park. The cat slowly crawls across the street and birds hover in the towering oaks. I take the key out of ignition and open the door, placing both feet on the ground before pulling myself out. I stand and become drenched in the sun and I lift my arms, spreading them wide. I tilt my head back and close my eyes in a feeble, physical attempt at vulnerability. I’m open and willing. I’m open and accepting. I’m open and afraid, but open and wanting. “I surrender,” I yell, and a smile appears on my face. “I’m trusting you,” I bellow to the heavens and return to attention. I open the back door and quickly grab my things resting on the seat, and then head inside to call him.

Chapter 4.

The paisley wallpaper seemed faded when paired with the dim light, softly trickling from beneath the shade of the lamp in the corner. A soothing melody echoed in the background. Sometimes I could make out Parisian phrases, other times I couldn’t hear a thing.  

I was laying there, somehow in an emotional daydream. I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what to do, all that I wanted to do was feel. I wanted to feel every bit of him. I wanted to feel his skin, feel his heart beat, feel his hand gently drawing circles about my arm. I wanted to feel his mind. And I wanted him to feel me, too. 

I looked up at him, eyes wide, begging him to see. I wanted him, in that moment, to see through my eyes past my mind and into my soul and cure all my aches and pains and brokenness and anxieties and frustrations and wants and hopes and dreams. I stared at him, bearing my existence, which no words seemed just to describe. 

An honest, gentle, angelic warmth of a smile crept about his tendered face. All his lines seemed softened by the light, and I fell and rose with each inhale and exhale. 

“I’m in love with you,” he said. I could feel my cheeks flush, and a flurry began in my stomach. I questioned, within a seconds worth of time, every bit of reason, every nook and cranny of my heart that had been hardened and blackened and blued. I trembled, I reeled, and I couldn’t wrap my mind around the enchantment that after two weeks someone could love me. 

But he did. 

He said he did. 

I muster all of my strength, and again, beckon him to search me. I feel fragile and lay my head down on his chest. 

“I’m in love with you, too.”

We both laid there in silence, and I wondered what he was thinking. Maybe he was envisioning the future. Maybe he thought he just made a terrible mistake. Maybe he saw, two years down the road, a tired, haggard man who was angry, resistant, and exhausted from his game. Maybe he was just reeling in the moment. Maybe he was thinking how much he loved me. Maybe he was content. 

“Promise you won’t let me go,” I said, breaking the silence. 

He didn’t understand where it was coming from, I’m sure. He looked up at me, just as he always had done, and said, 

“I promise, I won’t.”

I was afraid, even in that precious and pivotal moment, and I couldn’t figure out why. I had a feeling that things wouldn’t be easy, a hunch that the ride we were about to embark on would be a tough one. I was ready to be married, I was ready to be a wife, and I was ready for the work, compromise, and dedication that would come with that. I was afraid I’d want to escape or come up with some easy excuse as to why we weren’t working. “We’re just not right for each other.” “It’s me, not you.” “I just need time to figure out who I am.”

I was tired of excuses; I was tired of running away. I wanted him and I wanted a relationship and I wasn’t going to give up – and even if I should try, I’d want him to not let me. I’d want him to not give up, too. 

The Fault in Our Stars.

“I'm in love with you," he said quietly.

"Augustus," I said.

"I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.” 

Ulysses

“Her antiquity in preceding and surviving succeeding tellurian generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when invisible.” 

The Climax.

I felt raw. I felt as if I'd been sliced open, haphazardly, with blood and guts and everything gore spilling out and onto anything that I touched and anywhere I went. I was plagued and diseased and yet so numb that any form of self pity couldn't even be contrived. I grasped at my chest in a futile attempt to find any sort of existence. Life, it seemed, had been slipping away, and finally, at this moment, ceased. 

Eat, Pray, Love.

"'Go back to bed', said the omniscient interior voice, because you don't need to know the final answer right now, at three o'clock in the morning on the Thursday in November. 'Go back to bed', because I love you. 'Go back to bed', beacause the only thing you need to do for now is get some rest and take good care of yourself until you do know the answer."

All the Kings Men.

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 "For when you get in love you are made all over again. The person who loves you has picked you out of the great mass of uncreated clay which is humanity to make something out of, and the poor lumpish clay which is you wants to find out what it had been made into. But at the same time, you, in the act of loving somebody, become real, cease to be part of the continuum of the uncreated clay and get the breath of life in you and rise up. So you create yourself by creating another person, who, however, has also created you, picked up the you-chunk of clay out of the mass. So there are two you's, the one you yourself create by loving and the one the beloved creates by loving you. The farther those two you's are apart the more the world grinds and grudges on its axis. But if you loved and were loved perfectly then there wouldn't be any difference between the two you's or any distance between them. They would coincide perfectly, there would be a perfect focus."