by Hayden Hunt
“Awesome! I’ll go grab them!” he said as he eagerly ran out of the room.
He came back with two medium sized boxes in hand. He set them down in front of me.
I was pleasantly surprised by the first one. There was nothing to trigger any bad memories for me. It was just a box of my old clothes.
I never realized how many clothes I’d left over at Chelsea’s parents’ house. I knew I had stayed over there often during holiday visits but I never imagined I’d accidentally left this much stuff.
That hardly seemed like my fault, though. It was her parents that always insisted we stay over. In separate rooms, of course, because we weren’t married and they were so extremely religious.
Which, of course, never bothered me since I didn’t much like having sex with Chelsea anyway. I didn’t know just how much I disliked it until I’d been with Aidan. Now that I had, it made sense to me why I never wanted to have sex with Chelsea.
“Just clothes?” Aidan questioned. I knew he was expecting something a little juicier, seeing how hesitant I was to open things up.
“Guess so.”
“Keeping any of them?” he asked.
“Definitely not.” I picked through the box for just a minute before realizing how old some of these clothes were. Things that I had bought when I was barely out of high school that were extremely out of date now. “We can get rid of the whole box.”
“See!” Aidan patted me on the back. “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“Guess not,” I answered, a little more confident in opening up the next box.
I shouldn’t have been, though, because this one was quite a bit more personal. There wasn’t much in it, but they were a few sentimental items.
I froze when I saw a few old framed photos of Chelsea and all our old friends. It was weird to look at it. I felt like I’d gotten into a time machine and looked into my past… And I didn’t like what I saw.
“Wow.” Aidan picked up one of the framed photos, completely oblivious to my discomfort. “Look how little you are!”
“Yeah,” I tried to say casually. “I think I was only sixteen then.”
It didn’t take Aidan long to realize my discomfort, though.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing, it’s just… weird. I knew it would be weird to look at this stuff. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the past. I don’t really like being confronted with it like this.”
“Really?” he asked, as if this was a foreign concept. “You don’t get any joy from looking at these old photos? No nostalgia pops up for you?”
“No. I barely know the meaning of nostalgia. I’ve never felt nostalgic for anything…”
“Nothing?” he asked, shocked. “How is that possible?”
“I guess I just have no yearning for the past. But why would I? These years… they sucked for me. I didn’t know how bad they sucked at the time, but they did. I wasn’t even myself. I look at these pictures and all I see is a fake me… These ‘friends’ didn’t even know me. I never even knew me. Not until I met you.”
He wrapped his arm around me. “Oh, babe…”
“It’s fine.” I shrugged it off. “Don’t feel bad for me. Everyone’s got their cross to bear, this is mine. I hid from myself so I spent a lot of years apathetic and depressed.”
“I know you lost a lot of time, but at least it’s over now, right? At least you’ve moved forward.”
“You know… exactly.” I smiled at him. “I’ve moved forward. And it’s easy for me not to feel nostalgic about the past when my present is so damn good. How could I crave the past? I just crave the future.”
He kissed me on the cheek. “Me too. I’ll stay daydreaming about you, me, and our seven kids.”
I laughed. “Okay, hey, I never said seven…”
I continued to pick through the box. The only thing that was in it was a notebook and an old yearbook.
I half expected Aidan to pick up the yearbook, search for my photo, and tease me about how nerdy I used to look. But he didn’t. He didn’t even touch the yearbook.
I could only assume he didn’t want me to think any more about the past, which I appreciated. I loved so much how much he considered the feelings of not only me, but everyone around him. I could not have fallen in love with a sweeter man.
I picked up the notebook and flipped through it, seeing a bunch of old short stories I had written back in high school and college.
“What’s that?” Aidan asked.
“Oh, some old writings of mine. Nothing too important…”
“You write?” Aidan asked, shocked. “How could you never tell me that you write?”
“Well, because, I don’t really write anymore, I guess. Honestly, I’d kind of forgotten that I’d ever written. It never popped up into my head.”
“Well, did you like it?” he asked.
“Yeah, I did,” I said, remembering fondly the moments I sat in my dimly lit dorm room and exercised creativity in the only way I knew how.
“How come you stopped?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I admitted. “I guess maybe… I just got too depressed? I stopped caring about doing it? That’s the only thing I can think of.”
“That’s got to be it…” Aidan agreed. “You poor thing.” He rubbed my back.
I continued flipping through the notebook. “Wow, I had forgotten about so many of these stories. This brings me way back.”
“Dare I say it makes you… nostalgic?” he said in an overly dramatic tone.
“Oh, shut up.” I pushed him lightly.
“Seriously, though, maybe you should consider getting back into writing again,” he suggested. “I mean, if you loved it so much, maybe you’d still enjoy it.”
“Maybe…”
“Hey, maybe that can be your new job!” Aidan said cheerfully.
We’d been looking at several open positions for which I was qualified in Mosart but none of the places I applied to seemed like a good fit. They were either severely underpaid or severely overworked.
I’d expressed a few weeks ago to Aidan that I really hated my job. About how I wished I could get into another field, and he was now constantly reminding me that it wasn’t too late to change things. “You can be whatever you want!” he was constantly saying.
“Babe, we’ve gone over this, I can’t just switch my entire career path right now—”
“Of course you can! Especially if you want to be an author. You don’t even need to get hired to do that! You can just start.”
“Uh, yeah I don't need to get hired for it because nobody is going to pay me for it. At least, not until I publish something, and who knows if I ever even would.”
“Don’t be such a downer!” he continued excitedly. “Seriously, babe, this could be exactly what you’re looking for!”
“And what do I do about the whole not getting paid thing?” I asked.
“Let me cover the bills for a while after we move. I’m going to have some extra money left over from the sale of this house after we buy a condo out there. It’ll be more than enough to start us off and I’m going to be making good money while I’m out there. I could pay the bills while you finally begin your dream job.”
“…Seriously? You’d do that?” I asked in surprise. “You’d let me leech off you like that?”
“Babe, obviously you wouldn’t be a leech to me. Not at all. I’d be happy to do this for you. More than happy! I’d be thrilled to know you’re doing something you actually enjoy.”
“I still don’t know…”
It was a wonderful idea. It really would be amazing for me to get to do something I loved but… It was still crazy to think about. Really intimidating, actually. I didn’t know if I could really do it.
What if I failed as a writer? I likely would. I hadn’t written in years and I didn’t have a background in it.
“You don’t need to decide right now,” he told me. “Don’t rush it, just think on it. This
is going to be the big shift in our lives, you know? This is the time we change things. We can really start over. I know I keep saying it, but you can be whoever you want.”
And suddenly, I didn’t care that he kept repeating that over and over again. Because right now, in this moment, I believed it for the first time.
We were starting over. We were becoming completely different from the people we once were… And our lives could be whatever we molded them into at this point.
I grinned at him. “You’re right. You are completely and totally right.”
12
Aidan
I was on my way home from work, my nerves getting the best of me. I was trying to keep myself from having a full blown panic attack as I rushed back to our condo.
We’d been in California for about six months now and everything had been going really good so far. I absolutely loved my new job, Miles had decided to start his first novel and was now begin to finish it up—life was good.
The best part was, of course, the fact that neither of us were in a toxic environment anymore. We could go virtually anywhere now, being as public with our affections as we wanted, and never even get a second glance from other people.
I didn’t realize just how sad I’d become back in our hometown. I was starting to feel less than human with the way people treated me.
But I was finally beginning to feel like a person again. A person worthy of respect from the people around them. And it felt really fucking good.
Now, I’m not saying there weren’t still bigots here. I was sure that there were. I knew that not everyone here was supportive of homosexuality. But I didn’t worry about it because, as a whole, it was socially unacceptable to confront someone about something as private as their sexuality.
And I could handle a few individuals judging me, so what? You couldn’t win over everyone. I simply couldn’t live in an environment where everyone was judging me. It was extremely isolating, a burden that nobody should bear.
Obviously, I’d already been happy with Miles. But I was so much happier now that we were here. I sometimes still missed my grandparents’ bakery, but whenever those feelings of yearning came along, my fantastic coworkers always brought me back to reality. I was working in an environment I loved so much more now.
My life felt complete. Or at least, it would after tonight. After I did what I needed to do.
I pulled up to our condo and was glad Miles’ car was in the driveway.
Not that I expected him to be anywhere else. He worked from home now, so he was here basically all the time. But he still went on random errands sometimes. He had taken on most of the house duties now that he was at home.
By the time I reached our door, my hand was shaking. My heart was pounding in my chest and I knew there was nothing I could do to calm it down. Except maybe to get this off my chest.
I walked in and Miles was on the couch. I was confused to find he looked as nervous as me.
But that made no sense. Why would he be nervous? He should have known nothing about this.
Shit, unless he did know something. Maybe he’d seen something. I’d been very careful to keep this secret until I was ready to bring it up… But perhaps I didn’t cover all my corners.
Oh no, and what if he knew but wasn’t feeling good about it? Damnit, I knew this was too soon. It felt like we’d been together forever, but really, it hadn’t even been a year yet. By traditional standards, this was much too soon.
But we weren’t traditional at all. And we had been through so much that I felt our relationship was much older than it actually was. Plus, I did actually have a practical reason to ask. I could always use that as my out in case I made him uncomfortable.
He looked up at me, seeing me stare at him with a frantic look on my face.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Is something wrong?”
“No… yes… I don’t know. I’m feeling a little anxious right now.”
“About what, babe? Come, sit, talk to me.”
But I didn’t sit. I just kept pacing the floor. I knew only one thing was going to make the panic go away and that was to spit it out.
“Babe, I have something I need to talk to you about.”
This made him look even more nervous himself.
“Okay, what is it?” he asked.
“I love you. You know that I love you. You are everything to me. In the short time we’ve been together, you’ve changed my life so dramatically. For the better, everything has been for the better. And it hasn’t actually been very long, I know that, but I am completely confident that you are the man I am going to spend the rest of my life with.”
“Babe—” He grinned at me.
“Let me finish,” I insisted. “I, uh, well… I wanted to make this big, romantic speech to you but now I’m completely blanking. I’m, uhm, pretty nervous. But I guess all I really need to say is that I love you. I want to be with you forever. I’m sorry this isn’t more romantic.” I chuckled awkwardly. “But hopefully this makes up for it.”
I walked over to him on the couch, knelt down in front of him, and pulled out a little ring box. I opened it to expose a rose gold wedding ring that I had engraved with our initials.
“Babe,” I began, “will you marry me?”
He kept glancing up and down. First at my face, then at the ring, his jaw dropped in complete surprise.
I was expecting a ‘yes’ to fly out of his mouth at any moment, but every second he delayed, I got more nervous. After about thirty seconds, I finally had to break the silence.
“Please say something,” I begged.
“I’m sorry,” he said, laughing, “I’m just so surprised…”
“Damnit.” I shook my head. “I knew this was too soon. I knew it would freak you out.”
“Baby…” he tried to console me.
I stood back up again and started pacing all over. Instead of my anxiety dissipating, it had grown more intense.
“No, you know, I should have known better. This is totally on me. I don’t blame you for not saying yes right now—who proposes to someone they’ve known less than a year? It was just that I was reading about the adoption process last month and most agencies require you to be married for two years before you apply. So I just thought maybe we could get married now and then if we want kids sooner than we originally planned—”
“Baby!” he yelled, interrupting me. “Can you stop your rambling for one moment and look at me?”
I did. I turned around to find him on his knees now, a small red velvet box in his hand.
“Wait… Is that…” I began to mumble.
“A wedding ring? For you? Uh, yes, it is.” He smiled.
“You were… going to propose to me?”
“Well, yeah. Before you came home all anxious and went a little crazy-rambly there.” He laughed.
“Oh my God…” I sat down on the couch. “You were going to propose to me!” I couldn’t even grasp the concept.
“And I’m guessing by your own proposal, you would have said yes.”
“Yes! Of course I would have said yes just… Oh my god! I can’t believe we both did this on the same night, how crazy is this?!”
“Pretty crazy.” He laughed as he took the ring out of his box. “Here, give me your hand.”
He slid it onto my finger and then I took his hand and did the same.
“Are you sure we’re ready for this? To be married and everything?”
“Absolutely, I do! Baby, you’re my god damn soul mate. Ring or no ring, I already knew I was spending the rest of my life with you. I have no problem declaring that to the world.” He sat down on the couch next to me and rested his hand on my knee. “Especially if it’s required for us to have a baby of our own.”
Right, I completely forgot I mentioned the adoption thing.
“I hope you’re not weirded out that I was looking it up. What it takes to adopt, I mean. It was only that, though! Just a google search, nothing serious.”
&nbs
p; He looked at me. “No, it wasn’t just a google search.”
I blushed.
“Don’t be embarrassed.” He wrapped his right arm around my shoulders. “I know you. I know what kind of person you are. And I can see how much you want a baby. I see it in your eyes when a kid runs by us on the sidewalk. I see it when we have to walk down the health aisle at the grocery store and you stare at diapers.”
“It’s really been that noticeable, huh?” I asked.
“It has. But I don’t mind. In fact, I find it pretty damn adorable.”
“You do?” I looked up at him hopefully.
“I do. And I want you to know… I’m ready. Whenever we can have a baby, I’m ready. You’re not going to have to wait.”
Tears were filling up in my eyes. Already, our life was too good. Already, things were better than I could ever ask for. But now, the love of my life was going to marry me. He was going to give me children as soon as he possibly could. I was going to have a family.
I pulled him in for a deep kiss and then wrapped my arms around him, my head resting on his shoulder.
“You are going to be an amazing father. You are already such an amazing partner.”
“And you will be too.” He kissed the top of my head. “I’m thinking we’re headed toward a beautiful life.”
Epilogue
Miles
As we stepped out of the car, I noticed Aidan’s shirt had come untucked during the drive.
“Babe, quick, come here,” I whispered and pulled him toward me. “We’ve got to fix this.”
“Oh, thank you, babe,” he said, kissing my forehead gratefully. “Usually it’s me trying to fix your clothes.”
This was true. Aidan had always been the more fashion savvy one in our relationship. And I was sure if it wasn’t for the long drive, his shirt never would have come untucked at all. But that’d happen when you were driving in a car for three hours.
“Are you ready to go in?” he asked.
“Yeah, absolutely,” I said as we began to walk toward the church.
I was pretty nervous, though. I braced myself for all the people I was going to see. People of my past that I hadn’t seen since college, people who probably didn’t approve of my “lifestyle choice,” as straight people often put it.