by Holly Hart
“You’re serious?” I blurt out. “You’re not playing with me?”
Poppy shakes her head, smiling mischievously. “Nuh-uh. It would be nice to have a girl to live with. Dad’s okay, I guess… but he’s terrible at braiding my hair …”
I turn back to Harlan with very real surprise on my face. Really, though, I’m just doing my best to hide my shock from Poppy.
“You braid?”
Harlan shrugs, looking bashful. “Not that well, apparently.”
The rest of the meal disappears in a flash. It feels like I blink twice, and Harlan’s already paying the bill. I feel like I must be living inside a dream world. Surely it’s not possible to be this happy?
I half expect someone to turn a corner at any minute and tell me it was all a joke, a reality television show. But the longer it doesn’t happen, the longer the rug doesn’t get pulled out from underneath me, I slowly begin to realize that this is no television show.
It’s real.
I get to keep Harlan for the rest of my life.
“Race you to the car!” Poppy yells. She power walks to the restaurant’s front door, and the second it’s polite to do so, she breaks into a sprint.
I start after her. “Relax!” Harlan says for the second time today. The second time this meal. “Look, Stan’s out there. She’ll be fine.”
My heart thuds in my chest. It’s strange, I’ve only known Poppy – in person, at least – for a few minutes, and yet I’m already terrified for her safety. I wonder if this is what being a parent is all about.
Harlan grabs me by the wrist and tugs me gently back as Poppy nears the waiting limousine.
“There’s one last thing,” he says – his face more solemn than I’ve seen it in a long while. It’s as if he’s struggling to figure out how to get out the words. I realize that whatever he wants to tell me – it must be serious – because he’s not acting like the Harlan I’ve come to know and love.
“Spit it out,” I grin.
“It’s–” he chews his lip. “It’s about your father.”
My stomach tumbles. I feel like I’m on a runaway roller coaster, speeding from one of the happiest moments of my life, straight down to one of the worst.
“What about him?” I groan, hiding my face in my hands. “What’s he done now?”
“Nothing serious,” Harlan assures me, holding my chin and staring at me with those glittering, ice gray eyes.
“I promise. But I wanted to ask you something. A friend of mine from the service, he couldn’t handle the bad dreams, the PTSD. I guess that’s what they call it now. He didn’t have a sexy psychiatrist to fix him,” he grins reassuringly at me.
“Instead he turned to alcohol and pills – whatever he could get to take the edge off his fears – to get him to sleep at night. Anyway – he ended up homeless–”
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, cutting across Harlan’s story.
“Don’t be,” Harlan says, squeezing my hand. “I got him off the streets, and found this rehab program for him to enter. It’s coupled with this new experimental drug trial, and the early results are out of this world.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
It’s as if I’m seeing the first glittering of light at the end of the tunnel – but I don’t want to get my hopes up. I’ve had them dashed against the rocks of my father’s alcoholism so many times before.
“It’s a residential program,” Harlan says. “With a 90% success rate – if they can stick out the first month. I’ve made some calls, and your father has a place. If he wants it … that’s all.”
Harlan looks at me with a combination of expectancy, and a hint of anxiety. He looks like he’s wondering whether he has overstepped his bounds.
I fly towards him, pressing my lips against his, and kiss him fiercely. It’s as if I’m in a vacuum, and Harlan’s mouth is my only source of life, of oxygen. I don’t care about Mabel’s customers seeing us, not anymore.
“Yes,” I whisper, “a thousand times, yes. How the heck did I find a man like you, Harlan? I can’t believe you’d think to do something like that for me. Did I ever tell you how much I love you?”
“Any time,” he grins, letting out the tiniest reassured sigh. “Seriously – I was worried I messed everything up somehow.”
“You?” I choke, tears welling up in my eyes.
I wipe them away, ashamed at my weakness. It’s just, I’ve never felt anywhere close to being this happy. It’s like every dream I ever had has been realized. It’s not the money, not the trinkets, not the fancy cars or expensive artwork on the walls of Harlan’s expensive penthouse.
It’s none of that. It’s just, him. Him and Poppy, the life he’s built for the pair of them – and now for me.
And then I do something completely, utterly, unbelievably crazy. My lips move before my brain has a chance to pull them back.
“Can I ask you something, Harlan?” I say, voice cracking as I hear my own audacity.
“Always,” he grins. “Shoot.”
“I know this isn’t supposed to be how it happens, but I – I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life with anyone else–”
“That’s good to hear…”
I frown at him, and he presses his hand over his mouth, zipping it tight. “I’m serious. You made me happier than I’ve been since I was a kid, since before all of this started. So I want to know something. Will you–” I choke, then power forward on a surge of energy that wells up from out of nowhere.
“Will you marry me?”
Harlan’s eyes flare with shock. He looks at me, stunned. His mouth opens and shuts – a bit like a goldfish. But the sexiest goldfish I’ve ever seen…
But for all that slippery sexiness, Harlan is still stunned into silence. It might well be the first time in his life he hasn’t been able to reach for an easy joke.
And suddenly, I’m at a disadvantage. I don’t know where that request came from. I’ve known Harlan for what, six weeks? This is just lust, not love – surely.
No.
My jaw sets with determination, because I know the truth. I know myself. Whatever Harlan’s response, I know I wasn’t wrong to ask. He changed my life. He sacrificed for me when no one else would, and when he didn’t have to. So whatever his decision, even if it breaks me, I’ll understand.
Even so – my anxious brain stammers and stutters to fill the empty silence. “Not now, I mean,” I say nervously.
“But some time. Someday. It’s just… I don’t want to spend my life searching for any other man. I found him. I love you, Harlan, and nothing’s ever going to change that.”
Harlan takes a pace towards me, holds one finger up and presses it against my lips. I flinch, anticipating the only word I can imagine him saying: no.
But he doesn’t.
“This –” he says, turning his head to one side curiously, “Isn’t supposed to be how it works. I’m supposed to ask you, not the other way around …”
My eyes fix on his. I don’t see anything other than those glittering, caring, gray orbs. I try to predict what he’s going to say – how he’s going to let me down, but it’s impossible. He’s a sphinx.
“Just tell me,” I say, unable to conceal the stress cracking my voice. “Put me out of my misery, already.”
Harlan leans towards me, his forehead wrinkling. “You think it’s going to be that bad,” he winks. “Marrying me?”
This time it’s my eyes’ turn to flare with shock. Even when I proposed to Harlan, part of me – most of me – didn’t expect him to say yes. So now, I’m shocked into silence.
“That’s a yes,” he growls, removing his finger from my lips and replacing it with his own. He kisses me again, again not caring about the startled looks from the assorted diners behind us. “I’m just annoyed I didn’t get to ask you first…”
So that’s it.
My feet fill with an unbelievable lightness, my stomach is filled with butterflies. I don’t care what happens to me now. I d
on’t know what lies in my future. I don’t know if I’ll go back to my job, or just spend the next decade traveling the world with Harlan and Poppy. Most of all, I couldn’t care less if the medical board finds out I had a relationship with a patient.
I’ll sign whatever disclaimer I need to sign, because I’m not Harlan’s therapist anymore.
I’m his fiancée.
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