Things would be easier as he would be home until the fall, and after that we’d have to take things day by day. We spent the night in, eating takeout and savoring each other in bed knowing he didn’t have to leave again. It was blissful, and I finally felt at home again with my other half in London. As we ate, I caught him staring at my hand and I joked with him. “Sir,” I paused, gesturing to my face. “My eyes are up here.”
“Sorry,” he smirked. “It’s just nice seeing it there…I’ve been staring at it for almost a month now.”
“I can’t believe you bought it the next day.”
“I just knew. Truthfully,” he paused and bit his lower lip. “I’d known since Thanksgiving.”
“What?” I swallowed my food back.
“Yeah,” he nodded. “You remember my wish you wanted to know? Well, I knew even then that I had to be with you for the rest of my life. I understand it was early on, but I just felt it, Ellie. I spoke to your parents early that morning as your father taught me how to make the waffles, and before you came downstairs I asked for your hand. I told them that I hadn’t even told you I loved you, even though I already did, and that I was just waiting for the right time. That I was avoiding pressuring you or rushing you after all you’d been through, but that I’d wait forever if I had to.”
Rhys stroked my cheek as he continued. “I explained it could be a long time before I asked, or not, but that I knew it was already my intention to marry you no matter what. I wanted you to be my wife and promised them I would take nothing but the best care of you. They were surprised,” his brows rose. “But then agreed there was no way they could deny a chance for you to be happy…for us to be happy, together. Your mom said she hadn’t seen you smile that much in two years, that even your heart was smiling.”
Rhys paused and watched me intently. “So,” he took a deep nervous breath. “When I got the wishbone that night, I wished you would say yes and let me make your heart smile forever.”
I shook my head very slowly, processing everything he’d just told me. I thought about how excited he was for the wishbone, how sweet he was that entire weekend, and the glances he and my mother shared during our last two days. And then my eyes perked up, startling him.
“Oh my god, that’s why you looked at my mom that way, wasn’t it?”
“I didn’t think you’d caught that, but yes.”
“Rhys, this is the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. You really knew even then?”
“Ellie, I think part of me knew when I first held your hand. I may have kept it together on the outside, but internally I was feeling every possible sensation. It’s like the moment our hands touched I was done; you were mine and I was yours.”
Epilogue
“My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep. The more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.” - Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2
Aaron and I were both raised Catholic, so when the time came to plan his funeral, his parents opted for a traditional mass. They set it up with a priest they had known for years, a gentleman that had given Aaron all of his sacraments and would likely have married us. I’d only met Father Matthew once just before the funeral. He seemed nice enough, but I wasn’t in a state to notice much about people then. He was patient though, and took his time allowing various people to deliver eulogies, including James’ emotionally unintelligible one, and then he delivered his.
Since my first impression of him was vague, I only got to know him as he spoke about pain and loss, and how sometimes things happened that left us questioning our faith and life. He told a story about his family, how he had lost his great grandmother to a sudden accident, one that left everyone in his family distraught. And then he told the story of how he and his twin sister lost their mother two years later to a quick fight against pancreatic cancer. I couldn’t understand why he only told depressing stories when everyone was already at their lowest, but curiously I listened. He said both of those events were awful, and that his family still hadn’t completely healed, but explained how they had started to only recently.
Father Matthew said that his sister had always had trouble getting pregnant and wanted a large family of Irish babies. She and her husband had tried for years to no avail, but by some miracle she delivered a healthy baby boy just twenty-three days after his great grandmother died. And then she struggled for a year to get pregnant again, only to deliver another baby boy just eight days after their mother passed. Father Matthew explained that though it had taken them ten years to notice, those dates weren’t coincidence and while not everyone believed it was God’s hand, there was something larger at play. That things happened for a reason and those babies came when they needed them most.
I wasn’t sure what he’d been insinuating at the time or how he could claim that Aaron had died to bring some other person into our lives. I especially hated that he was talking about children, when I had just lost the person I’d always wanted them with. All I could think was what the hell was he thinking when he planned that speech? I pushed Father Matthew’s words into the back of my mind over the two years that followed, but recalled it when I took Rhys home for Thanksgiving. I had been happy with him then, ecstatic to show him my home, but I never could have imagined that maybe Rhys was what Father Matthew was referring to. Remembering the despair I was in when I first heard the words, I considered how different they sounded now that I could comprehend them clearly.
Loss was hard. It hurt like hell, and sometimes it took years to understand it. Rhys had come into my life when I had needed him to, with just enough time after Aaron’s passing to actually accept him. He was the only person that made me feel understood and not as some half-widow that was left behind, but as someone who had lost their spark in life.
On the day he proposed I remembered Aaron’s funeral and realized another reason Rhys was so special was because he had no qualms competing with a dead man’s ownership of my heart. He knew that Aaron would always hold it in some way, and that my love for him was infinite. But Rhys also understood that my love was shared, and that he possessed it in a way Aaron never could.
Being engaged again was scary at first. I had an irrational fear that having a ring on my finger meant I’d lose Rhys; that if I wanted him permanently, he’d be taken from me. Rhys could tell once it set in, because he asked if he had proposed too soon, so I explained my fears. I was trying to avoid shutting him out as I’d promised. He listened and calmed me, saying that we couldn’t control everything. He told me that life has its hardships that knocked us on our path, but it also had a habit of bringing wonderful gifts, like each other, and hopefully the children we’d have someday.
I loved how excited he was about our future, and that helped me enjoy the moment too. He was so thrilled to set the date he started discussing locales. We considered Paris in the fall, since it was our first trip, but ultimately decided on his mother’s house in Scotland. It would provide privacy and I loved the idea of getting married where he had spent his summers. Rhys especially loved the fact that our kids would grow up visiting where we’d get married.
He continually brought up a family and children, saying that he knew I wanted one too and had given up on the idea after Aaron. The night we got engaged he told me he treasured the idea of making me a mother despite my apprehensions.
“You’re my family, and I want nothing more than to surround you with little British babies running in this house.”
It was a beautiful picture he painted, and he said he could wait until I was ready, that knowing I wanted it someday was enough.
I finished my spring semester and since Rhys would be home until the fall, I taught summer courses on campus. I asked John if he could schedule my fall courses online so that I could travel back and forth with Rhys because he had to film in London and New York periodically. It would also allow me to travel for last minute wedding details since we chose to marry in November.
In between spring and summer classes, Rhys and I took
our trip to Naples. It was exactly what we needed, and we sat under the Italian sun, surrounded by purple and pink flowers hanging from our hotel balcony. I knew Rhys was still hesitant to let me pay, but it was the best money I’d ever spent because I had never seen him so relaxed. From the moment he proposed to me, I felt a peace I hadn’t in a while and it seemed he had too. It wasn’t the ring on my finger, and not because I wasn’t ending up alone, but because I finally understood Rhys really loved me all along. He knew since day one and was patient enough to let me catch up.
After coming back from Italy, Rhys would visit me on campus, sitting in the back of my classes with the worst disguises and distracting my students. One afternoon he took me to lunch at a nearby pub. We were so utterly happy and after ordering, our eyes lingered on each other as we shared a quiet moment. After minutes of comfortable silence Rhys twitched with a smile that said more than words.
“What?”
“So much has changed since we were last here…remember? This is where we played twenty questions.”
I looked around and realized I hadn’t even noticed. That felt like so long ago. “You’re right,” I paused. “Did you know then?”
“Did I know what?” he asked, his brows furrowing.
“That we’d be together?”
“I hoped with every fiber of my being…I hoped I would get what I wanted,” he nodded.
“And did you?” I leaned on my hand.
“Much more than I expected, darling.” My face went red and I fawned over the fact that he could still make me blush. Then he added, “Did you?”
“What, know that we’d be together? God no!” I laughed. “I was trying to ignore how hot I found you.”
“No,” he chuckled. “Did you get what you wanted?”**
“More than I knew I wanted.”
And I had. I was beyond blessed to have a man like him. I was lucky to have a partner like him, one that my parents adored, that Aaron’s parents loved too. They were all thrilled to hear I had accepted Rhys’ proposal, glad to see me living with a second chance in life.
I was truly moving forward and taking Aaron with me in my heart. I could still remember his smell, the way he used to bite his nails when he was nervous, and the sound of his rowdy laughter. None of it had left me and if anything, being with Rhys had brought Aaron back to life in the same way I had been revived.
A few weeks after getting engaged I gave my mother serious trouble for keeping the Thanksgiving story from me. I couldn’t believe she hadn’t mentioned it when I was upset and believed Rhys had cheated. She claimed it wasn’t her secret to tell, or her surprise to ruin. Apparently, she still had some tiny amount of faith that things would work themselves out and fall back into place. She reminded me of a mirror I had that was destroyed and how even then, things still came together.
When Aaron passed, my parents packed up my life and brought it over their house. In particular, they packed a full-length mirror, one that Aaron had bought me in a second-hand shop. Somewhere along the trip it had shattered in the truck, cracking in random places and resembling a prop from a horror film. When my dad brought it in, I thought, what else? as if life was challenging me to seven years of bad luck.
I remember staring at myself in the mirror before setting it in the trash, seeing my reflection all distorted through the cracks and missing pieces. After Aaron died, it felt like I looked at myself through that mirror for a long time: shattered, feeling the chips and shards piercing my heart and memories, but especially my future. My life was a shambles and so was my future, and despite throwing the mirror away, I continued seeing myself like that.
But the day I met Rhys everything changed. I started to care about how I looked, not physically, but internally. I started healing, because Rhys came and showed me it could be better. I still had some fractures to treat, and was far from perfect, but with Rhys by my side, and Aaron in my heart, I could finally see myself differently in that mirror in my mind.
I hadn’t lied to Rhys when I told him I loved him more than I loved Aaron. In a sense it was a fib because I loved Aaron for much longer than I had ever cared for Rhys. But my love with Rhys was so untainted by lack of judgment of my past, it was boundlessly stronger than I’d ever been able to love before. It took over my life, and while I would always love Aaron no matter what, my love for Rhys was infinite, too, because he allowed me to share my heart with Aaron. He made my past feel acceptable, and welcomed my cracked and chinked heart as it was. In fact, he thought my heart beautiful, and because he had mended it, I could see that my future with him would be beautiful too.
Excerpt - Perfectly Aligned
by Stephanie Alba
This will be a full length, standalone novel, due Fall 2015. This is unedited and subject to change.
Chapter 1
Waking up in a pool of sweat, flustered and confused is not an ideal way to start your morning, but it’s how I started mine. It was typical to wake up from these dreams in the same manner: completely out of breath, perspiration beneath my body and soaking my sheets, with my hair scattered across my head. I also regularly felt nostalgic, aroused, frustrated, and more depending on the scenes in the dream. Annoyed that it was still happening to me ten years later, I looked over to my digital clock and thankfully saw that I still had time to shower before work. I picked up my phone, planning to call Emilia regardless of the messages she’d already sent.
“Good Morning, sugar! It’s about time you called me,” Emilia’s voice chimed through the phone causing a harsh pain in my inner ear.
“It’s not a good morning yet, I’ve barely made it out of bed.”
“And why is that? You know you have to teach at 11:00 am right? You volunteered for this. You said you’d help now that I’m too pregnant to teach.”
“I know, Emilia, relax. I’m still in bed because I just woke up, not because I don’t want to help. Guess who I dreamed about last night?”
“No! Again?” Her voice made no effort to hide her simultaneous interest and frustration for me.
“Yes, again! It’s been about once a month since March. It’s driving me insane. Before it was once in a while, now it’s like I can’t stop.”
“Well, what was it this time?” she asked.
“Nothing, the usual,” I sighed. “He’s around, we’re together in some sort of capacity. It’s ridiculous because when I wake up I miss him in a way. It’s as if I expect him to be here, by my side or something. What the hell is wrong with me? This isn’t normal.”
“You’ve never really been normal, Hailee,” she laughed. “You want to know what I think?” she asked with cockiness in her voice.
“It doesn’t mean anything!” I said before she could tell me. “It’s just a familiar face that pops up every now and then.”
“Absolutely not. You just said once a month since March, it’s September! How come it’s only his face that you see? You don’t even dream about your exes.”
She had a point there, and I truthfully didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know… maybe I need therapy,” I said, attempting to brush her off. “I’m going to shower and then head over. See you soon.”
“Okay, but one more question,” she said sarcastically.
“What?”
“Was this one sexy at least?”
I stayed quiet because I didn’t want to answer truthfully. It was definitely a sexy dream, one that left me feeling lonelier than I had in a while and left me missing the feel of a lover’s kiss on my lips, and everywhere else for that matter. I groaned and Emilia laughed.
“I’ll take that as a yes! See you in a few. Just make sure you take a cold shower. You can’t teach yoga all turned on and sexually frustrated.”
I hung up on her cackling in the background.
Emilia and I had been friends since our freshman year of high school. She was my soul mate and despite meeting at fourteen, she knew more about me than most and understood me the best. She knew the things I’d been through that made me the
person I’d become, and I knew the same about her. If anything we were more like sisters than friends. Sometimes, like this morning, I found myself annoyed with her as I imagined we would if we really were sisters.
She was right in saying that I didn’t dream about my exes, and that his was the only face I saw when I sleep. Emilia was the only person that knew I frequently dreamed about Corwin Rogers. He was a classmate of mine from high school and simply that. We shared courses throughout our four years in school, often being partnered in assignments because of our close proximity in the seating arrangement. Samuels was right after Rogers on most of our teachers’ lists, so not only did I often stare at the back of his head,I had the pleasure of working with him almost daily. We were friends in school, often discussing personal aspects of our lives while working together, but we never got together outside of school because we had different circles of friends. I always wanted more with him though. Corwin was gorgeous and sweet, and over the four years that I knew him, I fell for him. Hard. Of course he had no idea how I felt, no one did. Emilia only found out during our senior year when she caught me staring at him repeatedly. After that she annoyingly pushed me to do something about it, but I gave her stupid excuses about how it would never work.
After we graduated, Corwin and I went our separate ways. He attended college in California and I stayed in Washington. Despite that, I still saw his face frequently as though he had never left, and in the world according to my mind, he hadn’t. I’d been dreaming about him on and off for almost ten years now. More than ten years if I counted the ones I had in high school. In some of them we were friends, or dating, or lovers; some were sex dreams, and others were sentimental replays of high school conversations we’d had. I even had one where we were yelling at each other and arguing like a married couple would. I don’t know why I saw him when I closed my eyes, having not heard from him since our graduation day, but Corwin’s image never left me. It drove me crazy all that time; I wish I knew why.
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