All of You All of Me

by Claudia Burgoa

  “I don’t know.”

  We wait the longest sixty seconds in the history of the world. Hunter is the one who takes the stick and reads it.

  “I would suggest a blood test, but so far the result is negative.” His voice is guarded, shaky. He sounds like he’s telling me about his last case, but hiding the shattering news. “If you make an appointment, I’ll go with you.”

  No baby, I repeat to myself, staring down at my flat stomach. That’s good, that’s okay. Then why the fuck do I think my world is falling apart?

  “Okay.” My chin quivers and I feel the threatening tears pushing their way out of my eyes, but I don’t allow them.

  “You were right,” he says, leaving the bathroom. I follow, hoping he’ll tell me what he means by I’m right. “We shouldn’t be together.”

  “Oh.” I fight the pricking tears. He’s leaving me. The words I said were, let me get my fucking act together, please. I never said . . . my knees buckle, but I reach out to the nightstand to steady myself. “I’m almost sure I said give me time,” I mumbled, looking at the carpet.

  He gives me a sharp nod. “The point is that there’s no use in being next to you right now,” he says with a definite tone.

  I hear the glass shattering noise inside my chest. If I am quiet enough, I’ll hear the shards hitting the floor.

  “I love you,” he declares, and the words feel like a punch in the gut.

  Sorry, I love you, but not enough. How many times have I heard that before?

  “But I’m enough,” I respond. “I might not be enough for you, but I’m enough for myself.”

  He gives me a loving look, and I want to hate him so badly. “Look, Willow, I know you have feelings for me, too,” he says. He exhales heavily, placing his hands on his waist while looking up to the ceiling.

  “What I’m getting at is that we can’t be together until you recognize those feelings for yourself and you’re ready to voice them to the entire world.” He walks to the door. “You are enough. You are everything to me. I understand that you have a disorder. It’s a complicated illness and part of who you are. The storm you talk about, that’s you. You have a powerful personality. Things are so intense when you are around that you tilt my entire world.”

  He smiles. “And I fucking love it. I want to be the man who can observe you silently from afar, learn every flaw, every quirk, and at the end of the day, love you even more.”

  Then he sobers up, shaking his head. “My biggest wish is to be your exception. Because you are my exception. I want to be the lucky bastard who won your heart because you own mine. But I’m definitely not your father.” His voice is low, determined. “I choose you, but I also choose myself. I promise to validate your feelings, but you have to learn to validate mine. I will be by your side, only if you are willing to see me as your partner. You are not in this alone, but you have to recognize everyone who stands next to you.”

  He runs a hand through his hair. “As I told you, I’ll give you time. Come back to me when you are sure about us, your feelings, and what you want for our future.” He sighs heavily. “Stop being scared of the what ifs, and be ready to live in the now,” he says, walking out of the door and my life.

  LOVE DOESN’T NEED PERMISSION

  No matter how hard you try, that feeling just never goes away.

  ~ Nicholas Spark

  Willow

  THIS WEEK REPRESENTS another big cathartic episode. According to my therapist, I was trying too hard to control my emotions instead of working through them. I blamed the pregnancy scare for it. Two nights and plenty of flash cards proved me wrong. Working through each emotion meant backtracking all my steps. It had been my encounter with my parents. I put the encounter to rest. The anger against my mother remained hidden, waiting for just the right moment to pounce and start one of the biggest storms I had been through. I chided myself at first. Once I worked through each emotion I experienced, from the moment I saw my parents until Hunter left me, I patted myself instead as I repeated, “everything will be okay. you’ve got this under control.”

  It had been too much at once. I didn’t give myself enough time to think. It’s another lesson I have to learn. Another experience that is helping me live with myself and with others. I can’t deny that I’m afraid of the future. After identifying the fear, I wrote it in my journal. It has become a reminder. Every time I try to push my loved ones away, I will remind myself of what will happen if I let my insecurities win. They are there, but I have to understand that most of them are just the remnants of what happened more than twenty years ago.

  It’s an old problem that opened me up from the core. Working for my future implies working with my past. That’s why I had to deal with my parents. I emailed them a letter that I hope Laila reads.

  Laila and Grant,

  Being an adult is hard. I can imagine that being a parent is even harder. The thing is that when you decide to become a parent, you assume the responsibility of another person. A small little human who is fragile and needs love and protection. There’s never a timeline for when a child no longer needs that unconditional love from the people who created them. Not every child is lucky to have parents to support them from early childhood until adulthood. I’m one of those cases.

  You had reasons to create a wall between your children and you. I have gone back and forth, trying to comprehend your reasoning. It’s impossible to wrap my head around the fact that neither one of you chose to love your daughters more than you love who you are as a couple.

  All these years, I have resented your absence. I hated that you abandoned me. Still, I have that love for the two of you that’s bigger than many comprehend. Love you rejected. Love you wasted or took for granted. The decision to visit you was out of desperation to win back what I had lost. I expected that you would receive us with open arms and a real apology. That wasn’t the case. As of today, I still feel we have a lot of unfinished business. But, I’m not ready to deal with that part of my life. Not when I have a lot more to learn about myself and my family. The family I created with the people that I love and who love me back.

  Still, I feel like I have to apologize if you don’t hear from me. There’s no timeline or plan set on when I will be open to send you an email or call you. Just know it’s not because I don’t love you, but because I have to validate my own feelings before I can understand yours.

  All my love,

  Willow.

  They didn’t respond back. Hazel who I had copied on the email came barging into my room. I thought she was going to lecture me or something. Instead, she hugged me and let me cry on her shoulder.

  “I wish you had a big sister like I did,” she whispered. “That’s who saved me, you.”

  We both cried hard, laughed harder, and decided our parents were taking the backseat for as long as we both needed.

  Maybe I don’t have a big sister, but my little sister is who kept me going through those years. And now, she’s old enough to be one of my biggest supporters and advocates. She has learned how to support me without trying to give me an entire guide on how to solve my problems. She accompanied me to the doctor. There was a one-percent chance that all those pregnancy tests were wrong. However, that wasn’t the case.

  My doctor confirmed I wasn’t pregnant. She suggested that my episode was caused by dehydration and stress. Her only recommendation was water and exercise.

  If there’s something that I learned from this experience, it’s that I have to validate my own feelings and prioritize. Like my feelings for the most loving, most caring, and most wonderful man I’ve ever met. Before contacting Hunter, I search for the manila envelope. The one he had prepared for my birthday. The message he wrote stopped me many, many times.

  Don’t read until you’re ready.

  Ready is a fickle word. I can be ready for the next marathon. I can stall my life and say, I’ll start a relationship once I’m ready. Ready for what? He’s right. I don’t want to voice my feelings for him out loud. B
ut I can’t continue living my life based on what happened to me years ago. My parents didn’t know how to love when I was a child. They don’t know how to love now.

  More than a year ago, Hunter terminated our relationship because he wanted me to find a man who could be strong enough to handle a passionate person like me. He left to work on himself to become that man. That’s how much he loves me. He slayed his own demons because if he can let go of the past, he might be worthy of my heart. That is the love I want to experience for the rest of my life. Opening the envelope, I take out the contents. Ten smaller, numbered envelopes.

  The first is a birthday card, wishing me a happy birthday.

  The second envelope contains a platinum bracelet with one single charm hanging. A heart.

  The third envelope contains a lock charm.

  The fourth envelope contains a key charm.

  The fifth envelope contains the statue of liberty charm.

  The sixth envelope contains a theatrical charm.

  The seventh envelope contains a scale of justice charm.

  The eighth envelope contains a flower charm.

  The ninth envelope contains a baseball hat.

  The tenth envelope is a letter.

  Happy birthday, gorgeous,

  By now your desk must look like a flower shop, and you will be confused about the charms. Well, as I thought about this day and how to make it special, I kept thinking about the fantasy we lived last week. The couple that married because there was something special between them. Something so strong they couldn’t deny it. They had to be together for the rest of their lives.

  To be honest, before you, I never believed in love at first sight. But I believe the night we met was whimsical. A serendipitous moment when we let go of a piece of ourselves and gave it to each other. You’re that piece of me that I didn’t know I was missing.

  The bracelet is a symbol of what our intertwined lives can be, each charm I gifted you represents a part of us. It’s the beginning of us, and I hope that throughout the years we keep adding more charms that will tell our story. It’ll be so rich that we will buy more and more bracelets. All filled with the memories of who we are, who we become, and our family.

  Call me crazy, but I hope that after tonight our life as we know it ends, and we begin an entirely new one. Together.

  Please, Willow Renee Beesley, walk along with me. We can get to know each other while we start our life together.

  With all my love,

  HNE

  At the bottom, I found a small note.

  Willow,

  The night of your birthday marked the end of a fantasy.

  I’m sorry that I have to leave you. I wish you the best, and also, I wish that when I come back, we are ready for what I feel in my heart can be the most epic love.

  Be well and be ready. I can’t wait to love you,

  Hunter Nicholson Everhart

  Hunter

  We won a big settlement. I hired three new associates. We finalized the details to purchase a law firm in London, and I landed two new clients. My life is fucking awesome. I should be out celebrating with Fitz, Scott, and Hazel. Instead, I’m home holding my phone. Staring at it like a sick puppy waiting for his owner to pick him up from boarding. It’s been four days since I saw Willow. Three hours since she texted me the confirmation from her doctor. She went to the fucking doctor without me.

  WILLOW: The blood work results are back. I’m not pregnant.

  Fuck, any man would celebrate this day. It couldn’t get better than knowing you didn’t knock up your ex-girlfriend, and you just made a bunch of money. I’m not anyone. I’m a pathetic man who is waiting for more from life. Until the text, I had no idea I was still hopeful that she was pregnant. I wished that her text had said something along the lines of “the stick was wrong, we are going to be parents.”

  In any case, I have to answer her text, and as of yet, I have no fucking idea how to respond to it. Which adds another twenty minutes of my staring at the phone and most likely Willow waiting for something. Maybe she’s with my brothers getting drunk and flirting with assholes. Nah, she’s not like that. Well, what is she like then? She doesn’t show anything.

  HUNTER: I’m glad, you must be happy.

  I regret hitting send when I read the sarcastic remark. Fuck that was shitty. But it’s the truth. Isn’t it? She’s worried about her job, her future. I huff. No, I want to be upset for the shit she said. I know that her biggest worry is being a bad mother like hers. The rest of what she said, was white noise to avoid the real problem. I hate knowing more than she is willing to say.

  WILLOW: Sorry about what I said, my emotions have been running high since Brazil.

  Her emotions running high? Pfft. She is a high of emotions. Fuck, I want to call her and give her a piece of my mind. At least, have a long talk. Discuss what I felt after the news that she’s not expecting my baby was revealed. I wanted that fucking baby. I wanted her.

  I.

  Have.

  Nothing.

  For sixty seconds, I played with the idea of having a little baby. Our baby. For sixty seconds, I saw a happy family. Those seconds gave me hope but also showed me that Willow isn’t ready for a relationship. I have no doubt that she loves me. I’ve seen it in her eyes. My heart feels it. She just won’t allow her heart to fully show me. Only one night has she done it. That night in Brazil when she allowed me to let everything I felt come out of hiding.

  HUNTER: I understand.

  It sounds sensible, but a fucking lie.

  In truth, I don’t fucking understand why she has to keep herself away from people who love her. I adore her, yet, she insists that she’s not enough for me. That I’d be happier with someone normal. Which planet is she on? There’s no fucking normal in this world. That label is the biggest lie. Not one person in this world is perfect. Some just know how to hide their imperfections better than others. Those are the fuckers everyone should be concerned about.

  Willow is breaking our hearts by insisting that she’s not enough. She is trying to create a fantasy of a person who everyone will accept. Or maybe, she has changed and only showed that fucked up side while we waited for the stupid stick to give us the answer we both waited for. Though, we had different motives.

  Will this be over? I was serious when I said I would wait for her, but wouldn’t be around until she was ready to take the next step. How can she not get it? She’s more than enough—she’s plenty. She’s everything.

  WILLOW: No, you don’t understand.

  WILLOW: You’re saying what you think is right. You’re upset that I haven’t had the nerve to take a step forward and cross the line. That I keep you at arm’s length. You’re pissed that I don’t see what you feel for me. But I see everything, Hunter.

  WILLOW: The problem with you, is that you’re an entire emotion that scares me.

  WILLOW: You’re the biggest emotion I’ve ever encountered. I’m not blind. I’m blindsided by the amount of love you radiate.

  WILLOW: I am afraid because I want to feel your warmth, always. Your loving me is overwhelming and wonderful. But the fear of losing you overshadows everything. And that might stay forever. The big elephant between us is, and might always be, the insecurity of losing you.

  WILLOW: I know you’re not my father.

  WILLOW: Thank God, you’re nothing like him. You’re prepared to do everything in your power to ensure that I work my way through my problems. That I can learn how to live with my emotional state. That is real love.

  WILLOW: I’m not my mother, either, and it’ll take time for me to grasp that concept. Teaching myself to love me has proven to be a challenge. Being a father is something you would love to be. Please, don’t deny it. I saw the pain in your face when you saw the results. And after the way I acted, you might think I don’t want children. Honestly, after you left I broke down because for sixty seconds, I could see myself holding that baby. Our baby.

  WILLOW: So no, you don’t understand how I fee
l or my current emotional state. And that’s because I didn’t explain it to you. You assumed. If things are going to work between us, we have to stop assuming. We need to start communicating with each other without reservations. You have to start trusting that I can handle myself, and I have to trust you with my thoughts. Because Hunter Everhart, us is a noun that I hope we use often and forever.

  WILLOW: Can we talk?

  I scrub my face with both hands. “Can we talk and what, Willow?” I say out loud harshly to no one. Thank fuck my brothers are away. “So you can break the few pieces left of my broken heart?”

  “So we communicate.” She walks in with her chin up, her eyes bright and her fucking smile plastered on that mouth I want to devour. Lifting her hand, she shows me the envelope I gave her over a year ago. “I know what you did, Hunter Everhart. I get it now.”

  IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS

  The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

  ~ Moulin Rouge

  Hunter

  HER DEFINED EYEBROW arches, she gives me an I know everything about you now kind of look.

  What is it that she knows? I stare at her, mute. How can I be out of words? I had thought about this moment ever since I left her apartment. I’m confused by her “us.” What do her texts mean? Does she mean let’s try to date or let’s marry tomorrow?

  “Who let you in?” I fire the first question, as I study her.

  She dangles a key chain, placing it back in her purse. “Fitz gave me the keys.”

  Setting her tote bag on top of the green velvet mat of the pool table, she starts pulling boxes. I stand up, marching closer.

  Carefully, she opens a black velvet box where the bracelet I gifted her for her birthday appears. The charms already attached to it.

  “Do you recognize this?”

  I nod.

  “Let’s call it evidence.”

  Then, she starts opening the rest of the small boxes. Tons of charms I bought during my trips.