Just Remember to Breathe (Thompson Sisters)

by Sheehan-Miles, Charles

  “Okay,” she said in a small voice. She looked at her twins and said, “Can you tell Mom and Dad to continue dinner without me? And not to come down here under any circumstances?”

  The twins nodded simultaneously, and Alex stepped outside, with me, and shut the door behind her. She took a seat on the front stoop, carefully sweeping her dress under her.

  “Sit down,” she said, indicating the space next to her on the stoop. I nodded. My heart was thumping. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt like this, unless it was the night I first asked her out an eternity ago. Christ, I was terrified. What if she said no? What if she told me to go to hell, to get out of her life? Or worse, what if she said yes, and then we ended up hating each other later?

  Damn it, I thought. Stop that. Just do it. Go for it. For once in your life, step the hell out of yourself and say what you mean.

  “Okay,” I said. “Look, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, a lot of writing. About what you said. About… me, and who I am. About you. About us.”

  She nodded.

  “I’m not very good at this, Alex. But… it’s something I have to do, okay. I’ve got some things to say, and I’m asking you to hear me out, without interruption, all the way through.”

  “Without interruption?”

  I nodded. “I don’t want to lose my train of thought, all right? Please? When I get to the end, you can ask me questions, or tell me go take a hike, or whatever, all right?”

  She gave me a sardonic smile, and said, “Okay. You set the rules. No interruptions.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I took a deep breath, then felt in my pocket, filled with index cards. I took them out.

  “Wait,” she said, grinning, her eyes bright. “You wrote this down? On index cards?”

  “I don’t want to forget anything,” I said. “I told you, I’m not very good at this. So I wrote some notes to keep me focused, okay?”

  “Wow,” she said. She had a half smile on her face.

  “You’re interrupting.”

  “You haven’t started yet.”

  I rolled my eyes up at the dark sky and muttered, “Oh, boy. All right.” I glanced at the first card. It said, Jaffa.

  “Do you remember the night we were in Jaffa? In the Old City?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay,” I said. “That’s the night I realized that I really wanted to get to know you. I saw you before that, at Hunter College before we flew to Tel Aviv. But you were so far out of my league, I didn’t even know where to start. And the flight over was awesome, and well, I mean, we flirted. And that was awesome. I was very attracted to you. But when we were walking back to the Youth Hostel, and I saw that really old house. It looked like it might have been a thousand years old.”

  “Abandoned,” she said. “I remember.”

  “Yeah. The thing was, I wanted to explore. And you came with me. The others were all worried. We might be trespassing or something. I don’t remember what they were worried about, to tell the truth. But that was when I realized how brave you were. And… wow, I admire courage. I think that night was when I started to fall for you.”

  She took a deep breath, and I could tell she was just as caught in that memory as I was. She’d taken my hand as we walked through the old house. It was just for a moment, but it was a moment that still burned in my memory.

  “See, courage can come in a lot of ways. It can be on a battlefield, and I’ve dealt with a little of that. It can be… something like you getting up every day, even after what Randy did to you, and still going back to school, going on with your life even though I know it hurt like hell. Alex, you need to know that I admire that about you. The night we left Israel, you wanted me to tell you how I felt. I didn’t know how to do it, then. I didn’t have the courage to do it, then. But I’m telling you now. Okay?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, and stared at me, her eyes huge, intoxicating. She nodded and bit her lower lip.

  I set the card down next to me. The next one said, En Gedi.

  I looked at her. Was she hearing me? I thought so, but that didn’t mean I’d won her over yet.

  “So, anyway. I know I shouldn’t say this as part of what I’m saying, because it’s going to be all sexist and objectifying and all that stuff. But I’m trying to tell you how I feel. So here’s the thing… Alex, you’re so beautiful, sometimes just looking in your eyes makes my heart stop. Even if I never see you again after today… even if I get to be ninety-nine years old, and have a life that goes on without you… I will never, ever forget our first kiss.”

  She blushed, her color going deep red, and I whispered, “You make me feel alive, Alex. We fit together in ways that I didn’t imagine were possible. I know I’m not the most articulate of guys, so it’s hard for me to say this and have it make any sense at all. But over the last few years, I’d been with a few girls. And you’re … something different entirely. Holding you in my arms… touching you… it’s like plugging me into an electric socket. It’s hard for me to be around you and not touch you, you’re intoxicating—sometimes I’m desperate just to reach out and touch one little hair on your head.”

  I took a deep breath, looking her in the eyes. “If you send me on my way today,” I whispered, “If you tell me to get the hell out of your life and never come back… I’ll accept it. But it will be the one and only permanent regret of my life: that we never made love. That we lost our future together.”

  She began to tremble, and opened her mouth to speak, and gently, I placed an upright finger over her lips.

  “You promised,” I said quietly. “No interruptions. Let me get this out before you send me away. I’m begging you.”

  A tear rolled down her cheek. I don’t know if she was sad, or angry, or happy, or what. So I moved on quickly to the next card, hoping desperately that she was going to allow me to continue until I was completely finished. When I set the card with the words En Gedi down, she picked both of them up, and held them in her hands.

  The next card said, The Rules. As I opened my mouth to speak, she snatched it out of my hands.

  I blinked, surprised, as she read the card, and her eyes immediately watered. What was she thinking of, when she saw that card? Her silly rules, her perfect rules, that had allowed us to tolerate each other long enough to fall for each other all over again?

  “Alex, I love the fact that you’re … you’re creative as hell. You’re smart. Even after I broke your heart, you figured out a way for us to be around each other. It might have been flawed, it might have been a little crazy, but it worked. I love the games we played. I loved when we asked each other questions and took turns, and I hope we never ever stop doing that. When I’m ninety, I want you to tell me that it’s my turn to ask you a question, and if that miracle happens, then my question is going to be, ‘Do you still love me?’ and I hope the answer will still be yes.”

  Tears were running down her face now.

  The next card had one word on it: Dad.

  She took that one from me too, as soon as I read it. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, and said, “My dad used to blame me for all kinds of crazy stuff. Like the first time he hit my mom. I told you about that. And I think I blamed myself, too. I thought… if I could just be better, then maybe they wouldn’t drink so much. If I didn’t screw up so much in school, maybe they wouldn’t be stressed out so much, and drink so much, and then maybe they’d realize that parents are supposed to remember to buy groceries.”

  I took a deep breath, and said, “So… when we met, I guess part of me still blamed myself for things that weren’t my fault. And it made me… so cautious. So afraid. So I held myself back. I never let you know exactly how I felt, because that’s part of how I control situations, it’s part of how I keep myself safe.”

  Oh God, I thought, taking a deep breath. This was hard. I looked her in the eyes, and my eyes were watering too. “Alex, I don’t need to keep myself safe from you. I don’t want to keep myself saf
e from you. You mean too much to me. I’d rather have a lifetime of heartache, from you breaking my heart, than even imagine my life without you. Because a life without you wouldn’t be a life at all.”

  She was huddled over, her arms wrapped around her shoulders, looking as if at any moment she was going to burst into tears. I looked at the next card, and it said Running. She reached out, and took it from me.

  I whispered, “Alex, you make me want to push myself harder. You’re right… the thing is, I never believed I was good enough for you. I never believed I measured up. But here’s the thing: you believed in me. No one has ever done that before in my life. And being around you, it makes me want to push myself to be better. It makes me want to be the best person I can. It makes me want to work, to deserve to have you in my life. You don’t just complete me. You make me a better person. When I’m with you, every single moment, I want to work to become someone you look up to, someone you admire, someone you can love. And I want to do the same for you. I want to protect you, and make you feel safe. I want to support you, whether you continue on to law school like your parents have pushed you, or if you decide to do something else entirely. If you took on a life of running a roadside concession stand, I’d want to be right there beside you, supporting you, no matter what you chose. I want to protect you, but I don’t just want to protect you… I want to help you learn to protect yourself. I saw the pride and happiness in your eyes when you threw me on the ground during our self-defense practice the other day, and I think that may have been one of the happiest moments of my life.”

  She took a deep breath, as if she was going to say something else, and I said, “Wait… one more.” My voice dropped to a whisper. “Just one more, okay? I have to get this out, because it scares the hell out of me.”

  She nodded, and I took up the last card. It said, The Ring.

  I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry as hell. She reached out and put her hand on the card, hesitated, then took it from me. When she saw the words on it, she started to shake uncontrollably.

  I couldn’t talk any louder than a whisper.

  “The night we left Tel Aviv, you were right to yell at me, because I couldn’t tell you how I felt. I was too afraid. And then I came out here to San Francisco, and I thought I was ready, but I wasn’t. We had a wonderful time, but it was tense, it was scary, and in the end, I went away and didn’t say it. And then I was in the Army, and you were in your senior year of high school, then at Columbia, and the time never seemed right. And then … well… we both know what happened.”

  I took a breath, and then said, “So, I’m going to tell you what I wanted to say that night in Tel Aviv, what I wanted to say here in San Francisco. What I’ve wanted to say every day since, but couldn’t.”

  My heart was thumping in fear. Where did she get the power to do this to me, I wondered, to make me terrified that she would break my heart, to make me so damn afraid that I’d lose her?

  I’d rather take the risk and lose her forever than not say it at all.

  “Alex, that night in Tel Aviv, what I wanted to say was this: Let’s pick the same college. Despite the challenges in our life, and the distance, and everything else, let’s make a choice. A choice to be together. I can imagine a life without you, but it seems impossibly dreary, imperfect, unhappy.”

  I took a deep breath, then whispered, “Alex, I don’t want to date you. I don’t want you to be my girlfriend. I don’t want us to be together for just a little while. I want you forever. I want us to look at each other, and say we love each other, and decide to be together forever. Alex…. I want to spend our lives together. If we ever decided we want to have kids, I want it to be me and you.”

  I was trembling as I reached in my pocket. This time I didn’t take out a card. I took out a tiny jewelry box. She gasped, and tears began running down her face freely. Her hands flew up to her face, covering her mouth, as I spoke again.

  “Alex… you are what makes my life worth living. Will you… will you consider becoming my wife? Will you let me commit my life to you? Please?”

  She stared at me, eyes wide. I think she was in shock, and I half expected her to run. I was shaking from tension and fear.

  Instead, she took the box from me, and slowly, ever so slowly opened it. Then she looked at me; she looked me in the eyes, and she whispered, “You’re crazy, Dylan. Oh, my God, you proposed marriage with index cards? No one else in the world would do that. Yes. Yes, yes! If you ask me a thousand times, then every single time I’ll say yes.”

  Both of us moved, quickly, and I was holding her in my arms, and looking her in the eyes. I took a deep breath, then slowly, gently leaned forward and kissed her. Her lips tasted like salt, salt from her tears, and then our kiss turned passionate, hungry, and I pulled her to me as her arms went around my neck, and at that moment, I’d have done anything to stay right there, like we were, forever.

  Asking them not to bite (Alex)

  When Dylan’s lips touched mine, it was as if the sun had just risen. My entire body responded to his, melting into him. If we hadn’t been sitting on my parents’s front steps, I might have ripped his shirt off right there. As it was, we kissed for what seemed a thousand years, his lips pressing hard against mine, and my mouth opened, at first just a tiny bit, then I sucked in a breath as his tongue gently, playfully touched mine.

  Then the front door opened.

  Dylan and I broke our lips away from each other, but I wasn’t letting go of him, no matter who it was.

  Jessica had opened the door a crack, and was blushing to the roots of her hair. I looked at her, a huge stupid grin on my face, and she returned it.

  “Um, sorry to interrupt, but mom and dad want to know if you are planning to come back up.”

  “We’ll be right there,” I said. “Give us just a minute.”

  “Okay,” she said. “See you.”

  She shut the door.

  “How much does she know?” Dylan asked.

  “All of it,” she said. “Jessica and Carrie. I’m afraid your timing … well…let’s just say we had a huge blowout at dinner. My parents know about Randy.”

  He nodded. “And… their reaction?”

  “We got it worked out. In fact… my father apologized. Sort of.”

  His mouth jerked up in a half smile. “Hard to imagine. Your dad is … formidable.”

  “Are you ready for this?”

  “Yes,” he said. He took a deep breath, then said, “Alex, with you by my side, I’m ready for anything.”

  “Then… let’s go upstairs.”

  Hand in hand, we entered my parents’ house and went up the stairs.

  My family was still arranged around the dinner table, the food mostly finished, having after-dinner coffee.

  The room went silent when I entered with Dylan.

  I took a deep breath, then said, “Mom, Dad… you remember Dylan Paris.”

  My father did something at that moment that stunned me. Something so out of character that I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.

  He stood up, and walked around the table, approaching Dylan, and held out his right hand to shake.

  “Dylan… it is good to see you. And… as my daughter put to me in the strongest terms earlier… I owe both of you an apology. Thank you for protecting her.”

  I could see Dylan was just as shocked as I was. He took my father’s hand, and said, “Thank you,” quietly.

  “We’ve got something to tell you,” I said, very quietly. Carrie’s eyes were as round as saucers, and I could see they were focused on my left hand. Where I wore the ring Dylan had just given me.

  “Mr. Thompson… Mrs. Thompson,” Dylan said. “I think you know that Alex and I… we love each other very much. I flew out here today because… well… I’ve asked Alex to marry me. And… she’s said yes. I’d like to ask you for your blessing.”

  Oh. My. God. What was he thinking? Asking my parents for their blessing was insane. It was like jumping into a pit of sna
kes and asking them not to bite.

  But once again, I was surprised. My father smiled, but it was my mother whose reaction really shocked me. Tears began running down her face, and she stood up, and walked to Dylan.

  She put her hands on his shoulders and said, “Of course you have our blessing. And… I hope I can be the first to say, welcome to our family.”

  Oh, God. I was going to start crying again. Jesus, bring on the waterworks. My sisters started crying out, crowding around us, hugging me and Dylan. My sisters of course had to see the ring, and I felt my hand yanked up into the light, and I couldn’t stop smiling. My cheeks were starting to ache, but this time it was a real smile, and I didn’t mind.

  Then my father broke down, and hugged Dylan, too.

  Carrie whispered in my ear, “You’ve given me hope. They’ve accepted a punk rocker and a former soldier. Who knows who might be next?”

  I grinned, and I knew then that things were going to be okay.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  You’re not finished yet (Alex)

  Six days later, we were home.

  I say home because, as much as I love San Francisco, and the house where I grew up with my parents, New York City is my home now. With Dylan.

  For those six days, my parents made Dylan welcome, letting him stay in the guest room on the fourth floor. The two of us spent our early mornings together, running, or him teaching me hand-to-hand combat techniques. Sarah actually joined us for that, and I could tell she thoroughly enjoyed it. I quietly mentioned to my Dad that she might enjoy enrolling in self-defense classes. Both of the twins would benefit from it.

  The day after thanksgiving, Crank and Julia left for New Zealand, to return to the band, which was on tour. Carrie flew out two hours later for Houston, where Ray Sherman was going to meet her for a week-long visit.