by Unknown
I feel his presence in front of me, and I’m afraid to move, not knowing what he’s going to say or do. I used to know him so well, but the space I put between us has made us like strangers. My eyes are on my lap, and I wipe away tears that haven’t fallen yet. He squats so we’re at eye level, and it hurts to see the pain I caused in his eyes. Those green pools used to light up my day, but now they seem dim, glassy.
He lowers his gaze to my hands and takes them, intertwining our fingers. His body is between my thighs, and our chests touch when his arms wrap around my waist. I forgot how secure I feel with him, how safe and strong he is. I used to sleep in his arms and all my problems seemed to fade away, but then I refused to let them help heal me. Keeping a secret so devastating was unfair to him, and my own fears pushed us apart. He promised to love me enough for the both of us, and I refused to let him. I rest my head on his shoulder and prepare myself to say the words I couldn’t say to him.
“I was pregnant again.” My voice is unrecognizable, frail, and tiny.
His chin leaves my shoulder as he pulls back and looks at me, then realization fills his expression.
“I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure… but I lost her.” I take a sharp breath. Thinking of the days leading up to my second miscarriage, how each day was hopeful, how I couldn’t wait until I couldn’t hide my bump, how we could take the journey together… but it never got that far. Just close enough to shut down my whole world.
“Oh, baby…”
I feel the pain in his words, his sorrow. He holds me tighter, and my body becomes limp as I cry into his shoulder. They’re not tears of despair but regret that it took me so long to tell him this, that I let it pull us further and further apart.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice is weak as he holds me more firmly.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to face it. I couldn’t see you disappointed or hurt. I couldn’t be the one to put you through that. Not again.”
He cups my chin and makes me look at him. “You don’t ever have to go through things alone, Chas. That’s what I’m here for. I love you. You don’t have to carry anything by yourself. Nothing can disappoint me as much as losing you.”
I see the pain and regret in his eyes, and I nod furiously. “I promise.”
His lips meet mine, and his kiss is soft, engulfing, gentle but intense.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him again and again between kisses.
“I’m sorry,” he says too.
I can’t help but be baffled. “What on earth do you have to be sorry about?”
My heart starts to speed up as my thoughts shoot to Kira. What if he really did sleep with her? If he did, after what I did, I can forgive him, I can move past it… I’ll have too.
“For not fighting harder for you.”
I burst into tears, but my smile feels wider than it’s ever been. “Thank God!” I laugh as I hug him tightly. “I thought you meant that… Kira… you and Kira.”
He shakes his head as his face flushes and he rubs the back of his neck. “It’s funny you bring her up. I guess in part you were right… she said she was interested in me.”
Anger rises in me, but I try not to let Bryce see it.
“Nothing happened,” he says after letting me stew for a few moments. I guess I deserve that… “So this agent guy…”
I can hear the bitterness in his tone. His jaw clenches as his brows furrow.
“I’ll ask him to end our contract. I’ll do it first thing tomorrow,” I promise.
A quiet moment passes between us.
“I have something for you,” he says, holding my hand.
He squeezes my hand and I squeeze his back. I intertwine our fingers, not wanting to let him go. He kisses me quickly, but we linger there. When he pulls away, he pulls completely away and goes inside the house. I sit anxiously.
When he returns, he has a book in his hand.
“You definitely know the way to my heart,” I say, unable to fight the smile spreading across my face.
He hands me the book, and my eyes widen when I see the picture on the cover. I swallow hard. It’s us, Bryce and me wrapped in each other’s arms. It’s one of my favorite pictures of us, one Duke took and teased us about mercilessly. My mouth drops open when I see the title The Story of Us by Bryclin Bell. My heart quakes.
I look up at him in disbelief. “Is this what I think it is?”
“I didn’t know how else to get through to you. I know you love books and words, so I thought maybe I could remind you of who we were, how much we used to mean to each other, and that we could get through anything.”
My mouth won’t close. I’m in shock, still not believing he’s saying what I think he’s saying. I open the first page and read the first sentence.
I fell in love with her words before I fell in love with her eyes…
“You wrote me a book?” I ask, tears clouding my vision once again. I’m torn between jumping into his arms, and reading the entire thing right now.
“It’s easy to write what you know,” he says as if he’s just done the simplest thing in the world.
He knows how much this means to me. I flip through it. This isn’t a novella or a short story; it’s over two hundred pages.
“This is why I was meeting with Kira. She’s an editor, and I wanted it to be good for you…”
I can’t believe I thought this man’s love wasn’t enough to bring me back, that I ran away from it and almost gave up on us. I stand and wrap my arms around his neck. How could he write this in between working and fighting for us? I’m in awe.
It feels so good to be in his arms like this again. “You are amazing. I don’t deserve you.”
“It might suck monkey balls, so don’t thank me yet,” he whispers in my ear, and I think it’s one of the most romantic thing he’s ever said.
The book could be written in gibberish, but that he even thought to do something like this… I already know he got the cover and the first sentence right.
“And it’s not finished yet. I wanted you to help me write the ending.”
The look on his face, how sincere he is, how right things feel now, it’s scary how good it all feels. I still have to push away the fear that something bad has to be waiting around the corner, but the usual anxiety that trickles up my spine doesn’t come. I only feel peace.
She’s sleeping finally, after staying up all night reading our book. The hours of sleep and work I lost were worth it to see her consume every word I wrote. She got to hear what went on inside my head and I think we’ve achieved a whole new level of intimacy.
I want to know what’s next. Where do we go from here? Things are good right now, as if the past year never happened, and I have the girl—no, the woman—back who looked at me as if I was the only man in the world. When she told me that she went further than she should have with the agent guy, I felt as if my muscles were squeezing my bones, my blood was scalding, and it took everything in me to not break something, but I was prepared to make this work even if she had slept with him. I wasn’t ready to let her go.
I thought I had heard all her secrets in her prayer, but she still had one, one that makes so much of what happened make sense. She was pregnant again and lost our baby. She dealt with that alone, and it makes sense that she grew distant and pushed me away. I was so angry about it that I abandoned her. I don’t agree with all of her decisions, but I understand now where they came from.
I sweep her long blond hair from her shoulder and kiss it, then I pull her close to me. It’s been so long since she let me hold her like this, so long since we slept together and not just in the same bed. I never realized there was a difference, but now that I’ve experienced both, I know there is. It’s the difference between being alive and living, loving someone and being in love with them, forgiving and really letting go.
I have so many questions for her. The one nagging at me the most is, how does she know I prayed for her? It nags at me. I’d almost forgotten I praye
d for her, and to see her doing it, and for us to be here… it seems like too many things have lined up for it all to be a coincidence.
I won’t question it now though. I’ll just enjoy her being in my arms and be thankful that I have my life and my wife back. My thoughts keep drifting back to the bartender, the role he played in me finding my way to California, my way back to Chas, and the amount of gratitude I feel towards him.
Chassidy
I never thought two of the best books I’ve ever read would be written by my husband and my best friend. I knew from the first line that each would wrap itself around my soul and stay with me for moments when I needed it’s comfort, like all good books I’ve read have done. Bryce’s first line took me back to a time so long ago, when a seed was planted that grew to where we are today. And my best friend’s first words of her manuscript let me know that the future is only as bright as you believe it could be.
I was suffocating in a world that once gave me comfort…
My heart had broken into a thousand pieces the moment I read that. Kelsey, my best friend, had battled depression. I’d never imagined someone who looks as if nothing ever gets her down could feel as alone and distraught as I did. She hadn’t told anyone. Her story of how she overcame post-partum depression through counseling moved me, and what anchored her was her faith in God, her relationship with Christ. I wouldn’t have thought I could relate to that, because I wanted more than anything to make it across the line of being a post-partum mother, but what we’d experienced was similar. She shared so much of herself so comfortably that I was amazed she’d never spoken about it.
Her words were genuine and real. Emotions spilled off every page. When I finished, I was in tears and saw my friend in an entirely different light.
That’s what brought me to her front door in the middle of one of the most beautiful suburbs in Illinois. Her house sits cozily in the heart of Oak Park. I hear the television on and her kids playing before I even ring the doorbell. When she opens the door, she looks genuinely surprised, which she should be. I haven’t been to her house in almost two years.
“Chassidy!” she squeals as her youngest daughter, Jordan, clings to her leg.
“Is this a bad time…?” I giggle as Jordan wobbles toward me, and I reach down and pick her up.
“You remember Auntie Chas?” Kelsey asks as she opens the door, welcoming me in. Her house is perfect, like a modern-day Winslow house. “You’re all dressed up for me?”
“Bryce and I have dinner with my mom and her fiancé tonight.”
“You’re kidding!”
I bring her up to date on my mom’s recently developed love life as she settles the kids in front of Tangled, which is her oldest daughter’s favorite Disney movie apparently.
“You won’t believe the arguments that little girl gets into over who’s better: Elsa or Rapunzel.”
“Rapunzel,” Madison yells from the family room.
Kelsey lets out a sigh. “She zones in on all things Disney.”
“They’re beautiful,” I say. Her daughters took the best parts of her and their dad. “I read your manuscript.”
Her eyes light up. “After I sent it to you, I wasn’t sure if I should have.”
I think back to the spat we had the last time we saw each other. I bet she really questioned it after I stopped answering her calls. So much has happened since then.
“I thought it could help you, but I didn’t know if was the right time or—”
“It was amazing.”
Her face goes blank before her mouth falls open. I can’t believe someone who writes how she did is shocked.
“You’re kidding?” she says quietly, but her hazel eyes sparkle in delight.
“No, and I’m not just saying that because I’m your best friend.”
She smiles softly, leaning forward a tiny bit. “You’re still my best friend?”
I look away from her and cross my arms. “I guess I haven’t really been acting like one, huh?”
“No, it wasn’t you, it was me. I know what a hard time you were going through and I didn’t know how to tell you that I’d been in a similar place. I didn’t want to offend you or trivialize your pain. I just wanted to explain, but I shouldn’t have forced my faith on you when you made it clear you weren’t interested in it.”
I let out a light sigh. “I understand why now.”
She looks at me with her eyebrows raised.
“I believe.”
Her eyes widen, and I can see her excitement growing.
“In God?” she asks, her voice high but hesitant.
I nod as a smile spreads across her face. I shrug but can’t suppress the smile on my own.
“Honey, that’s great! How… when?” she shrieks, unable to sit still in her seat. “You have to come to my church with me. It’s called A Place of Change. You and Bryce would love it!”
I throw my hands up to let her know to slow down. “You’re, like, zero to a hundred. One thing at a time.” She laughs, and I rub the back of my neck. “I want to tell you something.”
“You can tell me anything,” she says, still ecstatic.
“This may be a little out there.”
She tilts her head and squints at me, as if she’s trying to read my mind.
“I haven’t told anyone… most people would think I’m crazy.” I laugh and run my hand through my hair.
She smiles encouragingly, but I’m still hesitant. I know that she believes in God, but this could still seem insane to her. I take a deep breath, gathering all of my courage.
“I-I met an angel,” I say quickly and wait for her to laugh, but she doesn’t.
She’s quiet, then her lips part. “Like with wings?”
The nervousness in my belly multiplies, and I let out a short laugh. “He didn’t have wings. He said not all angels have wings.” I try to keep my tone jovial, just in case she asks me if I’m high or tells me I’m insane.
She picks up her cup of water, takes a sip, and when she sets it down, her eyes gleam with curiosity. “Where?” Her tone isn’t condescending or sarcastic, but genuinely curious.
“Well… he lived next door…”
One year later
“Having come freely, I ask now that you make the following commitment before God and those who stand before you so that Carter and Cara may walk in the abundant life that Christ offers. Do you vow, by God's help, to be faithful in your calling as members of the body of Christ, to help Chassidy and Bryce be faithful to God, and to help teach and train Carter and Cara in the ways of the Lord so that they might one day trust him as Savior and Lord? If you accept this responsibility, please respond by saying ‘we do.’”
“We do,” Kelsey and Brian say with smiles.
We couldn’t have chosen better godparents for our twins. Bryce hands Carter to our pastor, and I hand him Cara.
“Lord, we ask that you place your hand on each of these precious little ones, that you stir their hearts for you and allow them to know you, that you protect them, lead them, and guide them, that you be with them all the days of their life. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.”
If you had told me two years ago that I’d be in a church and dedicating my son and daughter to God, I’d have laughed in your face. If you had told me two years ago, at a time when I questioned if our love would even survive the day, that I’d be more in love with my husband than I’d ever been in my life, I would have called you crazy. If you told me that our children would bring my mother and father into the same room without fighting, I would have told you that you were delusional, but it was me that just couldn’t see past the storm I was in the midst of. Now it’s finally passed. After seeing clearly I started attending the group sessions I so hazardly ran from that day that seems so long ago. I couldn’t move forward without trying to help someone who was in the same situation as me and now I’m a group leader; Mallory and I still joke about the first time we met...
After the ceremony I attempt to help serve appetize
rs with Cara glued to my side.
“Let me hold my beautiful granddaughter,” Jeanine says, reaching for her.
She goes willingly, of course. Cara lights up whenever her grandmother’s around and vice versa. I never thought that someone who thought so little of me would love my child as much as she does, but Cara and Carter have done so much to keep our families together. They are our commonality.
My dad is feeding Carter a cookie Tiffany made. Everyone’s come out for today’s service. Jax and Tiffany brought their little girl, Emma. Of course Bryce’s brothers, Duke’s fiancée Julie, and Bryce’s parents are here, as well my mother and my new stepfather, Adam. My mother and father were opposite in every way, but my stepfather Adam is just different enough that he makes my mother a little lighter and less wound up. He makes her smile and forget to be so tough.
“I still can’t believe Bryce let you name the kids after your hot ex-neighbor,” Nicole whispers in my ear and gives me a playful nudge.
Kelsey and I exchange amused looks. I’ve thought a few times about telling Nicole who Carter really was. I muttered it once, but she burst into laughter.
I feel strong arms encircle my waist from behind, and I lean my head back as Bryce kisses me.
“You guys are disgustingly cute,” Nic says, rolling her eyes.
“I think someone over there thinks you’re cute, Nicole,” Bryce says, and nods toward Max, who has been stealing glances at Nicole all day.
Her face flushes, and she tosses her hair. “Come on, Kelsey, let’s go say hello.”
She pulls Kelsey behind her, who mouths, “Help.”
“Love you,” I tell Bryce, turning around to look into his eyes.
He squeezes my waist and picks me up, giving me a soft kiss. “I think we’re finally ready to write that ending.”