Believe Me

by Tahereh Mafi

  “The surprise?” Kenji is confused only a moment before understanding alights in his eyes. He looks at Winston. “Wait—I thought we sent you to go get him an hour ago?”

  Winston explodes. “This is exactly what I’ve been trying to say— This son of a bitch made me wait outside the MT for an hour, even though I was perfectly nice to him, despite my better judgment—”

  “Fucking hell,” Kenji mutters angrily, pushing his hands through his hair. “As if we didn’t have enough going on today.” He turns to me. “You made Winston wait an entire hour just to give you the damn dog?”

  “The dog?” I frown. “The dog is the surprise? How is it a surprise if I already know it exists?”

  “Wait, what dog?” Ella looks at me, then at the others. “You mean the dog from yesterday?”

  “Yeah.” Kenji sighs. “Yara took the dog last night. She gave him a bath, scrubbed him up. She got him a collar and everything. She really wanted it to be a surprise for Warner and made us promise not to say anything about it. The dog is wearing a stupid bow on his head right now.”

  Ella has stiffened beside me. “Who’s Yara?”

  Her faint, almost undetectable note of jealousy— possessiveness—only cements my smile in place.

  “You know Yara,” Kenji says to Ella. “Redhead? Tall? Runs the school group? You’ve talked to her—”

  Kenji catches sight of my face and cuts himself off.

  “And what the hell are you smiling about? You’ve messed up our entire schedule, dickhead. We’re an hour behind on everything now, all becau—”

  “Stop,” Ella says angrily. “Stop calling him names. He’s not a dickhead. He’s not a jackass. He’s not self-absorbed. I don’t know why you guys think it’s okay to just say whatever terrible things you want about him—to his face— as if he’s made of stone. You all do it. You all insult him over and over again and he just takes it—he doesn’t even say anything—and somehow you’ve convinced yourselves it’s okay. Why? He’s a real, flesh-and-blood person. Why don’t you care? Why don’t you think he has feelings? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  My smile is gone in an instant.

  I experience a strange pain then, a sensation not unlike dissolving slowly from the inside. This feeling sharpens to a point, piercing me.

  I turn to look at Ella.

  She seems to sense the change in me; for a moment, they all do.

  I feel a vague mortification at that, at the realization that I’ve somehow exposed myself. The proceeding silence is brief but torturous, and when Ella wraps her arms around my waist, hugging me close even in the midst of all this, I hear Winston clear his throat.

  Tentatively, I lift a hand to her head, drawing it slowly down her hair. I worry, sometimes, that my love for her will expand beyond the limitations of my body, that it will one day kill me with its heft.

  Kenji averts his eyes.

  He is subdued when he says, “Yeah. Um, anyway, last I checked, the dog was in the dining tent, eating breakfast with everyone.”

  Another awkward beat, and Winston sighs. “Should I go get Yara? Do we even have time?”

  “I don’t think so,” Kenji says. “I think we should tell her to keep the dog until after.”

  “After what?” I ask, trying to read the maelstrom of emotions around me and failing. “What’s going on?”

  Kenji blows out a breath. He looks exhausted. “J, you have to tell him.”

  She pulls away from me, panicked in an instant. “But I had a plan—I was going to take him there first—”

  “We don’t have time for this, princess. You waited too long, and now it’s officially a problem. Tell him what’s happening.”

  “Right now? While you’re standing here?”

  “Yes.”

  “No way.” She shakes her head. “You have to at least give us some privacy.”

  “Absolutely not.” Kenji crosses his arms. “I’ve given you tons of privacy, and you’ve proven you can’t be trusted. If I leave you two alone together you’ll either end up in bed or accomplish nothing, neither of which are conducive to our goals.”

  “Was that really necessary?” I say, irritated. “Did you really feel the need to comment on our private life?”

  “When it costs us an hour of our lives, yes,” Winston says, moving, in an act of solidarity, to stand next to Kenji. He even crosses his arms against his chest, matching Kenji’s stance.

  “Go ahead.” He nods at Ella. “Tell him.”

  Ella looks nervous.

  Winston and Kenji are an irritated, impatient audience; they stare us down, unrelenting, and I don’t even know whether to be angry about it—because the truth is, I want to know what’s going on, too. I want Ella to tell me what’s happening.

  I look from her to them, my heart pounding in my chest. I have no idea what she’s about to say. No idea whether this revelation will be good or bad—though her nerves seem to indicate something is wrong. I brace myself as I watch her take a deep breath.

  “Okay,” she says, exhaling. “Okay.” Another quick breath and she remembers to look at me, this time pasting an anxious smile on her face. “So—I didn’t want to tell you like this, but I’d been thinking for a little while about how to do this in the best possible way, because I wanted everything to be right, you know? Right for both of us—and also, I didn’t want it be anticlimactic. I didn’t want this big thing to happen and then it was just, like, we go back to the status quo—I wanted it to feel special—like something was going to change—and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, it was supposed to be a surprise, but it just wasn’t ready in time, and if I’d told you about it, it wouldn’t have been a surprise anymore, and Kenji kept insisting that I tell you anyway but I just—I’m sorry about yesterday, by the way, and I’m sorry about Nouria—I’ve been planning this whole thing with her since I woke up, practically, but she wasn’t supposed to say anything to you, and she knows she wasn’t supposed to say anything to you, because she and I had an agreement that I was supposed to tell you what was going on but yesterday I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen and I was waiting for more information because we were still trying really hard to make everything work in time but I know how important it is to you t—”

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Winston mutters.

  Kenji shouts: “You two are getting married today.”

  I turn sharply, stunned, to look at them.

  “Kenji, what the hell—”

  “You were taking too long—”

  “We’re getting married today?” I turn back to meet Ella’s eyes, my heart pounding now for an entirely new reason. A better reason. “We’re getting married today?”

  “Yes,” she says, blushing fiercely. “I mean—only if you want to.”

  I smile at her then, smile so wide I start laughing, disbelief rendering me foreign even to myself.

  I hardly recognize this sound.

  The sensations moving through my body right now—it’s hard to explain. The relief flooding my veins is intoxicating; I feel as if someone punched a hole through my chest in the best possible way. This is some kind of madness.

  I’m trying, but I can’t stop laughing.

  “Huh,” says Winston quietly. “I didn’t even know his face could do that.”

  “Yeah,” Kenji says. “It’s super weird the first time you see it.”

  “I can’t look away. I’m trying to look away and I can’t. It’s like if a baby was born with a full set of teeth.”

  “Yes! Exactly. It’s exactly like that!”

  “But nice, too.”

  “Yeah.” Kenji sighs. “Nice, too.”

  “Hey, did you know he had dimples? I didn’t know he had dimples.”

  “C’mon, man, that’s old news—”

  “Could you two just—please—be quiet for a second?” Ella says, squeezing her eyes shut. “Just for one second?”

  Kenji and Winston mime zipping their mouths shut before taking a step ba
ck, holding their hands up in surrender.

  Ella bites her lip before meeting my eyes.

  “So,” she says. “What do you think?” She clasps, unclasps her hands. “Are you busy this morning? There’s still something I want to show you—something I’ve been working on for the last few—”

  I take her in my arms and she laughs, breathlessly, just until she meets my eyes. Her smile is soon replaced by a look—a softness in her expression that likely mirrors my own. I can still feel the outline of that little velvet box against my leg; I’ve been carrying it with me everywhere, too afraid to leave it behind, too afraid to lose hope.

  “I love you,” I whisper.

  When I kiss her I breathe her in, inhaling the scent of her skin as I draw my hands down her back, pulling her tighter. Her response is immediate; her small hands move up my chest to claim my face, holding me close as she deepens the kiss, standing on tiptoe as she slowly twines her arms around my neck.

  The pilot light in my body catches fire.

  I break away reluctantly, and only because I remember we have an audience. Still, I press my forehead to hers, keeping her close.

  I’m smiling again. Like a common idiot.

  “Okay, well, that took a gross turn.”

  “Is it over yet?” Kenji asks. “I had to close my eyes.”

  “I don’t know. I think it might be over, but if I were you I’d keep my eyes shut for another minute just in case—”

  “Can you two keep your commentary to yourselves?” I say, pivoting to face them. “Is it so impossible for you to just be happy for—”

  The words die in my throat.

  Winston and Kenji are both bright-eyed and beaming, the two of them failing to fight back enormous smiles.

  “Congratulations, man,” Kenji says softly.

  His sincerity is so unexpected it strikes me before I’ve had a chance to armor myself, and the consequences leave me reeling.

  An unfamiliar, overwhelming heat erupts in my head, in my chest, pricking the whites of my eyes.

  Ella takes my hand.

  I can’t help but study Kenji’s face; I’m astonished by the kindness there, the happiness he does nothing to hide. It becomes more obvious by the moment that he’s played a larger role in executing Ella’s plans than I might’ve suspected, and I experience the truth then—feel it clearly, for the first time—the realization like a physical jolt.

  Kenji genuinely wants me to be happy.

  “Thank you,” I say to him.

  He smiles, but it’s only a flicker of movement. Everything else is in his expression, in the tight nod he gives me by way of response.

  “Anytime,” he says quietly.

  There’s a beat of silence, broken only by the sound of Winston sniffing.

  “All right, okay, that was a really beautiful moment, but you guys need to knock it off before I start crying,” he says, laughing even as he tugs off his glasses to rub at his eyes. “Besides, we still have a shit ton of work to do.”

  “Work,” I say, searching the sky for the sun. “Of course.” It can’t be much later than eight in the morning, but I’m usually at my desk much earlier. “I’ll need to make a quick stop at the command center. How long do you think we’ll be gone today? I have to reschedule some calls. There are time-sensitive materials I’m supposed to deliver today, and if I—”

  “Not that kind of work,” Kenji says, a strange smile on his face. “You don’t need to worry about that today. It’s all been taken care of.”

  “Taken care of?” I frown. “How?”

  “Juliette already notified everyone last night. Obviously we can’t check out of work completely, but we’ve divvied up today’s responsibilities. We’re all going to take shifts.” He hesitates. “Not you, two, obviously. Both your schedules have been cleared for the day.”

  Somehow, this is a greater surprise than everything else.

  If our schedules have been cleared, that means today wasn’t some spur-of-the-moment decision. It means things didn’t just serendipitously align in time to make it happen.

  This was orchestrated. Premeditated.

  “I don’t think I understand,” I say slowly. “As much as I appreciate the time off, this shouldn’t take much more than an hour. We only need an officiant and a couple of witnesses. Ella doesn’t even have a dress. Nouria said there was no time to make food, or a cake, or even to spare people to help set up, so it won’t—”

  Ella squeezes my hand, and I meet her eyes.

  “I know we’d agreed to do something really small,” she says softly. “I know you weren’t expecting much. But I thought you might like this better.”

  I stare at her, dumbfounded. “Like what better?”

  As if on cue, Brendan pops his white-blond head around a corner. “Morning, everyone! All right to bring everyone through? Or do you lot need another minute?”

  Winston lights up at the sight of him, assuring Brendan that we need just a few more minutes.

  Brendan says, “Roger that,” and promptly disappears.

  I turn to Ella, my mind whirring.

  Save the birthday cake she surprised me with last month, I have very little in my life to offer me a frame of reference for this experience. My brain is at war with itself, understanding—while incapable of understanding—what now seems obvious. Ella has organized something elaborate.

  In secret.

  All of her earlier evasiveness, her half-truths and missing explanations—my fear that she’d been hiding something from me—

  Suddenly everything makes sense.

  “How long have you been planning this?” I ask, and Ella visibly tenses with excitement, emanating the kind of joy I’ve only ever felt in the presence of small children.

  It nearly takes my breath away.

  She wraps her arms around my waist, peering up at me. “Do you remember when we were on the plane ride home,” she says, “and the adrenaline wore off, and I started kind of losing my mind? And I kept looking at the bone sticking out my leg and screaming?”

  Of all things, this was not what I was expecting her to say.

  “Yes,” I say carefully. I have no interest in recalling the events of that plane ride. Or discussing them. “I remember.”

  “And do you remember what I said to you?”

  I look away, sighing as I stare at a point in the distance. “You said you couldn’t wear a wedding dress with part of your bone sticking out.”

  “Yeah,” she says, and laughs. “Wow. I was pretty out of it.”

  “It’s not funny,” I whisper.

  “No,” she says, drawing her hands up my back. “No, it’s not funny. But it was strange, how nothing was really making sense in my head. We’d just been through hell, but all I could think as I stared at myself was how impractical it was to be bleeding so much. I told you I couldn’t marry you if the bleeding didn’t stop, because then I’d get blood all over my dress, and your suit, and then we’d both just be covered in blood, and everything we touched would get bloody. And you”—she takes a deep breath—“you said you’d marry me right then. You said you’d marry me with my bleeding teeth, with a visibly broken leg, with dried blood on my face, with blood dripping from my ears.”

  I flinch at that, at the memory of what my father put her through. What her own parents did to her. Ella suffered and sacrificed so much for this world—all to bring The Reestablishment to its knees. All because she cared so much about this planet, and the people in it.

  I feel suddenly ill.

  What I hate, perhaps more than anything else, is that it doesn’t stop. The demands on her body never stop. It doesn’t seem to matter what side of history we’re on; good or evil, everyone asks for more of her. Even now, after the fall of The Reestablishment, the people and their leaders still want more from her. They don’t seem to care that she’s only one person, or that she’s already given so much. The more she gives, the more they require, and the quicker their gratitude shrivels up, the desiccated remai
ns of which become something else altogether: expectation. If it were up to them, they’d keep taking from her until they’ve bled her dry—and I will never allow that to happen.

  “Aaron.”

  Finally, I meet her eyes. “I meant what I said, love.”

  “I was hideous.”

  “You have never been hideous.”

  “I was a monster.” She smiles as she says this. “I had that huge gash in my arm, the skin on my hands had split open, my nose wouldn’t stop bleeding, my eyes wouldn’t stop bleeding. I even had a freshly sutured finger. I was Frankenstein’s monster. You remember? From that book—”

  “Ella—please— We don’t have to talk about this—”

  “And I couldn’t stop screaming,” she says. “I was in so much pain, and I was so upset that I wouldn’t stop bleeding, and I kept saying the craziest things, and you just sat next to me and listened. You answered every ridiculous question I asked like I wasn’t completely out of my mind. For hours. I still remember, Aaron. I remember everything you said to me. Even after I passed out I heard you, on a loop, in my dreams. It was like your voice got caught in my head.” She pauses. “I can only imagine what that experience must’ve been like for you.”

  I shake my head. “It wasn’t about me. My experience doesn’t matter—”

  “Of course it does. It matters to me. You don’t get to be the only one who worries about the person you love. I get to do that, too,” she says, breaking away to better look me in the eye. “You spend so much time thinking about what’s best for me. You’re always worried about my safety and my happiness and the things I might need. Why don’t I get to do that for you? Why don’t I get to think about your happiness?”

  “I am happy, love,” I say quietly. “You make me happy.”

  She looks away at that, but when she meets my eyes again, she’s fighting tears. “But if you could marry me however you wanted, you’d choose to do it differently, wouldn’t you?”

  “Ella,” I whisper, tugging her back into my arms. “Sweetheart, why are you crying? I don’t care about having a wedding. It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll marry you as you are right now, in the clothes we’re wearing, right where we’re standing.”