“I don't know... let's save it for a rainy day. I’ve saved it this long.”
“You save everything for a rainy day. Live a little. Remember how you didn’t think Knocked Up was any good because you were saving it, and then you watched all the other Katherine Heigl trash first? You spoiled that experience.” He stumped me with that one. Then brought out the two copies of Pride and Prejudice. “Open and read the first paragraph.”
“Is it really that good?” I knew the first line without opening the book... just about anyone who's ever written a novel knows the first line of Pride and Prejudice.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,” Mark read.
“Okay, I love that line,” I conceded.
“Read on,” he prodded.
I did, and from that moment on and for the rest of our lives, that would be our tradition. Any time Mark left for a trip, we would make time for each other before we went to bed and we would read alternating chapters of a book that one of us thought the other would like.
Mark and I made it through the entire Austen catalog (except Emma, which I was determined to save for a true rainy day) and down through the Brontës. Later I suggested PG Wodehouse. Mark was dazzled by his wit and cunning language. I loved the characterizations.
But that night in Mark's apartment, we read the first two chapters of Pride and Prejudice and it was awkward. I’d spent so many decades reading with just me and my own head so having someone else in there was uncomfortable.
The next day, he left early in the morning. I drove Mark to the airport and gave him a great big sloppy kiss right there at the drop-off point. He squeezed my butt once, but not in a sexual way. Then I drove home and got to work—threw myself into the problems at hand so I would stop worrying about being alone.
Nick, Travis and I planned out the upcoming week.
I made calls and managed to secure a modest amount of funding, which was a huge accomplishment for me. Any day I found a willing sponsor was a day to be celebrated. Our company was tiny without any name recognition. I had wanted to establish a not-for-profit, thinking that we would get more donations that way. Nick disagreed vehemently and argued that we wanted to attract venture capital and needed to show profitability.
I caved to Nick’s logic, failing to mention that venture capital terrified me and went against my principles. Nick was doing the majority of the difficult coding work anyway—and at a very reduced salary. And he was devoting the majority of his budding career to this project (he had pointedly discussed turning down two job offers while he worked for me).
What Nick wanted, I made sure Nick got. So we weren’t a not-for-profit, yet we weren’t making any money, either.
I still had a small income from my books and wouldn't be taking much of a salary from the company. It would be better to hire a second and third general programmer than to pay me and Nick what we were worth. The only reason we could afford Travis was because my pay was so minuscule.
Wednesday night, I settled in for bed and logged on to Skype.
Mark and I shared our news. I was alone in Mark’s king bed and he was in his hotel room where he showed off his new, glowing tan.
“I can’t tell the difference,” I said.
Mark assured me he had spent the day out in the sun, getting darker.
“You need to protect your fair skin. I don't want you to get skin cancer fifteen years from now.”
“Who cares what happens fifteen years from now?”
“I'm going to be with you, so I care. Be smart about it.”
“You've got to loosen up and live in the moment. How was Nick today?”
“Nick was fine. Let's not talk about it and get back to Pride and Prejudice.”
“So you admit that you like it?”
“I always knew I was going to like it... I told you I was saving it for when I needed to read a really good book.”
Mark has never understood how a voracious reader like myself could spend months reading book after book just waiting for one that would truly call out to your heart. I had wasted so many hours of my life getting hooked in the first few chapters of a book, only to be thoroughly disappointed by the end. I would keep reading and reading, hoping that it would live up to its potential... but so many mediocre books never did.
Dear Reader, many of you are probably thinking this is an ironic statement because I’m putting you in the exact same position. I cannot help myself. I have to write everything there is to know about Mark. I want him to live on after I’m gone... I want the two of us to be together forever. That makes me selfish... and trust me, I know. Vain and narcissistic? Sure. Desperate, too. But this is what I want more than anything... for our relationship to exist forever and ever, in a happily ever after.
We're getting there. Be patient with me. The last three books will be the best of them, I promise. The final three installments will also probably be the most inaccurate because I didn't take as many notes during the time we got to know Alex (I was chasing a small kid, after all). I'll probably get some of the things about the fostering process incorrect.
I know we did some things in a highly unusual manner. For example, I gave Alex a paper showing that his name had been changed to ‘Alex Wolff-Sullivan’, but this was months in advance of the adoption process being finalized.
We shouldn't have done that.
We were also told that our initial fostering application had gone through faster than any that Valerie had ever seen (though maybe she was being nice to us by saying that). We were a special circumstance and the woman that worked our case was extremely motivated to get it through the system... so when our paperwork crossed her desk, it was filled out and returned promptly. She also called her colleagues to ensure that we were given highest priority.
I will love Miss Val until the day I die.
There are two kinds of adoption processes. The first one is common for most LGBT couples. You apply through a company and then a child is matched with you or you’re matched with a child. That wasn't the way with us. We stumbled across a child in need and then went through the process to adopt that specific child. It's a difference without a distinction to most people, but if you ever foster or adopt, you’ll understand the difficulty we went through. And you’ll also recognize the saintliness of the woman who helped us (although I hated her at first!).
I'm reminded of Alex when talking about Mark’s travel-reading habit because Alex has always been a reader just like me. That's one of the things that we bonded over, initially. We fostered him when he had just turned six (though we didn’t know it at the time because no one knew his last name). He was super skinny and absolutely terrified of seemingly everything. And he also became super dependent on us very quickly.
Alex and I would read a chapter of a book each night. He was already a good reader when he came to us. We didn’t know who had taught him... and, in a roundabout way, it was our reading time that ended up being one of the reasons why we were able to adopt him.
Alex's grandparents could have put up a huge stink and blocked the adoption (and initially they did) but because of our habit of reading a chapter a night—as started by Mark during that trip to the Caribbean—Alex is our son and my family is complete.
Thank God for books.
But then again, if I hadn’t tried so hard to make the health app work, then I wouldn't have been at the right house at the right time to find the kid in the first place. And if I hadn't gotten back together with Mark, then I never would have been in a relationship and I never would have considered adoption as a viable option.
I am often filled with wonder and amazement when I think about how our family came together. Sometimes life itself fills me with... I’m gonna go with ‘bemused befuddlement’. It’s rare that I can step that far back and ponder the meaning of life, but sometimes I do... and it always feels tragicomic.
The three of us are such different people. Even though
Alex is young, I know he's going to be completely different than either me or Mark—I can just tell. He's a much more confident boy than I ever was, which I attribute to Mark’s influence. He also loves baseball, seeing as Mark has obviously brainwashed him on that front. But the kid is also oddly shy at strange moments, and has always been a follower.
I worry so much about him because of the trauma he went through as a child. I wonder if he's going to be vulnerable throughout his life or if he will grow up callous to the needs of others... or will he go the other way and be too sensitive?
I’ve tried to show him how to live with an open heart and an open mind.
I hope that is enough.
As he's gotten older and I've gotten increasingly ill, we've kept that habit of reading a chapter at night during my trips to the hospital. Most kids stop reading with their parents between the ages of five and seven. Alex only started reading with us at that time. Screw normal. We’ll keep reading as long as we want to, thank you very much.
That's enough of Alex's story for now. I worry about getting through that section because I doubt I’ll have the stamina to finish it. So maybe you won't get to read the last three books about my son, in which case that will be a huge disappointment to me. And to my son, who might someday read these books (but please don’t read books four and five with all the sex... ah! Avert your eyes. None of that stuff happened! Please tell me you haven’t read those sections! Also, skip book eight! And seven. Definitely skip seven.).
To my son, just know that I tried very hard to finish the story of how you came into my life. I apologize if the wording isn’t as nice as in the earlier books—I just haven’t got the time. It was more important to show how much you mean to me—changed my life, actually... than needing it to read perfectly smooth.
This self-portrait started as a love letter to my husband, but I used that premise to sneakily hide how this project is actually a love letter to my family, both adopted and found. This is a love letter to the books I've read and the music that has been in my life. It's a love letter to Tim, Ryan, Stacy, Amber, Marty, Claude, Mark, Melanie, Suhail, Nick, my parents, Mark's parents and our grandparents. It's a love letter to all the people who made me who I am and who make our family what it is today.
I just want you all to live forever and I’m doing my best to make it happen, even though I am running out of time. Sometimes it feels like it’s literally killing me. But I’ve always liked a challenge... and if somehow you could live forever within these pages like how Austen's characters have withstood the test of time...
I’ll do it for you.
Just watch me.
WE WORKED OUR WAY THROUGH Pride and Prejudice and then it was time for him to fly home. I was so lonely! He had a night flight so we shared a call while he was in the airport and waiting for his flight. I told him I would get up and meet him at the terminal, but he told me not to bother.
I missed reading our book together, even though I had complained about it every night and mocked it as ‘pure silly’. To me, ‘silly’ has replaced ‘stupid’ in my vocabulary because Mark wasn’t too fond of it.
That night I settled onto the couch with my tablet. I was snuggled into his long-sleeve shirt. The arms were a couple inches longer than my normal size, but wearing it made me feel less lonely. Honestly, I’ve always kind of liked snuggling in his winter clothes.
Then the keycard activated and the door swung open.
There he was.
“Mark!” You surprised me!
I must have been grinning like a silly fool. He was clearly proud of himself because his bags were on the ground and he was waiting for a hug.
“Is that my shirt?”
That's the first thing out of your mouth? “Hello to you too!”
“What? No. Babe?” He laughed and smiled.
I shrugged out of the shirt. “I wasn't wearing your shirt.”
“Hey.” He came in for a hug and kiss.
Shirt off. Wasn’t wearing it.
He stopped mid-stride. “Are you wearing my cologne?”
“No. I don't wear smelly stuff.”
“Right.”
“I'm not!” I turned my back on him.
“Hey!”
“Hey what?”
“Don't I get a kiss? I came home early to surprise you.”
“You know I hate surprises.”
“I'm really not getting a hug out of this?” I could hear the pout in his voice, but like I cared! He was humiliating me! I was not desperately lonely to the point where I needed his shirt or cologne. I swear I wasn’t!
I walked to the hallway with the shirt in my hands. “Nope. You were making fun of me.”
He lunged so that by the time I heard his footsteps he was already upon me. “Give me that,” he said, ripping the shirt from my grasp. He arranged it so he could fit it over my head in one swoop. “You can wear my stuff, I just thought it was cute. I wasn't poking fun.”
“Yes you were!”
“I didn't know you were so needy.”
“See!” Always mocking me and belittling me!
He placed the shirt over my shoulders before I could storm away, then dropped the hem around my arms so that I was pinned inside the shirt and helpless. Then he attacked my neck with his whiskery lips so that I laughed.
“I missed you, so what?” I complained.
“Missed you, too. That's why I came home early.”
“Bah.”
“Oh no... now you’re grumpy.”
“I wasn’t wearing your shirt!”
“I know you weren’t.”
“I mean, I was kinda cold and I grabbed the first thing that was laying around.”
“And you happened to knock over my cologne as you did it...?”
Gah! You’re doing it again!
I must have looked exceptionally pathetical because he stopped teasing me after that. Pathetical is one of my dad’s made up words, by the way. It means so pathetic that it could never really exist, like a hypothetical pathetic.
I calmed down. “I wish we were the same size,” I confessed, “so I could wear your clothes for real. And we could share.”
“I think you look super sexy right now.”
“Yeah right. You would like to see me tied up. Let me go.” His arms were around me so it was like I was in a straitjacket.
“Nope. Not until you kiss me hello.”
“This is coercion.”
“This is true love,” he countered. “I kept this a secret and surprised you and this is the thanks I get?”
“Thank you.” I pretended to pout.
He chuckled. “Now, my beautiful caterpillar, do I get a kiss?”
He didn’t get a kiss out of me until I was allowed out of the restraints, but he was allowed to shower me with butterfly kisses because that was my way of taking back some control from him. Even while trapped in his sweater, I was still in control.
Suhail's Decision
I WAS FLOUNDERING.
Funding for our little operation would only last for another month at our current burn rate. I could take a paycheck of one dollar and we could last a couple more weeks beyond that... maybe. Perhaps I could entice Nick to work for less as well, but Travis—whom I had begged to join our team—was a different story. I could never ask him to take less. And, at any rate, it was foolish to daydream like that. Why waste time on a short-term solution if we were just going to fail a couple weeks later?
We needed a sustainable future. Unfortunately, we didn't have a viable product to showcase. Our coders had ideas and prototypes, but we didn't have something to really ‘wow’ potential investors.
Then there was the psychological problem... that our true clients weren't the people I wanted to help, but were instead large corporations in the healthcare industry. After a conference call with those people I’d feel icky—like I’d been talking with oligarchical villains from a dystopian fantasy novel.
These men and women held lives in their hands—the decisio
ns they made with their investments would determine the cost of healthcare for the rest of us. That's how it worked—expenses were almost completely decoupled from market forces due to the health insurance oligopoly.
Our initial funds were supposed to last a year, but we burned through it all in six months. I went back for a second hit at our local community foundation, but they didn't bite on my offer, though we were encouraged to apply again later. It was humiliating, depressing and frustrating that we didn’t have a product to show for our months of effort. If we really wanted this thing to take off, we needed to get into a hospital and integrate with their system.
We needed to show that our vision could actually work before anyone would hire us.
So I needed to get Tim on board again. I had other friends and contacts within the medical field, but over the past year, Tim had become like a brother to me. If anyone would fight for this vision as fiercely as myself, it would be him. I trusted him implicitly... and he was one of those nice, intrinsically loyal guys.
Prior to my little spat with Stacy, Tim and I had been organizing the rehab for his surgery patients through my app. Sure, it was just foot surgeries, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. I might’ve been frustrated by the slow pace of our app development, but theoretically, if we could improve recovery time for foot surgery patients, then eventually we could apply our app to other surgeries. And that just might be the window into the complicated world of autoimmune treatments, which were my long-term targets.
But, of course, I had burned that bridge because Stacy hated my guts and, in my heart of hearts, I knew she would hold that grudge for the rest of her life. She wouldn't let me or any of my associates go near her family. She had introduced me to one of her most trusted friends... and I had abused that trust.
I tried to talk to Ryan about working around Stacy, but he wouldn't hear any of it. He knew our company was struggling to implement our product in a working office and he knew how important this was to me personally... but he also didn't exactly grasp what it was we were even trying to do. It's kind of hard to explain and very easy to forget.
The Fiancé (It's Just Us Here Book 6) Page 22