- FAYE’S POV
The day after Keyon’s birthday. The day after Chris said he wants us to be together again. And here I am, waking up all by myself to a lonely house. Again.
I suppose he has time yet to call me. But his words yesterday seemed too good to be true - and when words are like that, they usually are just that.
I don’t know whether yesterday was the start of a new chapter in my life or not. I feel like I am still hovering over a line of old and new and that the old side has a gravitational pull on me despite something new trying to bring me to the new side. Like a tug of war almost.
I get up and get some breakfast. I am about to cut some fruit up for myself, as that takes up the most amount of time - therefore giving Chris more time to get in contact - but when I look in the fridge, I find that the chef has already done that for me.
I sit and eat my fruit, watching my phone like a vulture watching its prey.
Hurry the fuck up, Chris. I can’t wait over five years again.
When my spoon reaches the bottom of an empty bowl, and my phone hasn’t lit up once, I take matters into my own hands and type:
‘Chris, I just want to know where we stand now.’
I hit backspace and start again.
‘Chris, I’m just wondering what happens now with us & whether you honestly meant what you said yesterday. Neither of us can afford to have broken hearts again & that makes this a huge commitment. It’s not something you can ever give up on. If it happens, it’s got to be a serious relationship.’
Send.
My phone lights up about a minute later. My heart skips beats as I open his reply.
C: ‘I promise I will put my all into giving you what you deserve. You deserve true love and happiness and that’s what I want to see you obtain. I’m 110 percent serious. I love you so much.’
F: ‘I love you too. xxx’
C: ‘Can I come over? Want to give you something’
F: ‘Sure, come over whenever you’re ready.’
C: ‘I’ll be there in thirty mins.’
Oh lawd. I wonder what’s going to happen.
I go upstairs and get ready. I don’t have enough time again to get ready properly but I don’t care. I get to see Chris. That’s the most important thing. I would give everything I have to see him. To walk the same ground that he walks on. He’s the most beautiful human being I have ever been fortunate enough to breath the same air as. I’ve been thinking about him daily for so many years now. He’s everything to me. And now I’m so close to him being mine for good. After everything we’ve been through together, we’ll finally be reunited the way it should be and the way that it was meant to be.
Knock knock.
I quickly rush down the stairs before Renee has the chance to answer the door.
“Hey,” I say, slightly out of breath.
He looks at me strangely. “Hi. Your hair… is…”
Trust me to forget to check if my hair’s OK.
“I’m assuming I’m having a bad hair day? I haven’t looked to be honest.”
“Yeah, you are. But I don’t care. Just thought I would let you know.”
I’m surprisingly not even embarrassed. I just laugh and Chris laughs too as he extends his hand. He touches my hair and rearranges it so that my hair acts according to my parting.
“Thanks. So you haven’t brought Keyon?” I ask.
“No. Taken him to Arthur.”
“Why? He could have come here.”
Chris smiles. “No, he couldn’t.”
Confused, I let Chris in anyway. “Why?”
He walks further and further into the house, until we are face to face. His eyes light up as he looks into mine.
“Take me on the walk. The walk to the park your Mom used to take you to,” he says out of the blue.
“What’s brought this on?” I ask.
Chris just looks at me in silence.
“Right now?” I question.
He nods.
I grab my cardigan from the side and follow him out of the door. The day is pleasant; the sun’s glow falls upon us but there is a light breeze which accompanies it. I walk behind him as he walks along the road - but he then stops. I continue walking to be by his side.
“Is the only way alongside this road?”
“Yeah. Remember when I was walking along here, after calling you to say I wanted you to stay away from me for good, and you were driving on this exact road? And you stopped and you were refusing to let me through?” I laugh.
“Sorry about that,” he jokes. “Yeah, I remember.”
“So why are we walking to the park?”
“I like walking,” he says. “Tell me about your memories of the park.”
Some people are unable to reminisce on upsetting and desolate days. I am the opposite - usually. I usually like to talk about what I have been through as a person as that is what has built me to what I present every single day. And it’s so much better and healthier for you to be as open as you can. Closing yourself off is not something that is normally beneficial.
I tell Chris about how Mom used to take Jonah and I to this park when we were younger. In hindsight, I assume she did it to get away from Dad; he had, and still does have, extreme temper issues which would exuberate unnecessarily onto all of us - but especially onto Mom. She couldn’t take it, especially not with two kids to look after. We would spend full days here with her - despite it not even having a playground. We would play hide and seek in the forest for hours and then peer over the wall at the pond and the wildlife it possessed. We loved the park’s simplicity and the fact that nobody else was there. It was nature’s small palace and we had free, permanent invitations. Throughout the hard times in life, the times where the world seemed so horrific and so dark, this beautiful place was always here. And when my Mom died, when I was sixteen, it was still here. I would come here to get away from Dad, to be closer to her. I slept days and nights in this park so many times. I became another lost teenager and this park brought comfort to my hardening heart when I needed it the most.
“Is it your favorite place?” Chris asks when I finish.
“Yep, my favorite place. I owe it so much yet I will never be able to pay it my gratitude.”
He nods. “I can relate to that. At least to an extent. I owe you so much yet I will never be able to pay you my full gratitude. You’ve saved me. I would honestly be a completely different person if you hadn’t entered my life. After all, what’s a world without its creator? What’s a world without its nutrients, its contributors, its sunlight? I could never operate the way I do now if it wasn’t for you. I would forever be trying to find you, my heart, my soulmate, with zero success. I would never be able to find true happiness. But with you here right now, I know I’m looking eye to eye with true happiness.”
“But don’t you feel that way when you look at Keyon?”
“That’s different. Yeah, Keyon makes me a happy man. But I know, at the end of the day, I have to be the one who provides him with happiness - and, as of yet, I haven’t been able to provide him with that. That may be all changing though.”
“Your sobriety alone gives him true happiness. You’re a great man, Chris, and great men make great fathers.”
“Not all of them.”
“The ones that don’t aren’t great men. They may seem it - but if they can’t give their love and undivided attention to such a desperate, innocent little thing, they’re not great at all. You’re the greatest man I have ever set eyes on - and the greatest father. Meaning you’ve raised Keyon to be a great man himself. And that is so obvious just being in Keyon’s company for two minutes.”
“You really think so?” he questions it, showing his lack of faith in himself.
“I know so.”
We soon come to the park. When we arrive, all the memories return to my mind. Even the insignificant ones, the ones I had completely forgotten about until now. Everything comes flooding back and overwhelms me. I don’t feel teary. But I do feel like I shouldn’t be here because it hits me that there are no more memories to be made here. I don’t see why I am here.
Chris opens the oh so familiar green, tiring gate and we walk through to the gravelled path. This leads us to the park.
“You OK?” Chris asks, probably noticing how overwhelmed I am being here with him. It’s so surreal having two things bound together in my heart by my love together in real life. All those times I spent in this park with my Mom. All those times I spent in this park by myself. And now, here I am in that exact same place with Chris.
“Yeah, thanks.”
“That’s good.”
We walk further into the park, with Chris walking slightly ahead, obviously up to something. His look of deep thought on his face gives it away. But his façade and poker face stop me from finding out what is really going on.
Suddenly, he stops. Waits for me to walk closer to him.
It all happens so fast. So fast that I find myself losing balance.
In my mind, the sunlight dims and dims until my sight turns to pitch black. And then, out of the darkness, a single spotlight appears and highlights everything I live for. That one person who I love with all my heart. And this person takes in a deep breath.
Reaches for his pocket.
Drops down to the ground.
One.
Knee.
“Faye,” his voice cracks. “Will you make me the luckiest man alive?”
I stare at the ring before me for ten millennia. Oh. My.
I start crying. And I don’t cry often.
Chris is really doing this?
I can’t help reflecting on my last experience of this - with James. James had wanted to spend the rest of his life with me as well. We all know how that ended. Divorce.
As cliché, and perhaps as predictable, as it sounds, this feels completely different. James had me stumbling on my words. Chris has me wanting to answer straight away.
But I don’t. Not because I don’t want to - but because I want to remember this forever; I want to capture everything. So I look around at the surrounding. At the familiarity. At the tall pine trees my brother and I used to clamber on and attempt to climb. The grass that my soulmate and I stand on; the same grass Mom, Jonah and I would have picnics on, all the while trying as hard as possible to catapult Dad to the back of our minds. The same grass I slept rough on. The ocean blue, clouded sky we used to lean back and watch the shapes of the clouds as a family is now blanketed over the most beautiful moment of my life.
Chris is here with me, in this familiarity, reaching out to me. Reaching out to take me to unfamiliarity. But the best kind of unfamiliarity. The best kind in the world.
“Yes,” I say immediately after I wake from my paralyzation. “Yes.”
He takes my left hand and slips the ring onto my finger, also trying to fight back the tears. “I love you. And don’t you ever forget it, Faye Brown.”