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“Can you stay with me?” I whisper.
His face falls and lights up at the same time somehow. “Are you sure?”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t sure,” I say, giving him a pointed look.
“There she is.” He smiles. “I have a change of clothes in my car, I’ll be right back.”
I look back at the ceiling and stare at it. I hear him come back inside and then go into the bathroom. A few minutes later he says something about putting our clothes in the dryer. And I’m still staring at the ceiling by the time he sits down next to me carefully, as if afraid to startle me.
“What can I do for you?” he asks. I roll my head to look at him.
“Don’t leave me,” I say, and my voice sounds dead but also broken. I hear it, and it scares me. Memories threaten to creep in and drag me down. Drag me down to where it’s lonely and cold and dark. I don’t want to go back down there. So I keep my eyes focused on David, who is always warm and gentle. A beacon of hope.
His mouth parts slightly, eyes widening and he says, “Never.”
FIFTY-SIX
THEN, SPRING, TWO YEARS AGO
While we were all really feeling sentimental on our last night at our apartment, I guess Elliot was feeling extra emotional because he proposed to Madeline. Full on, ring in a box, blubbering like messes, proposed.
I was shocked the next morning when we woke up earlier to meet the movers, and Madeline came into my room jumping on my bed flashing her left hand at me. I was shocked at first that we didn’t hear her screaming when it happened, but I was also shocked because it was six in the morning and I could barely wrap my mind around what was happening.
“We were just really into the moment, in our feelings, and it was just the perfect time. Nothing huge and extravagant, just sincere and beautiful. Like our relationship,” Madeline says from behind the kitchen counter with her cheeks permanently pink and her eyes now permanently deformed into heart shapes as she gazes upon her fiancé. Yikes, that’s weird. Next to me, Hayden pretends to puke and I smack his arm.
“You two just can’t do anything normal, can you?” I say with a mouth full of a protein bar.
“Define normal, Ana,” Maddie jokingly glares at me. She then leans back into Elliot and he wraps his arms around her, kissing the side of her head.
“Uh, maybe being a college graduate for twenty-four hours before becoming someone's fiancé,” I say.
“Fiancé,” Maddie cries. “That’s the first time I’ve heard it in reference to us.” She looks up at Elliot. “Hi, fiancé.” He murmurs something back to her which has her turning around in his arms completely to kiss him fully.
My eyes widen and I find Hayden next to me, humor and happiness in his eyes. “Should I propose to you now too?”
“Always so romantic, Hayden,” I roll my eyes.
“I still get chills when you say my name.”
“Stop, you weirdo.” I laugh.
“But I was ready to marry you after I crashed into you almost four years ago,” he says seriously, taking a sip of the coffee he went out and got for all of us a little while ago.
“We have plenty of time for that, amor.” I wink at him and he pretends to melt. I laugh and try to playfully kick him.
Maddie and Elliot have recovered from their moment so I say, “So when’s the wedding?” Obviously joking.
“Next month.” Maddie smiles.
I choke on my protein bar, literally inhaling a grain and then falling into a coughing fit. Hayden comes over to rub my back and yank my arms up over my head. I push him away as I’m able to pull myself together enough to say, “Next month? What—why are you rushing?”
“Why would we wait if we’re ready right now?” Elliot asks, smiling.
“Seriously, are you—are you rushing because…” I make my eyes wide and I look at her belly.
“God, Ana. No.” She rolls her eyes.
“Because if you are, there is nothing wrong with having a child outside of a marriage. Marriage is basically just a piece of paper and it’s the world that has brainwashed us into thinking having a ‘child out of wedlock’ is a shameful thing and will damn us to hell. It won’t. You’ve basically been married for years. You're completely committed to each other and you love each other, so just because you don’t have a piece of paper signed by a stranger in a courthouse doesn’t mean you are any less of a committed couple,” I finish my rant, breathing a little heavier.
