“And Matt’s not the one either,” he said back to me.
We looked at each other for a while and then Alex walked past me and right to the very edge of the cliff face. And then, before I knew what was happening, I heard the scream . . .
“I proposed to a women who didn’t love me and cheated on me and I’ll never let that happen again!”
Alex’s words suddenly bounced back at us. They hit the sides of the mountains and came straight back.
“Oh my God. What are you doing?” I walked up to him and stood there as the two of us listened to his words echoing over and over and over again, until finally it was silent.
“Okay, your turn,” Alex said.
I shook my head. “No! That’s ridiculous.”
“But we’re meant to say it out loud and own it,” he said.
“I don’t think the magazine meant we should scream it off a mountaintop.”
“Do it,” Alex urged.
I looked at him for a while, weighing it up. It did seem totally ridiculous, not to mention embarrassing. But Alex was looking at me in a way that for some reason made me feel it was okay to do it. “Fine.” I sighed. I readied myself and then screamed . . .
“I’ve loved a man for three years who didn’t love me back and I will never do that again because I deserve MORE!”
My words hummed and buzzed around me in the air, filling it with energy. There was something so cathartic about this, so I did it again. This time I screamed as loudly as I could, until my throat hurt.
The words flew back at me. “More, more, more,” they echoed.I deserved more.Those three words ran through my mind and for a moment, I actually believed it. I did deserve more, didn’t I? I deserved someone who would love me back. Someone who would see me, really see me. Someone who would remember kissing me and would want to kiss me again.
Alex joined me and screamed again too.
We stood there and listened as our invisible words knocked into each other, reverberating through the valleys below and back up the mountains.
Hearing our words repeated in that way, a strange feeling began coming over me.
Alex yelled again. And then so did I. And soon, we were both yelling our realities to the mountains in front of us over and over again. And then I found myself inexplicably crying.
Alex took a step closer to me and suddenly his hands were on my face, wiping my tears away. It was the nicest, most unexpected gesture. And it felt good. I closed my eyes for a moment and savored the feeling of his soft hands on my face.
Something was happening.Alex. This view. The echoes of our words. This journey. Us. Something inside me was stirring and moving and shifting. I could physically feel it. A weight was slowly being pulled off me and I seemed to be feeling lighter and lighter with each passing moment.Was I finally getting over Matt? Could this really be working?
I opened my eyes slowly and looked up at Alex again; he was looking down at me with such care and concern etched across his face.
“I think we can do this together.” He said it with such conviction.
I nodded. “I think we can.” And I really meant it this time, because for the first time in years, I felt Matt slipping further and further away from me. And it felt good.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The mood when we got back in the car was different. More reflective, as we sat in silence and continued the rest of the journey. The winding road soon came to an end as we finally arrived in the small mountain village.
The quaint town looked like it should be on the side of a chocolate box, or one of those old vintage biscuit tins. The first thing you noticed was all the color. There is one thing I can say about Réunion island, it pops and explodes and bursts with color. I’d done some more reading on it and its fascinating history might have had something to do with its colorful present. The island was a mix of different cultures, a melting pot of French, Creole, Tamil, African and Chinese influences, all coming together to form something so unique, I wasn’t sure it existed anywhere else in the world.
I looked out at the town. It was surrounded on all sides by mountains. Dotted at the foot of these mountains were small wooden houses painted in a bright array of colors. Yellow houses with bright green shutters. Pink houses with bright red roofs, colors you would never think of mixing together, but they worked. Some of the houses were almost totally swallowed by overgrown gardens; huge ferns and palms and bougainvillea that only added to the rainbow that this little village town in the mountains was.
“Where are we going?” I asked Alex, who was also staring out the window at the sights.
“We’re checking into our hotel and then I have something else planned.”
“Does it involve volcanos, helicopters and dangerous roads?” I asked. “Because I think I’ve had enough excitement for one day.”
