AllFreeNovel
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If you asked me what freedom means to me, I couldn’t write you an essay or a poem. But I could break it all down in a few short sentences.
My life is beautiful. My love is reckless, and my soul? My soul is free.
You’d thinkas long as I’ve lived here, she wouldn’t be able to hide from me. But somehow, she always manages to disappear. “Doll Face,” I call out, aggravated.
Callum has been under my roof since she graduated. She started up her own personal styling business. With my help and Richard’s, of course. She owns a shop in the middle of the city where you can come to her and she will personalize an entire wardrobe for you. She had to hire people to sew, because my Callum can’t. She can draw it, accessorize it, but she cannot physically make it. It’s something she’s still working on at the age of twenty-two.
I run my father’s business. It’s okay. Kind of boring. No kids to yell at, and the staff gets all upset when I use my red pen on their proposals. I brought Richard in to help me. He was going nuts after he retired, so I decided I’d give him a chance.
“Callum,” I yell, coming down the stairs to catch her entering the door. She pauses, eyes wide as she hides something behind her back. Yellow paint splattered all over her clothes and face. “You didn’t…”
She bites her lip. “It’s so cheery, though.”
I walk over to the door, gently pushing her out of the way to see the mailbox, and fuck, it’s yellow. “That mailbox is insulting,” I muse at the yellow box of happiness.
“I love it,” she says, peeking under my arm.
“In my office, Mrs. Boyd.”
“Oooh, am I going to be punished?”
I smirk. “You’d like that too much. You’re going to read to me my favorite story.”
She sighs, setting the yellow paint bucket on the porch and walking to my office. I have a collection of white journals in there. All of them hers. She grabs her new one, crawling onto my lap.
“Read for me.”
She does, flipping to the newest page and clearing her throat. “I found out I was pregnant last week. My husband doesn’t know this yet, though.” She looks down at me, and I smile sadly.
Callum and I have been trying for the last two years to have a baby. But no matter how hard we try, we can’t seem to make it happen. She often writes fantasies about this in her journal, and it breaks my heart. The number of needles I’ve injected into her milky skin, tears I’ve wiped, how many times I’ve picked her up off the floor when her period came, it’s heartbreaking.
“My husband will think this is a fantasy, but we actually do have babies coming in our future,” she says, setting the journal down and looking to me. “Lincoln.”
“Did you just say babies?”
She smiles, happy tears leaking down her face. “It worked. It finally worked.” She wipes her eyes, pulling a sonogram from her pocket.
Three small babies in black and white. They don’t look like much now, but I know exactly what I’m looking at.
“Three? Dear God.”
She laughs, wrapping her arms around my neck and kissing my lips. “We finally get to start a family together.”
I found my forever on my first day of teaching at a new school. Wrapped in a bow with a painted, bratty mouth. A journal full of fantasies I get to make happen every day.
My life is full. My love is unconditional, and my soul? My soul is finally free.
