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I smiled with heartache, recalling that wonderful evening. “I think by now you’ll see there was a theme to our life.” I spun my wedding ring, glancing at my lion and siren tattoo beneath my shawl. The ink was faded now, the lines no longer as crisp. I’d lost count of how many times I’d stroked that lion in the dark. How many times I’d sobbed into my arm and willed Aslan to feel me, to know I still loved him.
I didn’t need my intuition to tell me that I would never find another like him. No one else was Aslan. I wanted no one else but him. I’d been forbidden from following him while I was still so young. I had his daughter to birth and his child to raise, but I knew in myself that I would wait. I would be a mother but never a lover. I would be a parent all while revoking the title of wife.
“The moon and the sea were the instruments of fate that brought us together. Latin was a big part of my world with biology and science. And one of the most poignant things Aslan ever said to me was: ‘Without the moon and the sea, we would never have met.’”
“The luna and the mare,” Margot whispered.
“Exactly.” I nodded. “The moment we combined those words and typed them into the search box to see if anyone else had claimed it, we knew it was ours. The fact that it was free was perfect. The fact that six years later we started a charity under the name Cor Amare was also fitting. The theme had come full circle.”
“Cor Amare?” Dylan asked. “I’ve heard of that. You clean up the oceans and donate millions per year to protect endangered sea life. Don’t you also donate to underprivileged people? Schooling and housing, that sort of thing?”
“We do. In a way, I feel like that’s our greatest achievement, not Lunamare.”
“What does it mean?” Margot grabbed a calico lacy cushion and hugged it. “I don’t know those Latin words.”
I held her stare. “Cor is heart. Amare is love. My heart was torn, and my love was lost. It fit.”
“Uh, that’s so romantic,” Margot breathed. “So you never...not once? Aslan was your last?”
“He was my last.” I nodded. “I couldn’t answer you before when you asked if he was my first, but I can tell you with every breath in my body that he was my last. My always. My forever.”
“You were never tempted to find salvation in someone else’s arms?” she asked.
“Never. Not once.”
“So...you moved in with two men who lived in happily wedded bliss...while pregnant?” Dylan helped guide me back to the story. The story that made me bleed with misery.
“I did.” Linking my fingers together, I sat straight and said, “My parents didn’t want me to go. They feared I’d do something stupid if I was away from them, but I overheard what Teddy said to them as he pulled them aside. He told them, in no uncertain words, that I was dying from a broken heart. That in order to keep me alive, I had to be free of everything that might tear out the rest of that broken heart. He convinced them I could move into their spare bedroom indefinitely. There were no memories in their home. Nothing to trigger me or make me spiral. When my father told them that it wouldn’t just be me for much longer, that they’d end up with a second house guest in a matter of months, Teddy truly became my knight in shining armour. He mentioned that he and Eddie had always wanted a child of their own. I’d seen their strict ten-year life plan. I knew they had goals of building a successful architect business, doing something ground-breaking that put their name on the map, and then adopting a child and becoming a true family.
“The idea that in a few months I’d deliver Aslan’s baby didn’t scare them. They vowed I could be as melancholy as I needed because they would be there. They would help me with every step. They would never evict me or my daughter and would do whatever they could to make my loss a little easier. They went so far beyond their assigned role as business partners that I collapsed again. My heart had skipped, and my vision had faulted, and by the time I was stable enough, my mother was nodding, and my father was agreeing, and it was settled.
“I moved into the spare bedroom of Mr. and Mr. Ross—Eddie happily took Teddy’s surname—and for the months left of my pregnancy, they helped me forget. They coddled me, went to birthing classes with me, they hugged me when I broke and helped honour Aslan’s memory by speaking of him often.
“I didn’t feel wrong living with them. I didn’t feel like I betrayed Aslan as his child was raised by two other men. In a way, Teddy and Eddie helped me keep Aslan alive for Ayla because when I couldn’t speak around my despair, they were there, telling her stories of when they’d first met Aslan on FaceTime or the texts between the three of them while Aslan learned how to renovate and needed to ask a question that YouTube couldn’t answer.”
“So...they became Ayla’s surrogate fathers?” Dylan asked, scribbling a few notes.
“They did more than that,” I murmured, remembering those heartsick days when they went out of their way to make their house my home. They’d dragged me into town and forced me to pick a paint for my new room. They transformed the walls into a rich dark grey and decorated the space with a coral-inspired silver chandelier, ivory bedspread, driftwood side tables, gauzy white curtains, and cream shaggy rugs. “They became my salvation. They didn’t treat me as if I’d shatter. They didn’t watch me as if I was one switchblade away from ending it. They gave me space to mourn but also forced me to focus on work.
“They were willing to give me a home but only because we were partners. Partners with a dream, a destiny. The impossible hope of creating a world where disease, plagues, and natural disasters couldn’t find us.
“I don’t need to tell you how appealing that became after losing Aslan. I wanted to run and hide. I wanted to vanish beneath the waves and disappear into the salt. The impossible task of making Lunamare a reality consumed me, and I was grateful that we spent nightfall sketching our spheres, drawing meadows of seaweed to act as the waste purifier, and arguing over how best to recycle air.
“As I moved closer to my delivery date and my stomach ballooned, they happily, generously turned their third and final bedroom into a nursery. They didn’t let me refuse. They nodded along as I blabbered that this was only temporary. That one day, I would be back on my feet. I would remember how to live. I would figure out a way to survive without Aslan.
“But when I stepped into that room for the first time, I’d dropped to my knees, hugged my bulging stomach, and sobbed. My pregnancy was a blur of tears and sorrow but kneeling in that nursery, I felt I could reach out and touch Aslan.
“They’d taken a photo of my tattoo, blown it up, and used the design to paint a fine line mural on the wall by the wooden crib. The lion watched over my baby while the curtains glittered with stars, the ceiling was painted with the waxing and waning phases of the moon, and the floor held rugs of blue layered over one another in different shades, mimicking waves upon the shore.”
“It sounds as if they should’ve gone into interior design instead of architecture,” Dylan said softly.
I nodded, remembering how that room sticky-taped my bleeding heart just enough that when I went into labour and was rushed to the hospital at four in the afternoon with two married men and my very anxious parents, I managed to feel something other than despair.
The pain had been astronomical.
I’d been in labour for thirty-three hours.
But when Ayla Avci came into the world, I’d smiled.
