All I Have Left (34 page)

Ethan and Frankie got married in March and were expecting their first baby in three months.

Evie and I were building a house together.

Everybody had moved on.

It was time we did and that meant me marrying my girl.

I got off around two that afternoon and picked up Evie and headed to Dr. Kane’s office in Dothan.

She handed me the mail and laughed. “Jameson sent us tickets to the Talladega race.”

I already knew that. He called and asked if we wanted them last month. “You wanna go?”

“Yeah! That would be fun.”

This was good. We were making plans and living our lives. That’s all we could do.

When we got to our therapy session, it started out normal as we talked about what changed since our first session when I punched a hole in his door when he made Evie talk about being raped, in front of me.

Dr. Kane told us that the way that you choose to feel about yourself is in your control. And how you deal with your feelings. That’s on you. No one else.

I didn’t understand what that meant in the beginning because there’s things you have no control over.

There comes a point when you’re pissed at the world for the wrong done to you, yourself included.

Evie and I both went through those stages.

What hurt more than anything was when we had to talk through the accident because there was some things were hazy to me. When I heard everything that happened, I went a little crazy.

When Evie talked about why she stayed with Shane, that hurt too because she didn’t feel comfortable telling anyone. I couldn’t imagine how alone she felt, but then again, I could. I was there myself.

“I’m not sure there’s anything more I can help you guys with that you’re not dealing with?” He said, smiling now, his eyes on mine and Evie’s hands locked together as we sat next to one another.

I asked Dr. Kane last month what he thought of me asking Evie to marry me. He said that was up to me but he said if it felt right, then he had no reservations. I had thought for sure he would have tried to talk me out of it. Given our past, you’d think we were years away from this.

What if we didn’t have years?

I almost died twice now. I wasn’t waiting.

Being in love is such a crazy thing because you can’t make it go away. You can’t make it come, and you can’t make it go. It’s blinding, consuming and fucking heart and soul sucking. And worth it.

I felt the nerves as soon as we got to The Point. I checked to make sure the ring was in my pocket, and then helped Ethan with the equipment.

Everything kind of passed in a blur because I couldn’t focus. My mind just kept playing over what I was going to say to her.

We played two sets before Ethan pulled me aside. “You still doing it tonight?” he nudged my shoulder with his own.

I knew what he was referring to. “That’s the plan.” I smiled with a hint of nerves. “After this song.”

It took me a while to decide on a song. If I was a song writer, I probably would have wrote something but I wasn’t so I chose something I could play on the piano for her and Ethan played the guitar.

I chose a song she loved. “Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley.

We played another song and then I turned to Evie who I motioned on stage. “Sit with me,” I said into the microphone and patting the bench.

The crowd of some four hundred people screamed. They probably knew what I was doing.

And then I began to play, the slow ballad. It’s a long song, longer than I initially thought when I started practicing it but it was perfect for her.

When the guitar faded, it was just me, I leaned my head back and belted out to a mostly nameless and faceless audience lyrics that moved people, made them feel, made them believe there was a life worth living if they believed there was.

Evie cried, her body silently weeing next to me as her head rested on my shoulder.

When the song ended, there was a moment of silence before everyone clapped, but that one silent moment is one I’ll hold with me forever. Evie staring at me with all the love and adoration I could ever imagine. I knew what I’d planned to do, hopefully knew what she’d say, but it still didn’t make it any less nerve wracking. Evie was my life, my heart, my soul, and now I was asking her to be mine forever…truly make her mine. We’d been through the fires of hell in such a short period of time. Now my heart was burning for her, only her, it was always only her.

I couldn’t wait any longer, the ring was burning a hole in my pocket. My hand had been absentmindedly playing with the black velvet box the entire night. I’ve been over and over what I wanted to say to her in that moment but really I had no idea how to actually put words to what I was feeling..

The “marry me” speech ranks up there with what you say when they tell you they love you, or they’re pregnant. They’ll remember everything said. Everything.

What do you say to the woman who holds your heart and soul in palm of their hand? It will forever be remembered by the woman, I knew this because my mother could repeat word for word what my father said to her. And though I wasn’t sure how with all the screaming, Frankie remembered every word Ethan had said to her. It was a moment that I knew I shouldn’t fuck up, so to say there was a lot riding on my speech, was an understatement. This just made me all the more nervous.

I stood, as did Evie and walked over to the microphone where we were going to do a duet. I hesitated once we were standing there, only to have Ethan shout from behind, “Do it!”

By the look on Evie’s face right then, she knew. The grin told me so.

With my hands wrapped around her shoulders, I held onto her, her back pressed to my chest as I held the microphone over my lips that were at her ear. “They’re gonna hear what I have to say…” I raised an eyebrow to the screaming crowd. “You okay with that?”

Evie wasn’t one for public attention but she was giggling so much she could barely keep herself contained. It made me think this was going to be okay and I shouldn’t wait. I should just do it.

I started swaying to the beat Ethan started played on the acoustic guitar beside me, a continuation of Hallelujah. Evie followed my lead, swaying with me.

Reaching around in front of her, I clasped her hand in mine twisting around to face her, and slowly dropped down on one knee, the crowd howled in response.

Evie gasped loudly and put her other hand over her mouth. “Oh my—”

“You knew this was coming,” I shook my head. “Just…let me do this, please.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to…” I said, giving her a wink.

I was on my knee, holding the ring in my left hand, the mic in the other. Turning my head to the crowd, I laughed. “Now what should I say?”

They laughed, Josh said something inappropriate to the left of the stage, as did Ethan, but Evie giggled and reached for her own microphone next to her. “The Grayson Gomez I know always knows what to say to make a woman weak.”

“Well,” I let out a breathy laugh. “You got me there. I just got one question really. No speech.”

“Yeah?” she quirked an eyebrow at me, shifting her weight to the right with her hand on her hip.

I nodded, drawing it out for the fun of it. “Now what?”

She smiled, remembering. “You know what happens now.”

“I have an idea.” I took the ring from the box and held it over the finger it would stay on for the rest of her life, I was sure of that. “These words are just words, but then again, they’re not words at all. They’re memories for you.” It was then my fucking voice shook, suffocating memories we both had were present, I saw it in her eyes too. With a deep breath, the anxiety passed. “What I say is important to you. I know that. But, sometimes simplicity is just as good.”

Evie grinned, tears falling down her flushed cheeks.

“So,” I paused, mostly for the effect and then looked up at her. “Marry me?”

Evie’s eyes broke from mine, to the ring, and then back to mine. “As if there ever was a doubt.”

The crowd exploded with applause and whistles. Smiles broke out all around from family and friends and I picked her up and swung her around the stage. Finally a celebration of our life, we’d waited so long for this moment in time. We deserved a moment no one could ever take from us. This moment, the sound of two hearts finally healing, finally believing and seeing what they created.

Evie and I were married two months later. We didn’t wait. We couldn’t wait. This was us moving on and giving all we had left to give.

Exactly one month to the day after we were married, she told me she was pregnant. Nine months later we were holding a precious little girl, Taliya, in our arms.

There’s always a beginning and an end to everything. But as one ends, another begins. Our life was beginning again, wrapped around a little girl with bright green eyes and long flowing blonde hair with her daddy’s smile.

These days, I see one type of happiness. That’s loving someone with all my heart.

Loving someone is blinding and all consuming. It is a soul-sucking sweet sadness. But it’s worth it. I’m here to tell you it’s fucking worth it.

I believe that no matter how many times your heart breaks, it can and will heal. The human spirit won’t allow it to remain broken when two hearts are beating together.

I’m not sure our story had a happy ending, there’s tragedy everywhere you look, but, there’s something beautiful in everything too.

Like a girl.

And a boy, willing to give all he has left just to see her smile.

The End.

Or the beginning to something bigger. Happiness.