TAVIAN

07.17.15

Nine months, six days, and counting down.

The timer starts ticking the moment I step onto the plane for my short flight home, the bomb in my chest officially triggered for detonation on April 23, 2016. I’ve seen the six-digit numbers in people’s eyes ever since I can remember, and not once have they been wrong. Not when my dad and brothers were blown up in the plant explosion, which is the day I finally realized what the numbers meant. Not for my grandma, who lost her battle with cancer a year to the day after she buried her son and two of her grandsons. Not for my best friend Bryan, who died from an undetected blood clot in his brain while he slept during our junior year of college, despite my attempt to keep him in a safe bubble throughout the entire day. And not for every other person I’ve met in my life, including all of those who were killed during the attack at the Pamplona airport.

Lyra’s won’t be wrong either.

For the first time since I’ve come to accept this unexplainable power I have as a blessing and reminder to make the most of each day instead of a curse, I wish more than anything I was just normal, living life blindly like every other human walking the planet. It’s a mindset that took years for me to develop thanks to the help of Annie, the only person who believes me about the numbers, and in less than two weeks, Lyra Jennings has made me question all of it. Now, I’m racing time, and even though I know I won’t be a winner at the finish line—at her finish line—I want to make the journey there the best it can fucking be. For her. For me. For us.

It’s just not that simple though. Life never is.

How am I supposed to explain to my mom, who tragically lost her husband and two of her three kids in one devastating phone call, that I’m going to end things with Annie, the girl who she treats as a daughter and expects to mother her grandchildren, to be with someone who I know will die in less than a year? What kind of son will I be when I rip away the one thing she’s been praying for—me to start a family, knowing that Annie will live to be well in her eighties and can provide this, while Lyra won’t ever see the age of twenty-five? Why would I subject her to even more heartache than she’s already endured by introducing her to the woman I’m madly in love with, only to make her suffer through the loss of yet another person, taken from us much too early?

When I left for this trip a couple weeks ago, I would’ve told you I was a good man—one who was morally and ethically sound, a hard worker, self-sacrificing and generous, someone who searched for the best in every person and situation. Now, I’m returning a cheating, lying, selfish asshole who wants to quit work and grad school to spend every second of the next nine months making sure the last of Lyra’s days are filled with heart-warming smiles, breathtaking adventures, mind-blowing orgasms, and most of all, a bone-deep love so powerful it penetrates to the very center of her being.

Though my wishes and desires are all in the name of love, my entire life will be upended and thrown into a state of bedlam. Everything academic I’ve worked so hard for these past eight years pushed to the side. The one person who stuck by my side through the roughest years of my life, believing in and supporting me when I gave her numerous reasons not to, abandoned without warning. And the promises I made to the woman who gave me life, who sacrificed repeatedly for her entire family, that only wants to be surrounded with more family to love and nurture, broken and forgotten.

Then, on April 24, 2016, it will all come to an end, and I will be all alone. My back turned on my past, and my future reduced to an urn of ashes.

The captain announces our upcoming arrival into Philadelphia International Airport and my mood plummets with the nose of the plane. I gaze out the small window at the city I’ve called home my whole life, illuminated by the waning hours of sunlight, and for the first time, I feel a disconnect. Now, any place without Lyra in it will never feel completely like home.

I miss her so fucking bad I can’t stop my hands from shaking, but I bottle up the liquid weakness and focus on what’s in front of me.

My legs move on autopilot as I trudge through the airport and retrieve my luggage a final time in baggage claim. I shoot a text off to both Annie and Ma as I wait for my Uber driver to pick me up to let them know I’ve landed safely and will be home soon, then turn off my battery-drained phone. The warring emotions inside me also battle the exhaustion from staying awake to watch Lyra sleep last night and traveling for almost eighteen hours, and I find myself dozing off during the twenty-minute car ride to my apartment.

“This is you, bud,” the driver announces, jarring me awake as he pulls up in front of the red-bricked building I’ve lived in for over four years.

I thank him and retrieve my bags from the trunk then roll the suitcases behind me as I pass through the lobby to the elevator, waving hello to Phillip, the guy on duty at the front desk, in the process. Thankfully, he’s on the phone and I don’t feel obligated to stop and talk about my trip with him. Right now, all I want is a hot shower and to pass out in my bed for at least a dozen hours. Tomorrow, I’ll deal with people again and the mess my life has suddenly become.

The elevator zips up to the fourth floor and I slog down the long, carpeted hallway, stopping when I reach the white door labeled 4E. I inhale a deep breath to prepare myself for seeing Annie, hoping to be as physically and verbally evasive as possible without her catching on to anything being wrong. I can blame jet-lag for not feeling well and postponing the talk I’ve told her we need to have, buying me a little bit of time until I figure out exactly what I’m going to say to her and my mom.

Not having my keys, I ring the bell and wait to hear the turn of the two locks while my gut tightens with unease. The door swings open, and instead of Annie greeting me, it’s my mom, who is oddly wearing a fancy dress and a smile from ear to ear. The last time I saw her in either was over a year ago when I was planning on proposing to Annie before Annie announced she was leaving.

My face screws up with confusion as I step inside the foyer, dropping my bags to give her a hug. “Ma? What are you doing here? And why are you so dressed up? Do you have a date or something? Did Annie help you with your makeup and hair?”

“A date?” Her numbers—011836—light up as she laughs too loud and shakes her head. “Of course not, honey. That’s ridiculous. Why would you think that? I bet your brain is foggy from all that time flying. Let’s go get you a drink so you can relax and enjoy being home.”

She hooks her elbow with mine and leads me toward the living area, and immediately, alarms and flashing red lights go off inside my head, alerting me to the bizarreness of this entire situation. Where is Annie? Why didn’t my mom answer my other questions? And why is she rambling like a lunatic? Even if I wasn’t a math guy, this shit doesn’t add up.

Before I can open my mouth and ask what the hell is going on, we turn the corner and a group of other well dressed, big-smiling people all yell, “Welcome home!” and start clapping as they stare at me. My confusion turns into chaos as I scan the crowd of familiar faces—friends from school, Annie’s parents, her brother and sister-in-law, my academic advisor, her coworkers, friends from church, my mom.

I have no idea what the fuck is going on, why all these people are here, in my house, after I just returned from being gone for two weeks, but I’m pissed as hell and can’t do anything about it, because Annie, who knew I wanted to talk to her about something serious tonight, is nowhere to be found. Sure, I was planning on putting it off until tomorrow, but she didn’t know that.

Doing my best to bottle my frustration in front of this audience, I paste on a baffled smile and ask, “Where’s Annie?”

“Right here, waiting for you.” I hear her voice, but still can’t see her until the crowd parts down the middle to reveal Annie, wearing a gauzy white dress, down on her knees in the middle of our living room floor, hands behind her back.

My stomach knots in the acid of reality. This can’t be happening. Please, God, tell me this is one fucked-up nightmare fueled by my anxiety of going home.

“Come here, my handsome hero.” She smiles brightly—the 062171 glowing in her pupils remind me of the long life she’s destined to live—and waits for me to take the three most painful steps of my life so that I’m standing directly in front of her before she starts talking again.

There’s nothing I can do or say to stop this. My chest constricts so tightly I’m afraid my ribs may have stress fractures.

“From the day we met,” she says, tossing her curly blonde hair behind her shoulder and peering up at me with big brown eyes, “I knew there was something special about you. Instead of our relationship beginning with bouquets of roses and hand-held strolls on the beach, we had casket sprays and tear-filled walks at the cemetery. You’ve weathered more losses than anyone at your age should, and things haven’t always easy, but despite everything, we’ve always been there for each other when it counted.”

Annie stops for a breath and to glance around at what I’m sure is a roomful of encouraging smiles. I have no idea what expression I’m wearing, but I’m just hoping everyone’s passing it off for shock. Because right now, I really am shocked speechless and stupid.

“Last Monday at lunch, when I saw the news about the terrorist attack at the Pamplona airport, I broke down and lost it. I thought you were gone. I didn’t know what to do, didn’t know who to call, or where to go. I was an absolute wreck, thinking I was going to have to live the rest of my life without you.” Tears breach her eyelids and slide down her face as she sucks in a ragged breath, and my instinctive reaction is to reach out and comfort her as I swipe the wetness from her face with my thumbs. Guilt coils in my gut when I touch her, thoughts of Lyra in the forefront of my mind.

“It was after I found out that you were not only alive, safe and sound away from the airport, but that you had saved another person’s life, too, that I knew I couldn’t wait another day to make you mine forever. That afternoon, I started making arrangements for these people around us—our closest family and friends—to join me here today to not only welcome you home but to witness my declaration of love.”

She swings her arms around from behind her back and extends them between us, and my heart slams to a hard, cold stop when I see the black velvet ring box wrapped in her fingers. I want to spin around and run—straight out of this apartment, out of this building, and out of this city—but my feet are cemented firmly to the floor. I may have fallen head over heels for Lyra, but I didn’t lose my decency as a human being. Annie doesn’t deserve to be made a fool of. Not right now, not like this.

She opens the box and lifts it a few inches higher, the glow surrounding her nearly as illustrious as the shiny metal of the wedding band she’s holding up. “Octavian West, what I’m trying to say is I love you more than anything in this world and would cherish spending the rest of my life with you. Would you please do me the honor of marrying me?”

To be continued in ETERN1TY, the conclusion of Tavian and Lyra’s epic love story…