Chapter Sixteen - Luke
The car ride is more silence, which my fears are all too happy to fill: hissing at me that this was all a mistake, that I’m a fool, that this will never work. Once we pull into the now almost-empty parking lot and Emma sees where we are, she can’t help but smile.
“You’ve been visiting the zoo these past few months?”
I nod. “Yeah, well, I’ve already rewatched like every episode of Planet Earth four times by now, so I had to get my animal fix somehow.”
At the zoo counter I nod to Sandra, who’s at her usual spot at the counter, before going through without paying.
“I have a membership,” I explain to Emma, “They know me by now.”
As we wind our way through the last of the zoo visitor stragglers and past huge cages and pens, Emma finally asks the question that’s been hanging over us since she saw me waiting at her door. “What’s this about, Luke?”
“One second,” I say. And then, a few seconds later, I’ve sat down at a bench in front of a tall wide cage, patting the space beside it.
“This is where I go to sit.”
As Emma sits beside me, I continue. “These guys are my favorite.”
And, as she sits there, her eyes lighting up at the sight, I think she can see why. The two golden lion tamarins are ridiculously adorable. With their bright orange shiny fur and little black-eyed faces, they would’ve been mesmerizing already. As it is, their being crazy in love makes even me fall silent as I watch. They walk hand-in-hand and are constantly grooming and licking and embracing each other. Even when they swing from one branch to the other, each monkey is only one branch behind the other.
It’s a touching sight, but, judging by Emma’s now-falling face, she too finds it a bit depressing. Finally, my gaze on the little creatures’ big love, I say it.
“I’ve been looking for you a long time, you know.”
“What?”
Now I turn to face her. “After that night and your dad showed up, you just disappeared. No note, no text, nothing. You just vanished and, no matter how I searched, I couldn’t find you anywhere.”
She avoids my intent gaze. “I didn’t think you’d go looking . . . I hardly thought you’d care.”
“Me too.” My voice is low, filled with emotion. It almost doesn’t even sound like mine.
“As it turns out, we were both wrong. Every day without you just going through the motions back in my old life drilled it in deeper. The undeniable gap that was there. No one to talk to, to laugh with . . . No one who really got me. Emma, I’ve never felt lonely in my life and, after you, I’ve felt more alone every day for the past six months. And that night . . . that night, you and I in my bed . . . I’m sorry, and yet, I’m not sorry. Because every minute of it, Emma, every second of it – it felt right. For the first time in my life, I don’t know why . . . Every part of it, of being with you, felt completely right.”
“How did you find me?” she asks quietly.
I laugh. “I had just about given up. I’d scoured the internet for you, the phone book, even risked asking a few friends who knew the commander better than I did. But everything turned up nothing. So, expecting nothing to come of it, I hired a private investigator.”
As she gapes at me in disbelief, I laugh again, nod. “That was a few months ago. And, yesterday, he told me where I could find you.”
As I grin at her, her face struggles with a smile she can’t quite allow. She still doesn’t believe what I’m saying. “But . . . why?” she asks.
I shake my head. “You first. Why did you leave?” When she says nothing, I repeat the question: “Why, Emma?”
She keeps her gaze on the tamarins, who are huddled in the corner of their cage in a hug-ball. Then, she gestures at her ballooned-out belly. “You’re looking at why. At first, I just left in a hurry to escape Dad’s rage. I planned to get in touch in a few weeks. But then, my period didn’t come and I took a pregnancy test . . . Well, then this happened. I had seen how you were with the other girls, and so I knew that I was probably just another fun lay that night. I knew you wouldn’t want the responsibility – that it would be better off if I just left you alone. So, I did.”
I nod. “And what do you think now?”
My sidelong glance at her impassive face reveals nothing. “Now, I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I mean, you went to all this trouble and everything you just said, but―”
Now I turn to her, seize her hand. “But what? I’ve gone through so many girls that by now I’ve lost count? I’ve never had a girlfriend for longer than a few months? I’ve never been in love?”
As she nods dumbly, I continue “All that is true but is missing the point. The point is you, Emma. You are the exception. You. You came into my life unexpected and unwanted – completely unprecedented. I never hoped for this, for these terrifying, overwhelming feelings that haven’t left me alone until now. Until I found you. And you want to know something? I still don’t want them. Yes, I want you, but I don’t want to want you with this desperate inescapable need that makes every new day without you feel empty and hollow. I don’t want Parker to keep asking me nonstop, “When’s Emma coming back?” I don’t want to think about that night we had every time I’m with a new girl . . . To have your delighted, rosy-cheeked face flash in my head every time I spot a cute animal. No, Emma, I don’t want any of this, but I’m stuck with it. I’m stuck with wanting you, with needing you. There’s no choice in any of it, not anymore. Emma, I’m stuck with loving you.”
As she gapes at me, the fear roars up again. Grasping her in my arms, I spill out more words. “So, you’re right if you think I’m not a good prospect, not well-versed in healthy relationships or any real sort of relationship for that matter. You’re right to doubt that I’d be a good father or a good boyfriend or a good anything, really. But I can tell you this” – I put one hand on her belly and the other on her cheek – “I will love you and this baby until the day I die. And I will do anything for you and our child. Anything that it takes for you to be happy.”
Still, she’s speechless, gaping at me with those blue moon eyes, the ones our baby might have too. Taking her hand, I lean in.
“This is when you’re supposed to tell me your answer – to me, my love, this, everything.”
It bursts out of her, in one delighted sort of laugh-cry: “Yes!” She throws her arms around me. “Oh, yes! Luke, of course yes!” She draws back to look at me with teary eyes. “I’ve missed you every day too, spent these last months trying to convince myself that we’d never work, that you’d never cared for me, that there was no point in even hoping, but now . . .” She smiles. “Now I think the least we can do is try.”
As we stare into each other’s eyes, suddenly, her smile falls.
“But what about the base and my dad?”
My smile grows.
“You haven’t heard? Last week he was transferred to another division. Apparently that crazy bitch wife of his exploded on another commander’s wife. So now we can do what we like.”
She nods as if she’s unsure exactly what I said, so I make it clear for her: “We can start packing when we get back to your place tonight.”
A devious look creeps onto her face. “Oh really? And what if I like where I’m staying now?”
I pat her face. “You can have a sheet partition in the attic too.”
Laughing, she rises.
“And for the baby . . . What if I’d already named him Damien?” I grin, pat her belly.
“If Damien’s ok with it then I’m ok with it.”
Now we’re both grinning stupidly at each other, so I ask her “What do you say?”
Her gaze flutters down, then back to mine. Her smile grows. “Ok, I’m in.”
I rise to whisper in her ear: “No, I’m the one who’s going to be in . . . you.”
Her eyes dancing with an aroused fire, she pushes me back a bit. “Luke!”
I step forward, kiss her, whisper in her ear “I can’t help it. I love you.”
We kiss again and, when we break apart once more, she says “I love you.”
*****
THE END