I Am Jack's Life Ch. 18

I went back up to my apartment. I was struck by the urgency to go now. But I knew it was better to wait. To let her cool off. I'd go over tomorrow. Besides, I had a stop to make at my mother's first.

My mother gave me what I asked for without the slightest hesitation, she just squeezed me very tight. Stan shook my hand and wished me luck.

Not a bad guy Stan, he made my mother happy at least.

I drove over to the beach house the next day. I'd called her mom to confirm she was in fact staying there. She was. I knew she would be. It was her home.

I knocked on the door, but there was no answer, so I walked around back and saw her sitting out near the water. I'd some how managed to time things so that the sun was setting as I arrived. Perfect.

I walked up to her slowly. My heart was beating so loud I could feel it pulsing in my neck and wrists.

"Abby?" I said as I got about ten feet away.

She turned around.

Her face had such hurt on it, that my whole practiced speech just sort of fell apart like so much crumbling ash slipping through my fingers.

Instead I went with the first thing I could grasp onto.

"Two roads diverged in yellow wood," I said.

She followed me with a wary - yet hopeful - eye. I had a chance.

I knelt down next to her.

"I owe you - so much. Not the least of which is the mother of all apologies. For the way I left things when you went to New York. For what you saw yesterday, for what it meant," I said. This wasnot a conversation to fuck up.

She still hadn't said anything.

"But I'm not going to apologize for those things. They would just be words," I said. I still had nothing of the speech I'd practiced. I was totally winging it. I thought I might pass out.

"You were right. You're always right Abbs. There's nothing to figure out. I love you. You love me. Everything else is just sand on the wind," I said, I reached into my pocket.

"Jack," she started to say, her tone sounded like she was about to turn this around, to tell me there was no coming back from what had happened. I'd been terrified that's what she'd say.

I held up my mother's wedding ring.

Her voice caught dead in her throat.

Speechless was good, it gave me a little more time to talk.

"I love you Abby," luckily I was already kneeling, "Will you marry me?"

She stared at the ring, and then at me. Her eyes filled with tears. I couldn't tell if they were good tears or bad tears.

I started to panic. She was being awfully quiet.

Then. She gave a little shriek and leapt up and tackled me.

I was poorly balanced, I went back in the sand tangled up in her. She kissed my lips, my cheeks, my eyes, anything she could.

Then she sobbed and sat up on my chest and pounded her fists down on my chest a few times.

"Fucking took you long enough, Don Juan," she blurted out. I sat up with a grin and grabbed her wrists, pulling them away from her body and kissed her, very softly on the lips. She melted into me.

The universal tapestries and all that.

"It was always you, Abigayle, it was always you," I said.

She grinned, "Liar," but her voice was soft and affectionate. A just for me voice.

"Is that a yes?" I smirked.

She broke into tearful laughter, "Of course yes!"

Then we went back to the beach house and had crazy I missed you sex.

#

We're taught through movies and books, all stories really - even Shakespeare was guilty, and before him, the Greeks he'd ripped off. That stories end with a wedding. That they end with graduation, commencement, or the end of a journey. The guy and girl get each other, they get the good jobs, and life ends right?

Sure the credits roll, and you sometimes get the impression that things are going to beHappily Ever After for the couple. We get up and walk out of the theater, or put the book down, and that's the end of the story. Its why we fear commitment. Movies and stories have taught us that once the credits roll on the rice tossing, your life is over; the credits are rolling, you're frozen in time during the last frame.

But it's hardly ever the end of the story. Life moves on, dragging you behind it like Achilles dragging Hector behind his chariot. The sun sets on a proposal, rises again on the morning after, sets again on six months of wedding planning, and rises again on a late summer wedding. Sometimes it's all just context for the rest your life.

Context is everything friends.

In stories.

In relationships.

In life.

Context is everything.

There's a little more left to this story, if you haven't forgotten by now.