The Space in Between (45 page)

Such is the power of being in love with an Emery.

But wait. I’m getting ahead of myself.

I need to explain the letter.

After the wedding, with the support of his new wife, my dad started going through the boxes he’d locked away in storage when we moved. He ended up coming across some things that belonged to my mom, and knowing how close we were, thought I might want. A lot of the stuff was pretty basic, some puzzles, books and assorted games we used to play before and after she got sick, but he also found a box of letters she wrote. Most of them were addressed to him, but the few that weren’t, after he worked up the courage to do it, he eventually sent to me.

Handwritten words from the mom that even as we’re driving along, I can feel as easily as if she were another passenger in the car with us, instead of watching over me from the sky.

Five year old words that were the kick in the pants I needed to do what’s about to come next. Where I do something guaranteed to make her proud.

“There’s no big secret here, Ems. We’ve just got the break from school and a week off from work and I’m excited to head home to see our folks. No need to sound the alarm.”

Sounds stupid even to me, so when she rolls her eyes and slaps me on the arm, I’m right there with her, but until I’ve made sure everything is in place the way it needs to be, I’ve gotta keep saying stupid crap like this.

I can’t give her what she’s after.

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Because you know me too well?”

With another light tap to my shoulder, she smiles, and just like every other time it’s happened since we got back together, I treasure it, savoring the warmth that it brings.

“Good answer, Cayne, but this isn’t over. I will make you tell me the real reason this trip is so important.”

Focusing back on the road despite how hard it is taking my eyes off her, I smile as I watch the world—cars on the road and trees lining the side of the highway—continue to move around us.

Not long now, Emery. In a few hours you won’t need to hound me for the truth because it’s going to be staring you right in the face. And I can’t wait to see the look on her face when it does.
 

Looks like the honesty pact loophole I found is about to win again.

Emery

Over the last year, I’ve been taking time to reflect on my life.

Sometimes in class where I can express that reflection in visual form, others when there’s a lull at the campus coffee shop where I work, but most of all, when it’s just me and Christian in our tiny apartment.

Starting with the day I think life for me really began.

The first day of freshman year.

Reflect back on where I started as a gangly and awkward fourteen year old with glasses, stepping up to the doors of Greenville High and almost passing out from the fear I had that everything would change and I’d never be the same again. The way it felt meeting my best friend and how that relationship has somehow managed to become one of the most important in my life. The rise, fall and second coming in the relationship with my mom, and the man I’d gotten lucky enough to have in my life when she met and married him a year ago.

Within a week of getting to Greenville, I’d found my niche taking pictures and playing my acoustic, the fear fading completely and when I did reflect back on that first day, finally believing that the change I feared was coming, never would. 

I didn’t have to fear the change because it didn’t exist.

Until a boy with disheveled brown hair and piercing blue eyes stepped out of the Crown Vic and proved me wrong.

The comfortable sameness of my days, flipped like a light switch, until almost a year later, nothing about my life and the way I had been living it at the time was the same again.

It was better.

I was better.

After spending the first month of our new start in New York attempting to juggle classes with time together and failing, both of us sick of the way it felt spending our nights apart, we decided to try living together. A few weeks later, we found a one bedroom situated between both our schools and ignoring the warnings from our parents, we dived in head first.

We were obviously blinded by love.

You know how people say that you never really know the way someone really is until you live with them? Well, I always thought it was crap. Turns out, I was just being naïve because the Christian I knew before, the one that I couldn’t bear to leave every night when I had to head back to my dorm, was the rose colored glasses version of the monster I agreed to live with.

For the first few months, all we did was bicker, and it wasn’t even about anything great. I always thought if we were gonna fit, it would be about something pretty epic, but no. We were arguing about toothbrushes, the toilet seat and the way he can’t seem to stop leaving his clothes all over the place.

It got so crazy that even Johnny and Jonah gave up on us. I think my best friend might have made it a total of thirty minutes during that adjustment period before he’d given us the grade nine flavored
‘fuck you’
and left to go back home.

Thankfully, the way it was in the beginning didn’t last long. 

As easily as I can sit and reflect back on what brought us to where we are now—heading home to Toronto to spend a few days of spring break with our parents and friends—it’s thinking about how we got to this exact point over the last year that I like doing the best and it’s pretty easy to see why.

It’s because the way we are now, in love, happy, with only the stress of real world stuff like jobs and school having the ability to bring us down, is the way I think we’re always going to be.

This is the snapshot of our future and despite how crazy it can get sometimes, living together and building toward a life the way we are, it’s the future I want.

It’s not just me that’s better, it’s not even us as a unit. It’s everything.

Or it would be if he would tell me why he’s in such a damn rush to get to Toronto.

I’ve tried everything to get him to tell me what’s really going on, and nada. Teasing him with fun in the backseat the next time he pulls over—even if it is total bullshit—smiling at him in the way I know works because it’s gotten me things in the past, and then the pout. I’ve tried it all and the bastard just smiles and turns his attention back to the road.

This sucks.

The only thing I can figure is that his rush to get home has something to do with the package his dad sent a few months into our living arrangement. He didn’t come right out and talk about what all was in it, but he’s been different since. If it had anything to do with his mom, though, his need to get home makes sense.

Christian’s mother and the loss of her, even with as often as he says I’m helping him heal and pushing him to be the man she always believed he would be, is still with him.

I think it always will be.

I just hope that wherever she is, she’s able to see the person I do. The one that she created with Nick and loved so deeply. I hope she’s proud of the man he’s becoming.

Because Christian Cayne…well, he’s not like other guys.

He’s different, and I
really
love different. The same way I love him.

“Hey dreamer,” he speaks softly, nudging me and pulling me back out of my head. “We’re here.”

Looking out through the windshield and taking in where here is as he pulls the car to a stop and puts it in park, I’m confused.

Where we are, I know it, but it’s not our parents’ house like he made it seem when he was smacking me on the butt and trying to get me in the car.

Why do I get the feeling this is some kind of set up?

Oh, I know why
. It’s because when he comes around and opens my door and I step out and around him, I see that we’re not alone.

My mom, his dad and our two best friends, along with some new additions of the female variety, are all standing around together.

“Uh, Mikey, what is this?”

This place for years after the day I first found it as a kid, has always just been mine. The one place in the entire city that I could come and get away from my life, look out over the water and pray on every boat that passed for what I felt was missing in my life. Every hope and dream that I’ve ever had is locked up tight here. My wishes all tangled up in the trees and on the wind that moves them, just for me and then, after I brought him here that first night, Christian.

It was never supposed to be for all of them.

I don’t know how I feel about this.

“Don’t be mad.”

“No promises.”

I sound like a brat, I know, but having all of them here, I feel violated. I haven’t been back here in almost a year, but it’s like relationships you have with people that even with all of the time apart, never change. The way I feel about this place, especially these days, is a lot like that.

It’s always going to be mine.

“So how dead are we?” Johnny pipes up when I get close enough and have finished hugging both my mom and Nick, the embrace with my step-father lasting far longer and solidifying the way I’ve come to feel about him since he was thrown into my life a year and a half before.

“Pretty dead if someone doesn’t tell me what this is all about.”

“Uh, Chris man, I got a pretty hot date later that I really don’t wanna mess with,” Johnny laughs as the girl by his side, the one I know to be his girlfriend Erika, elbows him in the side.

The very same girl who with that one move, has more than earned my approval.

“You might wanna let her in on the big secret now.”

Secrets.
A word I hate and an action that I loathe even more. I don’t think time will ever erase the way it felt having things kept from me, but with the way everyone is standing here and smiling, even if Johnny is nursing a pain in the side, I have to accept that not all secrets are bad ones.

Christian is using the loophole again.

Turning away from our friends, Jonah, who has remained completely silent, steps forward and plants himself at Christian’s side, handing over a small plastic bag before smacking him on the back and heading back to his spot with his own girlfriend.

“Yeah, Mikey. You might wanna let your girlfriend in on the big secret.” I repeat Johnny’s words back humorously, smacking him on the chest with my hand before attempting with my other one to snatch the bag. A move he catches and immediately brings further behind his back.

“I know you hate that I did this, but I’m hoping that when you see why, you won’t want to throw me over the cliff.”

“I’ll take it under advisement, but if you don’t wanna end up in pieces in the trunk, you might wanna start filling me in.”

Looking back to the trunk and swallowing hard, he turns back and starts explaining. “I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, before we even left for New York, but there was never enough time. Some things have come up recently that got me thinking about it again, and after working it out with everyone, I finally put it all together.”

“Put all of what together?”

“I’ll get to that, but there’s actually another reason I wanted everyone to be here. Do you remember our first Valentine’s day?”

He can’t be serious.
Knowing what happened that night after he’d given me the most beautiful present I’ve ever received—one that even today sits on the wall completed in our bedroom—there’s no way in hell I would ever forget that day.

With the smile playing on his face and the far off look he’s got in his eye, I’m pretty sure he feels the same.

That night changed everything.

“You know I do, but what does that have to do with today?”

“The puzzle that you turned into a picture on our wall and the way you feel about it, I wanted to give you another one for our first—but really not first—anniversary.”

Since the last picture was of this spot, it makes sense why he would want the next one to be here, but I still don’t get why he had to have everybody here for it.

“It’s why everyone is here. Why I took the risk that you’d be okay with this.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to take another picture, but this time with everyone.”

“You want me to take a picture of all of you?”

“No,” he follows up with a shake of his head. “I’ve been with you long enough to know that you’ve got a timer on that camera you carry around everywhere. I want a picture of all of us.”

“So you can turn it into a puzzle?”

“We’re all pieces, Emery. Everyone standing here, the place we’re standing in, we’re all these pieces that make up the completed puzzle of you, so yes. I want to turn it into a puzzle. One so big that you’re the only person that can solve it.”

A completed puzzle is, at its very basic, just a picture. A snapshot taken in time that someone had the pleasure of breaking down into parts in order to spend time putting together. Each time it’s done, bringing with it new insight and a new love for the subject being depicted.

He’s right.

This is the portrait of my life, here, with these people.

My family, and not just any one. The best one.  

Looks like it’s time for me to make new memories.

Christian

“
Are you sure about this, Chris?”

My dad’s question is valid. With the picture being taken in the spot that means the most to the both of us, and what’s about to follow once I can get Emery away from catching up with her mom and Johnny, I’ve been asking myself the same thing repeatedly.

The difference between my dad asking and the way I have been, is that he doesn’t know my answer as unequivocally as I do. My answer is finite, written in stone, and it’s time for it to be the same for him, even if he doesn’t entirely understand the urgency.

“It’s all that’s left to do now, Dad, and something tells me that doing it here, where Emery spent so long wishing for her dad, means it’s going to reach Mom.”

“Are you ever going to tell me what was in that letter?”