"When did you know that you loved him, Mommy?" Daisy's gentle voice breaks me out of my nostalgic reminiscing; tender spring wind stroking young jade leaves.
"I suppose a part of me always did," I admit unequivocally, vainly trying to recall the very first moment I realized how deeply embedded my love for him was – is. I shake my head, a metaphorical waving of a white flag. "I don't think there was a specific instant. From the moment I knew him – from the day I was born – he's been in my veins ever since." A smile tugs at my lips, as if his own slender fingers are doing the pulling.
"What does that mean, Mommy?" Nigel asks, light, sparse eyebrows furrowing in discontented confusion. Ripples paint the smooth blank of his forehead, a marbled pebble dropped into the calm ocean.
"There's a legend," I begin alluringly, raising a slim finger up to win their attention, "of something called the red string of fate. They say that this string ties certain people together, and when they are, their lives will forever be inevitably intertwined."
Their glimmering eyes stare up at me, entirely spellbound, all young hope and unfailing trust. It makes me think of pixies and twirling fairies and all the beauty in the world only young children have the faith to believe in.
I continue. "I believe that for us, that thread ran deeper than we could fathom."
I can sense the bewilderment in the air, as my poor, darling children try to make sense of the pure ambiguity I spew at them.
"What I'm trying to say," I finally clarify, granting them absolution from this unsolvable puzzle, a jigsaw with trick pieces that will never fit, "is that our thread wasn't a straight and simple line." Heaviness weighs down on my eyelids, a dull disappointment with the universe panging in my heart. "It was knotted and wound around trees and pulled taut."
That year passed as one of the happiest years of my life.
The young spring winds were still prickling as ever, like the spindly, bud-adorned branches themselves were scraping against your parched skin. The autumn rainstorms were like a rejected lover, pounding relentlessly against my glass windowpane, begging for a second chance. But the warm glow in my heart whenever Chase laced his willowy fingers through mine, or pressed his supple lips against my own, or accompanied his honeyed sarcastic comebacks with a lazy smirk, beat any blazing flame I could have ever ignited in my fireplace.
Imagine this: you wait around your whole life – twenty-two years – for something you were never sure was going to happen, that you weren't even aware that you wanted. A china glazed porcelain egg that has laid in incubation for years. Day by day, something inside of it grows stronger and stronger, until finally the buds nurturing inside blossom, and the intricately powder rose painted shell – each rose petal detailing painstakingly engraved on – is shattered open, to reveal what had been inside you all along. And then one day, out of nowhere, it falls into your lap, like a rainbow solidifying in your hands, in all its purest translucent reds and indigos and violets, the colour of his eyes in the duskiness of midnight. What you had always wanted, that had always pranced through your fingertips, lacing teasing ribbons of transience past your open palms, finally becoming yours.
All I knew was that I was happy. So happy.
"Girls, I have some news," chimed Anissa's ever low, womanly voice, reminiscent of a kindly queen's. Seated at a rounded oak table at the Brass Bar, Kathy's, Renee's and my head instantly swiveled to focus our full attention on the twenty-six-year-old quiet beauty, her glossy russet hair glowing like the season's – spring's – morning sunbeams in the dim bar light.
If people were drinks, Anissa was coffee; a subtly fragranced, freshly brewed mocha latte, easy on the palate, pleasantly warming you from the inside out. A touch of youthful chocolate naivety marbled through the otherwise mature aroma of fine coffee beans, leaving you basking in her elegant afterglow. Her naturally pale lily pink lips broke into the widest smile I'd ever seen grace her long, femininely angled face.
"Jin proposed."
Grotesquely high-pitched shrieks of celebration and animated clamours for all the details promptly ensued. "When?" Kathy all but squawked, barely containing herself in her seat. "Yesterday," Anissa beamed back serenely. "Congratulations," I squealed in response, expeditiously wrapping my arms around her. "We know how long you've been waiting for this," Renee chipped in, genuine delight for her best friend radiating from her tender face, "We couldn't be happier for you."
"You'll all be my bridesmaids, right?" Anissa requested, smooth coffee voice laced with irrepressible excitement. More painfully shrill screeches of enthusiasm did not fail to follow.
"Geez, what's with all the squawking?" the velvety voice that planted flowers in my heart sounded. Head instinctively rounding to his direction, my eyes landed on Chase, whose svelte hands were currently swaddled in a fluffy washcloth, melting away the traces of his night's labours. Despite his sandpaper words and unimpressed frown, his amethyst eyes glistened, smiling at me; like a secret for just the two of us.
"Guess someone couldn't keep away, huh?" Kathy teased, referring to how he'd plopped himself next to me on my chair, arm nonchalantly slung across the back of it. "Hey, I didn't cover your shift just so I could get annoyed by you at the end of it," he warned mincingly, voice as abrasive as a scratched chalkboard. Gravel against skin.
"I'm engaged," Anissa broke in, words dancing in poorly hidden ecstasy. A vibrant, stained glass winged butterfly of glee that refused to be squelched.
"Congratulations," Chase replied genuinely, without skipping a beat, perfectly aligned teeth appearing in a sincere smile, "Knew the guy had it in him. The two of you must be happy."
"We are," she grinned sweetly. If you squinted, you could see little infantile cupids soaring around her head; shooting miniature love arrows into her brain – heads of the arrows replaced with plump fuchsia hearts – activating euphoria to course through her veins.
Chase turned slightly to look at me, flushed lips lifting as my bay leaf hazel eyes met his. I felt engulfed in a heady miasma of elation and bliss, the high of a precipitously plummeting roller coaster. My own lips pulled up against gravity by instinct.
We are too.
A fourteen-year-old me sat perched on my house's brick red tiled rooftop, knees pulled to my chest as I sat saturated in the cooling summer night's breeze. The pirouetting air smelled like salty sand and sea and day-old pressed lemonade.
Something heavy settled like rusty metal in my chest. Ash in an old, neglected urn.
I've liked you for a long time. Meet me on the fourth floor after school.
Chase and I had discovered that pristinely pleated note in his locker that afternoon, perfectly daisy pink, the colour of a baby girl's swaddling cloth. A beach ball lay nestled in my throat; a weight tugged down on the corners of my eyes. Sighs refused to stop emitting themselves from my body.
"Hey."
Chase seemingly manifested out of thin air, lanky pubescent body settling down next to mine. His eyes were in that evanescent stage between lilac and amethyst, a lucent melding of shades of indigo. His disheveled honeyed hair grew thick and untamed, a floppy fringe curtaining his forehead, the curling of an ocean's wave. He was still clothed in his school uniform, forest green tie – dotted with immaculate burgundy rhombuses – loosened down to his protruding collarbones, top three murkily-swirled-cream shirt buttons left undone. His ivory shirttails hung loose, crumpled from having been sloppily tucked in that same morning, creases like an impulsive late night love note tossed aside.
"If the principal saw you now, you'd probably be in detention for a week," I lightly chastised in reply, always happy to see my best friend, but heart not wanting to hear his retelling of the events that had transpired after school had ended.
"Didn't know my mom was here," he retaliated jestingly, before we both fell into an apprehensive silence. Even the chirping crickets paused their orchestrated singing for us.
"You're upset," Chase finally pointed out, lithe finger poking into my mochi cheek.
Growing up together had gifted him with the uncanny ability to read me like a book; one of those about the outcast gangsters that sat decidedly fixed on his bookshelf, whose pages were yellowing and battered, a result of his incessant rereadings.
"What makes you think that?" I deflected.
"Don't give me that," he took his turn to reprimand me, knowing tone striking a taut chord in my heart. My then amber eyes had yet to changeover into the final hazel colour they would come to be. They watered slightly in a knee jerk reaction to Chase's meaningful perceptiveness; long fingers pressing too hard on a bruised peach. The citrusy night air grew stale around us.
Noticing my boulder strong resolve to stay quiet, Chase continued. "I turned her down."
My head snapped up to sentinel his expression, a watchdog skulking in the dead of night. His gold-flaked eyes were focused on the roof of his house, directly opposite from us. A small patch of emerald clovers – the colour of my mother's earrings – and swaying dandelions were cultivating themselves in place of a missing tile on his roof, a result of us having wondered what lay below those tiles a few years ago.
"Who was she?" I dared to venture, the words tiptoeing out of my mouth so nervously, a baby kitten walking on its paws for the first time, they could have been carried away by the slightest return of a draft.
"Just some girl from our homeroom. I hardly even know her. Beats me how she got the idea into her head of liking me."
"Oh." The anvil that had been weighing down on my shoulders instantaneously dissipated into the twinkling night sky, gleaming stars like purposeful holes that had been precisely stabbed into a perfectly oxford blue canvas. "Why'd you do that?"
"I don't know. I just don't want to date someone I hardly even know." His eyes glanced up shyly at me, indigo eyes reflecting the softly glowing streetlamp metres away from us; the star flecked night sky painting itself in his eyes. He went on, "I'd rather date someone who really knows me. Who knows what I'm like."
"You mean like when you're cranky and enjoy attacking everyone with your cruel words?" I guffawed indelicately.
"Wow, that's beautiful. I can't imagine why guys don't flock to you, what with your laugh that sounds like a snorting pig," Chase speedily retaliated, nudging me in the side for good measure. His tapered canines revealed themselves in his wide grin, razor sharp edges digging slightly into his bottom lip.
My mouth dropped open in faux offense. "Trust me, that poor deluded girl dodged a bullet. There's no girl in the world that can put up with that knife you call your tongue."
"You seem to do it just fine," he shot back immediately.
The returning summer breeze breathed life back into the stagnant night; persistent ocean waves crashed harder against the sandy shore, kissing it twice for each time it was sent away. The grape flower tendrils in my front yard swung in the electric wind. The shadowy night exhaled.
"Only because I've had to do it all my life. Seriously, were you born without the capability to say nice things?"
"You tell me," he replied, eyes darting to the mossy cobblestone pavement leading up to my house. The tiniest dayflowers were pushing their way through the cracks between each dusky stone, brilliant blue flowers finally uncoiling in the heart of summer. "After all, you've known me my whole life, right?" A wobble on the right, a tremor of ambiguity treading on the igh. A palpitating heartbeat caught between revealing everything and pushing it back.
"Why're you asking me that like it's a question?" I inquired snootily.
"It's called a rhetorical question, thick head."
Laughing, we lapsed into a comfortable silence, letting the harmony of scurrying squirrels and busy bumbling bees collecting their fuel for the coming day play for our ears only.
"There's also another reason I turned her down."
"What is it?" I interrogated, a starved jackal ravenous for answers.
Reveal everything or push it back?
"I'll tell you some other time," Chase redirected, futilely brushing specks of dirt off his khaki green trousers as he got up. Expertly deflecting my protests and demands to hear his reason, he cleverly cut in, "Come on, let's go get some ice cream. I want to go to that twenty-four hour gelato place down the street."
Imperceptibly grabbing my fingertips to guide me down the rickety staircase leading to my attic, Chase's cheeks were lucent in the subdued night background.
"Wait for me," I called out from where I lagged behind him, combing my one free hand through my frizzy short locks.
Now I knew just how much meaning his reply would eventually come to carry.
"Okay."
The warm aroma of vanilla beans and cinnamon wafted through my house, seeping into the minute gaps between my white oak floorboards, fairies tip-tapping their wands and leaving a trail of the full-bodied scent of cinnamon rolls.
Chase's midnight navy shirtsleeves were messily rolled up to his elbows, his arms busied with the laborious task of rolling out the dough of the cinnamon rolls we were baking. Leaning over my kitchen counter, I rested my chin in a calloused palm as I watched him, surrounded in his element.
"You just going to stand there and let me do all the work?" his ever-sarcastic voice sounded, one eyebrow quirked at me.
"I thought that was the one perk of being with you," I joked facetiously, crossing over to the side of the kitchen counter Chase stood at, hands reaching for a softened block of cream cheese lying on its side.
"At least there are perks with me," he shot back, sly smirk already growing across his cheek.
"And what is that supposed to mean?" I interrogated in faked offense, setting a hand on my hip for added effect.
"That no other guy could keep up with that bottomless pit you have for a stomach," Chase replied, smirk developing into a full-blown grin.
The vanilla fragrance floating through the air washed over me in waves of nostalgia: four-year-old Chase and me watching one of those light bulb ovens intently, hardly daring to breathe, in case our exhalations might've caused our rock hard cookies not to rise.
"You're lucky you landed a catch like me, then," I self-lauded indignantly, accidentally letting out a chuckle midway, "because there's no other girl out there who can gobble down food like yours truly."
A low, calming laugh escaped from his upturned lips, amethyst eyes focused on his rectangular block of flattened dough. "I sure hit the jackpot," he drawled out, playful sarcasm embedded in the grain of his words, edges of his tapered eyes creasing ever so slightly.
It was Chase's eyes that always gave him away. Even when his words were dripping with his trademark sardonic twist, the softened glimmer in his gemstone eyes betrayed him; the hole in his hardened crème brulee shell.
He rapidly swallowed his cynical words as he was buffeted with a snowstorm of flour I'd rained in his face. Little flecks of powdery white nestled comfortably between his ruffled peach strands, clinging to his cheek like rain to the ground. Cheeky chuckle erupting from my lips, Chase didn't miss a beat, slathering buttery cream cheese on my nose in retaliation. My kitchen exploded into a mess of tossed sugar and haphazardly cracked eggs, bustling squeals and deep belly laughs, hurting sides and exhausted pleas of surrendering defeat.
Egg white threated to drip from my eyebrow. Chase's crisp navy shirt was painted with crystalline sugar. Our flushed cheeks glowed, the way your skin gets when you've been in the sun all day long.
"You know," Chase started, between laboured exhalations, picking taupe eggshell fragments out of my chestnut hair. His sentence trailed off, whisked away in the sugary air. His eyes immediately darted back to his abandoned pile of dough, waiting to be turned into fluffy cinnamon buns.
"What?"
"Nothing," he mumbled, usual tactic of deflection arising in all its shining glory, hands now busied with a syrupy cream cheese mixture.
"What?" I wailed exasperatingly, a baby crying for its rattle, dragging the aaa out for good effect.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were going to say something."
"Don't I always say what's on my mind?" he challenged redundantly.
"Only when you're drunk," I teased mercilessly, grinning in victory, "or when you were a little boy and pride hadn't gotten its grubby claws on you yet."
Sighing, Chase's amethyst eyes lifted coyly to the ceiling, veering ever so slightly right, decidedly refusing to make eye contact with me. A luminescent cherry blossom blush came to rest on his cheeks. "I was going to say," he began, blush growing deeper with every word that left his mouth, "when we were younger, and I baked those orange cookies for you, and you smiled that big stupid smile," hardened layer of blowtorched sugar making its appearance, "I thought it'd be nice if I could always make you smile like that."
A cocktail of pure elation and shy embarrassment raced around my head, fully in shock that Chase was capable of even speaking such sweet words, when every other syllable that ever left his mouth was always coated in a thick layer of biting acerbity.
My stunned silence morphed Chase's embarrassment into uneasy discomfort, his usual cutting claws emerging as his defense. "You really do have a stupid smile, though," he smirked, a droplet of honey clinging onto his pearl peach hair, the three sharp bobby pins holding back his fringe painted gray by a rain shower of flour.
My lips pressed themselves against his; the flowers that had been growing in my heart for so long finally in absolute full bloom, all the sunshine in the world coming to swirl inside of me.
That afternoon, when I had a handful of flour chucked at me or an egg cracked over my head or Chase's lips on mine, and the fading autumn sun peeked in bashfully through my window, I knew.
Love is goddamn alive.
"That kid sure is smart, huh?"
Chase and I trudged through the snow-kissed paths in our wet boots, chunks of snow having met their melting demise on the tips of our shoes. The cream leather gloves that enveloped his hands reminded me of a polar bear's mussed fur in the thick of winter. Hands intertwined, we had just left Jin and Anissa's house, where we had gone to meet their two-season-old son, Van.
"Yeah. I can't believe he can talk already. He's going to be a genius like his dad, I tell you," I voiced out to Chase.
"I bet if we had a kid, he'd start talking really late, just like you," Chase smirked maliciously, cheekbones rounding in snarky delight.
"Hey, I was just a bit of a late bloomer," I defended, "And not everyone can be like you. You probably started insulting everyone the moment you came out of the womb."
Chase's perfectly white, gleaming teeth made their appearance as my playful mockery matched his. His amethyst eyes shimmered in the smiling winter sun. "Maybe the reason you can't stop talking now is because you're making up for the time you lost back when you couldn't," he teased mercilessly.
"Did your mom cry when your first words were, 'You're annoying'?"
Erupting laughter escaping from my lips as Chase dug his fingers into my ticklish side, I lifted my gloved hands in surrender. Regaining my breath, I continued, "Besides, I didn't know you thought about that kind of stuff."
"What kind of stuff?"
"You know. Having kids and being a family and all that."
He tucked his spare hand into his winter jacket's pocket: Sherpa wool, deep gray, the colour of sleek cars driving around in the city. A faint strawberry blush settled on his cheeks. "Well, yeah, of course I do, silly."
Over the year, I'd grown accustomed to being with Chase, versus being best friends with Chase. To be honest, there wasn't much of a difference. But I'd learned that silly was his code for darling, you're an idiot was I love you and let's go home was let's go to my home. I also knew that when he said all these things, in his concealed crème brulee shell manner, my world lit up at its edges, and I could take this blessing and lift it up to my lips like a broth of stars.
I was irrevocably in love with him, and love was the substance that held our little atoms together into bodies.
"You know something?" I asked redundantly, hazel eyes focusing intently on the ground as my cheeks glowed a juxtaposing ruby, "My very first memory ever is of you."
"Really?" Chase replied, taken aback and fully captivated; a child discovering a kaleidoscope, "What was I doing?"
"I remember I was lying in my bed. You were poking my cheek, or drawing letters on it with your finger," I chuckled, basking in how everything and nothing had changed since then, "And part of me was drawn to you, and a part of me resisted."
He remained quiet, his silent nudge for me to carry on.
"It might sound crazy, but I felt like this was the face I was meant to remember as the first thing I ever knew for the rest of my life. Part of me thought: Please don't look at me. If you don't, I can still turn away. And the other part of me thought: Please look at me." Chase's svelte fingers, made clumsy by his wool-lined gloves, wrapped tighter around mine. "But you looked at me."
The same pirouetting snow fell, just like it'd done a year ago, when Chase and I had been caught up in this confusing whirlwind of blooming feelings amidst a stubborn childhood friendship. I smiled, as our hands held together tight.
"And I haven't looked back since."
Disclaimer: I do not own 'The History of Love' by Nicole Krauss or 'Three of Cups' by Marty McConnell.
Author's Note: Oh god, here come the long apologies for the embarrassingly long time it's been since I uploaded a new chapter. I don't really have a good excuse, except that the longer it got since I wrote, the rustier I felt my writing got. Anyway, please excuse this chapter if it's not quite up to par with the usual quality. I hope you enjoyed the major fluff fest!