Fate.
I always imagined fate to take the form of a smirking lady, garbed in an elaborate Victorian ball gown, crimson and magenta and cerise burning on her whipped cream petticoat. She could twirl her fingers and her blood-red talons would draw shadowy hearts in the air. And with a sudden flick of her wrist, she would slice them clean down the middle; cackling the entire time.
It was only on my wedding day that I realized, fate was a woman clothed in shimmering seafoam robes, her shawl iridescent in the sunlight; a mermaid's pearly scales. A goddess who had been burning the midnight oil for decades, intricately plotting out the plan for my life.
And even then, I knew that I had taken her blueprint, scrunched it up between my palms and tossed it over my shoulder. I had wrestled free of the steel spider webs that kept me chained to a wall; freefalling and landing squarely on the ground. Still standing. Getting up and hacking myself a new path through the untamed forest, with nothing but my trusty sickle and him by my side.
Fate had seen me do it. Alarmed, she had flicked her widened laguna eyes over the scheme, before catching sight of her glaring oversight, glowing blindingly into her glimmering orbs. She shook her head and smiled knowingly, acceptingly, whispering to herself: clever girl.
And perhaps, that, too, had been a part of her weaving design all along.
But, this: this was about the time fate had watched, in terror, as I attempted to cut her master plan short.
"Stars."
"Hm?" I offered in response to Chase's incoherent mumble, rose petal lips barely parting to let the glowing words fall out of his mouth. Hydrogen and helium scorching into the creases of his faint smile.
"Written in the stars," he whispered in an even more disjointed manner, wispy eyelashes flittering against the cream pillowcases his drowsy head rested upon. My hazel eyes scanned his face, drinking in the edges – chiseled enough to stab a heart and leave it gushing with love – and inhaling his eyes, that I could delve into and find Venus and Mars entangling behind the deep swirl of amethyst; milky marbles of enchantment.
"And I'd hoped that we still had a few good years left ahead of us," I sighed jestingly, alluding to his clumsy bouquet of words scattered across my feet. The sunflowers tickled my blisters; garish, hopeful yellow against the harshness of the world.
"Idiot," my boyfriend softly knocked his knuckles against my forehead, and I swore I could taste forever on my tongue. The clear sweetness twirled like cotton candy between my teeth. Chase's lips pressed against mine, and the culmination of all my past and next lives whizzed behind my eyelids; we came back to each other every single time. "Do you believe in destiny?"
My head cocked to the side as I scrutinized the vulnerable peach head, defenses in concrete shambles on the ground. Syrup pooling by his ankles. When Chase relinquished his sardonic walls, he was seven years old again: standing four-feet-two-tall in our secret meadow, conjuring adventures of fighting off dragons. A stray raspberry was a glistening ruby, a penny became the moon.
And here we were, sixteen years later, lying in bed next to one another. A love-struck mess of tangled limbs and intertwined souls. After seven years of desperately looking for his face in crowded rooms, hope burgeoning like a forest fire every time I caught sight of a head of peach hair, only to scorch to a brittle crisp when it was never him. To lie through my teeth and say that I didn't believe in fate would be praying to Satan and daring him to drag me to the depths of Hell instantaneously.
"I wanted to," I confessed, lacing my heavy fingers through his, admiring the way his sylphlike digits arched at perfect forty-five degree angles at each graceful joint, "Sometimes, I think I needed to."
"Needed to?"
"Needed to believe in it. To keep me going."
"You really are silly," Chase's honey voice trembled as he pulled me in even closer, even though we were already skin upon skin. His arms held a certain relieved protectiveness in their grasp; they whispered, I'm not letting you go this time.
My heart surged against his. They beat in tandem, and soon, we didn't know whose blood was whose.
"And what about you?" I questioned, breaking the delicate silence that heaved with, thank God I found you again. "Do you believe in it?"
"Unfortunately, I think I do," he grinned back deliciously, a hazy concoction of gelatin-glazed fruits and fluffy whipped cream.
"Unfortunately, huh?" I interrogated playfully, pinching his angular cheek; the barest remnants of his baby fat from all those years ago.
"Unfortunately," he continued, never loosening his intoxicating hold on me, "you can't help what's written in the stars." His eyes, they killed me. I could have died a thousand deaths and begged for a thousand more. "But lucky for me," he muttered against my earlobe, warm lips grazing my neck, "I like what's written in mine." His cheeks flushed pearly poppy as the saccharine words left his mouth, radiating heat against my jaw.
"You're blushing," I deliberately pointed out, finding joy in heightening his already alarming levels of embarrassment. Withdrawing his face to turn away from me, his amethyst eyes located a particularly interesting plank of wood in my ceiling.
"Shut up," Chase grumbled under his breath, still holding me in his arms, "That was a once in a lifetime thing, okay? Don't count on hearing something like that again."
"Right," I giggled, watching as love coursed through the air, dripping into even the tiniest crannies of the room and nestling itself in between Chase's silky strands; glittering tinsel, "Maybe next lifetime."
He gazed at me meaningfully, small smile playing at the corners of his sharp lips. "Yeah," he murmured, you are and always will be my soul mate, "It's a promise."
Sunshine burst in kaleidoscopic explosions behind my corneas, searing into the cores of my irises. It seemed like such a given, that eternity was sculpted into our ring fingers, that fate could never fathom being so cruel as to separate us a second time.
"Do you ever wonder," he mused in hushed tones, as if speaking too loudly would wake up the still night, rouse the dreaming leaves from their gentle slumber, "what would have happened if we hadn't found each other again?"
The sour thought mingled in my mouth; rotting limes and mouldy berries. "Do you?" I posed his question back at him, letting the vinegary taste dissolve on my tongue.
"I can't imagine," Chase admitted, eyes like sips of dessert wine from crystal goblets, fairy lights illuminating my heart from the inside out. "I don't want to imagine," he mumbled quietly, morphing into the fourteen-year-old boy who had let me see him cry when we were torn apart for the first time in our lives.
"Don't," I reassured him, the floating word skipping across my watermelon lips – stained with kisses and beams – and wafting to his listening ears. "I like to think that we would've found our way back to one another. Even if it wasn't when we were twenty-one; even if we had to wait another seven or seventy years." His fingers glided along my cheeks, brushing adoration into my rounded jawline.
"Some things are just meant for you," he stole the words right out of my mouth; grape soda and melted ice cream and sticky fingers. The face I had grown up next to, that I was sure I would continue to see for the rest of my life.
My lips tugged up at the sides, threatening to spread across my entire body. "And I thought you said that was a once in a lifetime thing," I nudged teasingly, resting my head on his chest and listening to the blood running through my veins pulse through his.
"I'm taking that from our next life," he drawled sarcastically – his permanent manner of speech – as amusement played on his lips. His eyes glimmered in our special language, the one that giggled with shushed promises and inside jokes. Infantile fingers to lips and chuckling shoulders and shared secrets we would never tell another soul.
I could hardly believe that this was our reality; amaranth pink and gold-flecked obsidian and perfect indigo. That every step we had taken, from the day we were parted to the day we met again, had all just been drawing us closer and closer to our bound fates. If I had known, I would've ran.
"And if we hadn't," I threw us back into the engulfing subject, for discussion's sake, "I guess, one day, I would've had to settle for second best." His face registered my hidden words: no one could ever measure up to you. His irises gleamed, ardour bleeding through the amethyst. I'm going to love you for the rest of all my lives. "And on that same day," I went on, tapered canines appearing in my bared, tender confession, "Hell would freeze over, the sun would burn out and the stars would fall from the sky."
Laughter escaped from his mouth, candied hundreds-and-thousands and glacé sprinkles. Everything else was lost and found in a miasma of lips against lips, skin against skin. Love and love and love.
Meanwhile, in the present day, Satan panicked as he saw ice stealthily creeping past his toes.
"How're you doing?"
The thirty-one-year-old clashing of khaki sat opposite me, staring intently into his drink: water. His dry sandy blonde locks trickled down his face in splitting strands.
"I've been better," Calvin conceded, nodding ever so slightly in self-admonishment, "but I've also been worse. So I'm not sure what to make of that."
"It's a good thing, I think," I offered in encouragement. Sobering up was an excruciating process, and it showed on his face. Deep twilight and violet etched itself underneath his eyes, which were now dulled cerulean. A sick ocean's pallid foam. His pores seemed to gasp for air, beseeching for oxygen to satiate the starved skin. Weary creases embedded themselves by his temples, a nest of disappointments; of the things he drank to escape from.
He exhaled absentmindedly, donning a smile that didn't quite reach up to his orbs. The emptiness at the bottom of a whiskey bottle.
"Heath misses you, you know."
For the past season, Luke and I had been taking care of the three-year-old, taking on the roles of his absent parents. The fresh winter chill seemed to settle in Ocarina Inn; the ice cubes in Calvin's plain drink shivered.
"You don't think I miss him?" the mine-enthusiast sighed back, the thinnest hint of a snap lacing his rapid reply. "Sorry," Calvin apologized inaudibly, gnawing on his cracked bottom lip, "That came out too harsh."
"No, I get it," I sympathized, mind involuntarily wandering off to what Luke and Heath were up to that very moment, "The healing process takes time. We've all been there."
Calvin's eyes squeezed shut, flaxen eyelashes quivering, as if bracing himself for the inevitable blow. "When does it start to get easier?" When would the taste of Phoebe's abandonment stop burning like malt at the back of his throat?
At what point did Chase's leaving stop making saline tears spring past my lids?
It didn't. I could still remember his face, the memorized contours and indolent smirk, and it was always enough to leave me paralyzed. "Let me know if you find out," I lamented, drawing on the one piece of advice I could give the recovering alcoholic, "Until then, you've just got to keep living."
Calvin's large fingers trembled as he brought them up to his face; without the crutch of his poison, he had to relearn how to stand by himself. A wounded nightingale staggering on its own two feet.
"Luke and I've been trying our best," I relayed to Calvin, taking one last bite of my seafood doria and wrapping my daffodil-toned woolly scarf around my neck, "but a boy needs his dad."
"When can I see him again?" he requested, referring to the ban Simon and Barbara had imposed on the addict, preventing him from contact with his son until he was sober.
I mulled over the zinfandel question, cinnamon and cloves submerged in plum venom. "When you're ready to be his father again." I pulled on my gloves and stood to leave. "See you, Calvin."
Before I had made it eight feet away from the table, his husky voice choked out, "Molly."
I stopped, unwillingly, in my tracks, not turning around to face him. "Hm?"
"Please don't leave yet," he pleaded shakily, coarse notes grating against my ears like serrated metal, "Please don't leave me here alone."
A sonic boom crashed straight into my chest, invading my heart like a voracious virus. The crack in his voice reminded me of when I was ten years old and I broke my mother's favourite vase – pale eggshell blue, porcelain, detailed with ornate china engravings trailing up the sides. The million shattered fragments flying across the marbled floor.
A knock against the glass windowpane pulled me out of my reminiscing, drawing my hazel eyes to the turquoise and blue-haired duo grinning from outside the inn. Luke waved a gloved hand – leather fabric fraying at the mocha seams, palms shaded with blotches of worn walnut – while holding onto Heath's leg with the other. The three-year-old sat perched atop the carpenter's shoulders, riding like a miniature king.
"Looks like your family's here," tones of resentment and bitterness bled into Calvin's splintered remark.
"Don't say it like that." My eyes darted towards my makeshift family waiting restlessly beyond the window, Luke clearly pretending that he was going to let go of Heath's ankles while the boy giggled away. His laugh could push the limp, bone-grey clouds out of the sky, revealing the gurgling sunbeams underneath.
"Go on," Calvin softened, the melting away of his harsh icy edges, "The boy needs to have some version of normal parents in his life. And evidently, I can't be that for him just yet."
I swiveled my head to throw a compassionate smile in his direction, before racing towards the door. As my palms pressed against the oiled mahogany, I paused. "We're all a little lonely," I mumbled, just loud enough that Calvin could hear. Taking a deep breath, I walked out into the plush snow and mellow sunshine.
"Hey," Luke beamed at me, a billion watts gushing through a bulb's white-hot filament.
"Hi," I breathed, frosty vapours blowing out from between my dry lips like smoke, "I thought you guys were going to wait back at your place."
"We decided to be gentlemen and pick the lady up," Luke elucidated cheerily. Heath and him simultaneously pretended to take off their imaginary felt top hats and bowed ever so cordially, bursting into a thousand chuckles as their grand performance came to a close. Their laughs could have lit up the entire island.
Their mirth was infectious; it always was. A smile etched itself into my mandible, running fuchsia primrose through my plumped up cheeks.
"And who said the lady wanted picking up?" I challenged mischievously, noticing the way Luke's catlike eyes could've been made from the same material of the sun.
His jaw dropped open momentarily, electric eyes glazing over in dumbstruck response, before hastily turning to the boy sitting on his broad shoulders. "You see what I told you, buddy? Women are hard to predict."
"You were right, Lukey," Heath's tiny mouth formed an 'o' shape in awe. He had picked up the nickname when he'd heard me jokingly bestow it upon the carpenter once over the past season, and it had just stuck.
"I'm just kidding," I rolled my eyes laughingly, before Luke deposited Heath onto the ground and I began fussing with the boy's woven butterscotch scarf, ensuring that every inch of his neck was covered. Heath's orbs were that translucent shade of the sky after a hurricane – the exact melding of his father and mother's lenses. In his eyes, they were still together. I withdrew slightly as the acrid thought dawned upon me.
"You okay?" Luke tilted his head to the side in curiosity, an eager and clueless Beagle.
"I'm great," I replied jovially, shaking off the tart taste that lingered in my mouth, "Come on, let's get going before we turn into snow people."
A titter elicited itself from Heath's boysenberry jam lips. He tucked his little gloved hands into our larger ones, huddling himself neatly in between Luke and me. Perfect family portrait and hot chocolate by the crackling fireplace. Wine bottles smashed to smithereens and mothers that vanished into thin air.
I casted one final look into Ocarina Inn; Calvin's vision bored a charcoal hole into the wall, staring into the screaming abyss. The wrinkles neighbouring his temples dripped with loss, peeling skin mourning for the life he'd had: here lies the woman you love, the headstone chanted, you loved her so much, she was a part of your bones.
A tug of Heath's hand dragged me back to my current reality. "Milady," the two imps nodded in unison, hilarity traversing the widths of their faces.
"Race you guys back," I dared, jumping onto their bandwagon that left all worldly cares behind. Before I could even blink, we were all sprinting off, leaving a trail of kicked up sand in our wake; falling back down like barley confetti. Cheering for our searing calves and throbbing heartbeats.
Calvin's plead rang like church bells in the back of my mind.
This entire game of house; it was all so that neither of us would have to say it.
Please don't leave me here alone.
Heath's silky locks, downy feathers of sheeny teal, caressed his pillow as we tucked him into bed. Our little competition – Luke had emerged victorious, no contest – had left the boy exhausted, out like a light by the time the clock struck ten.
The winter evening painted the sky in a cascading shade of oxford blue, miniscule holes stabbing into the spellbinding canvas to create incandescent stars. They twirled amongst themselves, dancing with shimmering shawls that swam behind them.
Luke and I tiptoed down the stairs, taking care not to rouse Heath from his deep slumber. Ever since that fateful day, the three-year-old had been staying in the spare room in the Carpenter's, right next to Bo's bedroom.
We collapsed by the hearth, nestling ourselves into the lemon meringue sofa. I exhaled audibly, resting a single foot on Luke's knee. "If you would've told me that when I turned twenty-six, I'd be taking care of a child who wasn't even mine, I would have called you insane."
"Do you regret it?" Luke questioned; even in his gentlest of moments, he was always buzzing electric – his pendulum never paused to breathe.
"Can't say that I do," I admitted honestly, running a finger over my mussed eyebrow. "I mean, it may not be the life that I envisioned, but it's the one I have."
His head bobbed up and down in agreement, slender lips pursing together in contemplation; in assessment of the storm we had been thrown into. The livid torrents of rain pelted against our flesh.
"What was the life you imagined?"
A waterfall came to pour over my shoulders. Its frothy sprays of memories and daydreams jerked at my ankles, attaching a hundred-pound anchor to my limbs and leaving only desperate bubbles floating to the surface. His honeyed voice and echoes of, he was the one, and he's still the only one. I twitched a solitary finger to wake myself from the coma of heartache.
"Don't tell Gill this," I confided in the mayor-to-be's best friend, "because he won't be able to say, 'I was right,' enough, but I always thought it was ending up with Chase," I declared, letting the words bloom to life and take on the forms they desired: cherry blossoms and brilliant meadows and falling petals, "It seemed like a given."
In the stars, I was reminded. The way Orion's belt frolicked across his lips when he whispered it; all lazy smiles and iridescent luminosities.
An aura of understanding seeped from Luke's pores, Selena's name forever on his tongue. "Do you still think that?" he prodded, digging his fingernails – musky soil trapped underneath the short keratin – into the wound and picking off the scab. The blue blood oozed.
"A part of me does." The iron bars jabbed straight into my feet, jail cell slamming shut in front of my face, roughened paint slapping me in the cheek.
"That's the thing," Luke empathized, sharpened amber eyes focusing on the handcrafted floorboards, "You think, 'Yeah, I have to move on,' but you hold out that small hope, see, and it screws you over. It's the hoping that kills you."
"It's weird hearing a curse come out of your mouth. Like a baby holding a knife." A giggle fell from my lips; the dew drop on a heavy leaf.
"I'm older than you," he retaliated speedily, grin quickly growing on his face.
"Don't even get me started on that."
Silence settled like mottled dust around us. The question barged its way into my mind: what had we grown to become? Were we friends? Acquaintances who happened to have been thrown into these strange parental roles? Two people who had both known loss like the sharp edge of a blade, who had both lived with lips more scar tissue than skin?
My heel relaxing on his knee suddenly scorched at the thought. "You alright, Dolly?" Luke probed in concern, utilizing the name Heath had begun calling me when he'd elatedly discovered how, 'Molly,' rhymed with, 'Dolly.'
"I was just thinking," I started, bobbed chestnut locks tickling my collarbones, "about how much can happen in one season."
Piercing eyes scanned the entirety of my features. "You know, it's still not too late to walk away," Luke ventured warily, placing the silver offer before me, the jagged saw rearing to hack the rusty chains right off.
"Same goes for you," I responded, taking my calloused fingers and pushing the cold metal plate back towards him. A fleeting image of Heath, Luke and me hurling snowballs at one another emitted laughter from the mirrored reflection. The picture glowed with warmth.
"I'm not going anywhere."
Luke's words were like summer after a century of winter. A geisha finally letting her hair down, after years of it being mercilessly pulled back and teased into torturously elaborate hairstyles.
"Neither am I."
The maple tree ornament fell from her immaculate coiffure, slipping through the slim cracks in the parquet.
We were tired of being left. Of carrying hearts so heavy, they drowned us out at sea.
We forgot that two drowning people clinging onto one another just exacerbated the sinking process.
But all of that didn't matter at the moment. The singular thing that resounded, thundered, in my eardrums, like a marching band playing for all it was worth, was the answer to my silent question: what were we?
For right now, we were two people who were sticking around.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lemony Snicket or Andrea Gibson's work.
Author's Note: I'm so sorry for taking forever to update again, but here's a new chapter! I'm trying to get back into the groove of writing. I've always loved Luke, and writing his character just keeps making me grow more and more attached to him. Thank you all so much for following the story despite the sporadic updates, it means the world to me! As always, I'd love to hear what you thought!