Page 134 of Only Ever You

BASH

“What?”The weight of Faye’s head lifted from his shoulder.

Bash’s pulse was so loud, he almost didn’t hear himself explain, “We should get married. It was your idea for the marriage pact, and now that we’re … ” He trailed his fingers up the inner of her thigh, insinuating the implied. Though he hadn’t officially asked her to be his girlfriend or exclusive, he thought that was a given by this point. “I think that we should.”

The look on Faye’s face, how her body had gone rigid in his arms … it wasn’t the reaction Bash hoped for. He might’ve wished a little too hard that she would jump into his arms and cry happy tears about how long and how much she’d been waiting for this. Clouds would part and sunshine and rainbows would shower down on them as Faye said “yes, I’ll marry you!”

But right then she only looked … scared.

“Bash … ‘Relationship’usis not the same as ‘friendship’us. Things are different.” A tremble in Faye’s breaths shook up her voice.

She slipped off of his lap just as swiftly as she’d descended and thesudden coldness of her absence hit Bash like a glacier. Those nerves in his pulse thrummed with new meaning as he watched her step back once and then twice away from him.

Thingsweredifferent; they were as they always should’ve been. Him and her,together. Why was she?—?

“The marriage thing was just a joke.” Faye ran her hands together and pulled on the front of her blouse as if it was too tight against her skin. “You can’t ask me to do it after only a few days of being together.”

A few days?It wasn’t as if they’d only met last week; their relationship was a decade old and better than he could ever have dreamt of.

Bash’s brows drew in confusion. “I already know that I want to spend my life with you.”More than anything.“I was going to as friends anyway, so why wait?”

“Why wait?”

The desk came like a wall of cold steel between them, their distance getting wider and wider and Bash was helpless as to why. What had he done wrong?

Pinching the bridge of her nose in the way which meant she was getting a headache, Faye calmed that frazzled shake in her voice. “Bash, is this about what you said to me? After our last jazz night atSamuel’s?” When he drew a blank, she added, “About how you wished your life was ‘further along’ than it is now?”

“I …”

Bash realised then that yes, it was.

His life was almost exactly where he wanted it to be.

So many of his hopes and wishes had fallen into place this Christmas. He wasFaye’sand she was his–his best friend and the love of his life he’d yearned for. He was a whole person, nothing was missing from him; he’d learned that lesson now. All of the additional material things he thought he should want in his life didn’t matter so much now that he had Faye completely.

But he wasn’t just himself now, was he? His completed puzzle had doubled in size with possibility for those additional things – a wife, his own little family – to not beextraanymore, but the core of something that he was now only a fraction of. And Bash wanted them all with Faye.

Like he’d told Freddy to do, he’d made his plate bigger.

But that conversation as he’d walked with Faye beneath Christmas lights, dodging merry-goers, hadn’t crossed his mind before asking her to marry him seconds ago.

“I wasn’t thinking in that way,” he said, feeling like this inexplicable connection he had to her was being pulled out from between his fingers and he couldn’t keep ahold of the threads. The sickening sourness in his stomach loomed like dark clouds before a storm.

He’d expressed to Faye directly how much he yearned for a family, and how time felt to be running away from him, leaving him behind by himself. She’d known all of this before their relationship had changed. She’d said that she wanted a family too with the right man.

Well Bash was right here in front of her, waving his heart in the air for her to notice him.

He was physically fit and healthy, saw his therapist regularly, wasmore thanfinancially stable, capable and ready to provide for his own little family. The space in his heart waiting to be a husband and a father sat hollow.

Faye would back him up on all of this; she’d say “What woman wouldn’t choose all of that?”

And he’d think:you.

The molten middle of Bash’s chest was thick and heavy as his gaze fell to his knees, unmoved from his seat.

“I know that you want those things in the future.” The regret in Faye’s tone was clear, the shuffling of her feet more so. “But we’re not there yet.”

Yet.

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