Page 103 of Nothing Less than Magic
“Uh, I’ll check my email.” I saw the list about an hour ago but want to talk about something else other than Bonaire. Anything else, actually.
“Want to go for a walk?”
I wave my hand over the pajamas I have on. “It’s kind of late for a walk, don’t you think?”
“It’s only seven thirty. And it’s a nice night.”
“Aren’t you hungry?” It is my night for dinner, and I have big plans to zap us frozen lasagna in the microwave.
“They sent out for pizza at the office. But if you’re hungry, we can grab something on our walk. Come on, throw some clothes on. A little exercise will do us both good.”
I don’t want to, but I do it anyway, because it’s better than talking about our trip to Bonaire.
On the street, Austin takes my hand, and we stroll in the direction of the ballpark. Austin was right, it’s a perfect San Francisco night. Breezy but not too cold. And no fog in sight.
There’s a man rolled up in a blanket, sleeping in a doorway. Across the street is the woman from our building, walking her cat. As strange as it is, I’ve grown accustomed to seeing the fluffy feline on a leash. I wave, but she’s too busy scooping up cat poop with a plastic bag to see me.
The bars are doing a brisk business from the after-work crowd, reminding me of happy hour at the Ghost Inn. Half-priced drinks and five-dollar bites that don’t exist.
The smell of greasy burgers fills the sidewalk, and my stomach growls.
“You want to get something here?” Austin says.
It’s one of the few eateries left that we haven’t tried.
“I don’t want to eat alone.”
“I’ll get a milkshake or something.”
We go inside, but the line is too long. “Let’s find something else,” I say.
We go back outside and head toward the bay.
Austin pulls me down onto a bench facing the shoreline, where we watch a flock of seagulls dip in and out of the water. There’s just enough light from the restaurants and bars to make out the birds plunge-diving for prey.
“I want to talk to you about something.”
The first thing that goes through my mind is that he’s leaving again. The last time he did it, he sprung it on me just like this. One minute, we were this happy couple, and the next, he was feeling restless and unfulfilled. A wave of panic passes through me, making my stomach clench, then a strange calm.
He starts, “What do you say we renew our vows in Bonaire? Okay,renewisn’t exactly the right word given our status, but you get the gist. I guess you’d call it a recommitment ceremony. Just the two of us. And later, when we come home, we could invite everyone and make it official.”
I turn towards him on the bench, our knees now touching. “Are you asking me to marry you?”
His lips tip up in a huge grin, the same grin that used to turn me inside out. “Yeah, I was going to ask you tomorrow during our dinner date, do the whole down-on-one-knee thing, except we’re beyond proposals, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know, Austin. A few months ago, you were engaged to someone else.”
He’s quiet at first, chewing on the revelation that I might not make this easy for him. I suspect he expected me to jump into his arms with joy, even gratitude.
“It was a mistake, Chelsea. I got caught up in the thrill of the new, I suppose. It’s nothing I can explain with any kind of clarity; it’s just something that happened. And when you almost died, when I almost lost you for good, it put everything in perspective for me. It made me see what I had given up. Because we were good together, Chels. We were a team, working toward a common goal. I guess I just got scared of that.”
“Why?” I ask him. “Why were you scared?” Because it’s the first time he’s mentioned fear, and it seems significant.
He chuckles. “Okay, we’re going to do this”—he waves his hands between us—“the therapist-client thing.”
“Or how about the-woman-you-left-out-of-the-blue thing, who you’re now asking to spend the rest of her life with you?”
“Fair enough,” he says, contrite. “I suppose I was afraid that there was more out there.”
