The Story of Us

May 2010

Shallow, quick breaths escape from my lips. Sweat trickles down my forehead. Fingers twitch nervously. Looking over the steep descent, I retreat backwards.

“We should rethink this.”

“What’s there to rethink? We agreed.” Halle smiles and my world shifts on its axis. She continues speaking as she steps towards me, “It’s good for us to take risks once in a while.”

Her hands reach out for mine and pull me closer, steadying the wave of anxiety coursing through me.

“We didn’t think it through enough. What if we get hurt? Or worse?” I ask. My fingers trace her smooth, coconut-scented arms up to her face, where they rest on her rose-colored cheek softly. “I can’t lose you.”

She puts a finger to my lips and shushes me. “Stop worrying so much, Tasha. Everything is going to be fine.” She grabs my hand and squeezes it. “Better than fine—great! People do this all the time!”

“Yeah.” I face the endless pine trees that surround us on the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean. I could run away if I wanted. To safety. To stable ground. To a marked path. The option is literally sitting five feet away and surrounding me. But I turn back to her. “I know.”

She lets go of my hand and dances away towards the edge. Her bare feet kick up small clouds of dirt around her legs. Her short rainbow hair sparkles in the sunlight. She moves before me like some mythical, magical being. I could never run.

“Nearly a year together and I still forgot how much you worry,” she says. She twirls back and forth, dancing to the beat in her mind. Nearly a year together and I still always forget how fearless, headstrong, and adventurous she is.

“I worry for good reason. Bad things happen all the time. Why increase those chances?”

“Tasha! Baby, listen, what is the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?” She stops dancing and smirks at me.

“First, don’t quote John Green to me. Second, don’t be cute right now. Third, there is nothing remarkable about this. In fact, it’s a very ordinary thing to do.”

“Exactly!” she runs to me, grabs my hands, and pulls me closer to the edge. She’s still closer with her back to the waves crashing below. She runs her hands up my arms and through my long blonde hair. When she pulls back, she says, “So ordinary that we might as well do it.”

I sigh, and nod. I could never resist her.

“Might as well,” I repeat.

She squeezes my hands tightly before letting go again. She strips down to her skivvies, then helps me with mine, too. After, she grabs my face and pulls it close.

“Thank you for doing this for me.” She lays a soft kiss on my forehead, then my lips. “I know how much you hate this stuff, but it’s the perfect anniversary gift.”

I nod and wrap my arms around her waist. I squeeze so hard I’m afraid she might break, but she never winces. Instead, she places her lips against my ear and says, “You can do this.”

I take a few steps forward and stand on the edge beside her.

“I love you,” I say, forcing myself to breathe slowly.

“I love you, too,” she says, and I don’t have to look to know she’s beaming.

The deep ocean blue is moving with life fifty feet below us. Our fingers weave tightly together as we prepare ourselves for what’s to come. Nodding in sync, we take a step back, then jump. Towards our fate. Whatever it may be, I’m with her and that’s all that matters.

We land in the water, far below the surface, our bodies still sinking when our hands reach out and find each other in the dark. I hold on to her tightly as we kick our way to air. Gasping as I breach, laughing and coughing up water. My heartbeat thumps loudly in my ears as she pulls me into her embrace.

“How was it?” Her eyes are expectantly waiting as I laugh. I can’t stop. “That good?”

“It was incredible!” I shout when I’m able to take control of my hysterics again. Looking out at the miles upon miles of open water beyond us, it’s unlike anything I could have ever imagined. Every color in the world is brighter, the sun is hotter, the air is purer; it’s all so beautiful. So perfect. I look back at the woman beside me. “You’re incredible.”

She grins before diving under the water, tickling my feet as she passes by.

I follow as she swims towards the beach. We collapse onto the dry sand breathing heavy, side by side, hand in hand.

“Let’s do it again,” I say.

August 2011

We walk, Halle’s arm wrapped around my waist, and mine around hers, along the boardwalk admiring the variety of booths and food trucks.

As we pass by a ball-pitching booth, a man eggs her on, “Win your fine lady a prize?” He flashes us a crooked smile and raises an eyebrow, then continues, “If you knock over the top bottle you win a small stuffed animal, take down three and you get a medium-sized one. Get all six and win the big stuffed animal: bear, tiger, cheetah, whatever she wants!”

Halle reaches into her pocket.

“Don’t, Halle.” I hold on tight to her arm and shake my head.

“Baby, it’s just for fun.”

She laughs, kisses my cheek, pulls her arm free of me, and pays the man ten dollars for five balls. She prepares her arm by swinging it around very dramatically a few times, then throws. The ball hits above the top metal bottle, then smacks into the fabric backdrop before thumping to the floor. The man laughs at her misfire, and she turns to me and grins.

I got this, she mouths.

On her next pitch, she takes a few seconds then chucks the ball as hard as she can, hitting just below the second row of the pyramid of bottles. The bottles loudly tumble from the stand, the pyramid now in ruin on the floor.

The man scoffs and challenges her further. “Lucky shot. Let’s see you do it again.” Halle raises her eyebrows at the man. “Take down this set over here with your remaining balls and I’ll let you take away three of the big stuffed animals. Your old lady will walk away a real lucky woman.”

“And if I fail?”

He digs his thumbs into his chest and says, “I win.”

“And winner takes all,” Halle says. She looks over at me and I shake my head. For a moment she hesitates, but then she sets the remaining balls down. “I’m done. My young lady will take the big ass elephant up there.”

The guy sighs, looks up and grabs a rod from the wall and hits the elephant lightly until it topples down into his arms. He hands it to Halle over the counter, who she smiles wildly as she hands it to me.

As we walk away, the elephant head-locked under my right arm with my left around her, I whisper, “Do you really think that was fair?”

“It’s a game, Tasha, it’s fair. Some people are good, some aren’t.” She wraps an arm around my shoulders, and I wrap my free one around her waist.

“You played softball all four years of high school and all through college.”

She laughs, then swiftly changes the subject, “So now, the Ferris Wheel?”

“Can we?” I ask, facing her.

“God, I hate these things,” she says as we approach the line. “But for you . . . ”

“We don’t have to—”

“No, you want to go, so we’re going.”

We join the line of people waiting and I rest my head on her shoulder.

“Hey, dykes, how about some tongue-action?” Some guy’s voice yells from behind us. Halle looks around before landing on a group of douches laughing off to the side. She flips them the bird.

“Up yours, assholes.”

“Come on, line’s moving,” I say, dragging her forward.

“Someone needs to shove a d—” she begins to yell at them until she sees the mother and young daughter standing in line ahead of us staring back at us, “a rainbow . . . in your f’n mouth.”

I laugh. “That’s what you came up with?”

She shrugs as we move up the stairs to the entrance. “Better than what I could’ve said.”

I nuzzle my nose into her neck and whisper, “You’re sweet.”

She brings her lips to mine and whispers back, “No, you’re sweet. I’m spicy.”

“Or cheesy,” I say, kissing her nose.

We reach the front of the line and the operator asks for our tickets. Once Halle hands them over, he ushers us to the enclosed seats. I scoot in and set the elephant on the floor as Halle gets in and sits beside me. He closes the door to our bucket, then gives us a thumbs up before hitting a button that raises us.

The ride moves up and forward slowly as the operator lets more people on, one bucket at a time. Halle has her hand tightly clasped over mine.

“We really didn’t have to do this,” I say.

“Yes, we did,” she says, looking over at me.

“Why?”

“Because you need to know how much you mean to me.”

“Hal, I already know.”

We move to the top of the wheel, now overlooking the fair and the city beyond it. Halle shifts in her seat so she’s fully facing me.

I smile at her and say, “Are you trying to get fresh with me right now? Because I don’t think we’re supposed to be moving around so much in these things.”

“Natasha, just shut up for a minute.”

“Halle!”

She gives me a look. The look. The raised eyebrows, the puckered lips, the cheeks flushed. She is serious. So, I shut up and listen to her.

“I love you more than anything in this world. You know that.” She reaches into her pocket. “I would go to the ends of every world for you. I would name every star after you.” She smiles and takes a deep breath, then continues, “I would do anything for you. Even go on a stupid kid’s ride that scares the living daylight out of me. I love you. I have since the moment I met you on that bus to Minneapolis three years ago, and I’ve only fallen more in love with you every adventure since. And I would love to love you forever if you let me.”

She reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out a small robin’s egg blue box. “And since we will, hopefully, soon be able to get married in this country, I would be the most ecstatic person in the world if you would do me the honor of being my wife the second it becomes legal.”

She opens the box and resting inside is a silver ring with a blue jewel setting.

My cheeks flush, pulse races, world stops. My lungs are empty as I stare at her, mouth agape. The only thing left is her, sitting beside me with my future in her hands. Our future. Together.

“Of course!” I wrap my arms around her neck and kiss her. “Of course, I’ll marry you!”

We fall back against the seat and wait for the wheel to start spinning again. She pulls me against her tighter and I hold her equally as close.

“You are super cheesy, though.” I say, shaking my head and smiling back at her.

“Maybe, but I knew you’d love it.”

“And I do. It’s the perfect start to forever.”

She kisses my head, then says, “I thought so.”

October 2012

I’m sorting through boxes in the bedroom when Halle enters and leans against the wall, watching me.

“Have you found the box with your hair thingy in it yet?” Halle asks while chewed-up chip bits threaten to escape from her lips.

“The diamond-encrusted hair ornament that my mother gave me as ‘something old and something blue’ that I am supposed to wear to our wedding, which is less than three days away? No, I have not found it yet.”

“I’ve said I’m sorry a hundred times, Tash. I didn’t mean to pack it with the rest of your bathroom stuff. I didn’t know what was in the white box on the counter. I just assumed it was more makeup or something.”

I shake my head. It’s not worth the fight. Not now. It’ll turn up eventually.

“We should have waited to move,” is all I say. “Until after the wedding.”

“Baby,” Halle says. She rubs my inner thigh with one hand, tossing her empty chip bag in the trashcan near our nightstand with the other. “You know this place was too good to miss out on.”

I stare at her, eyes wide. “A month before our wedding, Halle. A month. Before our wedding. We moved. Who does that?”

“Free spirits. The daring types.” She leans in and nuzzles into my neck. “It’s fun. We have all these new things to explore in our new home with our new rings and new titles.” She kisses behind my ear. “I’d like to introduce my wife, Mrs. Flynn . . .”

“Halle . . .”

“I promise I’ll make it up to you on our next adventure.”

“How about for now we cut back on the adventures?” I ask as I pull away from her embrace. I take a box off the bed and bring it into the bathroom. She follows.

“You mean until the honeymoon, right?” she asks from the bedroom.

“I mean, how about for a little while at least, we stop calling careless mistakes adventures and stick to being—oh I don’t know—a little more careful instead.”

“Ouch,” Halle says. She’s leaning in the doorway, arms across her chest. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t patronize me, Hal. If I can’t find that stupid thing before the wedding, we’re both dead.”

“We will find it, baby.” She gestures to the boxes in the bathroom. “How hard could it be?”

June 2013

The hot water steams up the bathroom quickly and I get out just in time for my body to be completely obscured in the fogged-up mirror. Grabbing a towel from the rack, I wrap myself in it like a burrito while dancing across the floor to the sink, singing along to the music booming from my Bluetooth speaker. I pick up my wedding ring off the counter, slip it on and wipe off the mirror with a hand towel, then use another towel to wrap up my hair.

The front door slams shut, breaking my nighttime grooming routine. I rush to the bedroom door and listen closely. Halle’s yelling.

“Halle?” I call into the hallway towards the foyer. No response. I move silently on the plush carpet, towards the living room.

“Barb, no, it won’t work. I told you that already. I can’t do this right now,” I hear her say in a hushed voice as I turn around the corner and enter her line of sight.

I turn my head sideways and mouth, Who is it?

She shakes her head, fed up, and mouths back, Work.

I tap on my wrist where a watch would normally be, and mouth, You’re late.

I know, she mouths, then shrugs and turns away from me. She says into the phone, irritated, “I have to go.” After a few seconds, she says, “Fine, bye.”

She throws the phone onto the couch and crosses the room hurriedly, pushing me up against the living room wall, kissing me eagerly. A picture frame jabs into my shoulder blade as her hands maneuver around the towel, loosening it so it falls.

“Whoa, Hal, what was that about?” I pull my lips away as she moves on to my neck.

“I don’t want to talk about work,” she mumbles, her mouth against my flesh, her hands groping me.

“Hal, stop. I don’t want to do this. What is going on? Why are you—”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it.” She lets out a loud breath and pulls her head back. “So, let it go.”

“No,” I say. I stare into her eyes. I’ve rarely seen her this irritated. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fucking fine.” She pulls her hands away from me and puts them up in mock surrender. “Can’t I just want to have sex with my wife?”

“Not like this.” I pick up the towel, shaking my head. “Definitely not like this,” I repeat while turning around and heading to our bedroom.

She follows and grabs my arm from behind. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop it, then.” I pull back and walk with her right behind me.

“Natasha, please, I’m sorry.”

“Fine,” I say as I reach my dresser.

“You don’t seem fine,” she follows and stands beside me while I pick through the top drawer searching for underwear. She reaches for my hand but pauses before she touches me. “Honey, please, stop.”

I do. I completely stop. I don’t move. Not an inch.

“Work was long and there are a bunch of new people in the office, and they don’t know what they’re doing, so all day I had to help them. I just wanted to come home and let loose for a minute.”

I stay still.

“Sweetie, I just went about it all wrong.” She touches my chin and turns my face towards her. “I’m sorry.”

“What was the phone call about?” She lets go of my chin.

“I told you it was work. They just wanted to know where I put some papers or something.”

I turn away from her gaze as I remove the towel and slide into a pair of underwear and strap on a bra. I grab a large plain blue T-shirt from a drawer and slip it on. Halle grabs the shirt and pulls me in closer to her.

“Do you forgive me?”

“I don’t know.”

She frowns and kisses my cheek. “But I love you.”

“I know.” I look into her eyes. “But I didn’t like that.”

“I know.” She kisses my lips. “I’m sorry.”

I sigh. “You better be.”

She takes my hands and slides onto the bed, patting the spot next to her. “Join me, please?”

February 2016

I roll over in bed and reach out to Halle, who’s sitting up. She pulls away from my touch and I lift my head. The alarm clock shows it’s a quarter past three in the morning.

“Halle?” I sit up and turn on the lamp on my nightstand. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, just go back to bed.” She turns her head to me just enough so that I can see smeared lipstick around her mouth. She’s looking out the window, dressed in jeans and a low-cut black tank top.

“Did you go out?”

“Tash, just go back to sleep!” she snaps as she stands and leaves the bedroom.

My heart drops as I stand and wrap a robe around myself. I follow her out into the kitchen. “Where did you go?”

“God dammit. Leave it alone.”

“Stop it.” She looks away as the waterworks begin. “Don’t you dare look at me that way!” She turns back and points a finger in my face. “You have no idea what I’ve been going through.”

Dumbfounded, I stumble back against the wall and look away.

“This was never supposed to happen. I didn’t mean for it to.” She paces around the kitchen hurriedly, her arms flailing around. “It just did.” She turns to face me. “And I’m so sorry.”

“Are you drunk?” I ask quietly.

“That’s not the point. Tash, I—”

“Don’t. I don’t want to know.” I shake my head. When she reaches out for me, my hands shoot up to push her away. “Whatever you did, I can’t know.”

“Tash, I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

She heads towards me like she’s going to kiss me, and I can’t, so I throw her arms back and step further away.

“Are you going to leave me?” she asks.

“I love you, Hal. Regardless of your selfish, stupid mistakes. When I said those vows, I meant them.”

“I know . . .” She crumbles to her knees in front of me and reaches out her arms for my legs. “And I love you so much.”

“Don’t touch me.” I step back. “I can’t—”

“Baby, I’m so sorry.” She holds her head in her hands and sobs into them. “So sorry.”

“Why are you crying?” I ask. She looks up at me, mascara running down her face. I push the tears back down. “How could you do this to us?”

Her eyes are different than usual. I search them for a place that I can still call home. I look for the woman that I love. Not this replacement in my lover’s body. But not just my lover: my confidante, my wife, my everything.

She shakes her head, crawls across the floor and grabs my legs, wrapping herself around them, sobbing into my robe and stopping me from moving. “Because I’m stupid. I’m so, so stupid.”

“Yes, you—”

“Mama? Mommy?” Our three-year-old boy sleepily stumbles into the kitchen, a thumb in his mouth and his favorite blue blanket in his arms, trailing on the floor behind him.

“Oh, honey,” I say while shaking Halle’s arms off me. “Come here, baby. Did your sister wake up?”

Brice walks into my arms, shaking his head. I lift the nearly thirty-pound boy and rest him on my hip. “Okay, we’re okay, sweetie.” I wipe away unwanted tears on one side of my face with my free hand and he touches the other side and wipes them away with his pajama sleeve.

“You’re crying, Mommy.”

“I know, baby, but I’m okay.”

With sad brown eyes, Brice looks down at Halle on the floor and asks softly in my ear, “Did Mama make you cry again?”

April 2017

“Tash,” Halle begs, “Please, just let me try again. Can’t you see how much this is hurting me?”

“You?” I snap while packing a suitcase full of clothes that aren’t mine. “How much it’s hurting you?” I’m too mad to cry. I’m too pissed off to shed a goddamn tear for her. For everything. Our marriage, our lives, our children. “I gave you every chance!”

“I know and I’m so sorry. I can’t go, I won’t. This is my home, too.” She cries on the floor, drunk again. It’s four o’clock in the morning, and she stayed out late after work again. For the second night in a row.

“I can’t do this anymore, Halle.” I zip up the suitcase and pull out the handle, then push it in front of her. “Now go. Get out.”

“No! I can’t go. Where will I go? I love you. You’re my everything.”

“If that were true, you wouldn’t have slept with half of the female population!” I shout, shaking my head. “I won’t put our children through this and I will not go through this anymore. We tried breaks and I tried sticking it out and living with the fact that I wasn’t your 'only one,’ but I can’t do it, Halle. Because it is killing me. You are killing me.”

“But you love me. How are you going to survive without me?”

“Do I?” I ask, not intending to hurt her, but to genuinely question it. I didn’t even know if I loved her at this point. Not in the way I once did. Every time I looked at her in the beginning, I felt that fire in my chest, that warming of my soul, but now? I didn’t know what to call the feeling inside. Dark? Cold? Empty. I square my shoulders and shove the suitcase at her further. “I have a steady job and our two children. I’ll be just fine.”

She uses the suitcase to stand up. “You can’t take them away from me, too. I won’t let that happen. I won’t let you do that to me.”

“Do that to you? You did this to yourself, Halle. Now, you can sleep around all you want and do whatever you want all the goddamn time. As long as it never affects our kids, I will not ‘take’ them away from you. However, the very first time,” I say, pointing a finger in her face, “You ever bring them back to me late, or you miss another one of their events, or you handle them while you’re drunk, I will make sure that you never get to see them again. You understand? Those kids are my world.”

“You’re my world.” She nearly falls over when she attempts to reach for me. I pull back and she screams, “I can’t do this without you!”

“Shut up and get the hell out of here before you wake them up again.”

“I . . . I . . . don’t know where to go.”

“Get a hotel room or something, just get out. Now.”

“Natasha, please, just give me one more chance. I love you. Please.”

“Halle, listen to me carefully, and I know that might be hard considering your condition, but I don’t love you. Not anymore. Not for a while. So, you need to go. Because you are only embarrassing yourself.”

May 2018

Brice and Faith run around the playground. He’s teasing her, but even still, he never takes his eyes off her. He always knows where she is.

I’m sitting on a park bench, watching them play around the jungle gym, a book in my left hand barely being read. My eyes are glued to the most beautiful people I have ever seen. They’re so happy, so free, and full of life and with everything else that a child should have.

Brice is running around, tapping her on the back, then running away and returning. I smile but decide that Faith has had enough now that she’s sitting on the wood chips cross-legged with a pouty look on her face.

“Brice, Faith, come here,” I say just loud enough for them to hear. They look up and Brice’s head falls, knowing he’s done something wrong. “Sweetie, you’re not in trouble.”

He smiles and helps Faith up and together they walk to me holding hands. “Yes, Mommy?”

“Were you teasing your sister?” He looks down at the ground.

“No, Mommy, I was just playing with her. She was laughing.”

“Not when I looked up.” I say, pulling three-year old Faith onto one leg and my big five-year old onto the other leg. “You have to be nice to your sister.”

She looks up at me grumpily, her arms across her chest. “He was mean.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Brice says, looking directly at her and reaching for her hand. “I’m sorry, Faith.”

She looks up at him, tears dried on her cheeks. She doesn’t say anything, but her slow-revealing smile indicates that she’s forgiven him. I give them both a quick kiss on the forehead.

“Mama is going to be here to pick you up soon and you both need to behave for her.”

“We will,” Brice says, sliding off my leg onto the ground. “Can we play some more?”

“Yes, go ahead, but be nice.” I smile as he helps his sister down and holds her hand as they walk away together. “I love you,” I call after them.

Brice and Faith yell over their shoulders in unison, “Love you, too, Mommy.”

I glance at the parking lot and see Halle get out of her car about ten yards away. She walks across the park to join me on the bench. Without a word, she sits beside me.

For a long while, we sit there, watching our children play before us. Years ago, I might’ve reached out a hand to cover hers, or buried myself in her arms, all while she whispered sweet nothings in my ear. Just a few months back and I’d have been digging my nails into my palms sitting this close to her. But now as we sit beside each other, two very separate, but thriving entities, we simply bear witness to the most beautiful, intelligent, and kind young children that this world could be blessed with and all I feel is joy.