Marion Croslydon - Fast Forward

You had to be deaf to miss the retching that followed. Granted, the cocoa was loaded with sugar but not enough to make her puke. I hurried to the kitchen, wetted a cloth and went to wait outside the bathroom. Shortly afterwards I heard the flush and Clarissa appeared in front of me. She wasn’t glowing anymore. Her skin had turned a washed-out green and some of her hair stuck to her forehead.

I took her in my arms and led her shaking body back to the sofa where I’d been squatting the whole morning. There, I covered her with the blanket and started patting her face with the damp cloth.

“I’m so embarrassed. I can’t believe…” she started rambling, but I hushed her. I went back to the kitchen for a glass of water. She gulped it down in one go, which wasn’t a good idea. I had a lot of experience of puking my guts out. I’d been one of those girls for whom morning sickness stretched to pretty much every hour of the—

Wait a sec! “Are you pregnant?” Clarissa’s eyes rounded like saucers at my question and some color returned to her cheeks. “You are pregnant.”

“I’m sorry. We didn’t want you to know.”

I shifted backward on the sofa. I was missing something here. “Why? Is there a problem with the pregnancy? Because I know a great ob-gyn in Kansas City and we can figure out a way for you to—”

She covered my hand with hers. “No, Cassie. All is fine so far, except for the vomiting.” She gave a slight shrug of her shoulders. “We just thought it’d hurt your feelings because of what’s happening with Lucas.”

It took me a while for my mind to wrap around what she’d just admitted. When it finally did, tears began to form in my eyes. “I might never get Lucas back, but I’ll be damned if I can’t be happy for you and Woodie to have your own baby.”

“We didn’t want the news to make you even more sad.”

“Sad? I’m thrilled. I’m so thrilled you might finally see me cry.” My voice had gone all wobbly and I hid whatever sobbing fest I was going to throw by taking her in my arms. I hugged her tightly. I’d never hugged a girl in my life before, except for Gran. But Gran wasn’t really a girl and she was the one doing the hugging most of the time.

“It’s nice to see you’re human after all,” she mumbled in the hollow of my neck.

The cell in my jeans pocket beeped. I parted from my hugging partner and we swept our tears off our cheeks at the same time. The text had to be from Josh. I hadn’t spoken to him since leaving Kansas City last Friday, but he’d written me several sweet, if slightly mysterious messages. I still had no idea what was going on.

Josh (13:12): On my way out of town in the car. Should be in SH in about 2 hrs.

My fingers started to type.

Cassie (13:13): Meet me. You know where…

It was time for me to let Josh in.

Good! I heard Gran say out loud, as though she was standing next to me.

I think she really was.

Josh

The drive from Kansas City should have stolen my attention. I’d been squinting through the blowing snow to see the road ahead so hard my eyelids ached. But even a force-twelve hurricane wouldn’t have stopped me and my Honda rental. I was on a mission.

I drove past the city-limits sign welcoming visitors to Steep Hill, ‘The Legendary Cattle Town.’ As kids, Cassie and I used to make fun of it. Later, there was no road sign I’d dreaded more than that one. It wasn’t funny anymore. It meant heartache and betrayal. Today the road sign meant friends and family. Friends I chose. Family I had made.

It’d been a long road back to Steep Hill, not just on today’s drive. It’d been a five-year long road that’d taken me away from Kansas and from myself. But I’d found myself again and I was returning home.

I carefully merged onto the side road that led to Sweet Angel Point. The path was twisty and the wheels of the car skidded on the ice patches. If there was one thing my father had taught me well, it was how to drive. I hadn’t been that good a teacher with Cassie, unfortunately.

When I made it to the top of the hill, I gently applied the brakes. There were no other cars. I padded around the hood of the car, my feet crunching on the thick layer of snow. The weather had cleared and the cold rays of sun made the prairie around me glisten. I rested my back against the trunk of the cottonwood tree and let myself indulge in the snow-padded silence.

Cassie would arrive soon.

A whistle sliced through my thoughts. I straightened up. It’d come from close by. I checked my surroundings.

“Come on, Champ. Eyes up!”

I stumbled away from the tree, my gaze searching for the voice hidden within the branches. I circled around the trunk and there I found two legs hanging from a branch in the upper reaches of the tree. A head and a mass of blond curls soon emerged into view.

“Cass, are you fucking nuts? You’re going to break your neck.”

I extended my arms upwards, in an attempt to catch her should she fall.

“Relax. Unlike you, I kept climbing trees even as an adult.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better. Can we try and figure out how to get your skinny ass down here?”

“Do you remember the last time you were up here?”

“Of course I do. I proposed to you from the branches of this goddamned tree. I can’t believe the lengths I went to extract a ‘yes’ from you.”

“Actually, you didn’t propose to me. I proposed to you, remember?”

“Yes. I wanted it to be your choice.” Cassie shuffled on the branch and my stomach leaped into my throat. “Please, Cass. I’m begging you, please come down. You’re scaring the shit out of me.”

If I’d been in need of a therapy before, it wasn’t the case anymore. Lately, I’d been professing my deepest fears to anyone who would listen.

Cassie continued. “Our first times are always here. The first time we made love, the first time you told me you loved me, the first time we got engaged.”

I was trying to devise a safe plan to get her down so I absentmindedly answered: “We only got engaged once.”

“You’re right. The second time is scheduled for today.”

My brain played catch-up and my own voice sounded dumb in my ears. “You’re going to propose?”

“No, you are.” My eyes were glued on her so I couldn’t miss the cloud falling over her face. “I mean, if you want to.”

“Cass, I hate to break it to you but you never signed the divorce papers, so, technically, we’re still married.”

“I know that.” The playfulness had gone out of her voice and she was all seriousness now. “But I’m up here because I want to give you the choice again, just like you did when we were seventeen. You said then that I had to do it out of free will.”

“So you want me to propose to you freely?”

“If you don’t want to, you’ve got plenty of time to drive away. It’s going to take me a while to get back down.”

Despite the fact that the girl I loved was twelve feet above me, clutching a cold tree on a snowy afternoon, I couldn’t keep the burst of laughter inside. My reaction drew a frown from Cassie so I stopped. “Cass, if I didn’t control myself, I’d propose to you pretty much every day. And before you say anything, I’m aware that was a very cheesy line.”

“Cheesiness suits you, Champ. So feel free to shower me in it as much as you want.”

“Point taken, but please come back to sea level.”

It took ten hazardous minutes for Cassie to climb down the tree, lots of twisting and turning and swearing. I gave her clear instructions that she kept ignoring.

“Okay, Cass, well done. I’m right behind you so turn around slightly and I’ll catch you.”

I expected Cassie to turn and loop her arms around my neck so that I could help her back to ground level. Gently. Instead she launched herself onto me, causing me to stagger backwards and lose balance. I crashed on my back with Cassie on top of me.

She was light as a feather and I recovered quickly, hunching back up with Cassie on my lap. Patches of snow were caked over her face. I gently wiped them off. “I think your climbing is about as bad as your driving.”

“I think you might be right.”

After our days apart, having her in my arms, her warm breath brushing against my face was worth freezing my ass off in the snow for. I leaned closer to her so that the tip of my nose touched hers. I turned my face slightly the way I knew she loved.

“I’m still expecting you to propose, ya’ know. It won’t be on your knees, but on your butt. Still okay by me though.”

I welcomed back the sparks as they returned to her eyes. I brushed a wisp of hair away from her face. “Before getting to that, I want to tell you about Kansas—”

“—Don’t,” she hushed me. “Not yet. Your mom told me once that any strong family starts with two people committed to each other, trusting and helping each other, growing together… I want this proposal to be about us merging our lives because we love each other, not because we have to.”

“Cass, I’ve wanted to marry you since you stomped on my foot back in first grade. I just couldn’t do it then because we were six and it’d have been illegal.”

“I want you to propose to today’s Cassie, not first-grade Cassie, or even worse senior-year Cassie. When I say ‘yes,’ it’ll be to the man you are now, not the boy you were then.”

“So you’re going to say ‘yes’?”

She lifted her chin in that cute, headstrong way of hers. “Ask and you’ll find out.”

In the distance, I caught the sound of a bird singing. It echoed across the open ground around us. I filled up my chest with air and the frozen sensation stung my lungs.

“Cassandra O’Malley, do you want to be my wife?”

With her gaze locked with mine, she answered, “I do.”

The bird kept on singing as if it was spreading the good news to the whole world, but the outside world didn’t exist anymore for Cassie and me. For the first time, we allowed ourselves to be just the two of us.

Finally, Cassie shut her eyes tightly and opened them again. She pressed her lips together, then inhaled sharply. “So now, tell me what happened in Kansas City.”

Cassie ~ Palermo, Sicily, Italy

There really was something about the Italian language.

It made pretty much anything sound crazy romantic, as if each word had been designed to get la signora into bed. Listening to Josh’s deep, mellow voice, declaring that his life was mine, sent me spinning into Romantic Heaven.

Io, Joshua, prente te, Cassandra, come mia sposa

E prometto di esserti fedele sempre,

Nella gioia e nel dolore,

Nella salute e nella malattia,

E di amarti e onorarti

Tutti I giorni della mia vita

I hung on every syllable that floated out of his mouth and hoped that I wasn’t gaping. He didn’t stumble, but kept my shaky—and hopefully not too clammy—hands in his. They felt strong, steady and… sweat-free.

Earlier I’d been overwhelmed when we’d stepped into la Chiesa di Sant’ Agostino. Josh told me the church was an example of ‘Romanesque Gothic.’ I had no idea what ‘Romanesque Gothic’ meant, but it was even more beautiful than it sounded. Then he’d led us to the back of the church and broke into his impro in italiano.

“What is he saying, Mom?” Lucas tugged at my dress. You could always count on him to kick romance right in the butt.

Josh’s gaze broke slowly away from me to settle on the little man standing next to us, all brown eyes and hair. The Sicilian sun had given his skin a hint of toffee that matched his dad’s. They both looked good enough to eat.

“I’ve told your mother I’ll love her forever.” Josh pinched Lucas’s nose as he often did to tease him.

“Again?”

“You can never say ‘I love you’ too often, Champ.”

“Are you going to kiss her again?” Lucas’s eyebrows wiggled at Josh as he posed the question.

I quickly scanned the interior of the church looking for the silhouette of a priest or a guard. “I’m pretty sure kissing in a church in Sicily isn’t quite the thing to do.” At least, not the French kiss I had in mind.

Instead, Josh brought my hand to his lips and brushed each knuckle with the same gentleness he’d have used on a newborn. I was in the perfect place to thank God for giving me Josh not once, but twice.