The Secret Of Us - Liesel Schmidt

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things out together any time soon seeming slim, too.

      Matt’s ninety days of deployment seemed to pass both too slowly and too quickly. There were days that crept by endlessly, and days that were over before they’d even started. One thing that each of those ninety days held in common was the silence. No word – no phone calls, no e-mails, no letters. Nothing from Matt in the way of communication, and I felt sometimes as though I was going to go insane with worry.

      All of the previous deployments during our friendship had been consistently peppered with e-mails and fairly regular phone conversations. Now, there was nothing. Nothing except the maddening absence, the deafening silence.

      And the ambiguous way we’d left things before he’d gotten on that plane.

      So here I was, stuck in limbo and caught in a state of indecision.

      Maybe a more logical person would have taken those ninety days of silence and decided that none of it was worth any more thought, any more heartache.

      Maybe those ninety days would have been used to rebuild a separate life, one that completely closed Matt out and cut him off, but I seemed unable to think past the immediacy of my need to fix this awkwardness between us.

      And my inability to do it.

      It was, strangely, like having my feet encased in cement.

      And maybe just as dangerous.

      I didn’t know what to do or really how to feel, and so I did what I always did when I didn’t know my next move – I worked, I worked some more, and when I wasn’t working, I took out my fine-tip pens and sketchpad and drew. For me, there was escape and release in the creativity I found on the white expanse of the page. I could express my emotions – my turmoils and joys – in the strokes of my pen, and people seemed to like the results.

      I filled three sketchbooks while Matt was gone, creating a visual diary of sorts. Maybe one day I would know what to do with them, but for now, they were mine, tracing the arc of my heartbreak even as I hoped to find the beauty in all of this.

      When Matt came home, when his deployment was over, and he walked past the security desk to meet me in the waiting area at the airport, the air seemed thick with all the words we weren’t saying. All the words that hadn’t been spoken in the ninety days he’d been gone, all of the words that needed to have been said in the now eight months that had passed since we’d kissed.

      Now, they all seemed inescapable.

      I knew – standing there, in the midst of all the people welcoming their loved ones home, teary as they wrapped each other in warm embraces – that things were going to have to change. We would have to decide, once and for all, where we stood. I wanted so badly to reach out to him, to close the gap between us that seemed like a chasm as wide as the Grand Canyon, but all of the uncertainty kept me rooted and silent.

      And then it happened.

      He took a step.

      He placed his hand on my cheek, his touch feather light and tender, and whispered so softly that the words were nearly swallowed by the chaotic activity of the terminal.

      “I love you, Eira Larson. Please tell me it’s not too late for me,” he breathed.

      Matt’s eyes were moist with tears, all the pain and pleading and hope nakedly exposed on his face. I saw my own power to break him reflected in the depthless pools of his warm brown eyes, my own vulnerability mirrored by every emotion so plainly written there.

      A choked sob escaped my lips, every moment of insecurity and pain and wanting bubbling to the surface and pushing past all the defenses I thought I’d so painstakingly constructed. I wasn’t sure I could trust my voice enough to tell him everything I wanted to say, but I also knew the gravity of this moment. Whatever I said or didn’t say now would resonate forever, the same way a bomb blast seemed to ring forever in the ears of anyone close enough to hear it.

      This moment was deafening.

      This moment was sweet.

      This moment would determine our fate.

      I closed my eyes and tipped my chin, feeling warmth spread slowly through my body, a liquid heat that was purely joyful.

      I realized as I opened my eyes that I was smiling – a closed bud rather than a fully opened blossom – the first blush of a smile. Tears whispered at the rims of my eyes, softening my vision.

      Matt pursed his lips and then opened his mouth to speak again, but I shook my head to stop his flow of words. I was still silent, still smiling, as I reached up and placed my hand on his chest, just over his heart. I felt it pounding under the palm of my hand, steady and strong through the thick fabric of his uniform.

      “It’s never too late to say I love you,” I said, so soft it was nearly inaudible in the din.

      It was all I could manage, but it was all Matt needed to hear.

      He told me, later, that being away had given him time to realize just what he stood to lose.

      He had realized that I had become much more than a friend, and that he truly wanted more.

      He wanted me, forever.

      “Forever,” he said, holding my hand in his as we sat, side by side on the steps of his apartment. Fireflies were floating through the air all around us, lighting the darkness with their magical glow and lending romance to what might have been an ordinary evening. He lifted my hand and kissed my fingertips, my nose, my forehead.

      “Forever, Eira,” he whispered again. “That’s what I want with you. Will you marry me?”

      He spoke the words almost too softly to hear, as though he was afraid the sound of his voice might break the spell. But they were there, floating like gossamer in the evening breeze, dancing in the dark with the fireflies all around us. Slowly, carefully, Matt reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring, a small and simple gold band set with a single diamond that might have seemed unimpressive to some – but for me, the glistening facets of that round-cut stone were more beautiful than any others I had seen. For me, that stone meant that the dream I had dreamed for so long was now finally coming true.

      “Yes, Matt,” I whispered back. “For now and forever, yes.”

       Chapter Seven

       November 2008

      Three years.

      Thirty-six months.

      Roughly eleven hundred days.

      It had been over three years since I’d seen or heard from him, but here he was, in the flesh.

      Impossibly, it would have seemed, as in those three years, I’d moved a thousand miles away, leaving the home I had so loved in North Carolina to transplant my broken life into Florida sand, where I shared no history with Matt. Where I thought the tides of the Pensacola Bay would wash away the pain and leave me with a fresh future, like the unmarred sand on a shoreline after a wave has receded.

      I’d begun rebuilding here, in this small community set along the shores of Florida’s Panhandle, trying to find my own treasures in this jewel-box so famously known as the Emerald Coast. I’d spent the last three years trying to get over him, to forget how much I loved him, to forget how much he’d hurt me. Thinking of what I’d say to him if I ever had the opportunity to say it to his face – and now here he was.

      Right in front of me, smiling at me as though he had no idea who I was. Talking as casually as he would with someone he’d never met, someone with whom he had absolutely no history.

      And I had absolutely no idea what to say.

      “Can I get that rare, or is that against the rules?” he asked, flashing me another smile.

      A smile.

      A smile that I wanted to slap off of his face.

      A

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