Page 112 of Malaise
“Hey, Mum.” Carver reaches out and rests his hand on the angel’s wing, above the boy. “Hey, Rylie.” He touches the cherub’s cheek, glancing at me from the corner of his eye.
“I saw his picture at your house,” I explain. “Tanya told me about him.”
“Mum never really let it go,” he murmurs, glancing up at the angel’s face. “She blamed herself. Thought she’d done something wrong.”
“I can’t even imagine….”
He simply shakes his head, drawing a deep breath that has his chest expanding and shoulders pushing back. I get a pained smile before he looks back to the grave marker and begins to talk. “I’m sorry it’s been a while, Mum.” He folds his legs, sitting beside the base and leaning a shoulder into it as he fidgets with the overgrown grass at the bottom of the stone. “I didn’t want you to be disappointed, but I guess that was pretty dumb now that I think about it. I mean, you’re everywhere, right? You would have seen the stupid shit I’ve been doing, anyway.”
I sit on the ground opposite him, watching the way he methodically trims the grass at her gravestone by pinching it off as he talks.
“It wasn’t even my idea to come today. I would have put it off yet again, waiting until I had something awesome to tell you, and never actually coming… you know how it goes.” He shrugs. “Anyway, I’ve got a friend who wants to meet you.” He lifts his gaze to find mine, and smiles. “She’s really something, Mum. You would have loved her. She gives me purpose again, and even after all the shit I’ve just put her through she’s still here. Still fighting.” He pauses, running his finger along the recessed words on the stone. “I love her, Mum. She’s the one for me.”
“Brett…”
“I mean it, Meg. I had way too much time on my hands to think about things while I was inside, and I realised some stuff.”
“Like what?”
He gives the headstone a grin, as though embarrassed to be talking in front of his mum about this. “Age doesn’t matter, right?”
“I don’t think so.”
“So why wait? When I think about us, I think about it all. I want forever with you, Meg. I can’t imagine loving anyone else like I love you.”
“Forever?” I ask, heart in my throat.
Everything’s going so fast, but it doesn’t make me want to pull back. It excites me, and I’m hanging on his every word.
He reaches out across the grass, silently asking for my hand. I take it, my heart alive with the excitement in his eyes. “I’m committed to you, Meg. I’m not here for a summer fling, I’m not looking at getting some sort of temporary gratification. I want to experience everything with you, all of it, right up until we’re old and grey.” He pauses to look around the graveyard with a frown. “Maybe it’s morbid and a little creepy, but you know what I kept thinking as we walked through the rows to get to Mum?”
“What?”
“That this is how I want our story to end: with gravestones side by side that tell of a long and endless love.” My chest is tight as he returns his gaze to me, his expression stern and determined. “I want to marry you, Meg. I want to come home to you every damn night and be constantly amazed by how much more I love you as time goes by. I want our story to be epic. But mostly, I just want it to be ours.”
I wouldn’t have expected anything less than a vague marriage proposal in a graveyard. It’s quirky, unconventional, and everything that we are. I’ve never been more flattered or in love as I am in this moment.
“If that’s you asking me if I’ll marry you—”
“Will you? It doesn’t have to be now, we can wait to do it exactly how you want, but as long as I get to put a ring on your finger that promises one day you’ll be legally mine forever, babe, I’m happy.”
I nod, standing to make my way around to him, smiling like a damn lunatic. Maybe I am a little unhinged? So what? It’s crazy, it’s spontaneous, and it’s everything I want.
“Fuck, babe. For real?” he asks as I reach him with a smile.
“Did you really think I’d say no?”
He shrugs, showing his uncertainty, his self-doubt.
“I want epic too. And the fact you doubt that,” I say, slipping my arms around his sides as he steps toward me, “proves to me that I need to do more to show you how much I want this. Getting married is insane: I’ve just finished school, you’re seven years older than me and unemployed, and I sure as hell don’t have my parents’ blessing. But so what? You make me happy, and no matter what anybody says or does to try and convince me that it’s wrong, I won’t deny it. You’re it for me. Always.”
“Babe….” His hands slip around my neck, holding me firmly beneath my ears. “Life’s fucked up, and I regret the fact you’ve had to experience the pain you have, but fuck I’m glad you went out that night. I’ll never regret the fact we met, only the circumstances that meant we did.”
“Everything happens for a reason, Carver, and I know we were meant to cross paths too. I just don’t know if I’ll ever work out why I had to lose Den for it to happen.”
Carver places a gentle kiss to the tip of my nose. “Should we go see him, then?”
I nod, swallowing hard to bring myself in check. I have no doubt that the second I lay eyes on those letters, Den’s name spelled out for eternity, I’ll lose it. But if I can keep it together until then, it’s a start.