Heartbeats

Chapter 1

HIM:

It didn't turn out at all like I had hoped. When I mentioned forever for the first time, I had done it with the utmost care and devotion. "You're it for me," I'd said, but the dumbfounded look on her face told me she couldn't reconcile my feelings with her own.

We were sitting on a park bench in the French Quarter at the time, soaking in the coolness of the evening air over beignets. When we first met and she found out I was from Louisiana, she made me promise to take her on a tour one day. I'd grinned her way and assured her I would, and when I brought it up again three years later she had forgotten all about it. I'm not one to go back on promises, though, and that one, flippant as it was at the time, was one I intended to keep from day one.

Our very destination, then, was a bit of destiny, and maybe you could say I was caught up in the nostalgia of it all. No matter the reason, though, the words I'd said were not uttered in a frenzy of emotion, they had been sitting on my chest since the first time we locked eyes.

Of course, her lack of response deadened the light mood of the evening and sent me reeling through past events. Up until that moment, we'd been on the exact same page, line by line and word for word. I knew how she felt for me and vice versa. Our relationship was built on honesty from the beginning. It had become one of my favorite things, the easiness of not having to wonder where we stood.

But then.

I sorted through responses in my brain like a dusty warehouse trying to find one to clear the air. Contemplating apologizes, excuses, jokes, and explanations, I ultimately chose to say nothing at all for risk of making it worse. Unlikely, but not impossible. We finished our snacks in silence, staring blankly at some street performer a few feet away to avoid the tension of the moment.

I stole a few glances her way, mostly just to make sure I wasn't completely mistaken. But the furrow in her brow and shallow set of her eyes told me all I needed to know. She was thinking just the same as me. Trying to find words to reconcile. I prayed she would find them and she did.

"It's getting late. We should probably head back for the night."

It was barely 7:30 and we hadn't even had dinner, but I didn't argue. Didn't so much as lift a finger in her direction.

"You're right."

~*~

Once we found ourselves back in the hotel room, the thick silence fell into casual conversation about nothing in particular, a joint attempt at slicing through the awkward tension.

"Are you hungry?" I'd asked. And when she replied she could eat, I ordered Italian from the room service menu and excused myself to the bathroom to cancel our dinner reservations. I had planned to surprise her with one of my favorite restaurants in all of New Orleans, but I wasn't mourning that so much as the 10 foot chasm now separating us.

Even so, she wouldn't let me stay down for long.

"Italian?" She squealed when she answered the door, already changed into an oversized sweatshirt for the evening. "Gah, you think of everything!"

I was caught off guard as she threw her arms around my shoulders, pulling me close for a hug and a quick peck on the lips.

Dinner had us reminiscing about my childhood in the deep south, laughing over cheesecake and looking out over the city as it came to life.

"Thank you for bringing me here. It's a special place." We were sitting on the bed with the balcony door propped open to let the low jazz notes seep into the room when she broke the easy silence. I paused for only a moment before I lost all resolve and glanced her way, her eyes betraying everything she wanted. Everything she would soon get.

I'd never been able to deny her, not even in a moment already cracked with unspoken thoughts. When she straddled my waist and began laying kisses along the column of my neck, I wrapped my arms around her and didn't let go until the light of the morning danced in her eyes.

Why would I waste time wondering about the future when you're in my arms right now?

I told myself all was right in the world, enchanting myself with all of the excuses for her strange reaction all the while knowing it was only a matter of time.

HER:

I was under no impression that he wasn't entirely serious about me. To be such a vibrant, carefree, comical spirit, one look in his eyes was all it took for me to understand. In those eyes, I saw passion and devotion that terrified me, but dared me to fall.

So I did. Over and over again. Most people can name a single moment in time where they fall in love, but that was never the case with us. If I fell once, I fell a hundred times, each time more so than the last.

We'd agreed to keep it quiet to make things easier, deeming it in our best interest to keep things between us to keep public attention at bay. But that was easier said than done.

It was written all over my face in every news reel and interview I replayed of the two of us. Undeniable. Intense. Epic.

And always so so sudden.

We never talked about the future and when it inevitably came up in conversation, we kept it lighthearted and dreamy, never lingering among the possibilities for very long. That was always fine by me.

I'd known for a few months that something had changed in him when it came to this philosophy of life he had so diligently taught me. I found myself ignoring it because I didn't know what else to do.

On his 35th birthday, after the party had died down and the crowd left our apartment in Atlanta, I asked him what he would wish for if he could have anything in the whole world.

I don't know what I was expecting him to say. Perhaps fame or fortune, though he had already been endowed with his fair share of both in his short lifetime. Maybe peace on earth or something heroic.

The look he gave me told me he had already given it more thought than I knew and I swallowed as he asked me if he could think about it a while.

By the time we got cleaned up and settled in for the evening, I forgot I'd even asked him a question at all, but as he slipped between the sheets behind me, he granted me his answer.

"I want a family." He breathed it out into the night air so softly I almost missed it. And then, when I didn't immediately reply, he offered some clarification. "Earlier you asked me what I would wish for if I could have anything and I've made up my mind. I want a family and I want it with you."

As his arms enveloped me, the tears began to betray me, slipping from my eyes in a flood of emotion I'd been holding back for months. It didn't come as a surprise, not really. I could see it in him every time he locked eyes with a baby across the room, every time he slipped and spoke of forever.

Misreading my emotion, he turned me in his arms and pulled me toward him until our lips locked in a kiss that tasted like salt. "Marry me." He'd uttered when we finally broke away, and in the dim light of the dark room he searches my face earnestly for the answer I have yet to give. When it's clear I must say something, raw honesty falls from my lips.

"I don't know."

The media started reporting our break up the very next day and rumors began to fly. How they got their information, I'll never know, but they got most of the story right. He wanted to settle down and I wasn't ready, and that was a seismic shift we evidently couldn't reconcile. What they don't know, though, is that I probably would've said yes had I not looked into his eyes and seen eternity staring back at me.