The Not So Perfect Love Story

21|| Sebastian Ezekiel Gray

And her heart was the best part, it would calm the storms for those who were afraid of a little rain.

- R.M. Drake

21|| Sebastian Ezekiel Gray

When the song ended Bash asked if I'd like to take a walk with him. I looked around the people in the room and nodded my head, desperate for a break. So we both picked up an unopened bottle of wine and went out back, towards the beach area.

We had offered Mia a beach wedding like one of her dreams but she really wanted to wear the beautiful heels she saw and had us change the plans to an indoor wedding a few weeks after we finished planning for a beach wedding.

That girl is trouble and I couldn't with her, poor Mark.

Sitting as close to the waves as possible, Bash opened the bottle of wine and we started drinking straight out of it.

I had long since taken off my heels and Bash had taken off his suit jacket, his tie hanging loose around his neck. The two us leaned back on our arms and looked far ahead into the distance, both of our minds occupied by countless things.

"I realized that we have been spending a lot of time lately talking about me. I want to know about you." I declared after a while.

"There's nothing special about my life. I am having the same boring life as I have been for the past three years. This wedding and your life have been the most entertainment I've had in a while." He replies with a careless smile on his face.

"Then tell me something about your life from before you moved here." I say to him.

The need to hear him talk was overwhelming; I was craving the calmness that his voice brings. The sudden imagination of listening to him as the waves crashed behind us sounded like heaven and I wanted a piece of that.

"I am the first in my family to have a middle name. Like other than the people who married into the family." He said.

"What? No one that's born in your family has a middle name?" He nodded. "How come you do then?" I asked.

His face fell but he then mustered up a small sad smile.

"I had a brother, older brother, by two years. Ezekiel, my middle name, was his name." He said and then took a gulp of the wine.

"Had?" I asked slowly, curiosity brimming within me.

"Had." He nodded and took another big gulp.

I didn't say anything giving him the space so he could open up on his own. I knew he was going to continue, don't ask me how, I just did.

Maybe it was the amount of alcohol he'd had, maybe it was the sad smile before he started talking, or maybe it was because he chose to start this topic knowing it would lead to him spilling his guts out.

"We had been very young, like toddler young, I think I was 3 and he was 5. We were fighting over something, a toy possibly. No one is sure about what exactly happened next, it's like one moment we were fighting, the next I'm bawling my eyes out screaming for him to come back to me and he had disappeared in the water. It was said that there are two possibilities, either I pushed him and he fell into the water or the toy fell in and he went to get it. The only thing I do remember from that incident; which I shouldn't be able to, but I do anyway; is crying and screaming his name. And water, lots and lots of water."

He took a deep breath and then a big gulp of the wine. He looked at me once and then back onto the waves crashing. I just sat beside him silently, waiting for him to continue or stop.

"I couldn't call him by his full name yet, he was Zekky for me. He just wouldn't come out of the scary water no matter how much I screamed for him to. I remember promising him that I'll give him all my toys if he did come back.

I don't even know why I subconsciously kept this memory, I was three, I shouldn't remember almost anything that had happened till I was about 7 or 8. But I remember this bit very clearly.

After that incident my mum saw him in me. She used to call me Ezekiel and I'd respond too. A few years later, when I was old enough to realize that names can be changed, I asked my father to change mine to Ezekiel. 

I wanted to become him for my mother, remove the existence of a Sebastian. My dad though, he told me that a lot of people have three names, and that I can Ezekiel as my middle name but not my first name. I had protested a lot but he was firm on it, so I relented."

He looked to me then, his eyes searching my face. I kept my face blank, well as blank as I could with alcohol running in my system and slowly approached him with opened arms. He slid closer to me and let himself fall into them, resting his head on my shoulder and letting his tears fall. When he was calm enough he pulled me a little closer and buried his head in my neck.

"A few months before we shifted to your neighborhood, my mother died. She killed herself because of a sudden realization that it wasn't my brother that was living in her house with her. It was me, the cause of her first son's death. She went into depression after Zekky's death which had only worsened over the years."

"And you?"I asked after a few minutes when he didn't say anything else.

"What of me?" He asked a sniffle punctuating his questing.

"How did you deal with the weight of the two losses? I'm not trying to shrink you, but, how you feeling?"

"I got over it, being the only child in our group was fun and after witnessing Angela's life back in school, I was glad dad didn't remarry, although I'd have liked for him to find love again." He said.

"You know it isn't your fault right?" I asked, the hidden guilt in his voice pinching my heart.

"What isn't?" He asked, the little child in him curious.

"Neither of it. What happened to Zekky was an accident and your mum was unwell and she couldn't deal with the pain. It wasn't your fault Sebastian because you love them both with all you have."

"You– you really think so?" He asked, tears escaping from the corners of his eyes. I nodded and he wrapped his arms tightly around me, sobbing and letting his sorrows and guilt.

And at that moment I was glad he let me stay by his side and reassure the scared 8-year-old boy in him that it wasn't his fault.