Malik and Jade

Chapter 41 (Jade): A Beginning

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

Marriage to Malik had made me realize a very important lesson that I had always known, but I now understood in a way I never had before:  Our lives are made up of a non-stop string of beginnings and endings, but we tend to think in terms of the big beginnings and endings: starting school and graduating, getting married, moving into a house or an apartment together, having a child. Our lives began anew each time in very profound ways.

But what I never really thought about was the little beginnings we face all the time. When we had Nour, that was a huge beginning in our lives. And the milestones he reached were smaller beginnings, but they each signified an ending. Nour crawling meant he was no longer a helpless baby who only really moved when we picked him up and moved him. Nour walking meant an end to crawling. And so on. I cried with happiness, joy and pride and a bit of nostalgia with every milestone he achieved. Watching him grow was a beautiful blessing.

When I applied that thinking to marriage, I had to pause for a minute and roll it over in my mind as I really thought that concept through. Marriage didn't have just one beginning on the wedding day; marriage had many beginnings and endings in a continuous cycle. Our marriage proved that to me. We would always face many beginnings, some small, some profound. Some endings wouldn't be fun, some would cause us pain but if we  grew into the new phase of marriage together, we could survive it and maybe, possibly build something stronger. 

I felt like Malik and I had worked through the end of our first marriage and were rebuilding a second one that might be better. Stronger. More real. Certainly more equal.

That evening on the porch when Malik had told me about the patient he lost had been a smaller beginning for us, even if we hadn't recognized it right away. I had always known Malik held a lot inside and wasn't the most forthcoming with sharing his emotions until more recently, but that night helped me to look at him in a new way. Not as the confident, arrogant surgeon who never doubted his skill but as a man with a very demanding, often heartbreakingly difficult job that dealt in life and death. Even with those barriers he kept up at work, feelings could still slip through.

I'd found it symbolic that Malik had gone to the porch he'd built me so he could decompress and try to get himself under control. So a few nights later, I'd decided to begin a new tradition. After we got Nour down for the night, I stopped Malik in the hallway with a touch to his hand.

"Meet me on the porch in ten minutes?"

"I'll be there," he said, smiling at my somewhat mysterious invitation.

Hurrying away, I went to the kitchen, got everything ready and then took it all to the porch on a tray. Setting down the tray on the table between the two rocking chairs, I made sure everything was arranged nicely to my satisfaction. Then I took the portable baby monitor out of my pocket and put it on the table so we could hear Nour if he woke up.

Exactly ten minutes later, Malik came outside and I smiled at him. "Welcome to sunset and dessert on the porch!"

"I wondered why you didn't say anything about dessert after dinner."

"I was thinking, if you want to, we could have dessert out here every night after we put Nour to bed. Just some quiet time to decompress before we go to bed."

"I'd love to."

I'd already poured us glasses of water, and two pieces of pie were ready on the plates, the forks right next to the slices of goodness. Malik sat in his rocker after I sat in mine, and he grinned at me when he saw it was peanut butter pie with chocolate shavings on top.

"My favorite," he said before we both  began eating. "This is excellent, Jade."

In between bites, I asked him about his day and he asked about mine, and we just chatted easily about anything that came to mind.

"That was good," he said, after he finished. "Thank you."

"And now, stomachs happy with pie, we can watch the sunset," I said, patting my belly.

At that, Malik stood and fiddled with his phone for a minute and an old, slow song began playing, The Air that I Breathe by The Hollies. 

"We have a few minutes, so I propose an amendment to sunset and dessert on the porch," he said. "How about sunset, dessert and dancing on the porch?"

He placed his phone on the tray and held out his hand to me. When I took it, he brought me close to him, his large hand on my back, my hand on his shoulder and our other hands were clasped together and held against his chest. For once, he didn't lead me around in a series of intricate steps; instead he just held me close, and swayed back and forth with me. 

"Our neighbors are going to think we're weird," I said with a soft laugh.

"Do you care?" he asked me, and spun me in a quick circle.

"I don't, but I thought you might."

"Why would I care, Jade?" he asked. "I have my beautiful wife in my arms, and I don't care if everyone sees. Who knows? Maybe we'll inspire them to dance with their spouses."

"It's just that you were never big into public displays of affection and this is a pretty big one."

Malik was quiet for a minute.

"I should have been. I should have done a lot of things differently with you, and I'm sorry I didn't. I can't change all the wrongs I committed with you, but I promise you our future will be different."

"It's been fine, Malik. We're getting along really well, we're making our marriage work and Nour is happy."

"All true, but are you happy, Jade?"

Was I?

"I think I'm getting there," I said finally, honestly. "I'm closer to happy than I ever expected to be. I was planning on having Nour's happiness be enough for me, and my goal was -- is -- to raise him to be the kind of man who's so happy that he wants to share that with his loved ones and make them happy, too. That's what I was expecting, and I was going to be good with that."

"You were going to be good with that. What about now?"

"I've been thinking about more. And you? Are you happy, Malik?"

I threw the question to him because I wasn't ready to invite questions about what more meant. It was a huge leap, or maybe it was a series of small steps to get to more.

"In moments like this, hayete, I'm very happy. But I know I still have a great deal of work to do to get my wife to happy."

The song ended and the colors from the sunset were just starting to color the sky. We didn't talk as we sat back down in our rocking chairs, but we watched the sky in silence that felt right. Companionable. 

Malik reached his hand across to me, and I placed mine in his, and holding hands, we rocked and watched the sun set. I felt even closer to happy.

And that felt like a beginning.