White Cloud

30- I Could Be

The next day, I'm counting down the minutes until three o'clock when Vincent gets off from his shift downstairs. I have no idea what I'm going to say to him or what he's going to say to me that hasn't already been said but I think that we're either going to break up or we're going to fix the argument that we had yesterday, if you could even call it that.

I haven't changed my mind about anything though so if he just says the same thing that he said yesterday, we might as well just break up now because it'll save us both a lot of time and a lot of pain in the future. That idea makes me want to throw up.

Fifteen minutes after three, there's a knock on my door and it makes me jump out of my skin. The dogs wake up but they don't leave the bed as I stand up on shaky knees to answer the door.

Sure enough, it's Vincent on the other side with an uneasy look on his face that probably matches the look on my own face.

"Hey," He says as I step away from the door so that he can walk into the room. He shuts the door behind him and I return to where I was sitting on my bed but I shut my laptop and turn off the TV. Vincent sits down on the chair beside me and is greeted by both of my dogs.

"Hey," I repeat his greeting uneasily.

"So, I've been thinking," He starts out, patting the dogs' heads as he talks. I hold my breath, knowing that this can go one of two ways and I'm terrified that he's about to break up with me. "I know that what I said yesterday was misunderstood. I didn't mean to upset you and I didn't mean to make you think that I'm planning on ever walking away from you, because I'm not. I... I say that I'm not sure about the future because I'm not, but it's not because I think that one of us is going to stop loving each other. Sometimes there's just outside forces."

"Like what?"

"Like death, Bea," He says quickly and immediately, I remember that his father is dead and I wonder if that's what this is all about. "My parents didn't think that anything bad would happen to their relationship either but that didn't matter when my dad had a heart attack and left my mom alone. You were right, that I live in the moment and that I only like to think about the day to day but that's only because I'm afraid that if I look into the future and I believe that maybe we'll have a happy ever after and then something happens... I don't know how my mom lived through it because I don't think that I could."

"I know that the future is scary, Vin," I assure him. "And so is death, or the possibility of death. But you can't live your life in fear like that or you're just going to get stuck in place. I was like that after what happened to Collin, just stuck in place in fear of something like that happening again but... you got me moving again."

"I know," He sighs. "About the first part of that, I know. That's what I came here to tell you. That I see a future with you and that it scares the shit out of me. That you scare the shit out of me. And I know where you were coming from yesterday because unlike me, you've gotten over your fear and what I said yesterday made you afraid that you were just going to get hurt again but I swear to god that I'm not going to hurt you, especially not like that Collin guy did. But here, I got you this."

He pulls a small box out of his jeans pocket and he hands it to me. He didn't have to get me anything, I'm just so relieved that he didn't break up with me that I could just wrap him in my arms right now and never let go. Still, I reach out and take the box from him just to see what's inside.

Opening it, I see that it's a very cheap-looking plastic ring and it makes me laugh because it's in an expensive jewelry box, so fancy that it almost looked like he was about to propose or something.