The List: One Year, One Adventure ✔️

Chapter 21: Sunsets & Promises

Dean

God, she looked breathtaking. Part of me wished that there was a way that my heart and my head could see her as just a regular girl, that way I wouldn't feel like I couldn't breathe each time I laid my eyes on her. Every minute spent with her reminded me how selfish I had been over the last seven years, indulging my desire for non-committment and bountiful random sex. Nothing I ever felt with any of those girls physically compared to how I felt when I was next to her. It was like a constant wave of electric sparks that shot from my brain and clenched my heart, before they made their way down to every other pleasure center of my body.

When her eyes lifted up to rest on my face and she reminded me of my promises of a sunset, all I wanted to do was promise her everything I had to give and more. The sunset had all along been my plan to gauge if the time was right to move forward in my plans to propose to her in Thailand.

Since the day I met Ari, I had known about her desire to see Thailand again. Her dad had taken her when she was ten years old and on her memory board in her painting nook, were pictures upon pictures of her with the local kids in the different villages she visited. Her dad had taken a two week trip there in order to help build a well, as part of a humanitarian mission trip that several of his fellow volunteer first responder friends had organized.

She had photos of her hugging baby elephants at a local elephant sanctuary and pictures of her learning to stand on a surfboard at the local beach. She had one photo of her on the shoulders of a guy who looked eerily similar to her dad. I remember one day asking her who the gentleman was in the photo, because he didn't look like all the other photos of Ari's dad, James. Her eyes got teary and she hesitated for a few minutes. Going and retrieving the picture off her memory board and lightly running her finger over his face.

For a while she just stood perfectly still, the small tear drops falling just to the edge of the curled up picture. She had told me that the man in the picture was her dad's younger brother, Johnny. Johnny had stepped in and helped her dad raise her after Ari's mother left, until a bitter argument between him and her dad ensued around five months after that photo was taken.

I remember standing by her, with my arm lightly stroking hers and asking her why looking at his picture was so sad. Did the argument drive him away and Ari never reconciled, even after James' death? She explained to me that there was never a chance for a reconciliation between the brothers, because Johnny had taken a job in New York City as a firefighter. Less than six months into the job Johnny responded to large structural collapse call and never made it home.

Ari always said that she needed to someday go back to Thailand, because that was the last place that her family was ever really truly whole. When we planned the adventure, I knew that Thailand would be my gift to her and since being with her, I knew it was the place where I would ask her the most important question of my life and then begin to make our own family whole.

With only a few more days left in Miami before we ventured off for Thailand, I knew that tonight I needed to see exactly where Ari's head was in this relationship. Six years of secret love for each other behind us, it was time to start our future.

We walked hand in hand down to the beach, where I had arranged for the hotel to set us up with our own private beach cabana. The curtains hanging down from the cabana swayed slightly in the breeze. The plush white cushions on the platform begged for someone to stretch out on them. Chilling near the platform was a metal ice bucket with a bottle of champagne, while two glasses sat on a silver tray on the ledge of the cushioned platform.

The sand beneath our feet displayed an almost white sheen as the sunlight began to slowly drift, signaling the impending sunset. The turquoise water had begun to darken with the loss of light and a soft hints of red and orange began to slither across the cloudy sky. I pulled her further along the beach and turned towards her, grasping her body and lifting it into my strong arms.