Chapter Thirty-Two
Istood frozen, staring down at Henry, at the open box, at the largest oval clean cut diamond that I had ever seen in my life. If he had asked me this very question this morning, if he had pulled out this very ring in my loved-up state, there would have been no hesitation.
But now, as I took in the reality of my surroundings, I thought it was a joke.
It was like Henry, this whole weekend, this elaborate story that he had just told me had all been nothing but a big joke.
Someone was hiding somewhere in this boat ready to pop out and embarrass me, to see how far that I would go, for love.
For Henry, for the full life that I had already pictured us together with and the very one that he was offering me right now.
Henry’s lips were moving but the world around me had fallen silent. I wanted to step back away from him, not into him. But my feet wouldn’t move, I felt myself begin to sway.
“A drink,” I finally forced the words out of my mouth, “I need a drink.” The man that I thought was the man of my dreams was standing in front of me with the most divine piece of jewelry I had ever seen in my life.
This was far from how I ever pictured the moment that a man would be kneeling down in front of me, holding something incredibly shiny and the first words that came out of my mouth was to ask for a drink.
Henry scurried to his feet. I felt myself sway again, the vision of the roses, the vast ocean in front of me began to blur.
Henry’s hands gripped either side of my waist as he pulled me down, to a seat he had pulled out behind me, handing me a glass of water as I felt my body relax into the support beneath me.
Henry just stood there beside me, watching me take every single slow sip of the glass of water, until I thanked him, and he took the glass away.
Reforming his position on one knee in front of me. This time I was sitting down.
“Are you okay?” he said, holding my gaze, this time reaching for my hand. The ring now nowhere to be seen. I nodded.
“I knew that this would come as a shock. We’ve only known each other a couple of weeks.
But you now know everything there is to know about me.
There is nothing left to hide. I know that us getting engaged comes as a shock.
The fastness of this is a perfect concoction for judgement and for rumors.
But that’s because the reality is that we are two people that the majority will never be able to understand.
But we were meant to meet. We are two people that are destined to be together.
This love, this connection between us, it is greater than anything I thought that I would get to experience in this life.
” He gulped, squeezing my hand tighter as I finally began to feel again.
The warmth of his hand, the world inside his eyes. The flutter in my heart.
“When I presented that rose to you, it wasn’t just so that we could officially date.
I knew in that moment that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.
And I hope that I get to remind you of that every single day.
I know that I’m not perfect. I know that after everything that I have told you, there’s somethings that you’re going to need to come to terms with.
But if you do, if you can. I want this life with you, Molly.
I want every morning, every night to end and begin with you, so what do you say… Will you marry me?”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. “I… I…” Goddamn it, Molly, say something, anything. This moment is meant to be one of the best moments of your whole entire life.
As I struggled to say anything, I watched Henry’s shoulders sink and his eyes flickered away from mine, breaking what I thought was the best place in the whole entire world… in his eyes.
He stood up as he shook his head, running his fingers through his hair as his brow furrowed.
It was the very look of his that completely consumed me.
The look of confusion, of hurt, of failure and of disappointment all at once.
It was the expressed same feeling we both shared.
That nothing we could ever be or do would ever be enough.
But it was the same look, same feeling that the two of us were so goddamn good at burying down deep inside of us, pretending that it didn’t exist, covering it with something shinier.
It was the very same feeling that I wanted to console.
“I… I…” I tried to force something out of my mouth again, but he interrupted me.
“I’m so sorry, Molly. This, all of this, I really wanted this to be the most romantic moment ever. And now I can see that I have just done all of this, so, so wrong.”
“No, no it’s not,” I consoled him as he looked back up at me, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. He did have one thing right. This would be a moment that I knew that I would never forget.
“I just have questions that all…” I said.
“Oh… questions are good. Really good. Please ask me anything that you want to know.”
I looked back behind me towards the empty chair and Henry pulled it from the table, placing it in front of me as he took a seat.
“I want to know, this marriage, this life that you want to have with me. This ring,” I choked, looking at the sparkling diamond that was still held in the palm of Henry’s hand.
“I just want to know specifically what it is that you envision for us. I know that it does feel like we are meant to be together, and please know that is not what I am questioning right now, not at all. It’s just a life together, forever.
You’re not stupid for asking it, for presenting me with this.
Because I’ve felt it, I’ve thought about it.
But the details of it, that’s something that we haven’t spoken about. ”
There were a couple of things that Henry and I had spoken about.
I knew that he was like me and the two of us didn’t want any children, and I was almost certain that it was our own childhoods that had cemented that into our adult brains.
I knew that he had made me a part of his business and he wanted to mesh our working lives together, which really did make sense for our creative business minds…
but I wanted to know what the idea of our lives together really looked like for him, behind his dazzling eyes.
A sweet smile took over his face as his shoulders relaxed, leaning back in his chair. “I could tell you exactly how I imagine our lives together,” he said. “The movie of what we could be has played out in my mind every day over the past couple of weeks… the possibility of what we could be.”
“I want to know exactly what that possibility is…” I sighed.
Henry reached out and touched the side of my face, his thumb gently caressing my cheek. With everything that he had told me, I was worried that his touch would no longer soothe me but instead make me flinch. But I still felt the same relaxation, the same very tingles underneath his touch.
“Being married to you, means waking up every single day making one more coffee. Seeing your beautiful eyes open when you smell the beans. Being married to you is a life that is filled with more joy through all the little things that we get to share together. Coffee in the morning, kisses before work, our bodies pressed up against each other in the shower at the end of the day. It’s working towards the common goal of business and creation because no one else can.
It’s being able to take a holiday together wherever we want, to escape the moments of monotony, when we’ve had enough, and to invigorate ourselves in a new culture.
A marriage to you, means being held accountable, knowing and holding our shared boundaries between each other.
It’s constantly being able to watch you grow and uncover so many more layers that I cannot wait to see, to feel, to be immersed in.
A marriage and a commitment to you means freedom.
A freedom of the things that I had felt drowned by within myself, knowing that with you our container and space is always honest and open.
A marriage and life with you, is feeling challenged of new ways to always make you smile, to light you up, to hear you moan, to fill you with pleasure.
Being married to you, is to step forward into our future, to leave the past behind and to live the rest of the life that we have together.
It’s…” I held my fingers to his lips, cutting his speech off mid-sentence, “Shh…” I whispered.
Henry had the power to murder, to take the last breath out of someone’s body, and then to grace me with the most poetic words of our imagined future together.
He had done things that if anyone else had told me the same stories, I would be running to the police.
But this was Henry, and I would forgive him.
I had to forgive him. Forgiving him meant life, at least for now.
Forgiving him meant I got everything I wanted.
Forgiving him meant I would not become a statue at the bottom of the sea or another vision of AI in his mansion.
I don’t know when I would truly be able to forgive him.
But I knew that I had to. I would love him.
Because I could love him. Because I loved him.
Because even with this newfound truth, the side of him that he himself said was not in the past. I could learn to love that too.
Because I had to. Because this was all a part of the game.
Because this is how life worked. This was the epitome of everything that Elyse had been trying to tell me, my whole life.
You can have your cake, but you can’t eat it too.
You can have everything that you want but not all at once.
Everything is hard, Molly; you just have to choose your hard.
If this was as hard as things got, knowing the goodness that was here for me. This is what I chose, this was my hard.
“Of course I’ll marry you, Henry.” The words came flooding out of my mouth at the same time tears fell from my cheeks.