Chapter 36 MAEVYN #2
I offer a thin-lipped smile, my appetite for the food West just placed in front of me completely gone. “There’s all sorts of dancing at the club, but I’m mostly on the pole.”
“I hear that’s actually quite a bit harder than it looks,” Chev says, reaching for her coffee mug. “Takes a lot of muscle.”
I feel my stomach relax from the tension that was wound tight. From the minute we walked in, Westley’s parents have been warm and welcoming, their house full of love and honour for their family. It’s the complete opposite of what I had growing up.
“It definitely keeps me strong,” I smile as I feel a large palm glide over my thigh, giving a gentle squeeze.
“Where was it you two met?” Chris asks.
“Outside of a coffee shop, and then it turned out we were neighbours,” I say, smiling over at West, finding his attention already on me.
Chev gasps, touching a hand to her heart. “What a small world! Are you new to Heart City?”
“Yes. Aurora and I have always moved quite a bit, actually, but we decided to settle in Heart City for her scholarship.”
Chris blows into his mug. “Where have you lived before here?”
“All over Australia. We started in Port Yarra, though.”
“Is that where the rest of your family is?”
“My parents, yes, but we don’t have anything to do with them.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” Chev’s eyes turn soft with understanding.
“It’s for the best. I left home when I was young. They weren’t the kind of parents I can see you two are.”
“Christopher didn’t grow up with much of a relationship with his parents either,” Chev says.
“My dad took off when I was five, and when I was thirty-one, he passed away. That’s when my brother and I learnt that my father wasn’t quite the picture our mother had painted him to be.
She had passed a few years before him, so we couldn’t get further answers from her, but his passing put us in touch with a whole bunch of family members in Barbados. ”
“So you never got to know your dad?” I ask.
“Not in his life.” Chris shakes his head. “I’ve learnt a lot since his passing.”
“Was that hard? Knowing your mum kept you from knowing him?”
“I had a lot of anger and confusion at first. Sadness for what I had lost. Shame for carrying the wrong impression about my father for so long without pushing for more. But we were able to learn a lot from my relatives. My dad left us a letter in his will, admitting that he was partly to blame for pushing our mother away. He was young and felt like he’d been chained to a life he didn’t pick before he even realised he was stuck in it.
He tried to come back quite a few years later, and my mother told him we were doing fine, so he decided he didn’t want to disrupt our life.
That’s why we’re very open in our family.
We’re vocal about what we want for ourselves, we don’t shy away from tough conversations, and we get comfortable with making mistakes and apologising if need be. ”
Chris’s words hit harder than I expected. The bravery to be vulnerable, to learn from your mistakes. I can see how much Westley takes after him. There’s something so strong about his softness.
“That’s something Westley has helped me with, too. Being louder and more assertive with letting my inside thoughts be outside ones.”
Chev lays a hand over Westley’s, smiling proudly.
“How is your hand feeling, Chris?” I ask, remembering his recent injury.
“Right as rain.” He holds it up, wiggling his fingers. “It was a bit tender for a week or so, but I’m back to work now. Thank you.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a photographer.”
I look around at all the walls covered in family photos. “Did you take all these?”
Chris nods. “I rarely find a moment where I don’t have a camera in reach.”
“We try to stop and take photos as much as we can, too,” I say, smiling down at my daughter. “Collecting all the memories.”
“The food is delicious,” Aurora says, helping herself to another pancake.
“Thank you, dear.”
“Do you enjoy cooking?” I ask. She feels like one of those mums who says the secret ingredient to all good food is love.
“Oh, I love to cook. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” Chev winks at Aurora.
“Hope you love takeout,” I quip.
I don’t realise the implication until West looks at me the way he does. So many words unspoken, but eyes that convey them all. I said love. I admitted that his heart is something I’m even considering finding a way to.
“I do.”
“Very outdated notion anyway.” Chev pours herself and Chris some juice as she shakes her head. “Men should be getting to our hearts through the kitchen.”
“Now, we’ve talked about this, and we both agree, for our health, I shouldn’t cook.”
“A gesture every now and then is nice.”
Aurora and I chuckle at their antics while West shakes his head.
I’ve never met anyone’s parents before. I had nothing to compare to coming into this, apart from what I’d always known growing up.
There were no home-cooked meals. Instead, it was eating beans cold from a can. Sitting around the table was replaced with my parents and their friends passed out on top of it, face down in a pile of powder.
It was days of feeling unwanted and unworthy when I was around other kids at school who had parents who dropped them off with a kiss on the cheek.
It was feeling unsafe and confused when I got home at night to strange people in our house; loud and leering.
Not understanding why my parents didn’t care more about me.
Did they even like me? Every time my hope would die almost to the point of no return, my mother would have one of those moments where she decided she wanted to get clean again.
It would last a few months, enough for me to forget the bad times, long enough to string me along for a different future, hanging my dreams on the end of a hook, only for the cycle to snatch her back again.
For so long, the only family I’ve ever known is the one I made with Aurora.
***
I accept another dish from Chev, drying it with a tea towel before placing it on the bench. We watch in silence through the kitchen window overlooking the backyard where Chris, Westley, and Aurora stand beside the shed. Westley is inspecting a set of shelves.
“How long have you and Chris been together?” I ask.
“Feels like a lifetime.” Chev wears a gentle smile as she stares out the window. “We dated in high school. He was my first love. But life decided we weren’t ready for each other at that time. We stayed friends, dated other people. In fact, I was engaged to someone else.”
“Really?” I accept the washed mug she offers me. “And your engagement fell through?”
“I called it off,” Chev says. “It was about five years after Chris and I had split. I was planning my wedding, meeting with potential photographers, and Chris had just started working with the business I wanted to use.”
I turn, leaning my back against the bench, giving her my full attention.
“We got to talking and—” She stops, a dreamy sigh pushing from her lips.
“The chemistry was still so undeniable between us. He was nothing like the man I was going to marry, who was very dutiful and sensible. Christopher was fun and sweet. He had a wonderful way of making me laugh. I realised that’s what I wanted for the rest of my life—laughter. ”
“So how did you break it off with the other guy?”
“I was honest with him. Told him I cared for him, but I couldn’t deny that my heart belonged to another, and in all the years that had passed, I didn’t think it had ever stopped.”
I’ve never been a person to find myself swept up in love, but I think my heart may be swooning hearing the way Chev talks about her husband. “Sounds like you were meant to be all along.”
“Yep. Just had to wait for the stars to align.”
Her words make my pulse stutter. “The stars?”
“The stars being Chris and me. It’s like when anything in life goes right, all the right people are in the right place, wanting the same things at the same time… It all feels so right that there’s no way it wasn’t meant to be.”
It sounds so simple when she puts it like that. So easy and obvious. That perfect picture she creates in my head. And all my mind does is float straight back to Westley.
“He’s good with her,” Chev says, drying her hands over her apron.
My thoughts scatter as I rejoin the present and follow where Chev watches. Aurora laughs up at West, head thrown back while he grins at her, locking an arm around her shoulder. She leans into him, so slightly, but enough that I can see it from here.
“He’s really good to us. My daughter is definitely a little smitten.”
“And you?”
I look her straight in the eyes when I spill the truth that’s been growing over the last few months. “I think he’s becoming someone I could want for the rest of my life.” I chew on my lip as I look back out the window. “I’ve never had that kind of feeling before, or let someone in like this.”
“You never know what you’re looking for until you open your eyes to all the possibilities.” She lays a hand against my cheek. “Be brave, darling girl.”
If you want something, chase it.
If you want better, change the stars.
To be found… stop hiding.