Chapter Twenty-Two
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Iverson
I hover dangerously close to the edge of a ravine there is no coming back from. On the precipice, I wonder if I’m not already too far gone. Is there any saving things now? Or will my future remain bleak no matter what I choose?
I stare, unseeing, into the abyss of potential, then shrug.
Flag it.
My stomach will forgive me, even if Maple may not.
I eat another bite from the massive bucket of maple pecan ice cream balanced between my legs, groaning despondently as the warm, woodsy flavor cascades across my taste buds. “This is delicious,” I moan.
“You should stop eating that,” Birch tells me. Again.
“You should stop eating it,” I grumble. I hug the frigid plastic closer to me, hovering over it as I shove my rather too-large spoon deep into its depths.
“This is petrifying,” he mumbles, slashing a rag-holding hand out lightning fast to dab up a drop of melted ice cream from the counter before me. I sneer at him.
“Go somewhere else if you don’t like it,” I suggest through a mouthful of buttery bellyache.
“And leave you here, with all my stuff?” he asks, horrified.
“I think, technically speaking, it’s actually my stuff.” Not that I care all that much. I have sobbing to do. Ice cream to eat. Arguing over the semantics of ownership falls low on my priority list.
Birch doesn’t feel the argument is deserving of his attention either, apparently.
Oh well. Fine by me. I can focus on the things that really matter in life—eating my feelings, even if I can’t parse the flagging things out.
I spent hours alternating meditation, journaling, and running today.
Then, when none of them were working on their own, I started combining things.
Journaling with my eyes closed while I thought meditative thoughts.
Journaling while I ran a mile. Running that same mile with my eyes shut, trying to clear my mind of the increasing suckitude of my situation.
Then, in a last-ditch effort to not be a massive loser, I tried all three at once.
What did I surmise from this experience?
Exactly zero things about my own inner workings.
I am useless, and I should die. Or maybe that’s dramatic. Maybe I’m only mostly useless, and I deserve a horrible stomachache instead of death. In the end, both result in me alone and in pain. An outer representation of the few emotions I have been able to deduce.
Gold stars for me. Yippie. I can stick them to my red flags and pretend they mean something.
I shovel more ice cream into my mouth. It tastes of salty tears and candied pecans.
“I never knew you were so dramatic,” Birch huffs.
“That’s because you’re an idiot,” I reply. “Just like me. Just like all men everywhere. We’re all doomed.”
Footsteps sound behind me, and Birch sighs in relief. “Thank heavens you’re here,” he says. “He’s getting a little too pathetic for my liking, and he’s over halfway through his bucket. That was supposed to last a month.”
“Go away, Birch,” a soft, beautiful, sweet, flagging lovely voice says at my back. A small, warm hand lands between my shoulder blades and slides up, over my neck and into my hair. “Ivy?”
At the sound of my name in her soft, beautiful, sweet, flagging lovely voice, I crumple. What little decorum I’d managed to hold onto disappears, and I become nothing more than the feelings I’ve been running from.
“Maple,” I croak, leaning into her hand. I relish in her touch, unsure when it will end and unsure if, when it does, I will ever get it back. “Rosy Maple, I’m so sorry.”
“Hush,” she says. “At least until Birch gets the flag out of the kitchen.”
“I’m not leaving this kitchen,” Birch tells her. “The two of you can find somewhere else for Ivy to have his existential crisis. I told you on the phone, I need him out of here, and I also told you the consequences if you don’t fix this mess.”
“Birch,” she grits.
“Maple,” he retorts.
In the ensuing silence, I scrape a layer of ice cream with my spoon and push it past rolling tears to punish my stomach.
“Fine,” Maple hisses after I’ve swallowed and gone digging for more pain. “You’re so annoying.”
“Leave the bucket,” Birch replies. “The last thing we need is spoiling dairy hiding in crevices throughout the house.”
“You can have your stupid bucket. Whatever.”
I protest this soundly. No, he cannot have his stupid bucket. It’s my stupid bucket, and I need it to make my physical form feel as bad as my mental one.
“I’ll get you a new bucket,” Maple promises soothingly. “A bigger bucket. A better one, too. It’ll be blue and full of cherry chocolate nut truffle ice cream instead of whatever swill Birch made. Doesn’t that sound nice? Cherry chocolate nut truffle? Your favorite?”
That sounds exceedingly nice, which is how I know I cannot take this deal. I don’t deserve anything nice. I deserve to feel miserable.
However.
Maple desires me to give up my bucket, and I would rather perish than deny her anything within my power to give her. I’m already depriving her of so much right now. If she wants my bucket, she can have my bucket.
“Please don’t give it to Birch,” I request, carefully spinning on my barstool to allow her access to the massive plastic tub.
I lose her hand in my hair in the process, and the loss of it burns so acutely in this moment that I wonder if I might not be literally on fire.
Birch doesn’t reach for the extinguisher mounted on the wall next to the pantry, though, so I must not be. Wild, that.
“I won’t give your ice cream to Birch,” Maple promises, much to the man’s displeasure.
“I’m just going to scoot it into the freezer, then we can go somewhere else to talk, okay?
” She’s talking to me as if I’m a child.
Or a time bomb. Same thing, really, and I’m not even sure she’s wrong for it.
Salt still coats my cheeks, and when my bucket is taken away from me, I cling to my massive spoon , clutching the sticky metal to my chest.
When she returns, I am a very brave boy and meet her head on, staring forlornly at her sapphire blue eyes. “Can I take my spoon?” I ask.
Her lips purse in worry, but she nods, and I’m grateful for it.
I follow the swish of her toffee dress out of the kitchen, through an old servant’s passage, and down a hallway. Instead of going upstairs like I expect, she turns and leads me to the library—a massive, cozy room with more comfort than books. We sink into a lush blue sofa.
Maple shifts until her thigh presses along the full length of mine and wraps her arms around my middle, shoving into my space like she hasn’t a care at all about the drying dairy on my shirt.
“Okay,” she says. “Now that we’re away from the brat, let’s talk about what’s got you so upset. Birch said you were attempting another reflection?”
“‘Attempting’ is correct,” I answer morosely, then wince.
“I’m sorry, Maple. I really am. I’m no closer to finding an answer for my actions now than I was when I did them.
I just…” My fingers convulse around my spoon in my lap, and she squeezes her arms around my waist in encouragement.
“I just wanted to marry you,” I whisper.
“I wanted it so bad. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life, and so I did it.
I married you. I don’t–I don’t know why I did it that way.
I know the reasons I told myself—that I’d surprise you.
That you’d love it. That the Flag Day of it all would be romantic.
And then the reality was exactly what I thought, for a minute, anyway, before you…
” I trail off, unable to say it. Not now, when I’m feeling so raw.
“Before I left,” she finishes for me, softening the blow with a kiss on my chest.
“Yeah,” I croak. “That.”
She hums low in her throat. Then, gently, she asks, “Did you think I would have said no? From the beginning, when you first decided that you wanted to marry me?”
I make myself sit with her question, even as it tears through me. Did I think she’d say no? Did I think that if I got down on one knee with a ring and a question, her answer would be anything but yes?
“I don’t know.”
Quietly, she pushes, “Were you scared that I might?”
I flinch, trying to get away from the thought, but Maple holds me steady.
Her head tilts up, and her warm breath glides against my neck as her onslaught continues, a soft and terrible pull on my soul.
“Did you not ask because you were scared, Ivy? Did you think I didn’t love you just as much as you do me?
Did you think I’d reject you? Did you take away my choice because you were afraid my choice wouldn’t be you? ”
I drop my spoon and twist, clutching and falling until I cover her, and there’s nowhere for her to go. She lies beneath me without protest and runs her hands up my back and into my hair.
I shove my face into her neck. “You can’t reject me,” I proclaim desperately. “You can’t.”
Not unkindly, she replies, “And that’s the problem, Iverson. I can’t. But wouldn’t it be so much better if I could, and chose not to?”
“Please don’t,” I plead. “Please, please don’t.” I whisper the words again and again, a benediction laid over her skin like a prayer.
“Ask me, Ivy.”
“Please,” I repeat. “Please, please, please, please, please. Please, don’t.”
“Ask me,” she orders, twisting my hair in her fingers.
My tears wet her neck.
I can’t do it.
I won’t do it.
I can’t do it.
“Ivy,” she implores. “Ask me. Let me choose.”
I whimper.
“Let me choose.”
Skin electric, I rise over her, digging my elbows into the couch by her head. Droplets fall from my eyes to her flushed cheeks. Her beautiful blue eyes peering up at me, begging for a question.
My heart staggers in my chest, and I give her what she wants, unable to withhold when it’s within my power to give.
“Maple Mae Valor.” I rip the words from a dark, petrified burrow inside of me.
“I love you so much. I love you so, so, so, so much. Too much, maybe. I can’t let you go.
I can’t let you get away from me. I–I need you.
Please say yes. Please don’t make me ask you this question, and then tell me no.
Please, please, please say that you’ll marry me.
Please say that you’ll be my wife forever, that you’ll come home to me forever—that you’ll love me forever.
Please.” I take a stuttering breath, rest my forehead on hers, and ask the question.
“Will you marry me, my rosy Maple? Will you take away my fears and leave behind only joy?” My eyes squeeze shut, and I force them back open, locking my gaze on hers.
I will face this. For her. With her. Together, I can do this.
With a fortifying breath, I ask my final question, laying my heart out for her to stomp on—or to love. “Will you choose me?”
She opens her mouth to answer, and I brace myself.