27. Christian
TWENTY-SEVEN
CHRISTIAN
My feet crunched against the grass and wet mud as I strutted through the graveyard with three bouquets in my hand.
I was ashamed to admit it’s been a while since I came to visit.
No matter how much fucking time passed, I never forget the moments Eomma was buried. No child could forget it even if they tried to. Death smelled different for everyone, to me its scent was similar to bloody streets and empty homes.
She didn’t believe in religion, but in her last moments she prayed.
Her stone was an empty grey structure with nothing but her name on it. She once told me that she started with her name, and she’d like to end with her name.
“I’m gonna talk to Mr. and Mrs. Mikael first, if that’s okay?” The trees swayed at a distance and the world quieted despite the graveyard being near the city. In some ways, she replied.
I took three steps away from Eomma and stood in front of their graves.
Laura Mikael, a loving wife, and mother.
Ralph Mikael, a compassionate husband, and father.
Sitting in the space between their graves, I put the flowers down. “Mrs. Mikael,” pink roses for Adelaide’s mother. The first time I met her was on the driveway of my home. She came to give Eomma something and found me crying. She got down to the floor next to me and brought me to her side. I thought she was weird at the time, but when she pulled out a Band-Aid from her purse and put on the wound. She told me that bruises were little reminders of growing up—when petals fall during fall season, they grow back when you take care of them . That was the first and last time I saw her and that on its own was enough to let me know how incredible she was. Adelaide once told me her mother liked pink roses because her father bought them for her every single day. Ralph Mikael wasn’t here to give her these roses, which is why I did.
For Adelaide’s father, the flower choice always changed but today it was lily of the valleys. I met him once when I was really young. It was at a Christmas dinner party, Adelaide was five, I was seven. Despite not knowing him, Mr. Mikael carried me over his shoulders while laughing amongst others. He introduced me to his favourite paintings, told me about the time when he was my age, and complimented my outfit. It was shorts that were big on me and a t-shirt Eomma didn’t want me wearing.
“I’ve always talked to you guys about how much I’ve hurt Adelaide, how much I’ve missed her.” The wind blew heavily and messed up my hair. “Mr. Mikael, I’m pretty fucking sure you’d kill me for what I’m about to ask you.”
Adelaide and I were getting married in twelve hours, but their lack of permission pulled at me which is why I was here at five in the morning, asking them for their permission.
Technically, I asked them months ago when I told them the plan was working. But it was never a formal request.
It was all very fucking confusing. Adelaide bathed in my thoughts, lived a full life in it, died, then resurrected herself all within the span of a few weeks. I spent years with pent up frustration, avoiding our past, but now it plagued me. I was sick from the reminders of her, but I looked for no cure. I woke up with her name on my tongue, I slept with her voice in my chest, and went through my day with hope of seeing her in my dreams. My existence was solely for her torture, and I wouldn’t have it any other fucking way.
I was either going fucking crazy or Adelaide put a spell on me.
Somehow, I didn’t mind either.
“With your permission, I’d like to ask for Adelaide’s hand in marriage.” The morning sun shone through the trees, rays of light bracketing over us. “My reasons aren’t pure. But your daughter is… Fuck . I don’t mean to swear, I’m having a hard fucking time putting all these feelings into words—forming her into an insignificant sentence—it’s impossible, Mr. and Mrs. Mikael. There’s no existing language in the world to describe your daughter. Adelaide is… she’s otherworldly , there’s no place in this universe with the promise of another her. If the sun disappeared one day, I wouldn’t fucking notice because she shines brighter than it—than all of us combined. She’s irresistible, confusing, and so fucking stubborn. But I bet you’d be proud, Mr. Mikael. Hell, I’m proud of her for it. Seven years ago, I binded her against a broken door and drifted her out into the ocean thinking she’d never return to me, but she did. She fought demons on her journey, dealt with the betrayal of a broken heart, yet not once did she hurt me. Not once does she look at me like I took everything away from her. I promise you that if you allow me— grant me the privilege of marrying your daughter, I promise now and to the end of time, I will protect her from harm and never hurt her.”
All the words biting into my chest poured out of me with broken teeth and limbs tied around each other.
Talking to them felt like I was talking to Adelaide. I couldn’t tell her how I felt, but they were here, and they listened, and they wouldn’t judge me for them.
The end of our time together was a year from now and it left a fucking bitter aftertaste.
My feelings collided with realization and anger and all I could do was wait until the bruises from the accident healed. If I touched them, they’d crumble beneath me and start bleeding and I didn’t have the fucking time to take care of it when I wanted to.
“Christian?”
Fucking great, she’s in my head. Invading every part of me. Showing up where I didn’t want to see her, confusing me, leaving me alone, and fuck fuck fuck. All I wanted was what I couldn’t have.
“If this is you playing a joke on me, it’s not funny.” I gestured irritably between Mr. and Mrs. Mikael with a pointed finger.
“Turn around.”
My tightened lips loosened a fraction.
There she stood; hair tightened in her usual bun. Blood rushed in all directions, cold then hot, pouring then clotting. On the outside, it looked like I didn’t care. But on the inside, I was making my way through growling thunder and crackling lightning—fighting my fucking way out of these sensations.
The memory of Adelaide tugged at my heartstrings but having her right in front of me was utterly captivating—irresistible and all-consuming.
I’d expect her to glare at me, instead there was a soft smile on her lips.
She was here.
She was really fucking here.
Please don’t tell me she fucking heard all of that.
Was this a sick way of telling me I had her parents’ permission?
And fucking hell, was there ever a time she didn’t look good? It was making it hard to think .
She stood there in her fucking flowy sundress billowing in the wind, no makeup on, staring down at me as if she didn’t hold my soul in one hand and my heart in the other.
She put her weight on one leg, the other crossed over it, causing her hip to jut out. It became an agonizing reminder of her curvy hips grinding down on my dick and making me taste her.
Adelaide Mikael was a sight for the blind and music to the deaf. She was an unapproachable, cataclysmic segment of this universe that disappeared with a single, careless touch. I was uncharacteristically enamoured by the woman in front of me. The woman who could yell at me for speaking with her parents, for acting like a complete dick to her, but she didn’t.
She simply walked over to my mother.
Adelaide bent down and pressed her palms to the foot of my mother’s grave and when she stood, she kissed the same hand. My chest fucking thumped . “I always wondered who kept visiting my parents,” she spoke quietly to Eomma . “I should’ve known it was your son.”
“Who else would come here?”
She turned her head to stare at me, questions running through her eyes at a million kilometres per second. “I thought it was Daniel.”
“My dad couldn’t give less of a fuck if he tried,” I said without thinking. She didn’t know my relationship with my father was strained.
Maybe if I told him about the letter, about everything, he would’ve left her and helped. Maybe we could’ve sewn the pieces of our tattered relationship over the years. Maybe it was my fault for letting him get so fucking far away from me and Eomma . When I was a kid, he used to sit on the ground of my room when I was mad at him. He’d wait for me to talk to him about my feelings and shit. Eomma would be the one to yell, to be strict, and get agitated. But he was patient with me. He always was. Which was why maybe I should’ve given him the benefit of the doubt, but did the man who left my mom alone in her last minutes of life deserve it?
He walked away from me the moment I asked for Moonshine. He never bat an eye, didn’t call, didn’t text, didn’t fucking care .
In the end, I didn’t give a fuck either.
One look at her face and I knew exactly what those furrowed brows were wondering. “We used to be close,” I brushed the mud off my pants as I got up to my feet. “Not so much anymore.”
“Where is he now?”
In Bali, probably fucking your aunt.
“Don’t know.”
There was an odd familiarity in the comfort that proceeded afterwards. Adelaide and I at our parents’ graves together.
“We’re getting married today,” she turned her body to face me and tucked a loose strand behind her ear. I never noticed how the lines beneath her eyes protruded heavily with stress or how she looked at me with such sadness.
You did that to her.
Sneaking my hands in the pocket of my jeans, I waited to see where this was going. “We are.”
“How do you feel?”
“You’re asking me how I feel?”
The utter softness amplifying from the light hitting her skin was unbelievable. I proposed this marriage. I put her in this situation. Yet she was asking me how I felt like it was the other way around. “How do you feel about it, Adelaide?”
“I asked you first.”
A gentle wind caressed Adelaide’s face. I never knew I could be jealous of fucking wind.
Hair fell over her face and without thinking, I brought my hand up and tenderly brushed it away. Her eyes caught mine in the moment and we stared at each other. My tingling fingers prodded to touch her again, to feel her silky waves blend through the space between my fingers.
Looking into Adelaide’s eyes was hypnotising. She was magnetic, pulling me into her orbit—eradicating me of my control and stripping me away so all that was left was vulnerability and an intimacy between us.
My layers were made of thick glass, yet Adelaide’s single touch broke them down. Here I was, openly touching her and savouring what should feel like forever. I looked down at her lips. Would kissing her still feel like sitting on my old rooftop under the stars? Or would it be different?
Adelaide was the last girl I kissed and hoped that she always would be.
She followed my movements, staring at my own lips before the chirp of an obnoxious bird snapped us out of our moment.
Clearing her throat as she took a step back.
Hands fisted into her plain white dress, forcing herself not to look at me. I hated when she did that. I wanted to fucking sew her eyes open and tie her onto my arm so all she’d ever see was me. “You can tell me, you know?”
Her lashes fluttered against the tops of her cheeks. “Tell you what?”
“What you’re feeling.” She turned her upper body away from me. The only evidence of her listening was her feet. “Your body does this thing… it shuts down. You fade away into whatever darkness going on in your head and you stay there despite you, you know? Shrinking into yourself.”
Wide eyes stared back at me. “You notice that?”
“I notice everything about you, Adelaide. You’re always in the back of my mind so when I see you, I see you. There’s no such thing as simply glancing in your direction. I’ve tried many times, trust me. But you exist and for as long as you exist, I’ll always notice you.”
After what felt like a minute, she snapped out of her trance. “Wow, I didn’t expect you to say that. Since you always look at me like you want to lock me up in Mrs. Trunchbull’s closet.”
A rough chuckle.
“You piss me off, that’s why.”
That seemed to get on her nerves. Her lips curved into a snarl.
“You notice everything about me, yet I piss you off? Unbelievable.” She huffs out a breath and walks past me with her two other bouquets—placing them down beside my own.
Sucking in my cheeks, I held back a smile. It seemed that Adelaide Mikael put a little too much meaning on the words coming out of my mouth.
She crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head back and breathed. Entranced, I watched her. The gaping heaves of her chest, the solidarity she caved into despite my eyes on her.
It was unnerving. How I felt it all so suddenly . Or was it even sudden? Did these feelings exist when she came back into my life, or did they renew themselves?
Swallowing the dryness in my throat, I walked up behind her and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Do you know how it feels having memories of you when I don’t give a shit about other people? When we were younger, you spoke your mind, you didn’t care that people talked about you like there was something wrong with you.” She stilled when my hands curved around her arms from behind. “Watching you now is frustrating. You open your mouth then close it, the gears in your brain shifting before you decide keeping quiet would be fucking better. You fist your hands in your clothes when the anxiety kicks in and you don’t tell anyone, you take it all in yourself—it’s fucking frustrating.”
“Sometimes what I have to say seems useless,” she said quietly.
“Nothing you could ever say is useless to me.” I turned her around, so she knew I meant it. “I’m not kidding, you can tell me every tiny detail about a fruit growing mold and drying up in the sun and it wouldn’t be useless.” Didn’t she get it? It was her voice I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear her yap, to see her explode with all the fucking brightness inside of her . She pressed it all too close to herself and blocked all the possible ways out. Her anxiety was this oversized baby who cries whenever she takes a step forward, pulling her back into its snotty body and squeezing the strength out of her.
My hands dropped when she pulled away. The more she did that, the more I wanted to pull her back in. She was good at keeping her distance and pretending like she didn’t want me when it was clear as fucking day that she did.
“You give me whiplash, Christian.”
“What? How ?”
“You’re different one minute, saying crude things, then the next you’re this .” She gestured erratically with both her hands. I wanted to tell her I was confused too. Nothing I did made sense anymore. She was there and my brain fused and there was no existing wire to connect it back to rationality.
“Does it bother you?” I asked.
“A little bit,” Adelaide ran a smooth hand down her hair and averted her gaze to look at the bee buzzing around the flowers. “No one in my life has ever noticed this about me. You’re like a guy with a shovel. It’s like…” She glanced up. “I’m at the beach—screaming my heart out—then you’re there, digging yourself out of the sand like you escaped prison or something and you just stand there watching me.”
Her cheeks flushed with the confession.
“I unnerve you,” I said after a minute.
“No, you terrify me. I’m trying my best to keep it together and make it through today, but it won’t be possible when you’re so wishy-washy.”
“Do you want me to be mean then? Ignore you? Degrade you?”
“I’d rather you didn’t acknowledge me at all.” She rubbed her shoulder with the opposite hand. She didn’t mean it.
“You’re the one who said we were friends.” There had to be a way to get a hold of the situation again.
So fucking resigned . She said, “It’s my mistake. You were right. We can never be friends, Christian.”
We could if we tried. That was the only option we had, the other was ignoring each other and I didn’t want that. She finally spoke to me, and I wanted to hear more, have conversations in the early morning and late at night. If she pushed me away…
I was desperate to have her near in whatever way possible. Even if being friends was the only option.
“We haven’t even tried being friends.”
“Because I know it’ll lead to more heartbreak, Christian.”
My hands balled into fists. “How? Did the scenarios you came up with in the last five minutes tell you that? The thoughts you think in your brain aren’t reality. You don’t get to decide if a friendship between us won’t work.” I was so sick of her coming up with stupid conclusions on her own.
“Do you even want that? For us to be friends?”
I didn’t reply. What was the point in telling her the truth when she’s come up with answers all on her fucking own?
Timid and spiteful and so fucking demanding, “Did you ask me before you decided to break up with me?”
“You’re twenty-five, Adelaide. Don’t you think it’s time to grow up?”
“That’s funny coming from you, Christian .” She spat out, “Care to explain the fucking tattoo on your chest that’s the shape of my birthmark and in the exact same place as mine?”
Clenching my jaw, “We definitely can’t be friends.”
Her mouth parted like she didn’t expect me to say that.
Adelaide was invasive and deprived me of my control and patience.
There was only so much of it I could handle before she dug herself under my skin and wrapped my heart around her.
Some of us carried the truths we were too afraid to tell anyone. Not because of the repercussions, but because the truth could lead somewhere beautiful, and we didn’t have the luxury for gentility.
My mother’s womb carried the sins of unborn children, how could I let go of that and live my life like nothing happened? When I allowed myself to feel for Adelaide, I forgot how her blood ran through my veins—the responsibility for retribution.
Which is why when she strutted away from me, shoulders slumped and without a goodbye, I couldn’t stop her even when my limbs reached for her.
It was one or the other and I worked too fucking hard for too fucking long to pick myself over anger.