33. Amelie #2
They even told him about the time that I climbed onto the porch roof when I was nine and couldn’t figure out how to get down but I was too stubborn to ask for help so I slept up there. Kiaran quipped back that it sounded like I hadn’t changed much.
The sun was beginning to set and so was the panic of the night to come.
“I’m going to step out for a moment,” I called out as I approached the front door that was painted with a mural of our family in front of our home in Holleberg. “We should go soon,” I whispered to Kiaran and he agreed with a nod.
Stepping outside, I took a seat at the table to the right of the entryway.
Staring out at the sky, it was a perfect moment between night and day.
Towards the setting sun, a blend of orange, pink, and deep purple spread across the horizon and met with the deep blue into black where the moon was rising.
The metaphor wasn’t lost on me and it only made my stomach tie tighter into knots. We too, were in an inbetween, Kiaran and I. My birthday being the day of Kiaran’s ritual was all too fated and I hoped it meant good luck. Who dies on their birthday?
I knocked on the wooden table at the thought just as the front door creaked open and my mother appeared on the other end of it.
Her smile was a beacon to a home I always wished for.
“We’ve missed you, Amelie.” She covered my hand with hers. “And your father and I are so proud of you.”
The heavy weight on my heart felt like a constricting snake now.
It was so hard to hear that. My fate depended on tonight, as did Kiaran’s.
But with all the information between my mother and father’s families made me feel like everyone’s fate relied on me.
For one day, I just wanted to not be needed.
Even if it was the most uncomfortable day of my life, the unburdening might do my soul some good.
“I’ve missed you all too.”
She thumbed the top of my hand, her touch being such a comfort that I wanted to shrivel up right now so it was the last thing I ever felt.
“He’s a very good man.”
I met her gaze and for the first time I noticed how the gold in her eyes danced like mine.
“Kiaran?”
She nodded.
“Yeah..” I smiled at my own memories of him. “I like him.”
“How are you?” Her question gave me pause. I wasn’t sure she’d ever asked how I was. Not because she didn’t care before, she just didn’t have the capacity to.
“I’m okay,” I told her honestly. It was the best word I could come up with for how I was feeling.
“You’ve always been such a force, Amelie. Do you know that? It’s okay to admit you can’t take on everything and I think that boy in there might be the one who wants to help you.”
I gave her a half hearted smile, she was right. But I didn’t want her to know just how much was riding on me that he couldn’t, rather, wouldn’t help with.
“Please let him,” she added before the door opened, summoning the man in question.
“Sorry.” Kiaran shied away from the private moment my mother and I were having, “Do you need another minute?”
His face was fresh. I couldn’t imagine how long it’d been since he’d been surrounded by family.
One specifically that didn’t incur such a massive pressure as his own.
Seeing him in this light hurt, I wanted to stay here forever with him.
Let him feel what it was like to have nothing to your name but your family.
We were always just the Bloch family, within the four walls of our deteriorating home, it didn’t matter what was happening outside of it. As long as we had each other.
“No, we should go.”
My mother and I stood from the table, my brothers and father stepped out behind Kiaran. My family held Kiaran and I in their arms, random squeezes coming from all over the group hug. I let one tear fall down my cheek then hung my head back to keep from allowing anymore, my father caught me.
“I love you so much, my special girl. Don’t you ever stop dreaming,” he whispered to me.
And for some reason, in that moment, I prayed that everything would be alright.
Prayed to the God I wasn’t sure ever listened to me, but hoped for the first time he heard me.
I know it’s been awhile. It didn’t seem necessary to pray to you anymore.
Funny how we only bow to you when things are bad.
Do you hate that? Only hearing from your children when all they have left is to speak into your void?
Plaguing you with everything that’s going wrong for them?
Maybe your to-do list on fixing people’s problems is so long you just haven’t gotten to mine yet.
Either way, I’m sorry for not having faith in you.
I need you now more than ever, if that doesn’t tell you how dire this is, well…
I guess I’ll know you’ve never been listening.
Please let me have a tomorrow with Kiaran.
A forever. The prophecy clearly said that a love so powerful was created in your image long ago, that Earth was not ready for it so you separated it.
Made one heart, two halves of it and destined them to find each other.
As wild as it seems that I am one half of that whole, I feel it every time I’m near Kiaran.
The clandestine pull to one another, the colors that tie us together.
If your word is true, your prophetic path for me and Kiaran was carved into the stars, I beg for your guidance tonight.
Amen.