Chapter 41
forty-one
. . .
Acceptance
Present Day
desiree
Sunday, 5:45pm
I reluctantly pack up the last of my things, sad to have to be heading home and back to reality.
On the other hand, I have a new bloom in my chest in thinking about all that the future holds. Taven Carlisle, back in my life. For good this time, I do believe.
He drives me back in his Bronco, good old Eruption Green. He asks me why I’m laughing, and I tell him Inferno is a good name for a car, but I’m not sure I can be running around and calling this car Eruption. He says that’s all he’s ever called it, because it made him think of me.
I think about the term, and how it’s fitting as a way to describe the events of the past forty-eight hours. I think about what Lynda said, how she described the lifecycle of our crushes on one another, and how perfect the term “crush” really is. To compress to the point of distortion. And if that’s the case, I’m glad we made it to the end of the cycle, to an eruption of truths and realizations that are freeing us both from the maddening cycle of emotional torment we’ve been through. It’s been long enough.
If only the actual lifecycle of a crush could be so fast, just forty-eight hours. From intrigue and the initial flutters of excitement, the hope we feel in the start of something new. To capitalizing on moments together and making every second count. Then torturing ourselves with hunger and want that doesn’t seem to have an end, or the begging and bartering and grasping wrapped within our emotional desperation. The agonizing that can feel consuming, yet there’s no denying the way it can also make us feel beautifully alive.
If we’re really lucky, we can eventually land into that final phase—madly, deeply in love. How simple that would be if it all could be just forty-eight hours.
But no real transformation can be so fast, that much I know. Some things you just can’t rush. We can tell ourselves we prefer the comforts of what we know, thus avoiding the discomfort brought about by the chances we would take in facing change. That only steers you more off course, effectively prolonging the process, or worse—removing the possibility of reaching the end at all.
I share my thoughts with Taven, and he rubs his hand over his face, his other hand resting on the steering wheel. “I guess you’re right,” he says. “Just have to courageously ride along and let things run their course.”
I tell him that I like where it’s landed us.
He drops me off to my condo and walks me in, asking if he could stay the night. Just one last night with me, here in my home, then he’ll leave first thing in the morning. I say yes.
As we lie in my bed later, naked and sticky with sweat, he cradles me in his arms. He’s quiet, and I ask him what he’s thinking .
He kisses me. “I’m thinking about how you should get a tattoo for your mom, finally. Times ten.”
“Under my boob?” I say with a giggle.
“Anywhere you want,” he says.
I raise my arm in front of his chest. “How about right here?” I ask, running my finger along the underside of my forearm, between elbow and wrist. “Think I could pull it off? Can I be a tattoo girl? Melissa would be proud.”
He sits himself up against the pillows and headboard, scooting me up to look at him. “Desiree, you can be any girl you want to be, don’t you know that?”
“You mean woman.”
“You said girl,” he points out, and I run my fingers over some of his tattoos, explaining to him that I still sometimes struggle to believe that transformation.
He lifts my chin, and his dark eyes are serious on mine. “Dazzle, I may not know everything there is to know in life, but if there’s one thing I understand, it’s transformation.”
“Is that so?”
He nods. “It is.”
“And what, dare I ask, do you know about transformation?” I lay across his lap, cradling my head in my hand as I look up to him.
He traces a finger down the slope of my nose, over my lips. “I know that true transformation isn’t about changing into anything new, for one thing,” he says. His finger trails its way up to my cheekbone, then down to my jawline, then my neck and collarbone.
“So what’s it about, then, if it’s not changing to something new?”
He locks eyes with me, and I’m so in love with him in that moment, with his seriousness and the wisdom he’s trying to impart on me, wisdom he has hard earned. He says, “True transformation isn’t about changing—it’s about finally allowing yourself to be exactly who you’ve always been at the core.” He raises my hand and kisses it. “It’s the thing that I’ve loved about you from day one, Desiree. That you’ve always lived that way, even as a kid. Even though you might have been a little different from everyone else. You weren’t the loudmouth starved for attention, or the show-off bragging about the latest name brands in your closet. You didn’t feel the need to constantly be in a sports uniform to feel power and purpose, like I did for many years, and you never even bragged about the fact that you were valedictorian at your high school. You’ve always just been you, and I’m so incredibly in love with that uniqueness.”
I nod, eyes welling at the simplicity of his statement. “I’m incredibly in love with your uniqueness too,” I tell him, planting a kiss on his chest.
My whole life, I’ve always felt like I was plain, searching for some way to be significant or special. Yet here he was, all this time, in awe of the fact that I didn’t try and mold myself into anything to be exceptional in some way. I’ve just been myself. “Accept yourself and live within that truth,” I say with a smile. It’s something my therapist Ruth would say. How wise my Taven is.
“Sounds like another tattoo option,” he says with a grin.
“Too long.”
He shrugs. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. But you, Dazzle, are an assertive and strong woman ,” he says, cupping the underside of my face in a gentle hold. “You may not be as vocal and hotheaded as Melissa, or as reckless as I was for many years, but it doesn’t mean you’re any less fierce or fucking incredible. Got that?” I nod, loving the determination on his face.
I trail my fingers along the lettering of his ‘one day at a time’ tattoo. “I’m so happy you’re back,” I tell him. It’s a loaded statement, I mean it in more ways than one. I have a feeling he understands.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “In fact, I want to spend the rest of my life being here with you, showing you just how exceptional you are to me.”
“You don’t need to, I already know,” I insist .
“So you don’t need me to spend the rest of my life with you?”
I let out a giggle, a flutter in my chest at hearing him say that. I poke him in the shoulder. “You can’t be engaged to two different people in the same weekend,” I tell him.
He shrugs, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. “Fuck that. Yes I can.”
I kiss the smooth skin of his stomach, just below his chest. “You’re greedy.”
“Maybe,” he says. “But that wasn’t a proposal. Trust me when I say you’ll know it when it happens.”
“Promise?”
He opens his eyes and looks at me. “I promise it times ten, Dazzle.”