Chapter Thirty-Six
Thirty-Six
My new car reeked of stale cigarettes, and I sniffed myself to make sure it hadn’t rubbed off on me.
It had.
This wasn’t a great start to my plan, which had taken a full week to put into motion. Walela had to wait until she knew for sure there was a day when Danuwoa was planning to stay home on a weekend. The text came last night, and she was babysitting for a neighbor now, so it was just going to be Danuwoa and me in the house when I hoped to lay it all out on the table. I’d taken two allergy pills before heading over to make sure nothing got in the way of this conversation.
I mustered up the courage to get out of the car and knock on his door. The last time I’d been here, I was an invited guest—now I wasn’t sure if he would even let me in.
I knocked and waited.
And waited.
I knocked again and said, “Danuwoa, I know you’re home. Please open the door. You deserve an apology and more, and you deserve to have it said to your face.”
I heard a faint meow on the other side and waited with my heart in my throat for minutes or hours, I couldn’t tell.
Finally, I heard the lock click, and the door opened. I gasped. My soul had been parched from Danuwoa’s absence in my life for the past few weeks. He stood in the doorway with his gorgeous hair flowing down, wearing his old Peter Gabriel T-shirt and a pair of jeans, barefoot. Patches wove around his ankles in support.
“Osiyo,” he said curtly and nodded his head.
“Chokma,” I said with an awkward wave.
Now that I was standing in front of him, like with Auntie, the ability to communicate left me entirely.
“What do you want?” Danuwoa crossed his arms over Peter Gabriel’s face in front of his chest.
“Danuwoa…I’m so sorry about everything.”
He just stared at me, his face hard and unyielding. I deserved it.
“I don’t even know what to say…” I faltered but plowed ahead. “I’m so embarrassed. I hurt you and I told so many lies.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I could never have gotten a job like that just being me. The Ember who unclogged toilets at Bobby Dean’s. I had to drop out of school, and I was embarrassed by being…well…just me. I wanted to be someone more, someone better.”
“I don’t give a shit that you lied to get the job, I care that you lied to me even after I asked you not to. You never told me anything real . I can’t trust that anything you say to me is the truth. I wanted to know you.” His voice was raw with emotion.
“Everything that mattered between us was real, and you do know me,” I offered weakly. God, I cringed hearing myself.
His disappointed stare pierced me.
“Goodbye, Ember.”
He slammed the door in my face.
I ripped my hands through my hair. This went south so fast, but I couldn’t end it like this. Before I knew it, I was pacing in front of his town house, trying to think of a way to fix this situation I kept messing up.
I ran back to the door and knocked, pleading for him to open it again.
“Danuwoa, I’m so sorry. Please just talk to me.”
“Go away, Ember,” he said through the door.
“Wait!” I placed my palm on the door as if I could still Danuwoa from moving away on the other side. “I have been an idiot. I made so many terrible decisions, and the worst was never trusting you. I was so scared I’d ruin your life and make you lose your job that I ended up losing you instead. You have every right to be angry with me.”
I was met with silence, but I could feel Danuwoa still there, waiting. I had to do something to get him to talk to me. This couldn’t be it.
I had made many dumb decisions in the last couple of months, but what I did next might take the cake. I started singing Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” like in the movie Say Anything . I had no boom box, but I had a man who loved Peter Gabriel on the other side of the door, and I had to get him to talk to me.
I was not a talented singer at all, but I kept going, singing the only part of the song I knew, which was the chorus. I repeated the part about the light and the heat four times before he opened the door again, this time laughing, giving me the first sliver of hope.
“I’m so sorry. I’m not a good singer, and all I do is screw things up where you’re concerned, and you deserved so much better than how I treated you. You’re the best person I have ever known, and I know I don’t deserve a second chance, but I just wanted to apologize to your face.”
“Did you really just screech a botched version of the chorus over and over again?” He was still laughing.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard that song all the way through.”
It was stupid, but at least he answered the door. A fact I was starting to regret, since he was now laughing in my face.
Danuwoa snorted.
My eyes watered because I deserved this hell. I started backing away because that sliver of hope I saw was shriveling. I only humiliated myself more, and my fight-or-flight response was kicking in.
“No, wait—” He choked on more laughter. “Come in, we can talk.”
The way he said that reminded me of when that man in Ever After said, “I’ll give you a horse,” after Danielle de Barbarac carried Prince Henry on her shoulders—completely ridiculous. But still, I felt a small victory.
He stepped aside to let me in and shut the door to the outside world. We stood there staring at each other.
“You can sit,” he said, using his chin to point at the sofa.
I didn’t need to be told twice; I rushed to sit before he could throw me out.
“I never thought I’d have a woman trying to serenade me through my windows,” he said, laughing again as he joined me on the couch.
I gave him a wobbly smile. “I promise that was a onetime thing.”
“It better be! I can’t have you embarrassing me in front of all my neighbors like that. Patches was horrified, she ran upstairs. And, god, what’s that smell?”
The cigarette car!
“My new car needs some airing out. And my singing wasn’t that bad.”
“No, you were worse. I’ve never heard someone do such a disservice to Peter Gabriel before.”
I should not have been laughing, because this was a serious conversation, but I missed Danuwoa and his humor. He could probably make those British guards with the funny hats break character.
“I’m sorry!” I threw my hands up.
It took a few moments for our laughter to die down, and once it did, a somber silence fell over the room.
“I missed you,” I whispered.
“I missed you too,” he whispered back. “Do you know what it was like standing behind Mr. Stevenson and not being able to say or do anything to help you?”
I hung my head and wrung my fingers.
“You lied so much, and I thought it was all just stupid stuff because you were embarrassed about not having money. I felt like I knew you.”
“You do know me. Let me clear some things up.” I took a deep breath and then started unraveling my lies. “I never played in a bowling league.”
“I never believed that one,” he said.
“I never lived in Bricktown.”
“That one you gave away pretty quickly when I brought the printer home for you.”
“Yeah…and I’m allergic to cats. They freak me out, honestly.”
Danuwoa threw his head back and laughed. “I knew it.”
“You guessed it. It’s not the same as knowing.”
“Nah, when you lie, your nostril does this cute flaring thing. Every single time.”
“It does not!”
“There it goes flaring again.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, no one at Technix noticed it.”
Dropping Technix into the conversation brought the levity down.
“It wasn’t that I wanted to hide us. Kyle was blackmailing me. I didn’t want you to lose your job. There was so much at risk.”
“Kyle is an ass, and he was fired. Escorted out shortly after you were. Everyone still talks about you telling him off.”
“So there is some justice in the world.”
“I wish you had come to talk to me about it. I’m a grown man, and I don’t need protecting. We are supposed to be partners and face these things together. You never should have been put in a compromising situation. It makes me so angry that you went through all that alone, pushing me away. We could have kept our relationship on the down-low and figured out how to stop Kyle together.”
“I’m…not the best at asking for help. I’ve had to really work on that the past few weeks and lean on my community back home. I’m going back to school.”
“That’s great! Where?”
“Oh, just the city community college. Maybe I’ll get a bachelor’s, but one day at a time.”
“I went to community college before I transferred to state university.”
“I didn’t know that.” I smiled, more amazed by this man and how much we had in common.
“You never asked. It makes sense why you never asked, since you were making up a degree and everything.”
“I didn’t want to lie about myself to you.” I looked down at my hands. “That was what I hated the most, telling you a single lie. I want you to have all my ugly truths.”
“I want them.”
I looked into his beautiful dark eyes, making sure I could believe what I was hearing. But this was Danuwoa, and all he ever spoke was the truth. He was earnest and kind and steadfast. He was the rock that tethered me to reality.
“Would you maybe want to start over?”
It was more than I dared to hope when I showed up. I thought I would have been lucky with an I’ll think about it before he sent me on my way.
“Danuwoa,” I whispered, “I’m a mess and you deserve so much better.”
“Bullshit. Gvgeyui, I love you. You made mistakes, but that doesn’t change how I feel about you.”
“You love me?”
“I’ve been in love with you for a while, haven’t you noticed?”
“No,” I breathed.
“You are such a liar.”
“I had hoped you felt the same way about me, but that is not the same as knowing.”
“And how do you feel about me?”
“I still can’t speak Cherokee,” I said, tears starting to stream down my face. “But gvgeyui.” My emotional tongue butchered the pronunciation. “I really love you.”
He grabbed my face, pulling me in for a salty kiss. The best kiss of my life. It was full of forgiveness, grace, and love. We were sitting on his couch, but I still felt weak in the knees. All our pent-up longing and passion was in that kiss. He pulled me closer to his chest and I lost my hands in his long hair.
When we finally came up for breath, we fell back on the couch cushions, and Danuwoa wrapped me in the crook of his arm. We stayed like that, cuddled there for a few minutes.
I listened to his steady heartbeat and said, “I don’t have a job yet.”
“So?”
“I have a lot of work to do on myself. And I want us to start off on the right foot, one hundred percent transparency.”
“That’s okay. I’ll be here, supporting you. You know, I’ve had a lot of practice packing lunches.”
“Does nothing scare you?” I huffed.
“Only being without you. These have been the worst three weeks.”
“For me too.” Then this time I grabbed his face and kissed him. He shattered my walls. Every defense mechanism was no match for Danuwoa Colson, the sweetest man I’d ever come across.
“I love you,” I whispered against his lips and leaned back a little. “Did my nose do the flare thing?”
“I don’t know,” he said, smiling. “Tell me again.”
“I love you!” I laughed.
“No nose flare.”
“See, I’m not lying, and I promise going forward, I’ll never lie to you again.”
“Wait, your nose just flared.”
I bit my lip. “If I tell a lie, I promise it will only be a teensy-tiny little white lie. And it will be the last resort to spare your feelings.”
“I think with us starting over, we start with absolutely no lies.”
“I don’t want to have to tell you that I hate your cat.”
“Okay, you’ll need to work on that because no one hates Patches.”
I sighed. “I promise I’ll try to love your demon cat.”
He took my hand in his, stroking his thumb back and forth. I was the happiest I had ever felt in my life because, finally, things were working out for me, and it was all done the right way. No lies. No pretending to be someone I wasn’t. Whatever the future held for me with school, work, and my ridiculous family, I knew that I—Ember Lee Cardinal, a sometimes liar but overall good person—would be okay.