Three Years Later
Athena
The universe spoke in whispers and shouts, in coincidences and cosmic jokes, in moments so perfectly orchestrated that you couldn’t help but laugh at the beautiful absurdity of it all.
I’d always known this.
From the time I was a little girl, sitting in my mother’s garden while she explained the language of plants and the wisdom of the Earth, I understood that I was meant for something remarkable.
Not remarkable in the way most people defined it.
Not fame or fortune or conventional success, but remarkable in the way that mattered.
A life lived in alignment with the universe.
A journey that would challenge me, change me, and ultimately lead me exactly where I was meant to be. I just didn’t know, back then, that “where I was meant to be” would involve a neurosurgeon with an eye twitch, a spreadsheet obsession, and absolutely no belief in cosmic forces.
The universe, as always, had a sense of humor.
Sitting on the back porch of our house—the house with the good vibes, the one Julien tried so hard to logic his way out of before finally surrendering to the inevitable—I watched the afternoon sun paint everything gold.
It was late September, that perfect time of year when summer was releasing its grip and autumn was just beginning to whisper its arrival.
The air smelled like cut grass and the last of the season’s roses.
And from the backyard, I could hear laughter.
Not just any laughter.
The kind of laughter that came from pure, unfiltered joy.
The kind that made my heart expand until I thought it might burst.
The kind that reminded me that every single moment of chaos, every challenge, every test the universe threw at me was all worth it.
All of it.
For this.
I took a sip of my tea, chamomile with honey, because some things never changed, and watched my husband chase our three-year-old children around the backyard.
Julien was wearing jeans. Jeans. Not pressed slacks or tailored trousers, but actual, slightly grass-stained jeans. His hair was messy from tiny hands grabbing at it, and there was what appeared to be a sticker of a dinosaur stuck to his shoulder.
He looked absolutely perfect.
“Daddy, you can’t catch me!” Luna shrieked, her dark curls bouncing as she ran.
She was our oldest by two minutes, and she knew it.
She was also the most like Julien—organized, determined, and absolutely convinced that she could plan her way through any situation.
Last week, she made a schedule for her stuffed animals.
Color-coded. With time blocks for “snuggles” and “adventures.”
Julien was so proud that he actually cried.
“I’m going to catch you!” Julien yelled back, his voice full of mock-seriousness. “I’m the fastest daddy in the world!”
“No, you’re not!” That was Stella, our middle child, who was currently attempting to climb the oak tree in the corner of the yard.
She was fearless in a way that made my heart stop and soar simultaneously.
She was the one who believed in magic, who talked to plants, who insisted that the moon followed her wherever she went.
She was me, basically. Julien’s eye twitched every time she did something particularly daring, but he’d learned to breathe through it.
Mostly.
“Stella, please don’t climb higher than the third branch,” Julien said, his neurosurgeon voice activating. “We discussed this. Three branches are the safe limit until you’re four.”
“But, Daddy, the universe wants me to go higher!”
I hid my smile behind my teacup.
“The universe,” Julien said very carefully, “wants you to follow safety protocols.”
“That’s not how the universe works!”
“Stella—”
“I’ll stay on three branches!” she conceded, because even at three years old, she knew how to negotiate. “But only because I love you.”
“I love you too, sweetheart.”
And then there was Atlas, our son, our youngest by three minutes, who was currently sitting in the grass examining a beetle with the kind of intense focus that suggested he was conducting a scientific study.
He was quiet, thoughtful, and absolutely fascinated by how things worked.
He took his toys apart to see their mechanisms. He asked questions that would challenge a philosophy professor.
He was going to be brilliant—I could already tell.
He was also the one who gave the best hugs.
“Daddy, look!” Atlas held up the beetle carefully. “It has six legs and two antennae, and it’s beautiful.”
Julien stopped chasing Luna and walked over to Atlas, crouching down to examine the beetle with the same seriousness he’d give a complex medical scan.
“You’re right,” he said. “It is beautiful. Do you know what kind of beetle it is?”
“A ground beetle, I think. Because of the shape of its body and the way it moves.”
“Very good observation.”
They spent a moment studying the beetle together, and my heart did that expanding thing again.
This.
This is what the universe promised me.
This beautiful, chaotic, perfectly imperfect life.
I met Julien three years and eight months ago in Las Vegas, in a moment so cosmically orchestrated that even he—Mr. Logic and Reason himself—couldn’t deny that something bigger than both of us was at work.
I knew the moment I saw him that he was my soulmate.
He knew the moment he saw me that I was going to ruin his life.
We were both right.
He did ruin my life. The old one, the one where I drifted from place to place, following the universe’s whispers but never quite landing anywhere permanent. He gave me roots. Stability. A home that wasn’t just a physical space but a feeling of belonging.
And I ruined his life. The old one, the one of rigid schedules and emotional distance and control so tight it was suffocating him. I gave him chaos. Spontaneity. Permission to feel things deeply and messily, and without a contingency plan.
We broke each other’s old lives apart.
And built something new together.
Something better.
Luna convinced Julien to play “hospital,” which was her current favorite game. She played the doctor, naturally, and she was very serious about it. She was currently checking his heartbeat with a toy stethoscope while explaining that he needed to “eat more vegetables and do more yoga.”
“Yoga?” Julien asked, amused.
“For your chakras, Daddy. Mama says chakras are important.”
“Mama says a lot of things.”
“And Mama is always right!”
I laughed out loud at that, and Julien looked over at me, his eyes crinkling at the corners in that way that still made my stomach flip.
He’d changed so much in four years since we met. Not in the fundamental ways. He was still organized, still made lists, still color-coded things that absolutely didn’t need to be color-coded. But the rigidity was gone. The desperate need for control. The fear of letting go.
He still made spreadsheets, but now, they were only for the things that truly mattered.
Birthdays. Anniversaries. The day we met—which he’d marked in his calendar as “The Day Everything Changed” and refused to let me see the detailed timeline he’d created of our entire relationship.
He made schedules for family vacations and plans for holiday celebrations and detailed lists for the kids’ activities, but he didn’t make spreadsheets for every single day anymore.
He didn’t need to.
Because he’d learned what I’d always known: the universe had a plan, and sometimes the best thing you could do was trust it. Even when it was terrifying. Especially when it was terrifying.
“Mama!” Stella called from her tree branch. “Come play with us!”
“In a minute, sweetheart!”
“The universe says you should come now!”
I laughed and set down my tea. “The universe is very demanding today.”
“The universe is always demanding,” Julien grumbled, walking over to the porch. He sat down beside me, and I immediately leaned into him, fitting perfectly against his side like I always had. Like I always would.
“Tired?” I asked.
“Exhausted. How do they have so much energy?”
“They’re three. Energy is their default state.”
“I performed a six-hour surgery last week, and I wasn’t this tired.”
“That’s because surgery patients don’t ask you to play dinosaurs seventeen times in a row.”
“Eighteen times. Atlas asked again while you were making lunch.”
I smiled and kissed his cheek. “You’re a good daddy.”
“I’m a tired daddy.”
“Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”
He wrapped his arm around me, and we sat there for a moment, watching our children play.
Luna was now examining Stella’s “injuries” from climbing the tree (there were no actual injuries, but Luna was very thorough).
Atlas had released the beetle and was now drawing in the dirt with a stick, creating what appeared to be a complex diagram.
“Do you ever think about that night in Vegas?” Julien asked quietly.
“Every day.”
“Really?”
“Every single day.” I turned to look at him. “Do you?”
“Constantly.” He paused. “I think about how terrified I was. How certain I was that I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.”
“And now?”
“Now I know it was the best decision I ever made.” He kissed my temple. “Even if I didn’t actually make it consciously.”
“The universe made it for you.”
“The universe got me drunk and took advantage of my compromised decision-making abilities.”
“The universe knew what you needed.”
“The universe is a menace.”
“The universe is a matchmaker.”
He laughed, and the sound filled me with warmth. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but... you might be right.”
“I’m always right.”
“Luna said the same thing five minutes ago.”
“She’s learning well.”
We fell into comfortable silence, the kind that only came from years of knowing someone deeply. From seeing them at their worst and their best and everything in between. From building a life together, brick by brick, moment by moment, spreadsheet by cosmic intervention.
I knew, from a very young age, that I was destined for something remarkable.