30. Brooke
Brooke
Baggage is a funny word. I never understood it fully until now. Baggage is when the man who’s professing his love to you answers a call from his ex-fiancée instead of letting you finish what you have to say—words that might have sounded a lot like ‘I love you too.’
Baggage is thinking you love the man, and being ready to say it, only to be shoved aside for the past.
Meemaw looks up sharply from her phone as I stomp by. I just poured my heart out to her before this, and I don’t feel up to pouring it out again. I refuse to meet her gaze as I storm down the hall to my bedroom.
I can’t call Paige. I’m not sure how to say, “Hey, friend, so good to see you. I’m super jealous of your life right now, and Beck just said he loved me, but then his ex-fiancée called him, and he answered the phone instead of letting me say I love him back.”
I’m about to call Matt in a desperate attempt to find someone to sympathize with me when my phone rings, and it’s Beck. I can’t talk to him right now. He literally chose Addie over me, so there is no hope of a future with him, even if, for a moment, I had indulged in that dream.
I squash the dream down and reject the call.
I know that physically, I can’t compete with Addie.
She’s petite and CoverGirl-perfect. I’m …
not. While I hide them usually, today the tiny cracks in my self-esteem fissure into a full-fledged identity crisis.
But that isn’t me, and I know it, so I chuck my phone across the room, where it lands face-down on the bright pink shag carpet.
I’m practically vibrating with anger as I stare at that little black rectangle.
It’s stupid how much power that tiny device has over me, over everyone.
I snarl at the phone and then do the only thing I can do when faced with overwhelming emotions: I drop to my knees and reach under the bed to grab the shoebox of paints I brought with me to Meemaw’s house.
As I grasp the box, my hand slips and thwacks the carpet under the bed.
I slide my hand out to rub the pain away, but a piece of paper catches the corner of my pinky and gives me a paper cut.
I’m beyond angry, beyond annoyed, beyond any known human feeling when I pull the paper out, ready to hurl it into the garbage.
The drawing on the paper makes me hesitate.
It’s a handmade card. Curving along the border are roses and ivy vines, the faint marks of pencil still obvious under the color in a few places.
It’s amateur, but beautiful and striking in its own way.
What’s more striking than the border is the verse written in a swirling script.
“Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs.”
I flip the card open to find a cursive message. It’s the kind of cursive that’s hard to read, all loops and scrolls, but also its own form of art. It takes me a minute, but I muddle out the words—even the ones that are misspelled.
Dearest June,
On your wedding day, I wish to give you one piece of advice. Times are changing, and you will change too, but I pray you never forget your roots. We will never forget you. No matter where the wind blows you, you will always be our daughter.
The only thing you need to know about marriage is in the Bible—1 Corinthians 13.
Love forgives.
God bless you on your marriage, June.
It’s not signed, but it must be from Meemaw’s own mother. A woman I know next to nothing about except that she lived a hard life of poverty.
Tears drip steadily down my cheeks as I consider the words on the card. A Bible verse. Somehow, this card feels more precious than anything made of gold, or silver, or rubies.
Love forgives.
Those words etch themselves deeply on my heart, carving into the stone there. But even before that wisdom, the phrase love is patient …
They’re the same words Paige said to me.
The same words Meemaw said to me.
The same words Mom said to me before I came to West Virginia when I was bemoaning my terrible luck with men.
I stare at the card a little harder because these words are significant.
I feel them settling over me like a blanket of warmth.
I want to take in every detail, every thought that’s bouncing around my mind, as I look at the words and try to make sense of them.
I don’t know how, in one single verse, so much is contained, but it’s clear the entire world, and then some, is there.
Something plinks against my window, and I look up.
Another plink, and it can’t be a coincidence. I swipe the tears away and gently place the card on my bed before walking to the window and brushing aside the sheer curtains.
Beck stands below with a handful of pebbles as he tosses them softly against the glass. His serious face is drawn, his eyes searching the window, and I know the moment he sees me because he relaxes his shoulders before tensing up again.
Love forgives.
I open the window.
“Yes?” I whisper, even though it’s the middle of the day and we’re two adults, but something about this has me feeling like it calls for clandestine behavior.
“Brooke, I…” Beck drops the rocks and steps closer. Because Meemaw’s house is built into a hillside, my window is only a half story above the ground. His head is visible over the sill, but the rest of his body disappears as he comes up to the screen. “I’m so sorry.”
I sniff, and for a moment, I think about playing high and mighty and making him figure it out. But that’s not me either. I’ve always been a direct communicator, and he should know that. If he thinks he loves me, he needs to know that.
“You chose her. Over me. After you said you loved me.”
“I know. And I don’t have good boundaries with people, and that wasn’t right.
She was calling from Ben’s phone, but I shouldn’t have answered anyone right then.
” He swallows hard, and his neck cords. “I don’t want her, Brooke,” he says before lowering his voice to something quieter than a whisper. “I want you.”
I nod my head yes and blow out a breath because love forgives , and as I look into his sincere brown eyes, there is no doubt in my mind that I do love the man before me.
He’s imperfect, but so am I.
The moment calls for one thing. I pop the screen out and push it aside, just like I would in case of a fire. Then I climb up on the window sill and hop down into Dr. Beckett Whistler’s waiting arms.