Chapter 37
CJ
When CJ finishes speaking she thinks she might faint.
Here on the beach, pebbles underfoot, moon full and ripe, all their friends and family bearing witness to the most tender and honest moment of her life …
and Ash, her eyes focused, unrelenting, her skin warm against CJ’s grip.
She’s as beautiful as she has ever been, light breeze whipping her loose blonde waves around her shoulders.
The relief as she upturns the corners of her mouth, revealing those perfect white teeth as she bites down on her lower lip.
She looks happy. CJ has said things that have made her happy. Thank god.
‘You love me?’ Ash says, in a small voice, as if she really can’t believe it.
‘A tremendous amount,’ CJ replies. ‘Like. Huge.’
‘I …’ Ash says, words dripping painfully slow from those gorgeous lips. CJ finds herself leaning in, as if that will make her response reach CJ’s ears faster. ‘I think I love you too,’ she says, as if in awe at the fact.
‘You think?’ CJ repeats, but she quickly realises that sounds like pressure, coercion. She doesn’t want to make Ash feel obliged to remove the uncertainty. ‘I can live with I think,’ she adds, hurriedly, a nervous laugh punctuating her remark.
‘CJ, I …’ Ash says, and her eyes flicker to the group of people further up the beach by the steps. Suddenly, she laughs. ‘I feel like everybody knew before I did!’ she says. ‘I feel like I’m the last one to figure it out. The last to know that I’m head over heels for you, too.’
CJ pulls on her hand so there’s only millimetres between them.
‘Say it again,’ CJ demands, because she needs to check it is real, that she didn’t mishear or misunderstand.
‘I love you,’ Ash says quietly, so that only CJ can hear.
‘You scare the shit out of me because you do things your own way, in your own time. I thought, at first, you thought I was shallow and stupid for wanting love, that it was better to be strong enough to do without it. But I knew – I knew! – there was something happening. You do such a good job of protesting about any needs at all that I almost believed you. But you’ve said it now, you’ve opened the can of worms. And if that makes it OK to tell you I love you too then I bloody will.
I love you, I love you, I love you. I love your son, and I love Miguel and Todd, and I love the life you have built for yourself.
I promise, CJ, that I will not leave you, or hurt you, or abandon you.
I promise I will always tell you how I feel, and make sure I understand how you feel, and if me leaving to come on this trip felt like abandonment at all—’
‘It didn’t,’ says CJ, urgently. ‘It didn’t. I just couldn’t wait until you came home, is all. Well. Not home. You know what I mean.’
‘I do,’ Ash whispers. ‘But. You know. It could be my home …’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. We’d have to figure it all out but …
these past two months I have come to think that home isn’t really a place anyway.
It’s a person. How I feel when I’m with you, CJ, it’s unlike how I’ve felt with anybody else ever.
I thought I’d been in love before, but I was never fully myself.
You see me. That’s really scary too, you know.
I’ve been afraid. You have zero time for small talk or bullshit, and it puts the spotlight on me, makes me really examine what I think and feel and want.
The way you challenge me, it feels like a kind of devotion, like you respect me too much to let me kid myself.
I think that’s what I’m getting at. I’ve never been this respected, before.
You insist I show up for myself, and I just want to do the same for you.
However that looks. You and me. CJ and Ash. Together.’
‘Forever?’ CJ asks, because she has to, she wants to hear it, and with Ash she feels like it’s OK to get the reassurance she needs.
‘Forever,’ Ash says. ‘I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
And then they kiss, deep and meaningful, lips colliding, tongues dancing, a mark on their words, made with their bodies, yet another way to say, I do, I do, I do.
‘Mam?e!’ comes a voice, after a beat or two. ‘Miguel says we can go and get ice cream!’
The women pull apart, smiling, laughing, happy.
‘I could go for ice cream,’ Ash yells back to him. ‘Am I invited too?’
‘Of course!’ Jorge exclaims, clapping gleefully. ‘The whole family!’
CJ could melt. They walk up through the old town, Jorge holding her left hand, Ash holding her right, and she can’t believe it, can’t believe that they’re all here, that love can happen this way, in the end.