Chapter 33 Found
Sunlight angles through my window as I wake. Stretching, I check my body from last night’s adventure. Aside from a few aches and pains, I’m feeling normal. Even my head feels fine. The only part of me I’m not sure about is my heart. But it slowly dawns on me, I’ll be all right, no matter what.
I step out of my room and spot Jake dressed and standing next to Trevor.
The sun is shining, making his hair look like burnished gold.
As I stare, he turns as if he senses me.
He slowly walks over, and I ache to reach for him.
His body looks warm and welcoming. Taking my hand, he leads me over to chairs set off to the side.
I sit in one as Jake jogs quickly over to Trevor’s room and comes back with a cup of coffee in one hand and tea in the other.
Smiling wistfully, I remember the dreadful dinner when he served me tea in front of his parents.
That seems like so long ago and isn’t as painful as it once was.
“Look, Emma, I’ve been an idiot,” he says as soon as he sits down.
“Ever since I met you, really met you, I’ve sensed you were just dipping your toe into my world, and you were going to disappear at any moment back into hiding.
When I came home from my trip and you were gone, I knew that was what happened. It was awful.”
A smile is plastered on my face, but I can’t seem to find the right words. Finally I say, “I wasn’t running back into hiding, I was running forward, I think trying to find myself or save myself. I assumed the check was from you and your mother.”
He smiles ruefully and his shoulders relax, “Oh my god. Absolutely not. When I found the check my mother gave you and realized what she had done, I couldn’t believe it.
I’m truly sorry. That was so wrong. I was so pissed.
I confronted her and told her everything.
I told her the whole engagement was fake, and I did it just to avoid World War III, but I’m not avoiding it any longer.
I explained to her I can’t work at Oliver’s firm, and while the first engagement may have been a fake, I told her I’m going to try for a second engagement and this one is real. ”
Staring into Jake’s chestnut eyes, I see genuine pain. My hand goes to my mouth and my eyes well up.
“Emma, my blue-eyed princess,” he says, going down on one knee. “This isn’t your favorite bench in Central Park, but we’ve done that already. Somehow, this feels right. Will you marry me?”
He slips his mother’s ring out of his pocket and holds it out to me.
I’m momentarily frozen. Is this real or am I still in a dream?
Ernest’s hand slips into mine and lifts it up towards the ring, gently guiding me.
Clasping the ring, I turn it over in my hand.
I missed this lovely little ring on my finger.
Slipping it back into place feels perfect.
I feel Ernest’s reassuring presence slip away, and I wonder if I will ever see him again.
Suddenly, I’m in Jake’s arms with my arms and legs wrapped around him. I hear clapping from the group, and I unwind myself from Jake, blushing. Jake sweeps me up and, despite my embarrassed protests, carries me off around the corner.
We’re in his room before I knew it.
Laying me on the bed, he touches the ring on my finger. “Did you say yes for real?”
I nod enthusiastically, and he swoops down and kisses me. I press my lips against his and weave my hand through his copper hair.
We kiss until I think I’ve bruised my lips. We’ve been apart for only two weeks, but it felt like a lifetime. I was sure I wouldn’t ever kiss him again, and I’m like someone dying of thirst who has found a cool spring. I can’t get enough.
Jake sits up a bit and begins to unbutton his shirt and I’m mesmerized.
I want to memorize every tiny detail. You never know when the best things in life might disappear into a poof of smoke.
I watch him through heavily lidded eyes.
When he tosses his shirt onto the floor, I reach my hand out to touch him and my hand skims over his chest and the long muscles that play beneath his skin.
Jake’s eyes fly up to mine and I smile tentatively.
After these weeks of connecting with nature and the forest, I’ve connected to who I am as a woman.
The rhythms of the forest and the birth and rebirth of life through the plants and trees that grow flowers to produce seeds and then die, only to be reborn again and again flow through me.
It’s natural and good. It’s how God made the earth, and nothing is bad when done from a place of love.
Tracing my hand around his chest, I trail it down his flat abdomen.
I’m powerless to stop my hand from exploring.
Jake remains perfectly still, and my hand completes a circle and then reaches up for his head and I play with his beautiful hair.
I pull him back down to me. He quickly kicks off his shoes and slides out of his pants.
He says playfully, “You look good in field gear. Different, but good.”
Grinning up at him, I respond, “I really like it in the woods. It’s so peaceful, yet alive. I don’t think I was meant to live in a city. I should have grown up here or somewhere like it. That must be why I like Central Park so much. It’s closer to where I belong.”
Jake chuckles, “Yup. I can only take so much city living, and then I need to get back to this to recharge. This is where you feel what the earth is meant to be like. I remember reading a poem by Gary Snyder. He said, ‘Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.’ I believe that. Civilization has ruined so many things. So many species are extinct now or are going extinct. It will break my heart if the ivory-bill is extinct. But if it’s lost forever, we need to know.
Because if we killed off such a magnificent bird, I’m not sure I can forgive us or the human race.
” He shakes his head. “What am I doing, yammering on like that, when I was just about to get you naked? Emma, stop distracting me with poetry and philosophy. I have a much more primal need. God, when I got back to the apartment and saw the pile of stuff, I went crazy, thinking I had lost you.”
Kissing me passionately, Jake slides his hands down to work on the buttons on my shirt and then my pants.
We separate a fraction and lay on our sides, staring at each other in amazement.
Our eyes reflect wonder. He slowly reaches out and wraps a hand around my back.
I reach around his broad shoulders and press my hands, feeling his muscles, hard and taut.
His hand slips lower, and he caresses and rubs, and the heat rises, and need fills my head and wetness pools down low.
I hear myself beg, “Jake, please.”
He hesitates for a second and I reach for him urging him on.
It feels as if it has been forever. He plunges into me without hesitation.
I gasp. My body reorients itself to him, and I’m home.
There is no yesterday, no tomorrow, only this.
The two of us together. I press into him as close as possible while the need builds.
Jake murmurs, “You feel so good.” His words and the friction drive me to thrash and clutch at him until finally I tip over the edge with an explosion of white behind my eyelids.
I relax into the shudders until my muscles quiet.
Jake had stopped and is watching me with a look of wonder and he then resumes his rhythm until he drives deep and releases and gasps, “Emma.”
He lowers himself down, so he is partially on top of me, and we stay connected at our cores. When he finally withdraws, the loss of that connection causes my eyes to start to fill. I move closer to him, pressing our bodies together. I wedge myself into the crook of his arm, a perfect fit.
I nuzzle into him and say, “So, tell me everything. What did Oliver say about the news that you aren’t going to work at the firm? And do you really think your mom is alright with this?”
“Well—”
“Oh, wait a minute. Forget about your parents. Start with John Foster. I cannot believe that. What the hell? You lied to me for all this time . . . why?”
Jake raises his eyebrows. “Wow. You really have changed out here. You never swear.” Then he hangs his head.
“I am so sorry. That one was just stupid and it just kind of happened.” He traces a finger down my cheek.
“I don’t tell anyone about my book—well, I mean a few people know, like Vee, not that I think she even remembers.
Professor Montgomery, and Arnie, of course.
But I never say anything to other people, especially strangers.
So, when I met you and you started spouting off quotes from my book, I did what I always do.
I clammed up. And I figured it would be a good idea to act as if I didn’t even like the guy.
“I figured you’d look after Vee a couple times and that would be it.
Then things started snowballing, and after that I couldn’t figure out how to tell you that I was John Foster.
Stupid, I know. I kept hoping you would figure it out.
Remember when Uncle Joe called me John? I waited for you to connect the dots while we were making bluebird boxes. But you didn’t.”
I sputter, “Seriously, you thought I would somehow come up with the idea that you were a famous birder who wrote my favorite bird book? You put way too much faith in my detective skills. Of course, after the whole Arnie thing, I could see all the signs, but no way would I have ever put two and two together. Arnie practically had to hit me over the head with it before I believed any of it. Honestly, that may be the most maddening thing about”—I wave my hands in a wide circle—“this crazy situation. My favorite birder. That is just nuts.”
I catch sight of the sunlight reflecting off my ring and twist my hand around so I can stare at the diamond.
“Do you think this can really work?” I ask solemnly. Jake grabs my hand and presses it to his chest.
“Look, when I came home and you were gone, I suddenly realized that all this time that I’ve been searching for the ivory-bill, I was really looking for you.
You make me a better person, a stronger person.
So yes, I think it can work.” Jake takes a deep breath and, with a quirk of his lips, says, “Didn’t you say you’ve been dreaming about me for years?
” he pauses and I punch his arm blushing.
“But seriously, it feels like fate or destiny to me. I’m your Ceyx and you’re my Halcyon. ”
“Fate or destiny, my Ceyx,” I murmur. Could it be? Then, taking a deep breath, I share my story and the MS diagnosis, wanting nothing hidden between us.