48A/N: Well this is embarrassing. After a seven month break, I suddenly decided I am still really obsessed with this story and want to write it. Even if no one wants to read it.
"Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer." -Jean de La Fontaine
Emily went to great lengths to explain to me exactly what was indicated by the ring on her finger. Yes, Tyler Wright had given it to her, and yes, with the intention of someday marrying her. That, Emily said, was the key—someday. Though I hadn't (yet) brought it up, she had sensed what I was going to argue: that she'd been the one to talk me down after Drew stood me up, saying what a relief it would be not to have married so young. She was twenty.
"But this is totally different from you and Drew," she said as she drove towards Leonard's house. "We all knew that Drew was kind of a jerk to you… you know he wasn't good to you, Amy. Tyler's never tried cutting me off from my friends or family. He doesn't try to control me. I just know I'll never find anyone better."
At the mention of my ex-fiancé, Leonard was noticeably silent, but I could feel his eyes on me as I spoke. "How can you know that?" My voice was soft, as I was determined not to get argumentative. "You're only twenty years old, Emily, and you've never even dated anyone else."
"Tyler is my best friend," Emily countered just as calmly. "My best friend in the entire world. On a different level and a different way from you, you know? I mean you and I are girlfriend soul mates, forever. But Tyler, I look at him and just want to… I want to be around him all the time, I want to build a family with him."
There was nothing else I could say at that moment, as Emily seemed so sure of this decision. I had to admit that she glowed, she was so exuberant at the thought of being Mrs. Wright. Thinking back to my engagement to Andrew Bloom, I could tell I'd never been as excited at the prospect of being joined in holy matrimony to with my boyfriend as Emily was with hers. That's also what kept me from further fighting her: I couldn't call her out for naïveté, because that would make me a hypocrite and she'd know it. Still, though, Emily promised she and Tyler were going to wait to get married, at least until after they'd graduated from college. The ring Emily wore was just a promise ring, advertising her unavailability. Nothing to fret over.
That was what she said, anyway. She and Tyler would go on to elope that March.
They did it during Spring Break, when I wasn't even on the same coast to talk to Emily about it. Moriah had had her baby in February, and my mother thought it would be a cute idea to send me to meet my months-old nephew during Spring Break. Dennis and I flew together to Utah, where our ultimate destination was Wayne County, the home of Moriah, her husband Tanner, and the newest member of their little family unit.
Dallin Heber Fry was a name that seemed to go out of its way to sound Mormon or at least Utahn, but Moriah was at peace with it. He was her kid, so Dennis and I were in no place to beg her to change it and besides, Dallin was our father's name. So long as the family never moved out of Utah, where the boy would be in school with kids named Ammon and McCall, Dallin Heber would probably not get beat up. Unless he turned out to be a total nerd, which Dennis was tactful enough to bring up during dinner, earning him a kick in the leg from our sister.
"That is something I worry about sometimes," Moriah said to me privately as Tanner put the baby to bed. "What if he's unpopular—I don't mean that in a shallow way, I mean, what if he gets teased? What if he's bullied? What if he comes home from school everyday crying because someone made fun of him?"
Despite her parental concerns, I had to smile. "I can't believe you're a mother, Moriah. It seems like only yesterday that you were wreaking havoc at Our Lady of Sorrows, and sneaking out at night to hang out with Ben Jacobsen. Now you'll know the stress that mom and dad felt raising you up!"
With a good-hearted groan, Moriah sank into a chair opposite me, clearly exhausted. "Don't say that, I do not want to have a kid like me."
"Didn't mother used to warn you about that?"
She pulled her legs up onto the chair, a small and simple move that made me smile because I'd seen her sit that way so often as a teenager. "Yeah. One time when I didn't come home until two-thirty, she said one day I'd have to pay for my disobedience by having to raise a kid who was just like me. Then I'd know what hell I was putting them through." She heaved a heavy sigh and the reminiscent smile slid off her face. "Boy did they wish I was like Cody."
"Don't say that," was my impulsive response, even though I remembered being a child and hearing mother make remarks like that.
Clearly too tired to argue, Moriah merely shrugged lazily. "Be good like Cody, be trustworthy like Cody, set an example like Cody. I don't mean anything against Cody, God rest his sweet soul. But he was perfect, and so I guess when I wanted to act out and be just a teensy bit rebellious, I always seemed like a devil child compared to him. The saint. Mom and dad were afraid Dennis would turn out just like me. When he grew up to be more like you, mom was thrilled."
"Like me? Dennis and I aren't alike at all!"
"Come on, Amy! He's respectful, he makes good decisions, he pays attention in church. Dennis has got a good head on his shoulders. Like you, not me."
"Moriah…don't say that. You two are both friendly, you're outgoing, people are drawn to you, and they—"
"They're drawn to me, sure," Moriah said. "But you, they'll stay and talk to, have a real conversation with. Like Emily, I've never had a friend like Emily." She paused for a long time here and I sat wondering if she was finished. There was something I saw that night in Moriah's eyes that was completely foreign to me. Jealousy. "You know you're mom's favorite."
This caught me so off guard, but even if I'd been expecting it I still wouldn't have known the appropriate thing to say. Mother used to call me "an inhumane executioner of the bogus" for my never-ending pursuit of truth and inability to appease people only for the sake of making them feeling better about themselves. Still I had to give it a shot. "No," I said, "Mother isn't the kind to pick favorites. I'm just closer to her, that's all. Like how you're so much closer to dad."
She shrugged in an almost bored way. "Dad… he just, I dunno. I was his first girl so I was daddy's little girl. That thing, you know."
"Right. I was daddy's little girl responsible for the death of his oldest son."
It was apparent that Moriah did not want to argue with me, even though she knew exactly what I was talking about. We never spoke much about the guilt I felt for Cody's death, but she did say, "I hope you don't think dad blames you for that."
"I dunno. He just never talks to me or treats me the way he did you."
Choosing not to respond, Moriah patted her stomach and sighed again, and I remember thinking in that moment how old she looked. She'd yet to lose much of her pregnancy weight, which was particularly noticeable without the baby bump to hide behind. The old Moriah wouldn't have been caught dead overweight—seriously, if she had died fat, even her family would've seen only a closed casket, that's how obsessed she'd been with her appearance. Having Dallin was a great experience for her, a grand cure for her self-centeredness. Ten months after my visit, she would go on to have a baby girl (Bailey), followed two years later by twin boys (McKay Sterling and, no joke, Heber Dallin), then one more girl, Shelby, possibly the most unfortunately named of the bunch. Each of them drained Moriah more and more of her narcissism, and her transformation was a joy to behold.
But I'm getting way ahead of myself here.
When I returned home from my spring break of senior year, it was to an empty room in my apartment. Emily and I were living with one of her friends from high school, Lindsay Browne, and Lindsay's cousin, Jillian Grant. Lindsay was the only one home when I got there, and immediately I asked if she knew where Emily was.
"Emily? You'd better call her. She's tried like eighty times to get a hold of you. Here," Lindsay said, handing me a slip of notebook paper. "She said to call her at this number the second you got back."
This was weird. I knew Emily's phone number and even Tyler's, but this one didn't have the same area code as those. What on earth? I went to the phone in our kitchen and dutifully dialed the number. As it rang and rang, I felt myself suddenly overcome with a very foreboding feeling. I distinctly remember goosebumps rising on my arms while my stomach twisted itself into one uncomfortably large, iron knot. The knot relaxed slightly when Emily finally picked up.
"Hello?" Her voice was a little breathless, and the two syllables were infused with even more enthusiasm than usual.
Taken slightly off guard by her exuberance, I said, "Uh—hey, Emily!"
"Amy! Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you called!"
"What's up?" I laughed. "You sound like…I don't even know, like—"
"Like I'm not a virgin anymore?"
This stopped me cold. I wanted to laugh if only because admittedly, it was just a really amusing thing for her to have said. I had never pressed my own beliefs upon anyone, including my personal (and religious) conviction that you should wait to have sex until you are married. This always seemed like a Puritan train of thought to everyone I knew except Emily, who without any religious provocation, had reached the same idea herself—so it was a bit surprising to hear her just come out and say something like this.
My flustered reply was, "Ha…what?"
"Don't worry though, Amy! It's okay. Tyler and I just got married!"
I collapsed onto the kitchen chair and dimly registered out of the corner of my eye that Lindsay had stood up and exited the room. My heart had dropped into my stomach like a stone and I felt like I was about to be sick. Tyler Wright—she was married to Tyler Wright. There were so many things about him that I'd wanted to say to Emily, but I'd always put it off; I was always sure I'd have time, that there would be a time for us to have that conversation so I could voice my concerns. Right now I was so blindsided I didn't even know where to start.
Before I could try, Emily said, "It's okay though, Amy, I swear! Really, it is."
"You said you were going to wait," I choked out.
"I know, I know," Emily laughed. "But we've waited as long as we could! Amy, it was so romantic—we were out on a date, and Tyler said he wanted to just run away and get married, right then. And I said yes! Oh my gosh, it was incredible—he's amazing!"
"Emily—what—why did you do this?" I sputtered. "What made him suddenly decide he wanted to get married?"
She was calm (at least for the moment), much calmer than she had any right to be. I think she sensed that all I could do was think about Drew and what he'd almost done to me. "Amy," she said in a patient but firm voice. "Tyler is my match. We are meant to be together, and we will be, forever."
Don't be naïve! How could you have done this?! "Do your parents know?"
"Mine do…and gosh, you know, they were worried at first and my dad especially was upset, but now they're happy for me. They're happy. They're going to help us out, and I know Tyler's will too once we tell them. Deep down my parents know that he and I were always going to end up together."
"Yeah, but married?! Emily, neither of you—you're so young, neither of you can even drink legally yet!" (I'm not sure why that argument was the one to pop in my head, but it helped me realize how young they were.) "How could you do this? Was this just so you could sleep together?!"
Even as I said it, I knew I'd crossed a line. Emily's tone was defensively (and understandably) harsh: "God, Amy, really? I thought if anyone could understand me, the good little Mormon would! Aren't half your friends married already? When they get old enough to vote? Would you rather I just had sex with Tyler instead of marrying him, and making it acceptable to God? Is that you want?"
"Emily, I just—"
"Amy, stop! I knew you'd be upset, but geez, I thought you'd be on my side a little bit! I know Drew broke your heart and that your love life is messed up, but that doesn't mean you have to take it out on me. Maybe you just don't know what love is anymore, but I love Tyler. I love him. And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he loves me back. Why is that a bad thing? Tell me why."
You are still in college. Both of you go to school in New York where your tuition bills will keep you in debt to student loans for the rest of your lives. Where will you live? How will you guys survive? Who'll pay the bills? How many jobs are you both going to have to take? What if you get pregnant? Would you drop out of school? Would Tyler? Would he want to get rid of it? Why couldn't this wait until you at least graduated?
But I took too long to respond, and with a frustrated sound, Emily hung up.
School would be starting again in two days, and as I sat alone in our room, my heart ached. I missed her, I missed my best friend. Just as I was lying on my bed thinking these profound thoughts, Emily came through the door. We stared at each other for a long time; she appeared as though she wanted to throw something at me, but—perhaps because she had nothing on hand—she was able to refrain from doing so.
"I'm moving out," she said simply. My face felt as though it had frozen and I could not produce emotion. "We're going to live at my parents'." Only a couple of weeks ago she called it home; now, it was her parents' place. Her tone was icy, even colder than when I'd shut her out during my engagement to Drew. That hurt me much more than the news that she'd gotten herself married. I think, finally, it began to show on my face. Emily's expression softened slightly, but she did not walk over to me as she might have in the past.
"All right," I said in a low voice. "When are you leaving?"
"Tyler's going to come tomorrow to help me pack up."
I nodded. "Great."
"Just so you know…Amy, we're…it was hasty to elope, I know. But it's a done deal, now. We're going to have a ceremony after school lets out, a formal one so our families can be there to hear our vows. Our families and our friends."
"Mm."
"I'm not happy with you right now," she said flatly. "And I know you're upset with me, even though I'm not sure what I did to deserve that. But I still want you to be there when we do it…again."
Without meeting her gaze, I lazily slid off the bed and walked past her. I went to the library and stayed there until one o'clock in the morning before going back home, then headed there again at nine a.m. the next day. There was no way I could stay in the room and see Tyler there with her. No way.
This time I thought our friendship might really be over. When I had been with Drew, Emily and I had still shared a room. Even if we didn't talk like we used to, we still had to see each other and once in a while, exchange words. We still had to ask if we could shut off the light or if the other knew whether one of our roommates had an egg to spare. But once she moved out, she was gone. No more staying up late, no more privately wishing I could borrow her clothes, no more laughing silently to myself when she would giggle in her sleep. Tyler would be the one doing that now. Panic was settling in on me, and as I lay awake at night, I wondered what on earth was wrong with me. My best friend had once been Claire Thompson, who, after I rejected her, wouldn't talk to me. Then Emily Wright came into my life and I thought I had found a girlfriend for the eternities, but now this had happened. Was it my fault again? Should I apologize? The answer seems glaringly obvious to me now, but at the time I still felt betrayed, wounded, and upset with what I considered to be a rash decision fueled by Tyler's hormones.
Leonard came home from BYU when I still had a month left of school. He was on break between semesters, and when he'd found out that Emily was married, tried to talk to me about it. But I refused to get into a discussion on something so serious when I could not see him face to face—a decision I wound up regretting.
When he came to pick me up, my heart did that familiar leap in my chest. He smiled and took me into his arms, and we just stood there at my front door in a tight embrace for what felt like several moments. There is nothing, nothing like the feeling of being caught up in the arms of a loving man who is stronger than you. Though he could have given me a bone-crushing hug, he was holding me delicately, tenderly. We pulled apart, far enough to kiss.
"So," he whispered into my ear. "Where shall we go?"
"Out."
"Sammy's café?"
I smiled; it was a sentimental suggestion to go back to the place where we'd first met and hadn't visited since. Taking his hand, I nodded my assent, and we headed to the train station. Yes I suppose it's a bit silly to spend all that train fare just to visit a café, but when I was with Leonard, I tended to not see things the way I might otherwise. While traveling out to Scarsdale, we talked about the end of his school year and he let me vent about all my final projects and papers I had coming up. He teased me for deciding to write one about vintage tampon advertisements (I won't go into it here), but I still think that's the best paper I ever wrote in college.
Once we finally reached our destination, Leonard sat down and said "So," in that way which seems to expand such a little word into an entire conversation. "Emily."
"Tyler."
"Emily and Tyler."
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. "I still can't believe it."
He sighed heavily, thoughtfully. "Yeah. I just can't believe they eloped—Emily always seemed like the type to me who'd want a big, old-fashioned wedding… all her friends and family there, her father to walk her down the aisle."
"They're going to have a formal ceremony at the end of May."
There was a sudden and unexpected shift in his tone; when he said "oh!", it was light and surprised. "Are you going?"
The word "no" came out of my mouth so fast that Leonard jumped. I stared at him and saw him looking at me as if I had sprouted an extra head. "How could I go?"
"What—how could you not go?"
"If I went, it'd be like giving my support to their union, and I cannot support it." A waiter was walking in our direction but pivoted silently when I shot him a dark glare.
Leonard snorted a laugh and leaned back in his chair. "You're kidding."
"I'm not. Leonard, you and I both know that Tyler doesn't deserve her—"
"Well, you're too late! Amy, they're married already. It's a done deal. Ten years, fifteen years down the road—who knows? Maybe for them it'll be till death do they part, or maybe they'll get divorced next year. Who knows?"
"Who knows? You sound like you might as well be saying who cares!" I said. "And I care! Leonard, marriage isn't supposed to be like that. It isn't supposed to be like, maybe we'll be together this time next year, maybe we won't. The whole point of it is that you are wedding yourself to someone who you can picture living with for the rest of your life!"
"That wasn't my point," Leonard cut in, sitting forward again. "My point is that whether you like it or not, Emily Rutherford is now Emily Wright. There's nothing that can be done, there's nothing you or I can do. What're you, mad? Are you mad because she didn't ask your permission first?"
He had never made me this upset before, and it was his condescension that was getting to me the most. "Don't take that self-righteous tone with me!" I cried. "I'm mad because I don't think Emily knows what she's doing! She's a romantic; Tyler says he loves her, and she thinks he's the most incredible being to have walked the planet! If she had listened, if she had stopped for a second and let me talk to her about this—"
"Wait, hold on," Leonard said gruffly. "What about you? What about you and that Drew guy? When you were engaged to him, did you think he was the most incredible human being to have ever been on the planet?"
I could tell by his face that he knew he'd gone too far, but he wasn't sorry about it. "Don't talk to me about Drew," I said quietly. "You don't know anything about that."
"You know what, I think you're right! I don't know anything about that because you stopped writing to me because of him! I had been pouring out my soul to you for months, and then suddenly you just stopped writing me! You just stopped! You know how hard it is doing missionary work, and when you—the greatest constant in my life, even greater than my family at that point—when you just stopped cold like that, it killed me! Emily had to be the one who told me! I didn't want to hear it from Emily, I wanted to hear it from you! Then suddenly you decide to go and start up again, out of nowhere—I just suddenly get a letter where you explained you weren't engaged anymore, and gee, would I like to start writing again?"
Of course he was so, so right, but I was way too mad at him to really listen. "You didn't have to keep writing back to me, you know! If you didn't want to keep writing letters, you should've said something! But Drew messed with my head, Leonard—if you had really understood anything I ever told you, you'd have known that!"
"Don't tell me I never understood your letters!" Leonard almost shouted. "I get you, Amy, I understand you more easily than I do anyone else, except for moments like these where you pull the rug out from under me! You know what I think? You're scared that Tyler is going to do to Emily what Drew did to you, and I think that's really unfair." He brought his voice back down to a reasonable level, but the look in his eyes was still hard. "It means you're giving them absolutely no credit whatsoever. And you are a terrible friend if you don't go to that ceremony."
The waiter had been about to try our table again when I got violently to my feet. "You can go for me, Leonard, but go to hell first," I muttered, and I walked out.
It was nearly four o'clock in the afternoon on a Friday, and I was in Scarsdale. My hand clutched the train ticket that Leonard had bought me and which I had slipped into my pocket. But I'd already come all the way here…where could I go? I didn't know my way around, and the only place I knew where to get to from Sammy's café was the Wright house. Though it was at least ten miles away, I started walking in its direction. Part of me (the little girl inside, probably) felt bad that Leonard hadn't come after me to apologize, but almost instantly I was overcome with the feeling that I was the one who had to apologize to him, and I wasn't ready to turn around and do that just yet.
I was, however, ready to apologize to Emily.
Once I'd reached their home, I didn't think twice about walking up to the front door and knocking. Emily's younger sister Carol opened it. I opened my mouth to say something before I realized I had no idea what to say. Carol looked as though she was about to try to end the silence herself when suddenly I blurted, "I'm an idiot."
She shook her head with a grim look on her face. "You're not. Emily is. But don't tell her I said that. And don't tell her I told you she's on the back porch."
Thanking Carol, I walked around outside to the back of the house, where Emily was indeed sitting by herself on the porch swing. She was staring out into the backyard, into nature, but I could tell she wasn't focusing on anything in particular. Her legs were crossed Indian-style on the swing and her arms were folded; she looked pensive, or maybe even upset. I walked closer to her, and for a second, she shifted her gaze over at me before reverting it immediately. Without asking if I could, I sat down next to her.
"So," I said, and the word hung awkwardly in the air for a while. "Here we are again. I'm here, at your house, asking you to forgive me. Again."
With a forlorn sigh, Emily leaned over and put her head on my shoulder. "Amy, I don't want this to keep happening. I don't want stuff to keep… to come up and keep us from being friends. I don't want you to have to come here feeling sorry and feeling guilty. I understand why you're upset about me and Tyler, I really do."
"I don't think you do," I whispered, absent-mindedly rubbing her shoulder. Both of us had our eyes fixed on something that was shaking a tree branch in front of us, a bird or a squirrel. "I mean, I think you may have some vague idea about Drew, and yeah, you'd be right. Sometimes, Emily, I don't know if you've noticed, but I'll be in bed at night and I just start crying. I cry because there's this… fear, this fear gnawing at me from the inside-out—what if I'd married Drew? What if I had married him? What if he had shown up on our wedding day, and we were sealed together? Then it would all have been a question of inevitability…one day he would have left me. Or maybe he would have stayed, but maybe he would have cheated on me."
"Amy…"
"My point is," I say, closing my eyes and issuing a deep sigh. "Nobody tried to talk me out of it. Leonard gave up, my mother gave up, you gave up. If he'd wanted to, Leonard could have written me again and I would have read anything he sent, but I know he probably felt it wasn't his place to give marriage advice. And yes, you and my mother both expressed feelings of doubt, but neither of you sat me down for a real heart-to-heart. Neither of you asked me to consider how I really felt. Maybe if someone had done that…" I couldn't finish the sentence, because I didn't know how.
Emily was looking at me now, and I turned to stare back. She looked solemn, perhaps at noticing there were tears rolling down my cheeks. I shivered, and one slipped into my mouth. "Okay," Emily said in the quietest of whispers. "That's fair, Amy. But please, acknowledge my feelings, too. You say you feel nervous because nobody tried to talk you out of getting married. Well, nobody had to talk me into getting married. Tyler suggested we just go and do it, and it felt right. My gut feelings have never, ever misled me, and I just knew in my gut that I wanted to marry Tyler right then. Drew had a death grip on you, Amy. You know that."
A nod communicated my assent. "It's your life, Emily. I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry, too. I said things I shouldn't have, I got upset." Now that all that was out of the way, Emily smiled a little. "Thanks for coming all the way out here to tell me that, though. It means a lot."
I sighed again, although this time it felt much lighter—a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. "Actually, to be perfectly honest, I came out here with Leonard. We kind of got into a, um, fight."
"What about?"
"Er…you."
"Me? Oh no, I'm so sorry!"
There she went, making me laugh again, feeling bad for causing an argument between me and Leonard when she hadn't even been there. "Don't worry about it," I said, patting her knee. "If it wasn't for that, I probably wouldn't have been able to summon the courage to come here and talk to you. Curse him for being right."
Emily smiled, though there was still a rueful look to it. "Leonard usually is."
I shook my head, again feeling guilty for having lashed out at someone close to me. "Let's change the subject. How's being married?"
After four years of school at BYU-Hawaii, Moriah had informed me that asking something like "so! How's married life?" was basically a shrouded way of asking "so! How is sex?" But the question had just come right out of me, and since Emily wasn't Mormon, maybe she wouldn't read that into it…
"Wonderful. It's really, really amazing. We get to be together all the time, and it'll be just even better when we can get our own place—we're hoping maybe sometime after we graduate. We'll have to get out of New York, though. It's too expensive here."
That tiny pit of despair somewhere near my stomach twanged in pain again. She'd leave New York. Well, so would I, and soon. But I couldn't think about that for too much longer, because just then we both heard a car pull into the driveway.
"That's Tyler," Emily said.
In unison we stood up and walked back around to the front of the house. Tyler was just getting out of his car, but looked quite off guard to see me.
"Hi," I said. "Um…congratulations."
"Thanks," he muttered. "Weird, I was just thinking about you, Amy." That was weird. "I went to the high school to pick up my brother, and I saw Leonard there. His sister's in some upcoming concert or something, rehearsing, and he was staying around to wait for her."
Emily nudged me, and I rolled my eyes. "Emily," I said through my teeth. "Would you please give me a ride to the high school?"
"I'd be delighted!" She gave Tyler a quick kiss, then snatched the car keys out of his pocket. "C'mon, let's go!"
Five minutes later, she had dropped me off outside the high school auditorium. Wafting from inside were the sounds of several instruments that were so out of key and melody with each other, I thought nobody playing them could have possibly been in the same room. But I was proved instantly wrong as I walked inside and saw a band practicing there. Scattered through the seats facing the stage were a few parents, and there was Leonard in the back. He looked unsure whether or not he wanted to smile or grimace, but then he caught my eye and his expression turned blank. Biting the inside of my cheek and swallowing my pride yet again, I walked towards him. His eyes followed me the entire time, right up until I took the seat just to the left of him and a row behind.
"Tyler said he saw you here," I said very matter-of-factly. "Said you were going to give Leah a ride home from school." Leonard didn't say anything. "Isn't your house kind of close?"
"The reason I'm here is because you told me to go to hell," Leonard said flatly, not facing me. "And a high school band rehearsal seemed like the most hellish place I could go to, so here I am."
This comedic response caught me off guard, which kept me from being able to say something back right away. I was staring wordlessly at the back of his head until he twisted around to face me, wearing half a smile—he wanted to know if I was amused. Dear, sweet, boy.
"Come on," he said quietly, standing up and reaching for my hand. "Let's go somewhere a little less, um…"
"Yeah." I took his hand and together we walked out of the school. We crossed the street to get away from the sound of the band's "music," and wound up sitting outside the church that was just opposite of the school. "Emily and I just made up."
He nodded. "That was quick."
"It was long in coming."
"Mm." Leonard pulled my hand a little closer to his face and rubbed his fingers over mine. "I'm sorry about what I said to you. I was just really surprised at how strong you felt. But that didn't give me the right to get so riled up. I'm sorry."
Biting my lip I said, "I'm sorry, too. Of course I'll go to their formal ceremony; Emily's my best friend. But I'm still a little weirded out."
"I can understand that. But let me tell you this: at BYU, I had friends who met a girl in September and put a ring on her finger by that November," Leonard told me. "One of them was a roommate of mine, and I'd never seen him and his fiancé—now wife—do anything but make out. Maybe they had great meaningful conversations away from me, maybe they did fun stuff together, but I only ever saw them… you know, doing the physical stuff. I've known Emily and Tyler for a while, and they've known each other for a while. I can believe that they're in love."
Though I still could not agree with him one hundred percent, I knew I had to let it drop. My heart beat was quickening, beating a strong tattoo against my chest and up into my throat that made it hard to speak. "Leonard?" I said in a slightly strangled voice.
"Yes?"
"I love you."
That was the first time I had ever spoken those words out loud.
We had been together for what had felt like an eternity, yet those exact words had never left my mouth. And when Leonard looked over at me, I realized he had never said them to me, either. I knew that was the case, because I would have remembered exactly how it felt when he kept his eyes on me and he said,
"Amy Duncan. Nothing I can say could ever sum it all up. Sometimes I keep waiting to wake up from all this, because you are too good to be true." With a quiet sigh, he sat a little straighter and took my hand in both of his. "I'll stop before I get too cliché. But Amy, I love you. Stay with me, I need you. Please stay with me."
I remember weakly nodding and saying something like, "You'll always have me, Len," before he put one hand at the back of my neck and one at my waist and kissed me. I had known for a long time that I loved him, and he had known for a long time that he loved me, and I think we were both aware, to an extent, of these feelings that the other had. It all seemed to go without saying—but at the same time, it felt utterly ridiculous that we had never exchanged a simple "I love you." But now I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was the man for me. His kiss was slow and fervent, and the fire that had gone off inside me was more violent than it ever had been.
"Amy," he whispered once we had broken apart—our foreheads were touching and I kissed him on the mouth again, but for a shorter period of time and he pulled gently away. "Amy. I have to tell you something."
"What is it?" I asked a little breathlessly.
"I've…I've been worried that you'd freak out. Because of Emily and everything, I've just been worried."
"Leonard, you can tell me."
Just then, we were interrupted by a car horn that was too loud and held for too long to be coincidental. The window of a surprisingly nice car was lowered to reveal Leah sticking her head out from the back seat. She laughed and thanked Leonard for his kind offer to drive her home, then cracked a joke about PDA and rolled the window back up again. After the car had gone up the hill by us, I could tell the atmosphere between me and Leonard had definitely changed. He couldn't say whatever it was he had intended to just then, so I said something instead.
"I want to ask you a favor," I said quietly.
"Anything."
"Please. Let's not ever talk about Drew again."
Leonard put his arm around me and kissed my temple. "It's a promise."
Shortly thereafter, I remembered that I was supposed to be back at NYU in just over an hour. Lindsay had been reminding me for several days that I needed to be around at 6:30 Friday night. She was being annoyingly secretive about whatever it was, so I had no idea whether or not to ask Leonard to come along. Ultimately we decided he should at least drop me off, and in retrospect, I am exceedingly glad that he came back to Manhattan instead of staying in Scarsdale.
The surprise was not really one from Lindsay, but from my family. My dad, mother, Dennis, and Peter were there at the apartment waiting. At first, this was incredibly awkward, because I opened the door hand-in-hand with this Indian guy they had heard about but never actually met. Mom and Dennis leapt up off the couch as soon as I saw them while dad and Peter stood more soberly, but as soon as we all realized who was there—my boyfriend and my family—a certain awkwardness fell upon us.
Fortunately Dennis broke it first by roaring "LEONARD!" and taking three giant steps forward to pump Leonard's hand.
"We've heard so much about you," mother said with her prettiest smile, bypassing a handshake and giving Leonard a hug.
"Mom! Dad—guys, what're you doing here?" I asked.
Peter, who hadn't moved from his spot by the couch, was the one to answer. "Grace went back to Shanghai to be with her sister for a few weeks, and I phoned mom to tell her I missed her. I missed Grace. So mom got the idea that we should all take a trip down to New York together to visit you."
I turned to mother, who just laughed as she stood with her hand on Leonard's shoulder—a position I wasn't sure if I appreciated or was embarrassed by. "Honey, you know I love a good excuse to come down to New York. We're going to stay with the Lindens"—good friends who had moved to Westchester—"tonight, and tomorrow we'll just tour the town. But now, we'd like to take you and Leonard out to dinner."
"Oh, Mrs. Duncan, you don't have to do that," Leonard said, glancing briefly at my father, who had yet to say a word.
"Nonsense, dear, we've been wanting to meet you for a long time!" mother laughed. I feel like if she were your typical mom and I was your typical daughter, I would be a bit embarrassed, but all I could do was love her endlessly for her honest desire to get to know Leonard better. "We've come to surprise Amy, and now she's returned the favor by giving us the pleasant surprise of being able to take you out. I'll not hear another word of protest, young man."
"But I—"
"Dude," Dennis said in a stage whisper. "You'll never get out of it."
Mother took him by the arm and started marching out the door with him. "You really won't, dear." Calling back to my father, she said, "Dallin! You made a rez for Alfredo's, right?"
Peter walked past me and dad came next, saying "Yes, Eleanor." Then he turned back slightly to face me, but stopped walking. Once the others were a little out of earshot, he started moving along again, and we were side by side at the back of the group. "So that's Leonard."
"Yes." My heart was pounding—part of me thought dad was about to give me some wise words, or give me the proud-father-you're-my-little-girl talk that he always seemed to feed Moriah but had never given me. As soon as dad opened his mouth again, however, this momentary, desperate hope fizzed into nothingness faster than struck match makes fire.
"He's Latino?" Dad's voice is not curious, but disapproving.
This especially annoyed because I know I had mentioned Leonard's race, and it sounded like dad was not pleased I was with someone nonwhite. "He's an Indian, dad. American Indian. I've told you that before."
"Ah."
"That's okay with you, isn't it?" I asked sourly. After all, Peter had married a Chinese woman and nobody had made a fuss about it.
He shrugged, pretending to be surprised by my attitude. "You're the one who'd have to live with him, Amy. It's your decision."
"We're just dating dad, I'm not going to live with him."
"Oh, so you don't want to marry him? Maybe not right now, but it's not your intention to ever marry him?"
The two of us are still walking, and nobody else has even turned back to make sure we were keeping up. Dad's voice was still condescending, but I could not respond to him because I was too busy thinking seriously about his question. For the past while I had been really pondering where my relationship was with Leonard, and I had come to the conclusion that there was no question in my mind: I wanted to marry him. I wanted to live every day of the rest of my life with him, because he was perfect for me and I knew I would never find someone else who made me happier to be alive. Then dad coughed, and I realized I hadn't answered his question.
"I'm going to marry him."
"He's asked you?"
"No," I said, turning to look up at dad, who did not return my gaze. "But he's going to. And when he does, I'm going to say yes."