30 Love, page 14
I fold up the letter and slide into an envelope. It is far from eloquent and definitely is not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but it is how I feel, and having put it all down on paper makes me feel a bit freer.
I consider whether to mail the letter or just hold it until she makes contact with me. After all, I am still trying to respect her space, although inside it’s killing me. I begin combing through my room looking for a book of stamps when my phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Dizzy?”
“Yes? May I ask who’s speaking?”
I don’t recognize the number on my phone, but there’s clearly a tone of familiarity in it.
“This is Dorothy Landfair.”
Why in the world is Lailah’s mother calling me? I immediately assume that something really bad has happened to Lailah.
“Is Lailah okay?”
“She’ll be all right.”
I don’t know what to make of the comment, so I inquire further.
“She told me about what you guys have been going through,” she says.
“Oh. Mrs. Landfair, let me tell you that I never intended to hurt Lailah in any way. I love her so much.”
“I know.”
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with her, but she told me that she needs some space.”
“I know,” Mrs. Landfair responds again. “She’s just a little stressed out about all of this, but I wanted to call you and tell you a few things so you might better understand where she is coming from.”
“Okay,” I say, unsure if I’m going to be told off by another member of her family.
“Lailah really loves you. I know this. I also know that she’s afraid of being hurt. Robert and I know that you would never hurt her, though. Even Lailah knows this. I know she really wants to see you and talk things through, but she’s afraid. Being in a few bad relationships can do that to someone.”
“I understand.”
“I’ve been trying to get her to communicate with you, but I figure you might be better at that than I am.”
“So you’re saying I should go over to her house?”
“I’m not going to tell you what to do, because that’s up to you, but I can tell you that she wants to see you as much as you want to see her.”
I consider exactly what Mrs. Landfair is saying and immediately stop looking for stamps.
“Mrs. Landfair?”
“Yes.”
“Why call me and tell me any of this?”
I hear a soft chuckle in her voice before she responds. “Your mother and I had been talking to Lailah about the wedding planning, and as soon as this came up, we both knew it was just a case of cold feet. I told your mother I’d call you to see how you were handling things on your end.”
All of this is blowing my mind. I try to wrap my mind around our mothers conspiring to save our relationship, and for the first time in a while, I feel that all is not hopeless at this point.
“Thank you so much for calling, Mrs. Landfair.”
“You don’t have to thank me. Just make my daughter happy.”
“I will do everything I can to make that happen,” I respond.
After we say our goodbyes, I grab the letter I wrote and hop in my car.
In the drive over, my heart beats rapidly and I can feel my stomach tensing. Every stretch of road feels as if I am moving slower than slow. I wish that I could just fly to her house, but this time I have alone in the car with this letter is the moment I must be in. It is the moment where I do not know what will happen. It is the moment where anything is still possible, where I could be moments from reconciling with the woman I love or moments from losing her altogether, regardless of what our mother’s might think. There is a part of me that believes that we will be able to remain friends in spite of what happens, but I already know that that’s not all I want. I want so much more for us than that.
It is in this moment that I exit the interstate and take a detour. There’s a stop I have to make before I go see Lailah. If this will be my last chance, I want to go all out.
19
I see Lailah’s car in the driveway as I pull up, and I realize that I have never been this nervous in my entire life. There are no other vehicles in her driveway or in front of her house, and a part of me is relieved that she is alone. I don’t know what I would have done had I seen another car there, other than turn around and leave. My only hope, should I have stumbled up on that situation, is that it would have been Marcia and not Langston. I shake my head to clear the thought of that. Clearly, I’m tripping. There is nothing between them. I know this—or I should know it—but that does not stop my mind from wondering.
I approach the door, slowly, feeling the weight of each step I take up the driveway and onto the footpath that leads to her front door. I take a deep breath before ringing her doorbell.
In the seconds between my ringing the door bell and hearing her opening it from the other side, I live a lifetime.
“Hi, Dizzy,” she says.
I am flooded with relief just to hear her say my name. I immediately open my arms to embrace her, and she quickly closes the space between us by wrapping me in her thin arms.
I miss the feel of her, and I inhale the scent of her wild raspberry lotion, enjoying the tickle of her curly hair brushing against the side of my face. I am at home—finally.
“I missed you so much,” I immediately say, not wanting to let her go.
“I missed you, too.”
I hold her a beat longer, and she allows me to.
A million questions flood my head, and I don’t know where to begin. Instead, I simply say the obvious. “I’m sorry.”
She nods, her face solemn. “Yeah, I’m sorry, too.”
When she says this, I reach for her again and she allows me to hold her, but I can tell that there is still something beneath the surface that she wants to tell me, so I hold my breath cautiously.
Lailah leads me into the den and takes a seat on the end of the couch so that I am seated in the middle of it. As she looks at me, I notice that she is wearing an Ellison-Wright t-shirt that I gave her a few years ago while raiding the bookstore for paraphernalia during one of my trips down from New York. That makes me smile, and I hope that her wearing that shirt is a deliberate attempt to keep me close to her thoughts.
She looks as if she is contemplating what to say, which is totally uncharacteristic of her, and I can feel the mood in the room shift, as if the air is being quietly sucked out. I reach in my pocket and quickly produce the letter that I spent the morning writing. I hand it to her quietly.
She stares at it for a moment as if trying to figure out what it is. Then she takes it from my hand. There is nothing enthusiastic in her actions, nothing that screams a curiosity at what I have written. She places the sealed envelope on her lap and begins to twiddle her fingers. I wait for her to read the letter, but she doesn’t.
“Dizzy,” she starts. “I have been doing a lot of thinking over the past few days.”
I stand up from the couch. “Okay. Before you go any farther, I need you to read that letter.”
She looks at it curiously, but doesn’t make any attempt to open it. “We need to talk about a few things.”
I feel the hope in my veins beginning to drain. I start to pace the floor, as I feel my face warming. “I agree,” I finally say. “But please read my letter first.”
Her eyes move from one side of the room to the other, as she considers this. With a deliberate cautiousness, she opens the envelope and removes the paper inside.
For the next several minutes I watch her, unable to look away. Her expression remains unchanged the entire time, and I know immediately that I have lost her. And that feeling floors me. I stop pacing and stand there with my heart beating slowly and powerfully in my chest. My stomach feels as if it has slid down into my legs and hangs heavily at my calves. This is the one thing that I have feared more than anything for as long as I can remember.
I sit down next to Lailah. Not because I want to, but because I have to.
Her eyes are still on the page, although I know that she has already finished reading the letter. I want to say something to her, but I know that she has to be the one to speak first now. She knows my thoughts at this point, and that was all I could hope for when I wrote the letter.
When she finally opens her mouth, I stop breathing.
“I appreciate your letter.”
I nod.
“I have been doing a lot of thinking about what we are doing, and I thought these last few days would help me to figure that out. But I’m not sure that it has,” she says.
“That’s not such a bad thing, though. Right? I mean, we can’t know the answer to every question.”
“Maybe not, but all of this is so big. So much!”
“Maybe. Love is like that, though.”
“So you still want to do this, I’m guessing,” she says.
“More than anything in the world.”
“But there is so much that you don’t know about me. Just because we have been friends for forever does not mean that we know how to be together in a relationship.”
“True, but we can learn all of this stuff as we go along. I love you enough to get to know you in every way that you will allow me.”
“But I might need more time to get to know you the way I would need to know you in order for me to get some of these questions out of my head.”
“What kind of questions do you have?”
“I don’t know. Questions, ya know?”
“Talk to me, baby.”
“You know. Like will you always try to get even with me if you think I am doing something wrong to you? Will you naturally assume that I have the worst of intentions when I do something? I need to know that you won’t just trip out on me and do something—just because.”
“I am promising you now that I will not.”
“But you can’t really promise me that.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“Because you can’t know what the future will hold. Only time would tell if this was a fluke or if you really would handle the situation differently.”
“Lailah, all I have is my word. You have to believe me when I tell you that I only want you to be happy. I can’t sit here and tell you that we will never argue or have fights, though. That’s not real. Our parents can’t even say that they have never had their own problems with coping with each other’s peccadilloes. That’s just a part of life, but in all honesty, I don’t even have to tell you any of this, because you already know this. What I need for you to do is to really tell me what’s on your mind and not hide behind this argument.”
“I am not hiding,” she responds, but based upon the weakness of her words, I can tell that she is not using much passion to hold it up.
“Please. Just let me know what is really on your mind. I’m still your best friend.”
“I want to believe that.”
“You can take that to the bank and cash it for a million bucks. That is how certified my words are.”
She considers this for a moment and then stands up. Now she is pacing the room, her movements almost identical to my movements from a few minutes earlier. I can tell she is sorting through the different ways of making her comments.
“Lailah, just say it. I can take it.”
“Okay,” she finally says. “I need to know that we are not just settling for each other because the situation is convenient. I guess that is what crossed my mind when I went out with Langston, and it was the first thing I thought about when you told me that you wanted to go out with Jasmine. I figure that if we would be so willing to go out with people that we used to date, people that we spent much more time getting to know intimately, then maybe we’re not ready to be with each other for the long haul. At least, not yet.”
I consider her words. I know in my heart how I feel about her, but what she is doing is telling me that she has not been as sure about all of this as I have been. We can talk all day long about Jasmine, but this is not about her. It is about Langston or some dude who has yet to even enter the picture. I’m not totally sure, but what it feels like she is telling me is that she doesn’t know if I am the best that she can do. The thought stings to the core.
“As much as I wish that I could convince you of how much I love you, I know that you will only accept that when you are ready to. And I know that you will only be comfortable with the idea of being married to me when you have reconciled how you really feel about me. I can’t force that part. I have to just let you figure out that part yourself. But, real talk, I can’t tell you anything about my feelings that you don’t already know. Even if you decide you don’t want to follow through with our engagement, I will always love you. I don’t know how to do anything else—and I don’t want to know how to do anything else. But I can’t do all of this by myself. You have to want it as much and as badly as I do.”
Lailah nods, her eyes glassy, but unyielding.
“Can I ask you a question?” I say.
She nods again.
“Do you love me?”
“Yes,” she responds. Her voice is soft, but firm.
“Can you see us together?”
“Yes.”
“Can you see yourself spending the rest of your life with me?”
For a moment she doesn’t say anything.
“La, I’m asking you a simple question. Can you see yourself with me for the rest of our days?”
Her head moves slowly at first, up and down, and then more enthusiastically. “Yes, I can.”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear you,” I lie.
“Yes, I can.”
I chuckle.
“What?” she asks, her face full and glowing.
“You sound like you’re campaigning for President Obama.”
“What do you mean?”
“Yes, I can! Yes, we can!”
“Boy, you so stupid!”
“But I love you more than words can say.”
She hugs me, and I sear this moment into my memory: the feeling of her body wrapped tightly against mine, the sweet smell of her skin, the tickle of her hair against my cheek, all of it.
“So will you marry me?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“I mean now, not three years from now.”
“Yes, Dizzy,” she responds, playfully hitting my shoulder.
“I want you to be sure. I want this to be what you really want, because you’re all that I want.”
She lowers her head, blushing. “It feels funny telling you this, but I have always been trying to find a guy like you, and now I realize that I didn’t want a guy like you. I wanted you.” She laughs to herself. “I can’t believe I just said that aloud. You know, sometimes you think things, but you keep them to yourself.”
I nod, unable to conceal my smile.
“Now you’re here, and I have these feelings for you, and I just don’t want to ever lose you,” she continues.
“You will never lose me. We’re a package deal. We came into this world together, and I want to be with you as long as God will allow.”
She kisses me gently at first, then more passionately. It’s the first kiss that we have shared in days, and I realize that I have been aching for her touch.
We continue kissing for one interminable moment, before finally ending in a tender embrace.
“Oh,” I say, stepping back slightly. “I forgot. I have something for you.”
I retrieve the package from my pocket and hand it to her.
“What is it?” she asks.
I reach for her left hand and pull it to my lips. I kiss it softly and gently remove the ring that she is still wearing. I reach over and open the box, taking out the new 1.5-carat solitaire that I had been admiring from earlier. I kneel down in front her, still holding her hand.
“I love you, and I always will. And I would be honored to have you as my wife.”
She allows me to slide the ring onto her finger.
“Yes!” she says, looking the ring for the first time. Her smile is even wider than before. For a moment she stands there staring at it, before she lifts it to her face for a closer view. It takes me a moment to notice the tears streaming down her cheeks. “It’s so beautiful!”
“Just like you.”
I take the other ring, the costume one, and start to slide it into my front pocket, but she stops me.
“Can I keep that one, too?”
“Sure,” I say, handing it back to her.
“Dizzy, we’re really going to do this, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say, chuckling. “We are. Can you believe it?”
“I have to pinch myself.”
“No you don’t. This is the reality that we’ve always wanted for ourselves.”
She smiles. “I love you so much.”
“I love you, too.”
As we kiss, we slowly dissolve into each other.
One together in love, at last.
20
Epilogue
Akil doesn’t complain about the cranberry vest and tie that he and the other groomsmen will have to wear. In fact, he helps me to pick it out. My tux is nearly identical, except that my vest and tie are white. I will have to wait three more months to see how my tux looks against Lailah’s dress, but just knowing that it is going to happen is good enough for me.
Dantes Games, LLC is now official. We have even started pre-production on a new game that I have been playing around with for a while. It is a simple puzzle game that requires the player to assemble a group of clues and then solve a moving puzzle board. It is definitely a safe bet for a first game, but nothing spectacular. Our next project will be a bit more involved, though. Akil just wanted to make sure that we had something going to market before our independent contractor contracts expire with Gameland Media. One of the benefits of not being an actual legitimate employee right now is that we do not have to sign the same type of non-compete agreement as other employees, although we do have to respect the confidentiality policy of the company.
I imagine that most of my future will be up in the air and full of unpredictability, but I am cool with that. If anything, it will guarantee that when I turn thirty-one, I will have a few new adventures to look forward to.
