He leans into me and urges me…

29

Naomi

He leans into me and urges me to hold onto him. I do, and suddenly I see a flash of a memory.

Mother is standing by the stove, tears in her eyes. Father hands her

a handful of flowers to make tea.

“What will I do without her?” she asks.

“Aw, my Julee.”

My Father wraps his arms around my mother and holds her while she cries. I stand in the shadows, watching. Memorizing the curve of my mother’s hips, memorizing her face in the dim light.

“If this illness takes you, I need you to protect her,” Father says.

Mother nods. “I’ve been feeling a pain, in my arm. It started here,” Mother pointed to her elbow, then traced the pain back to the center of her chest. “I think this illness attacks the heart.”

“I know my heart will never be the same,” Father says.

They stare at each other; both of them with tears in their eyes. “You are beautiful,” my Father tells my Mother.

Marv closes his eyes and waits.

When he opens them, I stare into his eyes. I immediately ask, “I reminded you of your Mother?”

“No, not that. You reminded me of everything beautiful in the universe.”

“How?”

He presses his hand into mine. “That memory, that was the night my Mother died. I never looked at anything and saw beauty again. I saw pain. I saw emptiness.”

I wait.

“And then I saw you. You were the perfect light in my dark world. I’ve been waiting for you my whole life, and I didn’t even know it.”

“If you met me in the middle of a crowded room, would you still have chosen me?”

“Absolutely,” he says.

I lean into him and take a deep breath. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I’ll try.”

He doesn’t understand the sheer momentousness of my words, so I lean against him and press my lips against his. I kiss him until I have to come up for air.

“I like it here,” I finally tell him.

“I’m happy wherever you are happy.”

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