“I need to get this out,” she repeated, drawing the tears and the rest of the emotions she was feeling back inside of her. “I said that I was too busy, that I couldn’t spend time with you, be with you for real because I didn’t have time. And that was wrong.”
She paused, looked at him, watched his face. Watched forsomething.
“It was wrong because it’s not about how much time you have but about what you do with it. Because I got a promotion at work, the one I’d wanted. And yet it felt like garbage because I couldn’t tell you. And I couldn’t call you and I couldn’t…because I told you that you didn’t mean enough to me to fight.”
She heard his sharp intake of breath.
“Fight for us,” she continued. “Fight for what you said was bashert. Yes. Bashert, and I see that now.”
Silence.
Nothing.
“You probably don’t believe me,” she said. “And you have every right not to believe me, but—” she gestured toward the wrapped package “—you would probably believe this, something I got for you two weeks before we broke up in high school. I’ve been carrying it around with me for years now. I haven’t opened it. I haven’t done anything with it because I couldn’t have. I probably always knew I was going to give it to you, watch the expression on your face as you saw what I’d done…”
His jaw was tight, as if he was keeping it from falling and she didn’t know what to expect.
She forged ahead anyway. “So this is for you, for the past, for the present and for the future. And for the strings, tangled, tied, invisible, and ones that connect me to you.”
She watched, waited as he moved toward the desk, where she’d laid out the package. He cut through and opened the butcher-paper wrapping, slowly revealing and opening what was inside.
“You got me…” he managed, “a print from the hockey comics collaboration they did all those years ago. For graduation.”
She nodded, trying desperately to hold back the tears that were threatening to exit out of her, a geyser of unexpected reactions and upsets and nerves.
“Leah,” he managed. “You can do anything in the world. You don’t have to hide. I’m here. I always have been.”
And as he walked toward her, his arms opened, she had the feeling of coming home.
*
Samuel held Leahas she broke down completely in his arms. Upset, angst and nerves turned his shoulder soaking wet.
But he didn’t care, not at all. Because she wanted to be there.
“I’m here,” he said rubbing the back of her head, letting her cry. “I’m here. Here and now, as long as you want me to be.”
“How about forever?”
He smiled up at her. “I think forever might be in the cards. But.”
She raised an eyebrow, and there she was, his fighter. “What do you mean but?”
“I brought us something. Something symbolic. Something that says we can write our own story. Together. Starting anew.”
She nodded. And his heart was full. “I like that.”
And as she opened the paper to reveal the simple frame from his mantel, the simple drawing of white blossoms on snow, framed by a circle of branches.
“You remembered,” she said, tracing the ketubahs design with a finger. “An open playing field. Victory after crossing through the brambles and thorns.”
“Nobody else’s,” he said. “But ours.”
And then he did the most important thing. He stepped forward, put his arms around her and kissed her.
Hours later, after conversation over a very belated Shabbas dessert and a babka that Shayna had ready to go, he looked up at her. “How about we do this next week, with my family?”
“I like the idea. Not better than babka. But a lot.”
And all she could do was laugh, and close his mouth with a kiss that tasted like cinnamon, chocolate, and forever.
The End
