I don’t know what it is exactly, but there’s an ominous feeling when I walk into the apartment. I shut the door behind me and turn the lock. The lights are dimmed, both cats asleep on the couch.
“Lennon?” I call out.
It’s so quiet inside the apartment that I’m worried she’s not here. But where would she have gone, and why wouldn’t she have told me?
“Back here,” she calls from the bedroom, relief flooding me.
I find her lying propped up in the bed, nursing Bee. The TV hums softly in the background. She looks tired. I can’t help but kick myself for not getting home sooner.
“I’m sorry. The shoot ran late.”
“It’s okay. Leftovers are in the refrigerator.”
I don’t care about food right now. All I care about is getting close enough to kiss my girls.
I bend down, kissing the top of Bee’s head before I move in to press my lips to Lennon’s. I freeze before our lips touch, noticing how stiff she’s holding herself.
“Lennon?” I prompt. “What’s wrong?” I stand up straight without kissing her, looking her over in the hopes that I can figure it out myself. “Is it your brother?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “He’s stopped trying to reach me. It’s not that.”
It’s not that, meaning I was right and it is something.
“I feel out of the loop here. What’s bothering you?” I toe off my shoes, then loosen my tie before I sit on the end of the bed. I turn to face her. “Talk to me. I can’t fix what’s wrong if you don’t talk to me.”
Big brown eyes pool with tears, her teeth digging into her bottom lip, which already looks like it’s been nibbled on a bit too much today. “I found it.” She whispers the three words like the ultimate confession.
I stare at her blankly, wondering what I’m missing. What could she possibly mean?
My puzzlement only grows when she doesn’t elaborate. “Honeybee, I really don’t know what you mean.”
She huffs out a breath, her cheeks reddening from embarrassment. “The ring,” she hisses like it’s some dirty little secret. The ring? I think to myself. What is she talking about? “And I’m so sorry, I just . . . I didn’t mean to find it, it was an accident, and I . . . I’m not ready to get engaged. At least, I don’t think I am because I saw it and I froze. Completely panicked, and I don’t even know why.”
She starts to cry. I itch to reach forward and wipe away her tears, but I get the impression she wouldn’t want me to do that right now.
“Baby,” I say softly, “not to sound like an idiot, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t . . . I’m not proposing. I haven’t even bought a ring, and since that’s not something we’ve discussed, I haven’t even thought about it.”
She blinks, lips parted and stunned into silence. “But I saw the ring. In your drawer.”
My brows furrow. “In my drawer?”
“The bathroom.”
The light bulb finally goes off. “Lennon.” I try not to smile. “That’s not an engagement ring.” She opens her mouth to protest, so I quickly go on. “I mean, technically it is, but it’s not one I got, and it’s not for you. It was in my dad’s things. It was my bio-mom’s, or it was supposed to be hers. I don’t really know if he’d proposed yet or not.” I shrug like it’s not a big deal, but it’s just a reminder of all the things I’ll never know about them.
“Oh. Oh.” She wipes at her tears. “Wow, I feel like such a fool, and here I’ve been panicking all day.” Bee finishes nursing, and like we’re a well-oiled machine already, I take the baby from her and grab up a burp cloth to drape over my shoulder.
I’m not offended by what she’s said. I can sense there’s something deeper going on, something that maybe she herself doesn’t even understand.
“Do you not want to marry me?” I ask casually, hoping she knows I’m merely trying to understand and not pick a fight.
The me of a year ago would’ve been pissed by what she’s saying. I would’ve taken it personally and been hurt. Now, I can read her well enough to know that while seeing a ring might’ve been what set her off, it’s not the real problem at hand.
“I do . . . I think I do . . . no, I know I do. But . . .” She hesitates, her eyes dropping to the blanket bunched around her lap. “I’m scared.”
That’s not what I was expecting her to say. “You’re scared? Of what? Me?”
“No, it’s not that.” She shakes her head, clearly floundering to make sense of her feelings. “I always pictured myself married, but I think when I saw that ring, it made me think, ‘Do I even really know what marriage is?’ Look at my parents. I didn’t get the best example there.” She lowers her head. “I’m scared, Beckham.”
“Like you were with Bee?”
It takes her a moment before she speaks. “Yeah.”
“You’re not your parents, Len. We are not them. You need to remember that. For yourself, but mostly for her.” I hand Bee back to her. Lennon’s eyes drop to our daughter, a wistful smile touching her lips. “We owe it to her to break these generational traumas. We have to be stronger for her. She doesn’t need to be weighed down by our past.”
She brings her gaze back to me. “How is it you managed to talk me out of a near panic attack?”
I shrug like it’s no big deal. “Because I know you. But make no mistake, one day I’m going to get down on one knee and ask you the most important question of our lives, and when you say yes, there won’t be a single doubt in your mind of how much I love and respect you. No one’s ever going to treat you as good as I can, honeybee, I can promise you that.” Her breath catches, but I go on. “And when you walk down the aisle and look in my eyes, you’ll see how you’re not just the love of my life, but my whole fucking world. There is no me without you.”
Some people go their whole lives never finding “the one” and then settle for something that doesn’t come close to the real thing, and we were lucky enough to find it as kids.
We might’ve gotten lost along the way—mostly me—but we ended up back here with each other, exactly where we were always meant to be.
“You still think you’re going to marry me even after I freaked out seeing a ring?”
I shrug, indifferent. “Now’s not the time, but yes, I’m still going to marry you one day.”
I don’t know when that day will be, but I do know we’ll both be ready. Lennon still has things to work through when it comes to her family. I’m not sure she’ll ever want to reconcile with her parents, but her brother is a different story. I know she keeps ignoring him, but I have a hard time seeing her do that forever if he keeps reaching out. And me? God knows I have a shit ton of stuff to work through myself, but we have each other, and we have Bee to motivate us to be the best versions of ourselves.
Looking at the love of my life holding our daughter, I know that despite it all, I’m without a doubt the luckiest man alive.
I used to think that forever was just another word for time, but in actuality it’s a state of being.
Forever begins when you start living for yourself and stop answering to other people.
This is my forever.
