Page 115 of The Crush
“I want everything with you,” he tells me, repeating the same words he’d told me months ago. Though this time, he takes it one step further. “Isabel, will you marry me?”
I nod, so happy that I don’t know how to contain it. “Yes. Yes, of course I will.”
My hand and his are shaking as he slips the ring onto my finger, and he pulls me to him as soon as it’s in place. We both sink back into the blankets and pillows, intertwined together now the way our lives have always been. Always will be.
“I love you, Danny,” I murmur, my mouth against his. “I love you.”
“Mi vida,” he says back, punctuating the endearment with a kiss of his own. “Mi Isabel, I love you, too.”
The Epilogue
I’m all grown up when he leaves the next time. And walking right by his side.
With Daniel’s hand clasped in my left and the tickets in my right, we excitedly bid our familias farewell at the airport gate with long hugs and tearful promises to call and to write whenever we could.
And we do. We both do. For all the time we spend traveling, we send postcards full of details from every destination, call whenever we land somewhere new, pack stamp-laden envelopes full of photos so they can see for themselves that the two of us really are doing just fine. Better than fine.
In the pictures, Daniel is always smiling as if he never knew a time when he didn’t. His dimpled grin is wide, his eyes crinkling at the edges, his head tilted in my direction. He keeps an arm around my shoulders as I wrap my own around his waist and grin, try to remember to look at the camera instead of at him. But seeing him increasingly happy and at ease is forever my favorite sight of all the ones we see.
Where once I used to only catch glimpses of that part of him, I now find it all the time. Someone who is quick to laugh and to gently tease. Who is increasingly less wary to be caught in conversation with strangers now that he has things he wants to talk about. Whosits and plans a future with me instead of trying to outrun a past on his own.
Before the two of us packed our bags at the end of the summer of ‘95, Daniel and I had decided on eighteen months. Eighteen months of traveling down a list built from all the places we both marked out with thumbtacks on his maps, carefully calculating a route that would be funded by some of Daniel’s savings as well as a portion of my own.
Strange how by the time I finally had the means to leave on my own terms, I was as worried over what I was missing at home as I was over what I was missing away from it. No longer so sure that everything would be the same as I left it when I return.
A good thing. Because neither am I.
With each new place I come to know, I get to know myself better, too. With each part of the world I see, I see the place I want to occupy in it more clearly. And so does he.
Eventually, more and more conversations turn from where we will go next to what we want when we get there, to the life we will build when we do. Until the moment comes when we both decide once again that we have already waited long enough…only to have to wait a bit longer.
Almost two years to the day after Daniel came home, we sit side by side on the edge of the small tub in our hotel bathroom. Two pairs of eyes trained on his watch as we both will the seconds to tick by faster, my fingers playing anxiously with the gold wedding band on his left hand so that I won’t reach for the small plastic test on thecounter too soon.
“You ready, Isabel?” he asks me the moment three minutes have passed, the excitement visibly thrumming off him at the idea of confirming what we both already suspect.
I nod, tears already brimming even before I shakily stand and reveal to him the two pink lines that will cross through more than a few of the remaining places on our list. Although judging by the beaming smiles on both of our faces right before he scoops me up, neither of us have any regrets.
And we never do.
Ninety-Two
Daniel
Thursday, October 31, 2002
I check the wall clock once more, not wanting to be late as I try to bring some sense of organization back to my cluttered desk. The collection of papers and files and photos all competing for the little space left unoccupied by a massive computer.
Really never thought I’d miss typewriters.
Lifting my head at a knock on my door, I quickly remove my new reading glasses, shoving them out of sight into the front pocket of my shirt as I stand for my visitor.
“Hey, Danny, you heading out?” asks my office mate, a young man named Anthony who makes up for what he lacks in years of experience with undiminished enthusiasm. “I thought I’d take off early, too, unless you need anything?”
I frown, thinking with one hand on the back of my neck and the other on my hip. “No. Nothing that can’t wait until next week. Unless…has the DEA office come back with an answer on Torres yet?”
“Yes,” Anthony replies, a suppressed smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I, uh, I sent you an email.”
I look back at the computer, having just turned the thing off.
