THE PRESENT
The first thing that registers in my mind is yellow. I don’t know why, but my mind fills with the color. Almost as if someone poured pure sunshine straight into the center of my heart. My body feels warm. I open my eyes to see a ray of sun illuminating the swirls of dust floating across the bedroom. I love nothing more than these mornings, when the slats of the blinds create tilting stripes on the bedsheets and the shrieking of my alarm is absent.
His warm breath shifts the hair on my neck, tickling the sensitive area below my ear. I grin, turning towards him and planting my soft lips against his warm ones. His lips, his cheeks, his forehead, his neck. He groans, shifting slightly towards me, his arms snaking around my waist. I study his groggy face for several seconds. Like a map of his life, my eyes seek out the scar on his eyebrow from when he fell off of a chair when he was five. I look at the ruddy red mark on his jaw, where my lips tattooed a rose on his face the night before. I look at his eyelashes, long and feathery against his tanned cheeks.
“Morning,” his voice is scratchy, clashing with the early morning softness in his grey cloud eyes. He still looks asleep, his mouth pouting, then stretching into the smile I know oh so well. And I lose track of time, like I always do, as Nina Simone plays softly on the radio.
Maybe it was seconds later, maybe hours, maybe only minutes that I lay beside him, legs tangled in the bright white hotel sheets. The blinking clock on my right reads 11:38 am. I blow my bangs out of my eyes.
“We should get going, it’s getting late.”
“At this rate, we won’t even reach Sedona until next week.” He chuckles softly, not sounding sorry at all.
“It’s your own fault, you know.”
“As it always is.”
“Shut it.”
“Rude, now make it up to me.” He leans in, all minty breath and sparkling eyes and freckled cheeks and how could I say no, and before I knew it it was 2 in the afternoon.
“Will, we have to leave now!”
“See,” he says lazily, looking up at me from the bed, “the thing about not having a schedule is that you’re supposed to be relaxed. Relaxed, you’ve heard of it, haven’t you?”
“Let’s go!”
“Alright, be patient woman.”
We drove through the night, the stars rushing by overhead, the universe singing its song of silence as the city fell blissfully asleep behind us. The headlights lit up the desert, casting shadows of cacti and tumbleweeds against the harsh clay cliffs.
“Where are we going?”
“Nowhere. Everywhere.”
“Well, let’s go then.”
“Yes, let’s.”
And we did. And when the sun escaped from the horizon that held it captive all night, it fell onto our smiling eyes and lips and it was satisfied.
THE NEXT MORNING
Have you ever had that feeling like those twinkly Christmas lights were packed tight inside of your chest cavity? And you feel like you could burst from the electricity of it all. Like you were listening to the deafening climax of your favorite song, only it was happening on repeat, and every time your heart beats a little faster. Yeah, that’s how the inside of my old Subaru felt.
“What’re you thinking about, prettygirl?” His hand slid from the wheel to my folded hands, his fingers brushing like sun rays across my palms. The Christmas lights in my heart seemed to twinkle a little brighter.
“I’m just…I feel obnoxiously happy.” A laugh burst from his chest. It was bright pink, like the rain boots currently strewn across the backseat. “Seriously, I might start to annoy myself if I keep this up. I feel like I’m living my favorite word.”
“You’re living zenith?”
“How did you know my favorite word was zenith?”
“You told me. On our very first date, remember?”
And I did.
THREE YEARS EARLIER
“Are you,” I paused. I couldn’t remember his name.
“Will Jewell. And you’re Hadley Jameson, right?” Of course, ultrahandsome guy remembers my name.
“Yeah, sorry. My memory and I aren’t the best of friends. She gives just as much as she takes away.”
“I’m sure I can get her to remember me. I’m very memorable.” He smirked, and suddenly my brain was all pearls and chocolate and gold.
11:39 pm, and instead of curled beneath a heavy blanket of crappy TV and coffee gelato I’m at a 24 hour coffee shop with the boy with the chocolate eyes that I’d only met today. And instead of discussing the latest Olivia Pope drama with my cat, I’m trading favorites like baseball cards, tossing my secrets recklessly across the smooth tabletop.
“Favorite movie?”
“That’s easy,” I say. “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” A long pause ensues.
“You’re…very unpredictable, I must say.”
“I’ve gotta keep you on your toes somehow, right?”
“Right.”
“Alright…favorite dessert?”
“Oh pumpkin pie, no question. Favorite word?”
“Favorite word?”
“C’mon, everyone has one.”
“That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.” That’s what I said. What I wanted to say was you just read my heart.
He stands up and I grab my purse and our glances clash like silver swords as we step into the inky dark air. I watch his feet leave invisible footsteps on the concrete as he walks to his car.
“Hey, Will.”
“Yeah?”
“My favorite word? Zenith. It means-“
“I know exactly what it means. I’ll see you later, prettygirl.”
I was in for it.
THE PRESENT
“You still remember that? After-“
“All this time? Of course I do. I ask that question on every date I go on. You’re the only girl I’ve met who actually told me a word I didn’t know.”
“Wait! You told me-“
“I wasn’t about the embarrass myself in front of such a pretty girl, was I? Besides, I have a track record with words, remember. I know them all.”
“You DID have a track record with words. But that was before-“
“I met you.”
His words ricochet against the windows, lit white by my warm breath. They clang against the solid glass until finally settling in my lap. The silence of the endless road could have gone on for hours-
I was jarred by the rumbling of gravel beneath the car tires, stark in comparison to the smooth worn highway. Will slams his foot against the brakes, my hands crack against the dashboard, and the roar of the engine quiets. Someone screams during all of this and it slices through the night sky. I realize that someone was me.
“Hadley! Are you okay?”
“What the hell just happened?”
“I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to be so…abrupt. I just need to tell you something. Well, ask, more like but…”
“Spit it out, Will.”
“Look, Hadley. I thought of all of the big words I would use when I said this, words like elysian or epiphany or metanoia. But right now, only one word comes to mind. Redamancy.”
TWO AND A HALF YEARS EARLIER
“Pancakes with chocolate chips, just the way you like them.”
“You’re perfect. You only forgot one-“
“Coffee? I could never forget to give you your lifeblood. That would just be cruel.”
“Like I said, perfect.”
“And I love you.”
I had always thought the phrase “deafening silence” was an obvious oxymoron until this exact moment, when the lack of voices in the room was louder than the washing machine on laundry day.
“…what…uh, what did you just say?”
“I love you, Hadley. So much.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
His breath caught on the fishhook in his throat and it turned his eyes red.
“Reciprocation would be a great choice.”
“I just…you surprised me.”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it does!”
Wrong answer.
“No, it doesn’t.”
His sigh blew the walls of the house in, leaving me standing in the middle of it all with nothing but the dust.
His back rose and fell, causing the patterns on his comforter to morph into triangles and circles and guilt. I stuck the sticky note against his wall, covering the gash I made on a day involving chocolate cake and frisbees. Redamancy. The act of loving in return.
THE PRESENT
“Will, what are you doing?” My voice quavered, my tongue a tangle of leaves in the wind.
“Just- just wait. Redamancy. It means the act of loving in return. You gave me that word once, when I needed it most. And now I’m giving it back to you, a thousand and two times over. I promise you redamancy forever. I promise you redamancy when we’re old and we wear adult diapers and our eyes are too bad to see the lines on the road. I promise you redamancy when you’re grumpy and I’m frustrated and our favorite songs aren’t enough anymore.”
“Will!”
“Just wait.”
*to be continued*
– J.S.
