The computer in the living room is in automatic power-save mode, the monitor blank, the tower silent, and the sole sign of life is the monitor’s power light. It became this way after twenty minutes of a screensaver, which was watched by a catatonic Diana. There is a knock on their apartment door. Diana, who had been mindlessly opening a letter from the real estate agency, stops to answer it. In the doorway stands Corey, holding a bouquet of lilac oxalises.
Diana shakes her head slowly. “You still live here,” she sighs. Last night, after the discussion (what other word is there for it?), Corey slept in the makeshift guest room that was formed from putting Andrew’s crib in Gloria’s room.
“Diana, I love you more than anything. I don’t know when or how things went wrong, but I can’t let this fall apart. Not this quickly. Not at all.”
“Corey, I want this to work. I do, but—”
“Shut up…” Corey says swiftly, but not loudly.
Taken aback, Diana reacts with disgust, but before she can get a syllable in, Corey interrupts again, “Diana, I don’t know what notions you got in your head or where you got them from, but they’re killing us. They’re killing me. Maybe things have been too simple, but simple isn’t as bad as it seems. Diana, I don’t mind that you are curious about life and fate and all that, but I can’t stand around and let it separate us… get between us and push us apart. I won’t let it! Diana, things are right! They may not be perfect, but, God, what is? Me? Not a chance. You? Sometimes, I think so, but irregardless… I’m sorry if this—us—seems too unreal for you, but take my word for it, it’s real, and it’s good, and I’d like to know why you don’t think so…”
“It’s not that easy…”
“It can be!”
Diana holds up a hand, with a quick, “My turn.”
She breathes in before saying, “Corey, things are easy. It makes me look around and ask, what happens when things are too easy? Sometimes things don’t work out. I just want to know that it will work. I’m sure if I kept my mouth shut, things would coast along. If I don’t question it, I won’t know the answer.”
“The answer is ‘yes,’ my love. Listen to me. The answer is ‘yes.’ I don’t know this to be true; I make it to be true. Trust me, Diana, you’re just rocking the boat.”
“So, you don’t want me to rock the boat?”
“I don’t want you to expect the boat to tip, because I’m doing everything I can to counterbalance.”
Diana is silent for the longest time. “Remember when there was that time that we weren’t… us? I had to reroute my life. I had to implement a half-developed fallback plan.”
“Diana, when we put things on hold, you were still in a pretty stable environment: living at home, in college, working.”
“And every night, I prayed things would go back to the way they were.”
“And they did!”
Diana continues her monologue, “It’s not that I wanted a whole lot of change in my life, I just learned to expect it. When you hear about life plans being derailed, it’s usually off the desired track, not back onto it. It’s pretty scary when you’re told all your life that life is unpredictable and everything you predicted happens.”
“I know what you mean. When Donald was born, it was like an answered prayer. And how my great-aunt sang at our wedding, like I always imagined. And this beautiful house we’re living in. It’s everything we wanted.”
Corey gets the strangest look from Diana. “Donald” was the name Corey hand in mind for the son that would be the eldest
“Diana,” Corey starts, “I get what you’re wanting. But trust me, Sweetheart, I can give it to you. I never meant for things to seem stale. I just thought we wanted to be comfortable.”
Without another word, Arielle embraces him, holding him tightly in a forceful hug and kisses him. It is a welcome change from the reverent pecks that they usually exchange. Something out of a romance novel that Diana would not be able to stomach.
“You’re fighting…” Diana whispers.
“What?” he asked, taken aback by how things have changed so suddenly.
Diana smiles a great smile of joy, “You’re fighting it. You said to yourself, it’s worth it. You fought it. That’s what makes it different. All this time, I was following a linear system, and here you are, defying it, making it different. Defining the option.” Diana brings him close.
“And, are things going to get better, then?”
“They’re already better. And they’ll get better still.”
Corey asks, meekly, “I did good?”
“Doing good is hard. You did right. Right is as good as it gets. I don’t know what force made you figure it out, but you did.”
“Book,” he says simply.
“Huh?”
“There was a book in my office. A tattered, old thing by C. S. Lewis. I think I read it in high school, but this time, it was different. It inspired me to do something. It spoke of love and roles and how God wants us to be.”
Diana smiles, “What was it about?”
“I couldn’t even begin to talk about what it said, but it made realize that I should do what I was thinking about doing.”
“What?”
“This. Fighting. Anything but sit idly and watch my world fall apart.”
Diana picks up the letter from the ground. She reads it and says, “Shelley has found some houses she’d like us to look at. She’s asked us to call her.”
Epilogue coming soon...
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