Clandestine Confessions

I used to find myself habitually playing with my finger – the one where a ring once was.

As if it is still there.

It was a gift one Valentine’s Day.

I thought he was proposing.

The woman of that day internally panicked.

So maimed by love in the midst of what was happening within my home.

The relationship I looked up to my whole life shattering – and I in the middle.

I told him to keep it after picking it up from being resized.

“Can you give it back when things are better?”

And he did – while on the side of a mountain in Georgia.

It always made me wonder how he would have proposed.

There was at one time a video of it.

Since been deleted.

I have kept absolutely nothing….

The very thing I told myself I would never do.

But then again, I also told myself I would never become what I did.

Nevers are nearsighted – derived from naivety – negated by reality.

–

“I thought of something tonight.”

He was driving home from her house when he called me.

I know because he called me on the way there.

Pulled into the driveway, gave me a whispered “I want you. I love you”, a quick hang up before I could reciprocate the sentiments.

It was midnight but it did not matter for it meant that I still mattered.

A phone call meant I was yet to be removed as one of his two options.

I was laying on my bed staring at the moon creeping out between the trees.

“No matter how far apart we are, may we always seek comfort in knowing we share the same moon,” I always told him.

“I’ll Take You Home” by By the Coast playing quietly.

“Well it is a question really. And what if I became crazy enough to ask it?”

“And what might that question be?”

“Take a guess.”

I knew the one I wanted it to be but was so hesitant to say it out loud. Because what if it wasn’t? What if even guessing it would push him away? I was petrified to lose him.

“Ummm, run away together,” I said with a laugh.

“That isn’t terribly far off. We may have to do that after. Think bigger.”

I knew what that implied. Still so hesitant to speak the question.

“What if I asked you to marry me?”

–

It wasn’t the first time he asked me.

Standing in his kitchen a couple months prior. Only the light above the sink to illuminate the room.

Me clutching the sweatshirt he just gave me, sprayed with his cologne, given to me as tears streamed down my face sitting on the edge of his bed as he knelt on the floor.

“The Christmas Song” by Josh Groban playing behind us.

Our eyes locked.

He knew my pain.

“To keep me close,” he said.

“Do you have the ring?”

I pulled the black box from my purse.

He slipped it on my ring finger. Left hand.

“What if I asked you to marry me?”

I walked outside. A slight snowfall began.

Halfway down his deck I glanced up into the sky at the moon, turned around to face him.

“I would have said yes.”

“To what?”

“To all of it. Everything you ever wanted. Just know, I would have said yes.”

I walked to my car.

I looked back to see him one more time only to find the door already closed.

Tears accompanied my entire three hour drive home.

–

And it wasn’t the last.

Sitting on his bed having just been looking out the window at the moon, wearing his shirt after mine got stained with soy sauce from our sushi dinner.

He knew it was my favorite on him.

He wore it upon my arrival.

“Be Slow” by Harrison Storm playing throughout the room.

He had come back upstairs with a glass of whiskey in his hand, a glass of water for me.

He put them on his end table.

Laid beside me, brushed the hair from my face, a kiss on the forehead.

So gentle.

“You would make the most beautiful bride one day,” he said smiling. His eyes locked on mine but yet lost in the vision of it.

He grabbed my right hand, sliding off the ring, placing it on the opposite.

“One day I will upgrade this one for you.”

“You know you do not need to wait until then to ask me. It is you that matters, not the ring.”

“So what if I asked you right now to marry me?”

–

And then there was the moment when cooking dinner together.

Me sitting on his countertop.

Laughing as he kept adding more butter to the pan – “butter makes you better.”

Stealing bites of the vegetables we were sautéing.

“Passion Play” by William Fitzsimmons playing from my phone.

“I could do this for the rest of my life,” he said, standing in front of me with his arms wrapped around my waist. “I want this to be our forever babe.”

“You know…the only thing stopping this from being your lifetime is you asking a question.”

It came out softly, perhaps a bit more desperately than I had wished to reveal.

This was post birthday – when I was beginning to allow my heart to admit he was never going to have the courage to choose one of us himself.

And wanting to resist every second of that realization.

I leaned down for a kiss.

A gentle smile followed as I pulled away to look back in his eyes.

“So what if I asked you right now to marry me?”

My response required no empty space in between.

“I would give you my most important yes.”

–

Why do I say all this?

Perhaps to just prove to myself I wasn’t delusional.

I had evidence.

That this was more than just me on “the side”.

This was something.

I was someone.

More than just the other woman.

And this was something I wanted…or so I thought.

And was willing to go to great lengths to achieve it…