Eastern Lights

by Brittainy Cherry

There was nothing I loved more than watching the sunrises with Aaliyah, other than watching the sunset with her in my arms.

  I felt like I owed Grant the world for not taking Aaliyah away from me too soon, and I’d spend the rest of my life thanking him for that very fact.

  I held Captain America’s book in my hand as I read out loud, as Aaliyah sat completely wrapped up in the story. “It was in that very moment that Captain knew he’d discovered forever when Little Red Riding Hood showed up in his world,” I said, making Aaliyah laughed.

  “What?”

  I kept reading. “Because Captain realized that the secret to life wasn’t having powers. The secret to life was having love. Love was the greatest superpower any person could’ve ever had. So, with that, Captain got down on one knee.” I closed the comic and smiled as I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a ring.

  “Connor,” Aaliyah whispered, stunned as she stared at the diamond.

  “You are everything good in the world, Aaliyah Winters. You are heaven on Earth, and my very best friend. So, if you would do me the favor of becoming my wife, I’d really appreciate that a lot. Because it turns out I need more than flashes of love. I need your full time love, because you make me whole. Your love is my destiny. Will you marry me, Red?”

  Her lips pressed against mine within seconds but not before she whispered, “Yes.”

  With one single word, my life became that much brighter.

  With one word, I was complete.

  48

  Aaliyah

  It was December when I found the courage to call Marie.

  The snowflakes fell softly overhead and melted seconds after they hit the streets of the Upper East Side. The past few months had been a blur of me being in recovery, and falling deeper in love with Connor. Falling more in love with myself. If I’d learned anything over the past year, it was that loving oneself was truly the best act of rebellion anyone could partake in.

  I wasn’t perfect. I still had flaws. Sometimes I judged others, sometimes I judged myself. I nitpicked at my scars and at times hated the number sitting against the scale. Yet, the greatest discovery of self-love was realizing you didn’t have to be perfect in order to be worthy of love, of respect, of the ability to grow each and every day.

  The truest form of authentic love began when one could look in the mirror, see the flaws, and still accept self as a full being who deserved the highest level of happiness.

  I knew it was important to work on me, before I could face my past. I had to create boundaries strong enough to keep me from allowing others to hurt me.

  We planned to meet at our favorite coffee shop.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to come in with you?” Connor asked as we sat in the back of his car.

  I gave him a lopsided smile. “Yeah. This is something I have to do on my own. But, can you wait for me? I’m not sure how this conversation is going to go, or if I’ll be in and out. But...”

  “I’ll be right here. I’ll wait for however long it takes.”

  My lips landed against his, and his kiss gave me an extra dash of courage. That was what Connor’s love did for me. It made me stronger every single day.

  I climbed out of the car, allowing the snow to sweep against my cheeks as I tightened the belt on my wool coat. Marie was sitting inside the coffee shop already, staring down at her hands which were wrapped around a cup of coffee.

  As I pushed the shop’s door open, a bell dinged overhead, noting my arrival. Marie instantly looked toward me, her eyes filled with pain.

  Those eyes.

  How didn’t I notice before how much they looked like mine?

  Her eyes, and nose, and the slight dimple in her chin.

  A wave of nausea hit me, but I didn’t run away. I allowed myself to feel the discomfort, because no feelings were unwarranted.

  “Hi,” she breathed out, going to stand.

  “No, it’s fine. Keep sitting,” I said, sliding into the chair across from her.

  She eased back down, and returned her hands to her coffee cup. “I was going to order you a drink, but then again, I wasn’t certain you were going to show.”

  “It’s fine. I don’t need anything.”

  “I was surprised when you messaged me about meeting.”

  “Yeah. Sorry it took so long. I needed time.”

  “I get it, Aaliyah, I do. I’m just happy that you called. I know you probably think the worst things about me. And I know my reasoning doesn’t seem to make sense but—”

  “Are you still with him? With Walter?”

  Her eyes flashed with guilt. That was her answer, no words were needed.

  “Now, I know it probably seems pathetic…” she started to explain.

  “He’s a monster.”

  “I can see why you’d think that, but…I mean, he…” She took a deep inhalation and released it slowly. “He’s all I’ve ever truly known.”

  “Make a new story. Learn something else.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “I didn’t say it was easy, but it’s always worth it.” Over the past few weeks, I thought about what I’d ask her. I thought about the questions that I’d have, the pain that I believed she could make dissipate with her replies, the missing pieces of my soul that maybe she could’ve filled. But, as I sat in front of her, I realized our conversation wasn’t about me. It was about her.

  I’d already figured out how to love myself. Marie didn’t even know where to start. It turned out self-love wasn’t given to every individual by a certain age. Some people died without ever discovering themselves. Some individuals never were able to stare at their reflections and know that they were loved.

  That thought alone made me sad, because I knew with a few different choices in my life, I could’ve been her. That could’ve been me. I was no better than any other person who didn’t know how to love themselves.

  “I forgive you,” I whispered. “For your choices you made. For giving me up. For scheming to bring me back into your life. For the lies, the scandal. I forgive you.”

  Her eyes flashed with hope as she reached across the table, placing her hands over mine. “You have no clue how much that means to me. Aaliyah, this is it. This can be a new start for you and me. We can—“

  “No.” I slowly pulled my hands away from her. “You misunderstood. I forgive you, Marie. But that doesn’t mean I can open myself up to having you in my life.”

  Forgiving someone didn’t mean you had to invite them back into your world. Sometimes forgiving meant finally letting them go. Forgiveness meant cutting the final cord of ones connection to your soul.

  “I hope you find happiness, Marie. I do. I hope you start your journey to loving yourself. I hope you have more good days than bad, and I hope you laugh. I hope you find joy in the darkness. And I hope you leave him, because even though you’ve hurt me, that doesn’t mean you deserve to be hurt, too. If you allow it, Walter will hurt you until the day you die.”

  “Maybe I deserve that.” She lowered her head and stared at her hands.

  I placed mine against hers. “No one deserves that.”

  She looked at me with tears in her eyes. “I’ve made so many mistakes in my life.”

  “That’s okay. Begin again now. Can I ask why you stay with a man like him?”

  “At one point, he was my everything. I was just waiting for him to come back to me… To be the man I thought he’d always been. I’m waiting for something that I know was probably always a lie.”

  “Find your ugly truths,” I said, thinking about the conversation Connor had with me months ago. “It’s better to sit with the ugly truths than bathe in the beautiful lies.”

  She gave me a halfway grin before wiping the tears from her eyes. “I’m sorry, Aaliyah for everything. For hurting you. For leaving you. For all the bad choices I’ve made.”

  I smiled. “Thank you for that.” I glanced toward the front window, where Connor’s car was still waiting. “I should probably get
going…”

  “He proposed to you,” she mentioned, staring down at the ring on my finger.

  “Yes. A few months ago.”

  “Congratulations. He’s a good one.”

  “Yes. He is.” I stood up from the table. “I wish you the best, Marie.”

  “I wish you same.”

  I turned to begin walking away, and paused when I heard Marie call out my name. I looked back to see her standing with trembling hands.

  “Cole was a good man. A powerful musician, who loved the written word. He smiled like the sun, and loved like the moonbeams. He laughed like you, tossing his head back in full chuckles. You have his nose and his Cupid’s bow. He loved trying new things, and I know for a fact that if he knew you existed, he would’ve never let you go.” Her lips parted as tears began falling down her cheeks. “At Your Best, You Are Loved,” she said, making me raise an eyebrow, confused by her words. “It was the song Cole was playing as I walked into the jazz bar that first night. There’s a version by The Isley Brothers, but the version I knew was by—"

  “Aaliyah,” I muttered, feeling a wave of emotions. I’d listened to that song a million times, wondering if it was crafted for me.

  She swallowed hard and nodded. “At your best, Aaliyah, you are loved.”

  I could count the number of facts I knew about my mother on multiple hands. She wore Chanel No. 5 and liked her coffee black. She loved to read, and when she smiled, you’d see all of her teeth. I’d gotten my eyes from her and my ears. She named me after the gone-too-soon musician Aaliyah, who I listened to throughout my teenage years. She dedicated “At Your Best, You Are Loved”, to me.

  My mother loved brunch, and hated peas—like me. She cried during commercials, and ate a salad with every meal. She couldn’t stand Brussels sprouts, and the way she loved? She probably loved so much it hurt her. She gave her love to people who didn’t deserve it. She was flawed—like all humans.

  She had tight coils of hair dipped in black ink. Her laugh was infectious, the kind that made others chuckle just from the enjoyment of her sounds. She danced, too—poorly, like me, but oh, how her body swayed. And she was sad. Maybe sadder than most. Maybe more lonely, too.

  I hugged her. I pulled her into me and held on tight. She held me back, and as she began to cry into my shoulder, I held her some more. I knew once I let go, we’d probably never speak again. I’d move on with my life, and she’d hopefully began to discover her own.

  So, I held on a little longer because I wasn’t completely ready to let her go.

  “Thank you, Aaliyah,” she whispered.

  “You matter,” I softly said back. “You matter, Marie.”

  I said the words I’d wished someone would’ve said to me when I was child. I said the words I’d craved when I was sitting in the realm of loneliness. I gave her the words that she was never able to give to me. Then, I let her go.

  I walked back to the car where Connor hopped out and opened the door for me. He looked at me with concern in his eyes. The care he showed me made the cracked pieces of my soul begin to heal again.

  He didn’t say a word, but he wrapped his arms around me as the snow fell overhead. He knew I needed the comfort, and he delivered it without question. When we arrived home, I still felt a bit emotional.

  I hadn’t spoken to Connor about the conversation I held with Marie, and I didn’t think I had to share all of the details. Not yet at least. I needed to sit in them a bit on my own. But, I placed the song “At Your Best (You Are Loved)” on his living room speakers. The music filled the penthouse, and I stood up from the couch. I closed my eyes and began swaying back and forth alone.

  Tears began to fall down my cheeks as I moved to the song. My emotions of the day began to catch up to me, and before I could crumble. Before the ache in my chest could grow too large to handle, Connor caught me. He pulled me into his arms, and began to slow dance with me. He didn’t ask questions, he simply swayed his body with mine.

  He slow danced to a song that he didn’t even know the backstory to. I lay my head against his shoulder as the tears fell freely.

  “Feel it all, Aaliyah, you are safe here,” he said, holding me close to his body. The song played on a loop, and we kept dancing throughout the night. His lips fell against my forehead and he whispered, “At your best, you are loved.”

  He healed me by simply existing in my world. He was my person.

  My lover.

  My friend.

  My family.

  And at his best, he was loved.

  Epilogue

  Connor

  One Year Later

  She was nervous. I couldn’t blame her. It was a big day for her, and her anxiety was warranted. Hell, I was an emotional wreck. I couldn’t imagine how Aaliyah was feeling.

  We sat inside of the conference room at Roe Real Estate, waiting for the group to arrive.

  “Do you think this is stupid?” Aaliyah asked, holding a huge teddy bear in her arms. “Oh gosh, this is so stupid.”

  “It’s perfect,” I told her for the fifty millionth time.

  She rubbed her sweaty palms against my pants, and I didn’t mind it one bit.

  “Hey, they’re here,” Damian said as he popped his head into the room. After he announced the arrival, a group of around thirteen people walked into the room. One wife, six adults, and six grandchildren.

  For the longest time, Aaliyah went back and forth about meeting the donor’s family. She was terrified that they’d resent her, and be angry that she was able to live, while they loss their loved one, but after going through the lengthy process of writing one another through the donor program, which protected individual’s privacy, Aaliyah and the donor’s family decided they’d like to meet in person.

  The donor’s name was William Brick, and he was loved.

  The moment his family entered the room, there was nothing but an outpouring of appreciation.

  William’s wife, Addie cried instantly, pulling Aaliyah into a hug, which made her cry, too. And hell, I started to tear up from the interaction. It didn’t take long for us all to be an emotional mess.

  “Oh my goodness, you’re so young,” Addie said, placing her hands against Aaliyah’s cheeks. “This is good. This is so good.”

  Aaliyah smiled and laughed nervously. “I was scared to meet you all.”

  “I understand, but we are just thankful that you did. The fact that we get to see someone surviving and thriving because of our loved one, well, if that isn’t magic, then I don’t know what is.”

  “Please, everyone, take a seat,” I said, gesturing to the chair surrounding the table. We all sat, and laughed as our nerves skyrocketed through the room. Aaliyah began telling her story, about how she came into needing a heart transplant, and then Addie and her family shared stories of William.

  Aaliyah and I wanted to know them all, too. They told us about his service in the military. They told us about his bad taste in music and movies. About his goofy impersonations.

  “He could do a perfect Jim Carrey impersonation like no other,” his daughter, Becca said, holding her son in her lap. She chuckled at the memory. “I remember being a kid, and whenever I’d get pissed at him, he’d do the Ace Ventura impression and force me to laugh.”

  “That was our Grant, though.” Addie nodded. “He was the light in every room.”

  “I’m sorry, what did you just say?” Aaliyah asked, sitting up a bit in her chair. “Did you say Grant?”

  “Oh, yeah. It was William’s middle name. Most people called him Will, but the family called him Grant. I’d been calling him that since the day we’d met.”

  Aaliyah looked toward me, with stars in her eyes and I felt it, too. The overwhelming love that our Grant was sending our way. I squeezed her hand under the table, and she squeezed mine back.

  “Well, I don’t want to keep you all for too long, but I have this gift for you. Well, we have thirteen of them to be exact, in the other room. But, here it is,” Aaliyah said, standi
ng from the table and walking over to Addie with the teddy bear in her hands.

  She handed it over, and Addie looked a bit confused. “Well, thank you, sweetheart,” she said, still a bit stumped.

  “Squeeze it,” Aaliyah said, nodding in her direction.

  Addie did as she was told, and within seconds, tears began flowing from her eyes as the sound of William’s heartbeats began to be heard from the teddy bear.

  “Is it…?” Addie asked, her voice cracking.

  “Yes. I figured you all deserved to have him with you in some way, shape, or form,” Aaliyah explained.

  Dammit, who was cutting the onions?

  By the end of the visit, everyone was in tears, but they were tears of love, of gratitude, of peace. After the family left, I stood in the office, pleased with how everything went during the conversation with the family.

  Aaliyah walked over to me and fell into my arms. “His name was Grant,” she beamed.

  “Because of course it was,” I laughed. I glanced down at my watch and stood up straight. “Oh shit, we gotta get going. It’s already noon, and we can’t be late. It is, after all, our wedding day.”

  We didn’t start our day like most couples on their wedding day, and we were all right with that, because we weren’t like most couples. We were our own story, our own adventure, our own happily ever after.

  We headed from my office to the place where all of the magic began—Oscar’s Bar. A few years ago, I was a superhero and she was a lady dressed in red. She was looking for an escape, and I was looking for her without even knowing it.

  Oscar’s was decked out with decorations, thanks to my mother and my small town village that all came up to New York to celebrate Aaliyah and me. The moment we walked inside, Jax and Damian grabbed me to take me to the men’s room to get ready, and Mom and Kennedy pulled Aaliyah over to the ladies’ room.

  “You’re late,” Jax said, handing me my outfit that was hanging on one of the bathroom stalls. “You shouldn’t have been late today.”

  “It’s not like the show could go on without me,” I said, unbuckling my pants and sliding out of them to toss on my wedding outfit. “But before we get things going, how about a joke?”