Dreams That Won't Let Go

by Stacy Hawkins Adams

  “Play Go Fish with me, Daddy!” Charles David giggled and tried to climb on Reuben’s back.

  “Not right now, little man,” Reuben said and plopped into his chair. “I’m about to get up in a sec and help Mommy put the rest of the furniture in place. Have you found your other toys?”

  Charles David scrambled onto Reuben’s lap and pouted. “Moving is no fun. I can’t find anything, and you and Mommy don’t have time to play.”

  Peyton walked along the wall, touching it to guide her toward the door to the half bathroom adjacent to the family room. “Charles David, bring me the small trash can in the box by the door, okay? If you help Mommy finish getting everything right in the bathroom, I’ll get my deck of Go Fish cards out of my purse and play one round with you.”

  Charles David jumped down from Reuben’s lap and ran over to his mother. The sage green trash can she was referring to was sitting next to a big box, about half a foot away. “Got it, Mommy!” he yelled.

  He handed it to Peyton, who felt her way into the bathroom and placed it adjacent to the sink.

  “Good job, baby boy. My purse is on the table in the kitchen. Bring it here so I can find the cards.”

  When Charles David dashed away, Peyton made her way over to Reuben, this time counting the steps instead of clutching the wall. She climbed into his lap, where Charles David had been, and planted a kiss on his lips.

  “Welcome to our great adventure, babe.”

  Reuben smiled and encircled her tiny waist with his arms. “Thanks for doing this, Peyt. I hope we’ll be happy here.”

  She kissed him again. “I’ve prayed about it, Reuben. Everything will be fine. More than fine. We’re going to thrive here. You just wait and see.”

  He had confessed his concerns about the cold shoulder his sisters were giving him, and Peyton had reassured him again just this morning that the issues were theirs—not his—to worry about.

  Charles David reappeared, lugging Peyton’s floppy flowered purse over his right shoulder. Peyton slid from Reuben’s lap and found a spot on the floor where she could keep her promise to her son.

  Reuben watched them play with her Braille set of cards and fumbled with his inner dialogue.

  Please, God, if you’re really there, do bless this move. Clear the cobwebs and make it alright. Especially with Indigo and Yasmin.

  He must really be nervous. He had talked more to God in recent weeks than he had since . . . never mind that now. All he needed was for the prayer to work. If God didn’t answer, this move just might be in vain.

  7

  What kind of photographer couldn’t focus?

  Indigo chided herself as she sat across the room from Max, watching him work on a spread for Jubilant Today, a glossy monthly magazine which regularly hired him to cover local social events.

  She was supposed to be viewing frames of pictures she shot during a recent assignment for San Antonio’s art museum, plus she needed to edit the images from a wedding that a friend of the family had convinced her to shoot last week. Instead, she kept picturing Max in the black tuxedo he had purchased for their special day.

  Her friend Nizhoni, a former bridal consultant, had long ago landed a rewarding career as a flight attendant, but she was using her wedding expertise to help Indigo finalize details and look her best. Nizhoni had spotted the tuxes for Max and his groomsmen in a bridal magazine and had helped Indigo get a sample flown into the local bridal shop where she had once worked, for Max to try.

  Max wasn’t superstitious; he had insisted that Indigo join him for the fitting this afternoon to see if she liked how he looked in it. That was why she couldn’t concentrate now. The wedding was in November, but she had wanted to marry him on the spot.

  She pushed her chair back from her computer and rolled over to his station to plant a kiss on his cheek. Max kept his eyes on his computer screen and grinned.

  “You haven’t given me an answer yet, but I think I may take back the offer to make you a co-owner of this place, Miss Indigo.”

  Indigo sat back, surprised. “Oh really?”

  Max still didn’t look her way. “Look at you! You’re harassing me while I’m trying to work. Now if I do what I feel like doing— turning off this computer and taking you home—we’d both miss our deadlines and be broke.”

  “We’d also be sinning, brotherman,” Indigo said and swatted his shoulder. “I just gave you a kiss. How did you make that leap?”

  This time he did look at her, and into her eyes. “The wedding is ninety-six days and eighteen hours away. How’s that for making a leap?”

  Indigo’s heart danced. Max was something else. Waiting was a challenge for her too, but she knew it would be worth it.

  She rolled the chair back to her computer to give both of them some breathing space. “So now you think we shouldn’t go into business together, huh?”

  Max paused and winked at her. “I was just teasing, girl. You’re an ace photographer, and we make a great team. But you’re also hard to resist. Maybe your first inclination is right: let’s keep doing what we’re doing—handling our clients separately—for a while, until we get settled into being Mr. and Mrs. Shepherd. One thing at a time, okay?”

  Indigo nodded and smiled at him. “Gotcha.”

  Inwardly, she jumped for joy. Her instincts had been right: pray for God to work it out and let Max have the final say. In the end, Max’s decision had mirrored what she’d felt was right all along, and she hadn’t had to make a big deal about it.

  “Whatever you say, my king.”

  This time he rolled over to her and pulled her chair away from the computer so he could embrace her. He kissed her tenderly and smiled. “Are you going to be this agreeable after I put that ring on your finger?”

  Indigo shrugged. “You’ll have to wait and see. But I’m guessing if the king continues to treat the queen ‘queenly’ he won’t have any problems during his reign.”

  “Cut out all that gibberish,” he said and laughed.

  Indigo looked into his eyes, thrilled to see a happiness and tenderness there that she thought she’d never experience again after her breakup with Brian. She and Brian had reached the conclusion individually and together that they couldn’t and shouldn’t wed, but getting over him hadn’t been easy. Even if he didn’t excite her, he was her first love, and she eventually accepted that she would always care for him.

  Max had been her friend, but he pursued her with a patient, respectful determination. She had fallen in love with his kind heart and gentlemanly ways, yet she appreciated the fun-loving and sometimes silly sides that occasionally emerged. She was thankful that his whole heart belonged to her, without the trepidation she had eventually recognized in herself and in Brian during their last few weeks as a couple.

  Seeing Max in that tux today nearly brought her to tears. What if she had forced another relationship before giving this man a chance? She would have missed out on the wonder of this journey with him.

  He snapped her back to reality when he stroked her cheek and cleared his throat. “I know we’ve got to get back to work—my pages are due to the magazine first thing in the morning. But I have something to tell you, and I need to go ahead and get it off my chest.”

  Indigo’s stomach flip-flopped. He’d just tried on the tux; surely she wasn’t about to be jilted again. She sat back in her chair and tried to remain expressionless.

  Max knew her well though; he reached over and grabbed her hand. “Don’t even think the worst, babe. You know you’ve got my heart. But we’ve always promised to be honest and up-front about everything, so I need to tell you this now, before the day is over.”

  Indigo managed to squeak out a reply. “Go ahead then.”

  “I went down to City Hall this morning to drop off some aerial shots of the city at the urban planning office, and I ran into Reuben. We wound up having coffee, and we got to talking about the wedding. He’s really happy for us, you know?”

  Indigo held her breath and waited. />
  “He asked quite a few of the big brother questions—How am I going to take care of you? Am I prepared to be a good husband, and all of that. You would have been proud.”

  Would I really? Indigo mused. She couldn’t believe it. Max was being sucked into Reubenmania.

  He sighed. “Anyway, here’s the deal: we had such a good talk, and I could tell that he really cares about you, and you know I’ve been trying to decide on a fourth groomsman. So before we parted this morning, I asked Reuben to stand up for me. He said yes.”

  What the—?

  Indigo rolled her chair backward and took a few deep breaths to keep from saying something she might regret.

  They had gone for a tux fitting, had a late lunch, and spent the afternoon working together, and he just now happened to remember that he invited the brother she was struggling to accept to be in their wedding party?

  “Max, stop being funny.”

  “Indie, I’m not. I asked Reuben to be a groomsman. I think it will help bring us all closer.”

  Indigo stood up and grabbed her purse. She stared at Max and willed herself to calm down. “You know what I think? You need to decide whom you really want to be close to.”

  She strode toward the door without looking back.

  “What about your deadline?” Max called after her.

  Darn. She had to meet it. She would be back, but right now, she needed some space. Reuben was crowding every corner of her life, and even if she were being selfish or childish, her feelings mattered. Her concerns about her own wedding shouldn’t be dismissed.

  She had to get past this, though. Reuben clearly wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Right now, she was going to take a walk. She would edit her pictures in another hour. Maybe Max would have cleared out by then.

  8

  For the first time in weeks, Reuben felt hopeful.

  His unexpected meeting with Max this morning had given the two men a chance to get to know each other. Although Max, an Everson College graduate, was from New Jersey, both men had graduated from high school the same year and both had played college basketball.

  Reuben was also struck by how much Max, with his mop of curly hair that he wore closely cropped these days, and his café au lait complexion, resembled Dad David—Indigo and Reuben’s biological father, who had perished in the car crash with Mom Meredith.

  Reuben knew Max had heard the details—from Indigo’s perspective— but he explained anyway how he had been twelve, Indigo seven, and Yasmin just eight months old when their parents died. Mama and Daddy, their paternal grandparents, had kept photos of their biological mother and father throughout the house, to remind each of them of their parents, and not long after, Mama and Daddy had suggested a special name for the couple.

  “We’re going to raise you now, and we’re going to love you like your parents did, so call us Mama and Daddy,” Daddy had instructed Reuben and Indigo. “But don’t ever feel like you have to forget my son and your mother—none of us ever will. They’ll always be your parents. Let’s come up with a comfortable name to call them when we talk about them, okay?”

  Indigo had suggested Dad David and Mom Meredith, and the names had stuck.

  With his toffee complexion, angular face, and thin, but muscular bone structure, Reuben was the spitting image of his father, which meant that Indigo was marrying someone who resembled all of the men already in her life.

  Reuben had felt comfortable enough today to pepper Max with questions about how he had come to know and love Indigo, and why he felt he was ready for marriage.

  “I probably started falling in love with her the first time I formally met her, at Hair Pizzazz, your aunt Melba’s hair salon,” Max told him. “I had been assigned by the Jubilant Herald to shoot Indigo’s photo, because she had won an O Magazine photo contest. Just talking to her that brief time and seeing how beautiful she was, inside and out, left me intrigued. But Indie was engaged to Brian, so I tried to steer clear.

  “When they broke up, she wouldn’t let me get close, even though I could tell she might be interested. Since I had received my master’s in digital photography from the same grad school in New York that she was attending, I volunteered my services a lot over the next two years. Those flights from Jubilant to New York City weren’t cheap!” Max’s laughter bellowed throughout the city hall coffee shop. “But the volunteer sessions gave me a good ‘excuse’ to be in New York at least once every six weeks to invite her out for coffee, then to a show, and eventually to dinner. She dated a few other guys off and on, but just before she graduated, we seemed to settle into a routine. I would travel to New York a few weekends a month, when I didn’t have to be away on a photo gig, and at least once a month she would come home to Jubilant. It just seemed real, and right. I think we both knew we wanted to be together before we made it official.”

  Reuben listened and nodded. His and Peyton’s relationship had unfolded in a very different fashion, but it sounded like there had been a similar chemistry, which eventually turned into adoration. They weren’t fairytale romances, per se. Instead, the things that made their relationships beautiful were the steadfastness of their love, and a sincere interest in wanting the best for the other person, regardless of whether they were going to be together.

  Max didn’t say all of that, but Reuben felt it and saw it in his eyes. This man was a good brother, and he was going to be good to Indigo.

  Still, Reuben was stunned when, just before they departed, Max grabbed him by the shoulder and asked him to be one of his groomsmen.

  “In your wedding?”

  Reuben was certain he had heard wrong. Max had to be in tune with Indigo’s feelings; he had to know how Indigo felt about her brother. But Max had insisted.

  “Indigo’s going to be fine,” Max said. “Before the wedding rolls around, you two can make a point of spending more time together and talking through whatever awkward issues you need to resolve. Maybe this invitation is just what you need to jumpstart a reconnection between you two.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Max smiled. “Indigo can be stubborn—I mean, come on—your parents treated her like a princess from the time they took custody of you three. But she’s a beautiful person. She’s just wrestling with a few things right now, and she’s still got some growing up to do. She’ll work through it. Don’t worry.”

  Reuben had been tempted to tell Max about the issues he was struggling with too, but thought better of it. They had hit it off, but their connection was still through Indigo. He wasn’t sure yet whether he could trust Max to keep his confidences, and he wasn’t ready just yet for Indigo to know the primary reason he’d felt led to move back to Jubilant. If he and his sisters were going to love each other and celebrate each other as siblings, he didn’t want it to be forced, or out of guilt.

  Reuben wondered this evening how she had reacted to Max’s decision to include him in the wedding party. He wouldn’t be surprised if Miss Indigo picked up the phone and called on Max’s behalf to revoke the invitation. She had never been that over the top, but then again, he hadn’t invaded her territory before.

  Reuben and Max had traded cell phone numbers before going their separate ways this morning, with promises to get together soon for a game of basketball or golf. He was tempted to call Max now for an update on Indigo’s response.

  Instead, Reuben steered his SUV out of the downtown parking deck and headed home. His thoughts remained on Indigo, though, and how since his family’s relocation, she had avoided spending any time with Peyton and Charles David. It ticked him off, but Peyton didn’t seem to mind.

  “She’ll come around,” Peyton said. “Don’t force it. I’m sure it would help, though, if you told her about your dreams, or at least about the promise you want to honor. You can’t keep holding all of this pain inside, Reuben.”

  Reuben trusted his wife’s wisdom, because usually she was right, even when he didn’t want her to be. But he wasn’t ready to give a tell-all confession. He wan
ted Indigo and Yasmin to accept him just because, without feeling obligated. Then he’d tell them the full truth about his reasons for returning home.

  For now, he had to cherish small successes. At least the nightmares had lessened in frequency since the move, and he didn’t constantly feel like he was suffocating. He hadn’t suffered any more panic attacks, either. Life was getting better. Plus, there was a strong possibility that he was going to be an important part of Indigo’s special day. If she allowed him to stand with other members of her wedding party, he knew Mom Meredith would be smiling down on him and resting in peace.

  9

  Indigo and Max agreed via text to spend Sunday together.

  Max sent the first message:

  R we going 2 church 2gether?

  Still having dinner at your parents’?

  Indigo’s response had been curt.

  Pick me up @10:30.

  She had disregarded the peace offering in his reply:

  Will do. Luv u.

  This morning, she dressed quickly and puttered around her townhouse, watering plants and dusting furniture as she waited to see whether he’d bother to show, given her bad attitude.

  When he rang her bell, Indigo opened the door to his solemn face. He stared at her with puppy dog hazel eyes, but Indigo also noticed a hint of defiance. Usually, they greeted each other with a kiss, but this morning they nodded hello.

  Max was wearing the navy slacks and the blue-and-white-striped collar shirt she had bought him on a recent shopping trip with a grad school girlfriend. She pursed her lips to keep from telling him how handsome he looked. She wanted to smooth his few untamed short curls and bless him with a reassuring smile, but she didn’t.

  Indigo knew Max hadn’t meant any harm; he was trying to do what was right. Shelby had been insistent about that when Indigo called her in tears the evening she had fled from the photo studio.