In This Life

by Christine Brae

  She slowed down to allow me to catch up, and I took her hand as we crossed through the familiar path on the way to the medical clinic. We both stopped when we saw how much it had changed. The tiny structure had doubled in size and was now a bona fide building, complete with a parking lot, a driveway, and air conditioned rooms.

  “It feels so different,” she said as we walked through the sliding doors.

  “Mr. Grayson!” someone called out to me. I could hardly recognize him, but it was Chiayo, now a skinny teenager, pushing a cart full of soft drinks around the waiting area.

  “Goodness, is that you, Chiayo? You’re all grown up!” I exclaimed as he offered me his hand.

  A pretty teenage girl sidled up to me. “Mr. Grayson! It’s me, Malee! The girl in your class! Do you remember me?”

  “Malee! Wow, what are you all doing here?”

  “We help with the drink cart after school,” they said in unison.

  “You guys remember my girlfriend, Anna?” I saw the look of contentment on her face, and our fingers locked around each other in silent unity.

  “Oh yes!” said Malee. “Dr. Dillon!”

  Anna happily hugged them both. Her facial expression changed considerably as she recognized her friend from long ago. He was a handsome man, blond with scruffy facial hair and light blue eyes.

  “Delmar?” she whispered. She repeated herself, raising her voice this time. “Delmar, is that you?”

  The handsome man ran towards her and swept her up in his arms. I felt a pang of jealousy before quickly reminding myself that this had been her past, but I was her future. They’d been housemates five years ago, but she was mine now.

  “Annita!” He beamed as he freed her from his embrace. “Comment ca va?”

  “Tres bien, merci. Et toi, Delmar? Que fais tu ici?”

  I had no idea what she had said to him. She glanced at me uneasily and decided to switch back to English. “What are you doing here, Delmar?”

  “I moved back here two years ago,” he answered. “Where is Dante?”

  “Two years? You’ve been here that long?” And then she let out a laugh. “Dante isn’t here. He’s in Germany on business. But you remember Jude Grayson?”

  “Ah, yes, the elusive Mr. Grayson. How are you?” the cheeky Frenchman quipped.

  “I’m good, thanks,” I said, possessively placing an arm around Anna. This was my punishment. If I had chased her down as soon as I’d arrived back home, I wouldn’t be dealing with the ghost of Leola. From the look of it, he’d been a substantial part of her past and I was just going to have to manage through it.

  Delmar eyed me with a dubious look then turned his attention to Anna. “Anna, how long will you be here? Milena and the baby are at home; I am sure she would love to see you.”

  “So you married Milena?” she asked, somewhat surprised.

  “Mais oui. We have a baby boy named Stephane.”

  “Congratulations, Delmar! And best wishes to you both. Unfortunately, we are only here for a day.”

  Our attention was diverted by a loud commotion and then the wheeling in of a man on a stretcher with blood jetting out of his chest.

  “Dr. Davignon!” said a Thai nurse. “We need you right away. A boating mishap.”

  “Anna! Come with me,” Delmar said as he ran to attend to the patient. “We could use your help over here.”

  She beamed at me, her eyes wide and glowing, asking for permission.

  “Go, go.” I laughed as I watched her dash excitedly towards the operating room.

  “THERE YOU ARE.” She was out of breath as she found me sitting on the floor of the waiting room two hours later, playing a game of backgammon with Chiayo. “Did you show him how it’s done, Chiayo?” she teased.

  I lined up the game pieces and handed the board back to him. She offered me her hand and I took it before bringing it to my lips for a kiss. To be able to show your love openly was truly liberating.

  “He beat me every single time, Dr. Dillon,” the young boy complained.

  “Gray! How could you? Picking on a little boy like that!”

  “He’s a young man and he tried to cheat me twice!” I argued. “Chiayo, you’re on the hook for a rematch okay? The next time we come, we can surely play again.”

  “Okay, Mr. Grayson! It was very nice seeing you.”

  “You too, Chiayo. Give my regards to your parents, and thank you for keeping me company.”

  Chiayo stretched his arm out and offered me a fist bump.

  “WHERE TO NOW?” she asked as we walked hand in hand down the road leading us back to the village.

  “Well, I was thinking that we should visit our little hut to see if it’s still there,” I suggested. She showed her appreciation for my idea by pulling me in for a kiss. “Or maybe we should go back to the villa,” I muttered into her lips.

  “Or,” she winked at me with a batting of her eyelashes, “maybe we can continue this in our little hut. Just like old times.”

  “I like that plan,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  We moved quickly through the side streets and ran down the path that led us to the beach. We glanced at each other as we noticed the many changes that had taken place in the five years that we’d been gone. The lights that were strung along the leaves of the coconut trees high up in the sky were somewhat too bright and blinding, there were no more bamboo houses, and the beach had been cleared of the wild, growing grass. There was white sand all around us; it felt unnatural and pulverized. The markers that helped us remember where we once fell in love, where we danced and swam and played, were no longer visible. We walked in silence, immersed in our thoughts, afraid to point out the obvious.

  That things had changed and what once had been no longer was.

  Anna was the first to break through the solitude. “It feels so weird, doesn’t it? So different.” She squeezed my hand to get my attention.

  “I know, I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

  “I do think that this, right here, is the spot where we first met,” she said lightly, trying to deflect us from our saddened disposition.

  “You think? The spot where you flung your phone out into the sea?”

  “This very spot,” she said confidently. “Wait. You saw that?”

  “I saw everything. I followed you that night,” I finally admitted.

  “Oh my gosh! I’m in love with a certified stalker.”

  “Say that again.”

  “What? That you’re a stalker?”

  I yanked her towards me and kissed her. “No, the love part.”

  “What love part?” she shouted out before running away from me. I let her go for a while and then sprinted right behind her. “I’ll race you to our hut!” she yelled, then sped away from me. She was a runner all right, but she forgot just how much taller I was, how much wider my strides were. I caught up with her in no time, lifting her up and slinging her over my shoulders. She struggled in my arms, laughing and giggling, desperately trying to get me to set her back down on the ground. I halted immediately after hitting a myriad of lights in front of me.

  What was formerly the place where the little hut once stood was now a resort.

  In the place of the pristine yellow sand was a beautifully manicured garden with villas lined up along its perimeter. A large sign connected each of the structures: TLH Resort and Spa.

  “Our little hut, it’s gone,” she said with tears in her eyes. “Somehow I thought it would still be here. But of course not, I should have known that nothing remains forever.”

  “Blue.”

  “No, I’m okay. Let’s walk back before it gets dark,” she said, trying with all her might to contain her emotions.

  I decided to take charge. “Come with me,” I said, holding both her hands in mine and walking backwards towards the shore. We stopped right as our feet touched the water. The night sky had fallen, but the stars were out in full force. No matter how things changed, how they developed, how masked they became by the t
rappings of the modern age, the beauty of nature would always shine through.

  “I have something for you,” I whispered, fishing into my pocket to pull out a teal colored box tied up with a white silk ribbon. My heart was beating out of my chest. I was going to open up my heart and soul to her with the hope that it wasn’t too late.

  “Oh no! Jude. You didn’t have to! What is it?”

  “Please open it.”

  Slowly and with shaking hands, she tugged at the ribbon until it unraveled what was in the box. Tears filled her eyes as she held it up for me to see. It was a golden seahorse, intricately handmade and attached to a long gold hooped chain.

  “I found it at Tiffany’s while we were there to meet Maggie. The blue stone in its eye is the color of the ocean—I thought it was perfect because that’s what I think about when I think of you. You burst into my life like the crashing of the surf and then you pulled me in like the tide, showing me a world of dreams and endless possibilities.” I gently held her face in my hands and looked into her eyes. “I will quarrel with the heavens and fight with destiny to be with you.”

  “How? How did you know about that verse?” She began to cry, tears streaking down her cheeks as I gently latched the necklace around her neck.

  “I saw it on your key chain,” I admitted. “For a while, I had a tough time reconciling the fact that I’ve become so wrapped up in this life. With you. When all I ever believed in before you was the life after this one. It took time for me to admit to myself that it’s what I want to live for.” She stood motionless, willing me to continue. “Anna, I’m found. I’m not lost anymore. I realized that I found myself on the very day that you stormed into my apartment and slapped the heck out of me. I learned that all I had to do was look into your eyes and everything I thought I lost in the past five years was never really gone. You kept my heart for me, nursed it, nurtured it, and delivered it back to me as soon as we saw each other again. I’m never going to stop prioritizing my love for God in my life. I can still love Him most of all, but I can only love Him truly by loving you. Because loving you makes me want to give of myself, loving you inspires me to bravery and courage and truth.”

  “Oh, Jude.”

  “Please let me finish.” I held my hand up, urging her to keep listening. “I’m not going back. I’ll return to the seminary to tie up loose ends and then I’ll come back to you. Please, Blue. Please wait for me. I want to live the rest of my life with you, take care of you, love you with all my heart as I do now.”

  “What about your lifelong dream? The vocation that you were committed to?” she asked.

  “I’m not that person anymore. My needs, my hopes, my dreams for a future are all tied up in you. God is loving and forgiving. There’s a reason for all this, why we met, why we fell in love. I know more than anything that this is my fate. To serve God as a man with a wife and a family. To bring up my children in His name and in His love. That’s my vocation, Blue. Please say you’ll wait for me.”

  I held on to her arms as I sat on the sand, urging her to take a seat next to me. We watched as the current ebbed and flowed and the rush of the waves teased our toes. She wiped the tears from her eyes and straightened up to compose herself. Tenderly, she held my face in her hands and kissed me. It was a kiss of affirmation, a covenant between me and her with the stars and the moon as our witnesses.

  “Jude,” she said as she pulled away. “I’ve been dreaming of this day for years. When I waited for you to come back to me, I held those words close to my heart. I wanted to tell you how much I loved you. I loved you from the first day that I met you. When you sat by my side in the water,” she said with a light chuckle, “I loved you then. Because I’d never felt this kind of love before, never wanted to, until you.”

  We stayed facing each other, our foreheads touching, her body circled in my embrace.

  “Do you know how lucky I am to have met you?” I said. “Many people speak endlessly about their love for God. They give huge amounts of money, participate in many other activities, go to church. But that’s not what matters. It’s what you do that goes unrecognized. What you think when you’re alone, your convictions when you know that no one is listening. You are beauty and love and religion all wrapped up in one. You serve God more than anyone I know. You are a blessing. In loving Mikey and Dante, in the nameless patients that you care for, in the fact that you won’t go up against God.”

  I started to cry. I shed my tears because the next few words I was about to say were those that had bound me for five years, kept me a prisoner. And now I was about to set myself free.

  “Oh, Anna,” I cried. “I am hopelessly, helplessly in love with you.”

  “YOU HARDLY ATE anything tonight.” I covered Anna’s hand in mine as we sat side by side in front of the sliding doors leading to our bedroom with our feet immersed in the water. We had just left a hot pot dinner at the resort restaurant minutes ago, and were now relaxing for the evening. The large boiling pot of soup had been surrounded by a vast array of meat, chicken, and fish. There was enough food to feed ten people, and as it turned out, it fed only one.

  There were boats parked on the dock a thousand feet below us, and above us the ebony sky was satiny and pristine. She avoided my statement and responded with one of her own.

  “Those skittering fish, they look like pearls in the ocean. Did I ever tell you that my mother loved pearls? Well, almost as much as diamonds, I guess they were her second obsession.”

  “Blue.”

  She turned to smile at me. “I’m fine. I just wasn’t hungry.”

  “I was jealous of Delmar today,” I said without reservation. I was looking for a reaction, a vehement declaration that none of that mattered, that I was the one she’d been waiting for all her life.

  She looked away, her gaze directed somewhere far in the distance. “Don’t be. There was nothing at all. Those years,” she laughed self-consciously, “I thought that casual relationships were the only way to survive the pressures of med school.”

  I nodded. “Well, did they help? Did they get you through?”

  “Every girl at that age needs affirmation, I guess. That’s really all they did for me. Casual relationships are just that. Fleeting, transitory, shallow. They never really amount to anything.” It was her turn to lapse into wistfulness, and her words did nothing to allay the green-eyed monster that lurked in the dark recess of my imagination. “Jude?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What was it like living in the seminary all those years? Did you enjoy it like I enjoyed medical school? Did you find fulfillment?”

  “My days were filled with prayer and service to others. And a lot of reading—theology, scripture, you name it. I would read for days on end. There was a lot of reflection, but also a lot of interaction with people from all walks of life.” I smiled as I remembered those years. Before her, those days were the best days of my life. They were enough to grant me purpose, to lead my direction. In the past three months, I couldn’t even remember how I’d survived my life without her.

  “Where there women?” she asked.

  “Women?”

  “Have you looked in the mirror lately? There must have been women chasing you all over the place,” she badgered, trying to prove a point.

  “Honestly, I never even paid attention. Sure, in college, I did slip up a few times, but the longest relationship I had was probably three months with a girl in my freshman classes who ended up sleeping with Peter.” Her mouth hung open in surprise. “Before you say anything, no, she and I were over before he hooked up with her.”

  “Whew,” she said, relieved. “I really like Peter too.” The half curve of her lips did nothing to hide her somber frame of mind.

  “Tell me what’s really wrong, Anna. Talk to me.”

  “I miss my mom. If she were here, she would be so happy for us. I used to talk to her all the time about these things. She would tease me about being too level-headed for love. I also miss Dante. You know I’m going to h
ave to speak to him when he gets back, don’t you? I keep playing the scenarios in my head. I never led him on. I loved him. I’ve loved him since the day that I decided you were never coming back.”

  She fidgeted with her hands; I could tell that she was really torn up about it. It irritated me that my profession of love for her would incite this kind of emotion.

  “Do you want to be with him?” There was no masking my sullen mood. I stiffened up my posture and crossed my arms in front of my chest.

  “No! But I would never hurt him. He’s been with me through everything, supported me, defended me, taken care of me,” she pleaded with me to understand.

  “So don’t equate love with gratitude. I get it, Blue. You’re thankful to him for everything. But if you love me, then there should be no guilt. No regret. Tell me you don’t regret it,” I heard myself say loudly. I was angry and I couldn’t control myself. I wanted her to take me in her arms and soothe my insecurities about Delmar, about Leola. About all those who came before me. She lifted her legs out of the water, preparing to stand up. I grabbed her right arm and held it down to stop her from leaving. “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “To walk. I need to go for a walk. I’m just a little dizzy, and I need to walk it off. It might be the elevation of the resort. It’s messing with my equilibrium.”

  “Let me come with you,” I argued. I dried my legs with a towel and slipped my feet into my sneakers.

  “No, I just need a few minutes. I’ll be right back.” She brushed me away as I attempted to follow behind her.

  I DIDN’T THINK I had moved since she left. I sat at the edge of our bed and stared at the rose petals scattered all over its cover surrounding two swan shaped towels conjoined at the mouth to form a heart. A flash of lightning in the sky quickly followed by booming thunder and then a deluge of rain interrupted my contemplation. I decided that it was time to search for her, worried that she may have gotten lost. I rushed outside just as I heard her light footsteps on the deck. She arrived as I was shutting the doors that led to the pool, her hair flat on her head, every inch of her showing through her soaked clothes. I missed her so much; I just wanted her to be okay.