by Chloe Plume
Chapter 49
Madison
One Year Later…
Having just finished my last exam, my nerves still on edge, and exhausted from two weeks of finals, I walked home to my apartment. Well, it was Zayde’s apartment too. We’d moved in together when I started my first semester at Stanford.
Zayde split his time between staying with me and playing with the new band he’d recently formed in LA. There was nothing I liked more than coming back home after a long day of classes to find him drafting new material, hard at work with his guitar in one hand and a pen in the other, bunches of scrunched paper notes littering the floor.
I’d started right away with pre-med and my public policy major. I could finally say, whole-heartedly, that I was proud of the life I was leading, and even more importantly, the future I was working hard for. Zayde, for his part, was finding success playing with the new band. They’d garnered a sizable and loyal fan base and were recording their debut album.
I made my way up our small street with the brown brick and white shingle siding apartment complexes. Tomorrow, after sleeping in until noon—which was well deserved I might add—I’d head back to L.A. to visit my father. I was excited to see Zayde, who was in L.A. finishing the album and would stay with us through Christmas.
My father had concluded his divorce from Charlene and seemed much happier for it. He was finally contemplating slowing things down at work, going into a sort of semi-retirement, because as he put it, “I’ll die before I retire.” I hoped he could find someone whom he really loved, someone who would also push him to enjoy his life instead of burying himself in work to avoid the emptiness he still felt at the loss of my mother.
We still hadn’t discussed the revelations about my mother. The real story, which I kind of understood, didn’t shake my respect or admiration for what she did, taking the risk of starting a new life from scratch in an unfamiliar country. But it helped remind me that we all have our own story, and you can’t base your life on someone else’s.
I turned the key and opened the door.
Wait…
The lights were on. And, there he was.
Zayde.
“Hey, thought I’d surprise you,” he said, his sexy smile stretching across that beautiful, angular face.
“What happened with the album?” I asked, still shocked to see him.
“Thought it would be nice to be here with you after finals. Oh”—he reached behind the kitchen counter and handed me a bouquet of roses—“these are for you.”
I buried my nose in the fragrant flowers. The smell was pure tranquil bliss after two weeks of grind. “What’s the occasion?”
Zayde smiled. “Oh, I’m not done yet.” He pulled up a chair for me and I sat down while he grabbed his guitar. He made some last minute adjustments and began playing.
I recognized the song immediately. He’d played parts of it for me as he perfected it over the last year. The song, he’d said, was about me and us and how I changed his life. Although I protested, he insisted on including it in the new album.
As he started singing, it dawned on me how talented he really was. Finally his voice, hidden for so many years behind the thumping beat of dance music tracks, took center stage, rising above the strum of the guitar and then, when an instrumental motif called for it, diving below the surface of the riff until it resurfaced stronger and more resonant. He was beautiful. Right in front of me, everything I could ever want…
Wait…
I already knew how the song ended, but he began to sing a few new lines. Perplexed, I looked up at him, and he smiled.
I’m not gonna waste any more time,
So forgive me if this doesn’t rhyme,
If I want to spend the rest of my life with you,
Then I want the rest of my life to start right now.
And then he proposed on one knee, his guitar in hand and a beautiful ring sparkling inside a blue velvet box. My heart skipped and I went from exhausted to absolutely ecstatic.
“Oh my god…Zayde…”
“Don’t leave me hanging, or I’ll add those lines to the album version.”
“Well, then…oh, shut-up Zayde. Yes! Absolutely Yes!”
He dropped his guitar and swept me up in his arms. We kissed long and passionately and he walked slowly to the bedroom.
“Don’t we have the rest of our lives for that?” I teased. “What’s the rush?”
Zayde smirked, his eyes squinting in that ridiculously sexy way. “I can’t help wanting what I’ve never had.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve only had sex with my girlfriend, never my fiancée!”
-The End-
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Acknowledgements:
Thank you to all the authors who answered my many, many questions and guided me through the self-publishing process. You guys are rock stars!
Thank you to my friends and family who put up with me being engrossed in my own little world these past few months.
And most of all, thank you to my readers. You guys are the reason I write and I hope you enjoyed this book!
