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Previous Chapters: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 & 9

10
Finale:
Carriage

If there was ever a distinct second chapter of my life beginning, or at least the definitive closing of the first, it was that moment in the bar. I wondered how many epiphanies passed through saloon doors that truly panned out. How many names of suddenly legitimate children had been chosen over a bad pint of lager. The world suddenly seemed less full of rain, and the thought that the first 25 years of my life had been full of anything worth chatting about, much less fretting publicly over was repulsive.

It didn’t feel like a waste, it just didn’t compare.

Without batting an eye, the decision to leave the bar was accepted unanimously and we made our way to the cars. Heather got into hers, which Christian and I nearly protested. We didn’t think she wasn’t capable of driving, and its possible the instinct was chauvinistic, but we bore the full weight of her being pregnancy with the clumsy thoughts of two non-dad-ish figures. We simply didn’t want her to drive. Or do anything. But her instinct was just the opposite at the time and, in fact, the metaphorical appropriateness of her driving for our late night visit to the beach was sharp.

I sat in the passenger’s seat. Staring mostly straight ahead into the blackness that the headlights spilt. When I looked at Heather, every single time, I fell in love again. And in a strange twist on a male’s usual attention, whenever I looked at her my eyes drifted down…to her stomach…to her abdomen where my son or daughter was beginning. In fact, the more I looked to Heather, the more I found myself looking down.

Chris fell asleep at one point and it felt more like Heather and I were alone. She rested a hand on my knee and patted lightly as if I was ill. Maybe I was before that night in some way. Before then, I’d been blissfully confident that newfound career, romance, direction and home meant happiness. And in an effort to not sound ungrateful, they mostly do (they come dangerously close). But not truly knowing why means a gap in that appreciation. And my young heart combined with my young head could not have seen far enough ahead to know what really matters. But to have some of that magic stuff so early is almost too lucky for a young WASP lad like me. It would be months before I’d legitimately wonder if I deserved everything I had handed to me, and the answer lay in the fact that I could answer those questions better through an example as a father. But, that still never answered the question. It may never.

The car ride was over far shorter than I remember the trip being. Chris awoke with a jolt as we parked, and inexplicably we were all fresh and awake to stumble down to the beach.

It was cold, so we pulled our jackets tight like our mothers told us to. Christian’s wouldn’t zip up since he broke it the second day he owned it, but his sudden running about in the sand wasn’t conducive to restrictive clothing anyway. I stood staring for awhile, as I’d taken a liking to doing as of late.

The water was feverishly iridescent. Christian made several comments from afar that it was “broken” and here he had come all this way. It was beautiful though. Through the first tens of yards an eerie green and oddly white shifted within the sounds of waves approaching. My ears were battered by the same winds that carried a bit of dry brush across the sand in front of me.

Heather almost scared me out of my skin when she came up behind me. I tried to act like she didn’t, but it was no use. She hugged an arm and nestled into my shoulder and side.

“Are you okay?”

She asked me. She actually asked me this, I would repeat to myself. I was fine…how was she?

“Oh- yeah. Of course. You?”

“Great.”

We stood in the silence for awhile.

Then awhile longer.

Christian could be heard falling down about a hundred yards off.

“Oops. Shit!”

Heather and I both smiled and laughed to each other, knowing full well that this doofus was to play a large avuncular role in our new family like it or not. It was like a sitcom was being planned as we stood there.

Eventually, Christian came bounding toward us, obviously having given us enough time alone by his clock.

“I figured I gave you two enough time alone- I mean, you certainly don’t need to have sex again for awhile.” He smiled, and thankfully Heather did too, so I felt okay in laughing along.

“Cool waves, all lit up like that, huh?” I nodded out to the beautiful night ocean.

“Awesome. I couldn’t have done it better in Bryce myself.” I laughed. Heather didn’t get it, but probably assumed correctly that it was a corny joke on some level.

We all sighed and the winds blew the evening’s hour into us. Christian made his way to the car with a yawn and fell quickly asleep in the back seat.

Heather and I stood for what felt like an hour. Together. Not as two people, and not even in the campy assertion of three people, but as one warm being on the edge of the ocean. Way too young to be confidently shopping for a new T.V. much less raising a child.

But there we were.

And maybe it was in the calm…maybe it was in the strange waves…maybe it wasn’t there at all…but we felt someone smile at us from someplace. We both confirmed later that we felt something. There at the beach we would decide that we were right. And it seemed that the rest of creation agreed, not because the question was perfect, but because we finally asked.

End.

23 : Season 2

Hopefully I’ll see you back in the Spring…

-Dean Browell

11/30/2k1

Previous Chapters: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 & 9

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