A Moment Like This

Caleb

Yoga is probably a smarter choice today, but once again, I find myself wanting to pour my frustration into a punching bag. Actually, frustration isn’t even the right word for how I’m feeling. I’m just… lost. I left Hannah’s house three nights ago with her promise she’d think about everything. At least I know I laid everything out there. If she takes this other job, it won’t be because I was too afraid to tell her. It will be because I was an idiot ten years ago.

In all the years between, my work kept me going and helped me find confidence in something. But it’s not enough anymore. More importantly, it’s not what I want most. I’d flip burgers at a fast-food restaurant if it meant Hannah could see herself how I do. If I could help rebuild the fire in her that Todd and I both had a hand in dousing, I’d shuck oysters in a seaside shack.

I struggle through Oscar’s “warmup”, trying to explain what happened on Friday night. How my nineteen-year-old cousin became my go-to person for advice, I don’t know, but he’s a lot wiser than I was at his age. Nineteen wasn’t a good year for me in terms of life choices.

“You told her?” he asks, standing a metre away in the training ring.

“I did. Flat out said that I love her and have all this time.” I sigh, letting my shoulders droop. I’m an easy target, and I know it, but Oscar doesn’t capitalize.

“What did she say?”

“Paraphrasing? First she said she was just familiar to me and I’ve mistaken that for love. Then she told me she’s made so many bad decisions concerning her heart, she doesn’t trust it anymore, so she can’t love me back.” Saying those words out loud twists my gut even more than they did when they spilled out of Hannah’s mouth.

“So, what are you going to do?” Oscar takes a lazy sweep at my legs with his feet, but without any resistance on my part, I go down like a bag of bricks.

And decide to stay there.

I stare up at the flickering fluorescent lights suspended from the twenty-foot ceiling, looking for answers. “I don’t know.”

The light above me becomes obscured by a shadow and, once my eyes adjust, I see Oscar reaching his hand out to pull me back to my feet.

“Can I just stay down? You win, man.” I tap the mat for emphasis.

“That’s not how this works. I don’t care if you’re bleeding from every orifice of your body, you get back up. If one leg is broken and you can’t stand on it, you use the other. We are not training anyone to get knocked down and stay there.”

I deflate into the mat, understanding his point, but not knowing how to get back up. “This is my own fault. I should have never left.”

Oscar toes my ribs with his foot. “Get up.”

“Seriously, man. I think this is my… What’s the word? Comeuppance or something. You reap what you sow. You get what you give. All that jazz.”

“Get. Up,” Oscar repeats with a new level of irritation in his voice. “You won’t figure it out down there. I haven’t been wasting my time training you, so you can quit when things get hard.”

“Just let me stay here,” I beg, feeling every bit as pathetic as I sound.

“No. I said get up!” he shouts. More playful than angry, but I don’t want to hear it a fourth time.

“Fine!” I roll until I can get on all fours, then force myself to stand. “I’m up. Happy?”

“Nope.” He smiles and starts bouncing on his toes. “I didn’t mean get up off the mat.” He sends a right hook to my temple, but there’s no heat behind it. “I mean, you get knocked down, you grapple back to standing. Or do you want me to put you in a figure-four leg lock and you can see what it’s like to be totally stuck?”

“That’s not even muay thai.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t know how to do it. Point is, old man, you will not tap out. You will get up.”

I want to be frustrated with him for relating every life experience to kickboxing. If I could solve every problem with a right hook, things would have been great after I broke Todd’s nose.

But to appease my very stubborn, freakishly strong cousin, I agree. Also, because everyone in the gym is staring at me and this is one of the last places you want to appear weak.

I attempt a sad knee strike, which Oscar blocks and starts laughing. Heaven help anyone who ends up in a fistfight with this guy, because he’s slicker than an oiled skillet. But the important thing is that I’m back on my feet.

Now, I just need to figure out how I’m going to fight for the love of my life.

“Can we talk?” Hannah asks at the first opportunity we’ve had to speak all day. At least about anything other than the thirty-two person wedding party that occupied our dining room for the better part of four hours tonight.

“Yeah. Here or…?”

“Your office is fine.”

That reply leaves me with a marked feeling of disappointment. If she wanted to discuss personal matters, she’d have asked to talk somewhere else. This is business. Something that, months ago, would have filled me with relief. Now, I don’t know what to think.

“Okay. We’ve got a few minutes while the dining room gets put back together.” I nod for her to follow me into my office.

We walk in and she scans the space. It’s a slight improvement since she last saw it, but it’s still not somewhere you’d want to spend any length of time.

I settle in front of my desk, leaning back on my hands and crossing my ankles. “What can I do for you?” I forcefully keep the grimace off of my face as I berate myself for making this seem so casual.

“About that new job.”

My heart stops beating. Actually stops. It might have fallen out altogether, but my focus is on Hannah and I refuse to look away, so I can’t check the floor.

“I’m not going to take it. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to stay here. At Hibiscus. As your sous chef,” she rambles.

This is the answer I was hoping for. More than anything, I didn’t want her to leave. I don’t want her to leave. But I ask the same thing she asked me. “Why?”

She furrows her brows and glares at me for several seconds. “Is that not okay with you now?”

“Of course it is. I told you I want you to stay. I guess what I’m asking is, why do you want to?”

She exhales and starts fiddling with a button on her jacket. “If you think I’m going to give you some declaration of my undying love, that’s not why…” Her words trail off and she scrunches her face.

Well, that’s a hit I won’t recover from for way longer than any Oscar has landed.

“I love this job. I love our menu and the location. There’s so much potential in this place, and I feel like we can reach it under your leadership.”

Again, even with the professional approval, all I feel from her words is pain in my chest. My heart is still there, turns out. It’s currently breaking.

“But the truth is, if that’s all I wanted, I could find that anywhere.”

In a move that steals the breath from my lungs, like a squarely landed gut punch, Hannah steps forward. Her eyes are level with my chest, but she’s looking upward at me through her dark lashes.

“It’s not all I want, though.”

I suck in a long inhale through my nose. “What do you want?”

She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, continuing to stare at me without tilting her head. “Were you serious… about what you said?”

“Which part?”

She bites down on her lip until it loses colour. “That you never stopped loving me?”

I didn’t realize that from everything I said, I had left any room for doubt. But, given our history, I can’t blame her for needing more reassurance; which I’ll happily give. “Not for one second. I might not have realized that for a long time, but I never stopped.” I inch forward, testing if she’ll pull away. “Hannah Parker, I love you. Still; now; always; forever. Whichever way you want me to say it so you believe me, it’s true. And not because of who you were or what we had. I love you for who you are today and who you’ll be tomorrow. And every day after that.”

She finally tilts her head up so I can look straight into her eyes, and I notice a single tear trickling down her scarred cheek.

I trail my thumb over her scar and wipe her tear away. “Let me prove it, because there’s never been anything I’ve wanted to work harder at in all my life.”

We stand in silence for several seconds as I wait for her reply. Something. At least a slap would be an answer, but she’s not hinting at anything.

Finally, she replies with two simple words that say a lot: “Kiss me.”

That response never occurred to me. I’ve wanted to kiss her for months, and now that the opportunity is in front of me, I hesitate. Until I see the doubt in her hazel eyes that makes me afraid she thinks I didn’t mean what I said.

I place my hand at the base of her neck and pull her toward me as I lean down to meet her lips with mine. Our flesh colliding together provides an instant bolt of euphoria that spreads through me, head to toes.

In between frantic kisses, I mutter, “I’ll never hurt you again,” and “You’re perfect.” I’m so dumbfounded by this reality, I don’t know how much time passes before I remember we’re at work. That I’m her boss, and there’s an abundance of activity happening outside my office door. But the importance of that all fades away a little more with each brush of Hannah’s lips against mine. The way she clutches the back of my jacket makes my entire body itch with anticipation. How she moans into my mouth makes me weak; so strong, but so, so weak.

And I promise myself in this moment that I’ll never let her doubt how much I love her again.