“What do you mean?” he asks, turning to face me, his fingers tracing a path down my arm and across my stomach. His touch is soothing and calming, and for a second I forget my concern, I forget that we will struggle to become a couple. Our love story is different and bold. It’s spanned over a decade, but it will always be viewed as unusual and people will question if it will ever really work.
“You’re on a vacation right now and so am I. We have jobs and families and lives that we created. How can we possibly leave it all and start something new?” My words come out in a desperate rush of panic. But if we don’t follow through with it, all of this will have been for nothing. The last twelve years of my life will have been for nothing. My breakup with Ryan will have been something I did out of fear rather than out of necessity.
“We’ll make it work. Your job is easy, Nora. You can do it from anywhere. We can move wherever you want. California, Hawaii, Australia. It doesn’t matter.” He’s so sure of himself, so sure of his words and I hate that I’m panicking and ruining this time we have together.
“What about your job?” I ask, again realizing we haven’t really dove too deeply into what our lives look like outside of each other.
“It’s a large corporation. I can transfer. It will take some time, but I’ll be able to find something within the company.”
His answers calm me and make me think. I’ve already changed my life by waiting for him. Changing things now won’t matter and now is my time to live the life I’ve always wanted.
A life with Elliot.
“We’ll make this work,” he murmurs, nuzzling into my neck and making me smile. He’s right. We will make this work no matter what.
“We’re going to meet my dad today,” I murmur back, cuddling closer to his warm body. “Just a warning, I have no idea how this is going to go. Alice is one thing, but my dad, he’s another.”
“Don’t worry about this. We don’t need people to understand what we’re doing or why. This is between us and if our families can’t get on board then it is what it is.”
The next stop is my father’s house and I’m not entirely certain what his reaction will be. I think like most he assumed I’d never find Elliot. That I’d continue to drag myself through life looking for him. So he was more than pleased when I met Ryan and even openly admitted his happiness that I would now be more committed to a “normal” life. No more aimless wandering, no more traveling and wasting my vacation time, no more loneliness. But little did he know, Elliot was still there in the back of my mind, clouding my judgment and making me realize I was just pretending with Ryan. I was forcing myself to be happy. Today is different. Today is the start of mine and Elliot’s life together and like he said, we don’t need to explain things to anyone.
We arrive at my dad’s house several hours later and when we pull in the driveway, Elliot hits me with a look that screams he has something to say. He looks at the house and then back at me, his mouth opening and closing like a fish and I can’t help but laugh. His eyes are wide and his brow furrowed, as he looks to be processing something, trying to find the right words.
“What’s going on? “I question, smirking at him and his expression, suppressing the laugh I feel coming on so I don’t make him uncomfortable.
“This is your dad’s house?” he now asks, almost like he’s clarifying, pointing to the red brick bungalow in front of us. It’s been my dad’s house for thirty-five years. It’s the house I grew up in and the house he can’t bear to put up for sale because it holds all the memories of my mother. Alice and I have tried to convince him to move to something smaller, something with less maintenance, but he won’t hear of it.
For the longest time I wanted the house out of my life. I wanted to pretend the death of my mother didn’t have a massive impact on my life. I didn’t want to be returning home as if it had filled some void in my life, but as the years ticked by, I realized the house and my dad keeping it, helped us all heal more than we thought.
“Yep. This is the house I grew up in.” I stop and point to the window above the front door. “That was my bedroom. Alice’s was in the back of the house and she would—”
“I’ve been here. I met your dad,” Elliot blurts out cutting off my words and silencing me with something I didn’t see coming.
Now it’s me with my mouth opening and closing as I try to figure out what to ask first. My thoughts are a mess, swirling and jumbled with questions and reasons and ideas for how he could’ve possibly met my father.
“What do you mean?” I stutter out, my words catching on my tongue. I can feel my heart begin to race, a panicked feeling consuming me.
Did my father know it was Elliot and intentionally send him away? Did he keep it from me in the hopes that I’d just move on with my life? My panic turns to anger in an instant and I don’t even wait for Elliot to answer as I whip open my car door and storm toward the house.
“Nora!” Elliot yells, jogging to catch up to me, grabbing my wrist and spinning me so I’m now facing him. “Stop. I met your dad while I was looking for you, but I didn’t know it was your dad.”
“When?” I ask, my words practically a demand for him to spill it all.
How could he have been this close? How could he have met my father but somehow missed me? Was this recently? Was this before we finally found each other?
I have too many questions to even begin to process and the two of us stand suspended in an awkward silence until my father calling my name breaks it.
“Nora, what are you doing?” he barks, his Boston accent heavy and somewhat soothing in this strange moment.
“Go back inside, Dad!” I yell back, my accent now slipping through in the heightened anger and confusion of the situation. But he doesn’t move, his feet firmly rooted on the white front porch as Elliot and I stand in the yard, watching him.
In that moment though, it must register, and I watch my father’s face go from red to ashen white and without another word, he walks back in the house. The door slamming shut behind him and I have no idea what kind of mess I’ve just brought Elliot into.
“Does my dad know who you are?” I ask, shakiness to my words, wondering if this reunion could’ve happened years ago, but my father somehow controlled it.
“No. I don’t think so,” Elliot answers. “It was a while ago. The first time I came to find you.” He stops, dragging a hand through his hair and letting out a hard exhale.
This situation is far more complicated than either of us even realize. We’ve been looking for each other for twelve years, twelve long years of let downs and disappointments and neither one of us really knows the lengths we actually went to. It’s hard to put into words the number of times we thought we were on the right track or how far we really traveled. It’s all become one lump of bullshit that we’ve never fully discussed.
Right now is why we should’ve. I’m struck with wondering about all the times we may have been so close, but still not there.
“My investigator found you. Well, it was obviously your father’s address and I came here. He was leaving the house and I stopped him, asking—”