Summer Ending

There was a special kind of peace that came with living in Newcastle, Colorado. I loved the song the wind played, a lullaby blowing upon my face as I perused the pages of my latest romance novel. I loved the magnificent backdrop of mountains large enough to swallow me and my problems up whole. I liked the long green silence of the fields and the therapeutic shade of the air. I loved the entire panoramic view from the perch of my country home balcony.

I loved all the scenery with the exception of one noticeable eyesore: a man, half-naked in the yard facing me, performing the very unnecessary task of chopping wood in my light of sight. Each time I saw this individual, my tranquil mindset gradually gave way to rage. That bubbling rage that doesn’t reach your face, but promises to someday explode in a barrage of epithets. The reason for this bubbling was that the realtor had told me that there was no one living within five miles. “Only birds and the lilies” the lying scoundrel had said.

However, she did not call and inform me when someone bought the land next door and built a house apparently held together by chewing gum. And she sure as hell didn’t tell me it was this man. With pec muscles bursting all over the place and abs so neatly packed I could play a song on them. A back so broad it could contain the world.

What was worse was that he would come out every day at the same time right in my line of sight. Weren’t there other places in the universe to chop wood? Our relationship was so young and we were already getting into a silent fight.

Fine, I telepathically said to him as he chopped his stupid wood. You will be my eye candy. A piece of meat. My Magic Mike. Nothing else. Consider it penance for thousands of years of patriarchy.  

I didn’t need him to talk. He could open his mouth and sound like a jackal. Then I’d have to sit there for hours as he regaled me with wretched country tales of finding possums in the street. Or worse. He could sound like a being from heaven and I would be forever pulled into the gravity of his orbit. Neither one would do, for I’d be gone by summer’s end.

So, I developed a routine. I would go out on the balcony early, right before the sun peeped its head over the horizon. I’d read my book. He’d come out around noon and start chopping his wood like a psychopath. I’d glance up occasionally, taking in the scenery both inanimate and moving. The individual acts of reading romance and watching his bare skin would often coalesce into one as I imagined I myself in my Magic Michael’s arms, the heroine of my very own harlequin tale. 

It was the perfect arrangement until he committed the cardinal sin. He spoke.

“Do you think you’re better than me?”

I was snapped out of my state of reading when I looked down below to see my muse leaning on the fence across the way apparently taking a break from his pointless woodchopping to harass me.

Startled, I uttered, “What on earth!”

“Do you think you’re better than me?” he repeated with a sly smile, sounding nothing like a jackal and more like a Matthew Mcconaughey. 

I began to fume as I slowly realized this man was about to ruin the whole summer with his big mouth.

“Is that your version of a greeting?” I said back with enough venom to turn him away.

He briefly said, “I’m sorry. My name’s Bret.”

The bastard had just ruined my secret name for him. No more “Magic Mike”. “Bastard Bret” had come up and replaced him without so much as flinch. And just as casually, he transitioned back to his atrocious question.

“Now, do you think you’re better than me?”

“What would possess you to say that!”

“Well, every time I come out here. You just sittin’ up there lookin’ down on me, like you’re a queen on a throne watchin’ her peasants.”

It was an especially vile and weaselly thing to say. He was calling me stuck up and didn’t even have the courage to say it outright. But the characterization played into my plan anyway. 

“So what if I am?” I told him. “Why does it bother you if I consider myself royalty?”  

In response, he said something that caught me off guard.

“It doesn’t,” he just smiled. “I love a woman who knows her place.”

I felt a little bad for berating him. So, when he asked for my name, I gave it. But he said he preferred to speak of me in royal terms.

“See you later, your highness,” he said, with a dramatic bow as he left. Leaving me with my book and thoughts and dreams. 

And that was the moment it all went to hell. Because that was the moment I started to fall deeply, impossibly in love. We created a routine for ourselves. I would be out bright and early each morning on my “throne” as he called it and he would come out later, chopping wood. Observing me from the corner of his eye.

When he seemed satisfied with his work, he would take a break and stroll to the fence. Lean over and call to me from across the lawn. We would talk about casual things like the weather and family. Turns out he had an older brother who used to pick on him. Whenever he got out of line, I would imagine Little Bret getting noogied by the elder sibling and I’d make sure to tell him that I was thinking it. It was just the type of conversation to keep a man just at arm’s length. Then one day, by accident, we took a wrong turn into a somber topic.

“Why do you chop that damned wood all day?” I asked. “There can’t be that many chairs in the universe.”

“I go to town and sell the wood for a pretty good price, but I always have a little extra.”

He leaned on the fence and lowered his head, seemingly ruminating over a thought. He finally lifted that strong chin and confessed to me, “I use it to vent.”

Careful, I said to myself, but still, temptation and concern made me lean in and ask, “About what?”

He hesitated for a time and then visibly trying to maintain composure, he said, “My -- my dad’s not doing too well. He’s a nice guy. Nicest guy I know. Why’s a guy like that gonna die in pain, but I know a lotta bad men who are gonna live for a century.”

I’ve read a million romances that could weave words together in a seamless tapestry. I felt shame at only producing the words, “I don’t know.”

“But I told you why I vent. Why do you read those books?”

“To create another world. A world without death. A world where the hero always says the right thing. There are a few misunderstandings along the way, but it always ends up okay in the end.”

I made sure to add, my eye contact fading, “But we don’t live in that world. We’re only allotted pieces.” 

My mind journeyed back to losing my own loved ones and I ended with, “We only can appreciate the pieces we've got.”

When you’re in love, you’re in a constant state of holding things together before you go off the deep end. I supposed it’s like a sweater with a loose thread. It only takes one yank and then everything unravels. Him sharing his grief with me might have been that yank that pushed our hearts toward a definite momentum.

Gladly, though, the summer was coming to an end. It was my last day in that summer home and I awaited my love in my throne upon the balcony. Oddly, he came out earlier than usual. He wasn’t shirtless or dressed in a t-shirt and jeans as usual. It was slacks and khakis.

“You got big plans today?” I mused.

He didn’t speak. He just fidgeted before moving toward the fence. I watched as he jumped it, coming closer to me than we had ever been in our three months of knowing each other. Then, much to my shock, he crossed my yard and he came closer and closer until he disappeared. I distinctly heard the sound of him scaling the front of my home.

I started to push myself to my feet to stop him from whatever madness he had planned, but by the time I leaned in to start my ascent, he was already climbing over the balcony railing. Seeing my movement he held out a flat palm in my direction.

“Stop! Stay right there. I have something to say, and I want you to be on your throne when I say it.”

He finished his climb over the barrier and landed right in front of me looking even more amazing than in my dreams. His polo did nothing to hide his broad shoulders and the bumpy terrain of his body. In fact, it showed off ever twist and turn, leaving me quite speechless.

Then, even when there were no more words to drain out of the air, his next act produced an even starker silence. Almost in slow motion, he got down on one knee. My heart pounded feverishly as he said the words: 

“Will you marry me?”

His beautiful broad eyes looked up to me begging for a response. And there was no doubt, no hesitation, no pause in my rejoinder.

“Are you crazy?” I hissed. “What’s wrong with you?”

I saw his eager face turn to shock, but he would not conquer me. I had to power through.

“Don’t you understand? You were nothing but a plaything! A fantasy! Like one of my books!”

I waved it in front of him like a witch casting a spell.

His expression had now transitioned to confusion as he asked, seemingly in a catatonic state, “Does… does this mean you’re saying no?”

“Oh, my goodness! He’s dumb, too!” I had to send it home. “No, it means I’m madly in love with you. I want to have your babies and we can all live in your raggedy house together living off of wood choppings and Julia Quinn novels -- OF COURSE, I’M SAYING NO!”

I could see those words shattered him. Good. He tried to hide it behind his anger, but I saw tears. Good. His grand gesture a puddle on the ground, he had nothing left to do except descend the balcony in defeat. 

I watched his shrunken stride as he traversed the grass. The drooping head as he climbed his ricketty fence. His insecure gait as he strolled across his yard. Up his ragged steps. Into his dilapidated shack. The moment his door slammed, I urgently screamed into the house while fighting back the tears.

“Gretchen! Gretchen!”

My aid came out quickly, kindly as always.

“Yes, Ms. Summer.”

“Bring me my wheelchair. I’m ready.”

A year before, when the doctor issued my death warrant, I had made a distinct plan. A plan that Bret was never supposed to be part of. I was supposed to spend a peaceful summer in Newcastle and then go to the assisted death clinic with my mind only bathed in the dreams and hopes of my favorite romance novels. But Brett came and plans changed. He proposed and plans changed again.

By that time it was never a matter of whether or not he felt pain, but the color of the pain. I could give him the pain of that witchy woman who was never any good anyway. The pain of knowing a woman strung him along only to reject him in the most humiliating of ways. A pain that stifles, but with the right medication and loads of books one that can be shaken off if given enough time. Or I could gift him with the added pain of yet another loved one marching to the gallows. A pain that starts and ends with suffering and begins again on a cold midnight. Again, when you hear that song. Again when you see the way the wind brushes against the trees or get that whiff of a familiar perfume. Again. Again. Again.

I would not wish that pain upon my worst enemy let alone my love.

As I lay in bed the gas flowing in through my nostrils, I feel the four dark walls closing in. I try to erase my mind of the bad memories and replace them with the happy ones from my romances. But no matter how much I push it away, the moment on the balcony keeps storming back.

On my final breath, I dream of him and cry.