Maybe?

By the time I stepped outside, the leaves were on fire. At least, they glowed as if they were. The heat pulsed in the air and pressed itself against my face like a dense and stifling wall. It’s safe to say this was one strong campfire. I turned to zip the tent closed, tugging it to make sure there wasn’t even the slightest gap for any critters to sneak through, and proceeded to walk towards the setup of chairs beside the fire.

We’d been needing this getaway for a while. It had been a difficult few months filled with money woes, therapy sessions and conflict. I was grateful when he surprised me for this little respite from the world - a corner of the woods that we could call our own, even just for one weekend.

He’s kneeling so close to the fire now that the embers have settled right on the edges of his beanie. The sun has already set and cold is starting to drift into the mountains. I can feel it on my hands especially and decide to move to closer to the fire, outstretching my palms.

“When I said I’d be five minutes, I didn’t expect to come back to a roast,” I say.

“You’re talking about me, you know. A man of the wild!”

“Yes, well, this ‘man of the wild’ has been a bit out of practice, hasn’t he?”

“Clearly I never required practice to begin with,” he retorts, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly as he teases.

He stands up and moves to the backpack I’ve left lying by the tent. There’s nothing exciting in it - his wallet, wrappers from the road trip snacks, my glasses case. He digs in it for a moment, searching desperately for who knows what until he finally tugs it out from the chaos - the tangle that is our treasured earphones.

We have (had?) this tradition of listening to music together, sharing one pair of earphones connected to a crumbling Walkman that contained our latest CD discovery. We would hike to the very top of whatever hill we could find in the city, sit down on the grass and listen, an earphone bud in each of our ears, as we looked over the bustle and noise of urban life. Those were the happiest of days - romantic walks, incredible sex, digging into a pizza on a rainy Friday night. Everything was so different now, but at least we (I?) have those moments to look back on.

Coming out of my reverie, I see he’s gone to the car, digging in the trunk as though he completely forgot to pack something and is now in urgent need of it. I pull my coat closer around me, the fire doing little to fully warm me up in this autumn cold. After what seems like forever, he starts walking back towards me, a weathered and bulging plastic bag in hand.

“Where’d that come from?” I ask.

“I packed it by the spare tyre at the last minute. Just a little something I thought would be perfect for this trip.”

He comes close to me and pulls out the contents of the bag in one swift motion. The Walkman. I haven’t seen it so long that it takes me a moment to recognise what it is in the first place. The surface is scratched and discoloured, and the buttons worn from years of use. With the click of a button, the latch dislodges and the lid lifts up to showcase an empty compartment for a CD. Kids these days use iPods and here we are with a decades-old Walkman.

“Care for a listen?” I can hear the hope in his voice that I’ll say yes.

I look into his brown eyes at that moment. He’s got laughing wrinkles in the corners and his smile shines right through them. He’s just as handsome as when we first met, only now he has a thick beard and replaced the leather jackets with tartan.

I’m not sure if he’s joking or not. I can’t remember the last time I spoke to this side of him. I almost forgot that he even existed anymore. But how can I say no? This may be the moment I’ve been waiting for.

“Sure”, I respond. Prepared as ever, he had also pulled out our CD case with the Walkman. This case is home to some of the greatest music of the early 2000s. You name it, we’ve got it.

Instead of pulling out one of the classics, I see he’s reaching for the latest addition to our collection. About a year ago, I surprised him with John Legend’s Evolver album, one we had been looking forward to for ages. We’d never gotten around to listen to the full album though.

“I wasn’t expecting to see that one in there,” I say.

“Why not? We still have a few songs to get to.”

“I guess I never thought we would get to them.”

He gives me a look that is part hurt and part surprised, as though it was a given that we would eventually listen to those remaining songs together. Without responding, he removes the CD from its case and places it in the Walkman, shuts it closed and presses the button until he gets to the last song we listened to.

Except he doesn’t. He goes straight past it and lands on one further down the list. Number 8.

“I have to confess - I betrayed you and continued listening to the album on my own recently. With all the distance and tension between us lately, I’ll admit that I didn’t think we’d get better, or at least back to where we once were. So, one day I just decided to continue with the album, thinking it no longer mattered that we kept to our traditions. Nothing else was going right anymore, so I thought ‘why not?’. Eventually, I came to this song.”

He reaches for my hand and draws me towards our camping chairs by the fire. We sit and pull blankets close, getting cosy together under the starlit sky, not a person in sight.

I take the right earphone and he takes the left. With them sitting snug in our ears, he presses play.

The next few minutes are some of the most emotional I’ve experienced in recent memory. Not an angry or sad type of emotional, but a touched one. I’m so moved by the song that tears start to line my eyes and trickle down my face. The lyrics speak the words I’ve been waiting to hear from him - an acknowledgement that he was wrong, a genuine apology for what happened and an assurance that I’m still all he wants. The piano is soft in some moments and intense at others, a perfect balance.

As the song draws to a close, John Legend gliding his fingers over the last few keys, I look into my husband’s eyes and see him, the real him, for the first time again. If only for a split second.