In Sebastian's Heart

When I was ten, Daddy left to join the U.S. Forces. everyone was sad, of course, and fearful. Some more than others, but we all were. Mommy especially. 

Daddy made sure to spend some time with all of us during the last week of his being home. I knew he was going to Afghanistan. We had looked it up in the map at school, and it seemed like a very far distance to me, but I will never forget what Daddy said when we told him about it. 

He said, “No distance is too far when you are bound together by love. Remember that, Elizabeth, every time that you are alone, for there is always someone that loves you, even though you may not know it.”

What Daddy did to spend time with us was simple: he asked us what we would like to do for a whole afternoon and he would try his best to do it. He took Mark to see a baseball game, Daniel got to play paintball, Louise went to a unisex beauty salon and I asked Daddy to go window- shopping with me. At first I could see that he wasn’t very convinced, but we managed to have fun anyway. 

I still have the teddy bear he bought me. It’s white and has got a red bow around its neck. When you squeeze it, it says “I love you”. Daddy gave it to me and made me promise that, when I was feeling sad, that I would press the bear and remember him. To this day I still do it sometimes. I named the bear Sebastian, which was my father’s middle name.

When the big day came and he left for Afghanistan, I felt a big empty hole in my heart that just seemed to get bigger day after day. Five weeks after, Daddy was reported to have been killed in action. I cried a bit, slept a lot and pressed that teddy bear quite often those days. 

But I managed to get through high school with some not-bad-not-good grades that satisfied me. Then I had to start looking for a job. Oh, the places I went to! I applied for a waitress and got refused, a secretary, a babysitter, a dog-walker, even a janitor in a grade school close to where I lived. All for naught. 

At last I decided to try to do what I liked best: painting. Daddy used to say that I could see something, grab a brush and, detail by detail, put it down on paper exactly the same way that I had seen it. So I started selling paintings that I made.

And it worked! People wanted me to go to their houses, size up the place on the wall where they wanted the painting, and give them something that they would not be ashamed to put on the empty space on their wall. I also made a few caricatures, for humans and animals, though I must say that I was terrible at it. Except when it was really obvious. 

For example, there was a teenage girl that wanted me to do one for her enhancing her eyes. I must say that I laughed when I was alone, for her eyes were the smallest part of her body, I dare say! She wanted them to look ‘mysterious and alluring, like a mermaid waiting for the seafaring man to fall helpless to their gaze’. I wonder what book she got that from...

I soon had a steady income coming in, and I was glad to help put food on the table for my family. Sometimes it grew to hold one more: Nathan, Louise’s fiancé. He was very handsome, though I did not envy my sister. I kind of had my eye set on his brother, Luke. Luke never paid any attention to me, though. Luke was... well, brotherly. I mean, he treated me almost exactly as Mark and Dan (he wanted to be called Dan now, it was ‘cooler’) did, except that he respected me a lot more. I used to wish that they would do as he did.

One day, the three guys were playing a video game on the couch and I wandered in.

“Hi, guys. How’s it going?” Complete silence, other than the clicking noises of them on their consoles. “Oh, stupid me, why did I even ask?” I turned then to go to the kitchen. 

“I’m winning, Beth. It seems that I practice more than these two clowns and they’re trying to beat me.”

“And we wil! Right Mark?”

I turned to Mark for his opinion but he was too far gone into the game to hear anything. I dared not shout at him, because it could prove fatal for my ears and anyone eslse’s in the close vicinity if he lost his place.

“Well, I’ll leave you guys to-”

A loud cheer interrupted me.

“Yes! I told you I would win! I won, Beth!”

Luke started dancing crazily across the living room floor and grabbed me to join him.

“I won!”

My two brothers were stretched out on the sofa, spent from all their ‘hard work’, so they didn’t see Luke as he pulled me closer and kissed me. I pulled back even harder and stood, staring at him. He colored up and looked at the floor, embarrassed.

“Oh, great, now you’ve done it Lukey...” I heard him mutter to himself. “Now you’ve done it for good.”

“All you’ve done, Luke Gouir,” I whispered intensely at him, “is make me truly relieved that I wasn’t on my own here. I like you too”

He looked at me, too surprised to say anything understandable.

“You-you mean that-really?”

I looked at him, winked and smiled. My brothers sat up on the sofa, miraculously recovered, and cheered him on.

“Come on buddy! Do it! No other time will be better!”

Now it was my turn to blush and glance away. 

Luke looked at me and whispered theatrically, “Will you be my Lady Love, Elizabeth?”

“I will.”

-------

That was about two years ago now, and Luke and I have only had one fight in all this time. But the only difference is that yesterday, my teddy bear, Sebastian disappeared. I looked all over for him, but I still hadn’t found him when Luke arrived to take me out. Today we were visiting a forest nearby our town.

When we got there, he led me to a grove of aspen trees and gave me my missing Sebastian.

“What? How did you get him?” He only told me to press him, and i heard once more the now-familiar message: ‘I love you’.

But there was something hard in the center of my bear... I opened a tiny zipper that Sebastian had on his side and took out...

A ring? Luke went down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Maybe next year, or the next, but we will be together for the rest of our lives, of that I am sure.

With Sebastian, of course. After all, it was he who first gave me his heart.