Speak Now

SPEAK NOW

“Speak now …”

I looked at my soon — very soon — to be husband. He was smiling at me. Not even worried. He looked so sure of himself, so confident. Like the day we met …

*****

“Hey.”

I turned and saw a tall guy looking at me. Was he looking at me? I literally did that thing where you look around behind to make sure that the person is really talking to you. I even pointed to my own chest with a finger to make sure.

“Yeah, you,” he said. “You’re new here, right?”

I was new. You know how he could tell? I was standing in the hall, looking around trying to find the room for my next class. It was mid-semester, and everyone but me already knew where their classroom was. Ergo, I was the new kid.

“Yup,” I said. “New kid. Where’s room 224?”

“Two-two-four?” He snorted, and pointed over his shoulder. “Down there.”

I was sure I’d been down there before, but I followed his directions.

“What class?” he asked.

“Uh—“ I pulled out my timetable and looked at it. “Social Sciences, with — “ I moved my finger across the page, “Mrs. Blankenship.”

“Follow me, I’m in her class, too.”

We started walking, when the bell rang.

“Hey,” he said, “what’s your name?”

“Gemma.”

“Huh,” he said.

We arrived at the class just at the teacher was closing the door.

“Mr. Lake, you are late. And you’ve brought a friend,” said a woman I assumed was the teacher.

“Yeah, well, I was showing Gemma here where the class was. She’s new.”

“Welcome, Gemma. I’m Mrs. Blankenship. Come in and I’ll get you settled.” She turned, “Thank you Quinn, for bringing Gemma to class.”

He had saved me on my first day at a new school. He’d also helped me get acquainted with his friends — all his friends were my friends. I’d never really made any new friends during high school. I’d spent all my time with Quinn’s group.  

*****

Now the room was filled with some of those same friends and both families. All anxiously looking towards the front of the alter, were Quinn and I stood facing each other, on what should be the happiest day of our lives

“… Or forever … ”

*****

I knew that when we went our separate ways to university, that things might change. During high school we’d been inseparable, always together. Quinn just wanted us to always be together -- same classes, same activities, same everything. I hoped that we could weather the distance, but I was tense around Thanksgiving — known to first year students as the "Turkey Dump" because traditionally that was the time that couples who are separated by distance from each other realize that maybe a long-distance relationship was harder than they thought. But not Quinn and I. We were solid, at least as solid as a person can think they are at nineteen.  

The four years at university were good. I felt secure in the knowledge that whatever university threw at me, Quinn would be there to help. And I was there for him as well. We were only a couple of hours away from each other, so one of us would regularly travel to see the other on weekends. While I liked to plan a weekend together, Quinn was more of a “surprise!” kinda guy.

“Surprise!”

I jumped and turned around. There was Quinn, a big smile on his face.

“Quinn!” I had stuttered, “What are you doing here?”

This was the first time that he had showed up unannounced.

“I thought that I would surprise you,” he had said, looking directly into my eyes.

I ran over and gave him a big hug.

“Thank you!” I had said, looking back at the table where I had been working with three other students. We were working on a group project, and needed to finish up our meeting, then because I hadn’t expected Quinn to show up, I had planned to finish my portion of the project over the weekend.

“Umm,” I said, “I have to finish up this meeting first, then we can get together.”

Quinn looked at my teammates at the table.

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “This is Henry, Jennifer, and Carson. Everyone, this is Quinn, my boyfriend.”

Everyone said their hellos, and a silence settled around the group.

“Why don’t you take my key, and I’ll meet you back at my dorm in about an hour?”

“Sure,” he said. But he wasn’t smiling now. “An hour.”

He turned and walked out of the library, without taking the key.

After he’d left Jennifer asked me, “How’d he know you were here?”

I hadn’t considered that.

“Lucky guess?” I’d said, smiling.  

But still, how had he known?

Later, when I left the library after the meeting was over, there was Quinn sitting in front of the library on one of the benches watching the front door. Looking for me, I assumed.

“Hey!” I said, with a bit of false cheer. “You didn’t have to wait out here. There are great chairs inside.”

“I’m fine.”

We’d started walking towards the dorms. This was not the first time that Quinn had visited, it was just the first time that he had shown up unannounced. And, it was obvious that he was disappointed in his reception.

“So,” he said, “nice friends.”

“Yup,” I said, “we got to pick our own groups for this project, and they three of them are as conscientious about their grades as I am, so we’ve got a good groove going. The project is due next week, so we needed to decide who was going to do what.”

“Carson was looking at you funny.”

“Carson? No way. He’s in a relationship.”

“You’re in a relationship, and you’re working with him.”

I stopped and looked at him.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I don’t know. Am I?”

“Carson is a friend. Henry is a friend. And Jennifer is a friend. I have a lot of friends at school. Both male and female. I am allowed to have friends, Quinn. You have friends who are women. I don’t suspect you of harbouring feelings for them. Not everybody's trying to make moves, you know.”  

I stopped and looked at him. He looked back at me.

“I saw the way he looked at you, Gemma.”

“You saw concern in his look, because you had just shown up during a meeting we had all planned a week ago because it was the only time that we all had free. That was the look you saw. He was just too polite to ask what you were doing crashing our meeting.”

Quinn said nothing. We continued to walk towards the dorm.

“Where are you staying?” I asked.

Quinn stopped and looked at me. “With you.”

“No. Shelly is here this weekend. You can’t stay in my room.”

“Can’t she go somewhere?” asked Quinn.

“No she can’t ‘go somewhere.’ This is her home. She would never ask me to leave if she had a date. And I’m not going to ask her.”

Quinn turned and started walking away towards the parking lot.

“It’s obvious that you don’t want me here, so I’m going home.”

I didn’t beg him to stay, although I was pretty sure that he wanted me to. But I had too much work to do. And, to be honest, I was a little angry about him just showing up. And how did he know where I had been?

I went to my room, and continued to work on my assignment until midnight, then dropped into bed. Around three in the morning my phone rang. No one likes a call in the middle of the night. I looked at the screen. It was Quinn.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m so sorry.”

I didn’t know what he was sorry for, but I did know that he had been drinking.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I’m sooo sorry,” he repeated, and hung up.

In the morning I called him back and he said he didn’t remember calling me. He did apologize again for showing up unannounced, and I accepted his apology. He told me that he’d slept in his car and was still in town. He came over. Shelly was at her job, so we had the room to ourselves. He was a mess, so he had a shower and cleaned up. I noticed that his hands were all cut up and he had a bruise on his face.

“What happened?” I asked, pointing to his bruise.

He touched it tentatively. “I have no idea,” he said.

It was only the next week when our work group met again that I found out that someone had jumped Carson behind the library. He had a black eye and had taken a number of hits to the ribs, but he’d whacked his attacker in the face with his elbow. Carson never saw the guy who’d run off when some people had walked around the back of the library. I never even thought about Quinn.

*****

“… hold your peace.”

Should I have said something? Should I have asked Quinn if he’d been the person who had jumped Carson? Would he have told me the truth? And how had he found me?

But I said nothing.

*****

After we both graduated, we moved to the city, and looked for jobs, and before too long we were both gainfully employed, living upwardly mobile lives. I was in business, Quinn was in finance.

At some point we had decided to get married. Quinn popped the question at a really romantic dinner, and I said yes. What I didn’t say was when. I was in no hurry to get married.

“We should have a dozen kids.”

“Are you kidding me,” I said. “I’m not even sure that I want children.” I had informed Quinn.

It was like I had struck him.

“How could you not want kids?” he’d asked.  “Don’t you love me?”

“Yes, I love you. I’m just not sure about kids, that’s all. I didn’t say yes, and I didn’t say no. I just said that I’m not sure.”

“Is it just me, or does that apply to all the guys you work with?”

I looked at him, a frown spreading across my face, anger boiling within.

“Are you insane?” I asked him.

“Maybe. I don’t know. You spend all your time with all of these guys from work. What am I supposed to think?

“Stop talking,” I said, turning on my heels, and walking away from him.

The next night I had to work late, and the people working on the project decided to go out for dinner. There were five of us, and we went to a local pub, McGinty’s, for dinner instead of having dinner delivered.

We had just finished our dinner, and were getting ready to go back to the office when Quinn showed up.

I was shocked to see him.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I was in the neighbourhood, and thought I’d drop by and see what you were doing. I thought that you were working late,” he said, looking around the table. 

“Working dinner,” said Ben, one of the team members.

Quinn turned to look at him. “I was talking to Gemma, but thanks for the update.”

I took Quinn by the arm and led him away from the table.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?” Quinn mocked.

I was furious.

“How did you know where I was?” I demanded.

“No!” he said, “I want to know why you told me you were working late, and yet I find you at a bar hanging out with your ‘friends’ from work.”

“No. You tell me how you knew where to find me.”

“The Find Your Phone app on your phone.”

“What! You are tracking me?”

“No!” he said, “I’m just worried about your safety, so I track your phone.”

“For how long?”

“Since university. I worry about you.”

“So why are you here? Do you think that I’m in danger at McGinty’s. Or is it that you don’t trust me?”

“Look, you lied to me. You are supposed to be at work.”

“I am at work. This was a working dinner. See the laptops? That’s what a working dinner looks like,” I said, pointing at the table.

I turned to walk back to the group. He grabbed my arm, and whirled me back to face him. I was shocked! He’d never laid hands on me before.

“Let me go, or I will call the police on you.”

He let go, the colour draining from his face.

“I’m so sorry, Gemma.”

Ben came over.

“Everything okay, Gemma?”

“Yup. Quinn was just leaving.”

We almost broke up over that. But Quinn had admitted that he was jealous and terrified of losing me. He admitted that he had trackers on my phone and car. He went into therapy. It seemed to help. No more secretive tracking. No more showing up unexpectedly. Trust was what we needed in our relationship. No obsessive questioning. He’d promised, swearing on his love for me that he was better. That was two months ago.  

Then, last week, I found out that someone had tried to run Ben off of the road using a PIT manoeuvre, hitting him in the rear driver’s side bumper sending him into a spin. He’d managed not to drive off the road, but had almost crashed into an oncoming car. He didn’t get a plate number, but it was a big, dark coloured truck. We were all horrified. Ben couldn’t think of why someone would target him, or try to run him off the road.

****

The room was quiet. The officiant looking around the crowd to see if anyone was going to speak up.

*****

Yesterday, I had to take Quinn’s truck to run some last minute errands because he was getting my car detailed. I noticed some damage on the front passenger dumper. I looked closer, and saw some red paint in the damage. Ben drove a red car.

When Quinn came home, I asked him about it. He swore he didn’t know what I was talking about. In fact, he said that Ben probably put the paint on his bumper himself, to make him look guilty. I told him he was ridiculous.

I also asked him about Carson. He pretended to not know what I was talking about. I reminded him of the late night call, and the bruises. He stopped talking.

We went to the rehearsal dinner and pretended that nothing was the matter. He didn’t leave my side for the entire night, holding my elbow, only letting me talk to the people he wanted to talk to. He was beginning to scare me.  

After, when I asked him where he was staying, he said with me. I said no, bad luck seeing the bride before the wedding, blah, blah blah. He insisted. We went home.

Back at home, when I tried to talk to him, he told me that I needed to go to bed, so that I would be ready for my big day. I slept on my side, facing away from Quinn -- Quinn, the man who I was going to marry the next day.

Our wedding day. Quinn stayed with me while I dressed. He drove us to the venue together. He never left my side, and had “offered” to hold my phone for me. We were having a small wedding, without attendants, so it was just the two of us. We even walked up the aisle together.

*****

Now, the officiant was about to declare us husband and wife. I saw him, almost in slow motion, taking in a breath to finish our vows.

“I can’t do this,” I said to the officiant. I turned to Quinn. “I’m not marrying you. You frighten me, and you’ve hurt people because you don’t trust me. I can’t love you if I’m afraid of you.”

I turned to walk away, and Quinn grabbed my arm. There was a gasp from the audience.

“Get your hands off of me!” I hissed.

Instead he grabbed my other arm, and pulled me in front facing him.

“We are getting married, and we are getting married now!” He turned to our officiant. “Finish the vows!” he yelled.

I was struggling to get out of his grasp, and he turned me around, and put his arm around my neck. At the same he pulled out a gun out of the back of his waistband, and started waving it around.  

“DO IT!” he yelled at the officiant.

Now was my chance. I stomped down on his instep with my high heel, used all my force to elbow him in the ribs, and then swung my fist into his groin. The gun clattered to the ground. I kicked it away.

My father and brother jumped on Quinn to hold him until the police arrived. Quinn’s mother was yowling about how I hurt her baby. It was mayhem.

When the police had finished taking our statements, and Quinn had been transported to the police station, I turned to address my guests.

“This was not how I expected today to go.”