A Love Everlasting

The window was fogged like London’s grey skies, raindrops splitting the grey dew that covered it. Down the long, curved driveway I could see figures moving. Coniferous trees provided shelter along each side of the drive, allowing a thick, tall and green coverage from passing cars and pedestrians. It also conveniently blocked the house from my view.

But as the figures moved along the miles of rock, coming closer and closer with each step, I could see them. Just as they rounded the final curve, headed straight for my car, did they come into full sight from my point in the car. I could see all three of them in full detail.

It had been three years. Three years since I had seen any of them, and they looked so, incomprehensibly, different. Different. 

Janise had been ten the last time I saw her...The image of that tiny little girl with perfect blonde braids and cloudless eyes and a skip in her step was gone forever, blown away like a leaf in a strong breeze. Instead, she was tall and curved and...beautiful. Like a model straight off the page with long, waving hair like the spun silk of hay in an afternoon breeze and eyes as hard as steel hiding the pain and fear raging behind them. She waltzed to the car with the fire and temper that all thirteen year olds seemed to carry with them. But, I reminded myself, she was no normal teenager. She had suffered enough to last the average person ten lifetimes. Enough to drive a person mad.

And sweet, sweet little Julie with her soft curls and tiny, toddler face and chubby arms was almost the size of an average school girl. She would start school soon, I realized. She was almost five. But still the shock of seeing that baby all grown into a kid was imminent. Pale locks were tied back in a knot behind her pale, tear-stained face and her arms and legs were lanky and tanned. How one acquired a tan in Seattle’s bone cooling winter, I will never know. 

My eyes passed over both of the sisters to the now-oldest sibling. Jayden David Meller. Davey. My first ever friend. My first kiss. My first true, true love. In that moment, staring at the boy who was but now is, I was taken back in time to another rainy day, miles away in Ontario, Port Stanley, a local fishing community that we had grown up in, when he told me all the ill fate that had come to them. When he told me he was leaving. It felt like a million years ago, as if it had happened in a separate universe, to two separate people with different stories. But he was here, and I was here, and his sisters were here, and we were moving in together. It was real, as real as anything can be.

My eyes were torn away from him as Janice clambered into the backseat, scowl pasted across her irritatingly gorgeous face. The other door clicked open and Julie sat down opposite from her, reaching her hands up to hug me around the seat awkwardly.

“I remember you Ri,” the little girl whispered in a choked whisper that pain and years of loss shone through. “Jaydey said I might not, I might not know who you are and that is okay, but I know who you are, I remember you.”

I gulped back my tears. She had been a little girl when she left. A little girl who I pushed on the swings and yelled at to get out of my room and ate supper with and danced to absurd, trashy music with. A little girl who I hoped beyond comparison to words still knew me. Still loved me. I squeezed her hands gripping me, in what I hoped was a comforting gesture.

Suddenly the door to my right swung open and Jayden slunk into the driver's seat. They had elected (although my guess was, Jayden elected) to leave all of their things behind. Every article of clothing, trinket, decoration, toy, possession left in a different land as if it could just be forgotten about. He looked over at me and I realised that I was staring at him. His skin, still soft and pale and void of flush, his cheek bones, high and sharp and stark against the softness of his jaw and lips. The lips like pink roses that I had spent hours kissing once on the dock of a boat harbour. His hair, now shorter, was still curly and sandy blonde to reflect the sand of shored beaches and ocean waves and crystal caves that he came from. 

The day he told me he was going to Seattle I had screamed. At him. I shouldn’t have, he had just lost everything and his best friend, his most loyal protector, was mad at him. But I had lost everything too. I had lost him and he was everything. Him and them, Julie, Janise, Jessie. But I had yelled, I told him he was making a mistake, I told him that Port Stanley would always be our home. The beach and lakes and boats would always be home.

I snapped out of my memory lane with one last look at those eyes. Eyes the colour of bleached cloth, gentle, vibrant gold not far from sunrise sky. 

“Buckled?” He asked his sisters, turning to them as he buckled himself. Janise scowled harder but beneath her heavy coat the black strap was visible. Julie obliged, buckling herself in instantly.

I turned to the road, flicking on the wipers to clear the rain streaking the windows. Then I turned the radio on and up, backing from the driveway. Sweet melodious notes drowned out my miserable memories.

---

Port Stanley wasn’t massive by any means. In fact, it was very tiny, but it was busy. Especially on clear nights when the pale pink and blue of the sunset reflected across a pale, splashed ocean, bathing it as if it were a canvas splashed with paint. Actually, not an ocean, a lake. Still, my point being, navigating the streets of downtown Port Stanley on a Friday night near the beach was like trying to push a shopping cart through mud.

I felt better being back in my familiar little car, a little red coupe with rusting doors and dirty seats and millions of CD’s. We had all squished into it without a word after running through the airport security and such. During all of which we spoke little to each other. Now, we didn’t speak and no music played and if it wasn’t for the honking of nearby cars it would be utterly silent.

Still, even silent, I felt Jayden beside me like a weight. Not a bad weight, almost a good weight, like part of me was hollow and now he has filled it, but I’m still getting used to the extra thing to carry. I was going to have to get used to a lot of extra weights.

We pulled along onto one of the quieter streets lined with friendly coloured homes on one side and docks on the other. The last one on the street, painted bright yellow with a sloping white lattice pattern roof and windows covered in shutters and flower boxes, was by far bigger than all the rest. No other cars were parked in the driveway, and all lights were out. I pulled into the lane set beside it, killing the engine and staring up at the house.

For three years this had been my house. At sixteen I had taken on that responsibility of cleaning and cooking and gardening. The yellow paint as bright as the sun was peeling with age; the flowers in the boxes drooping from days without water. It looked like beyond all odds some sweet old lady should live here. 

We walked up the stone path silently still, Julie squeezing Jayden’s hand and leaning into him sleepily while Janise walked with her arms crossed and her head down. They trailed behind me like lost puppies bathed in gold and pink light from the setting sun. I climbed the low steps to the quaint white porch covered by a sloping awning and curtained sides. The door was shut firmly, a stark red against the yellow of the house. It looked like an open wound against yellowing skin.

I dug into my purse, fumbling around for the keys. When I found them they fell from my shaking fingers and clattered to the deck. To my surprise, Janise came forward and handed them to me. I looked into her ocean grey eyes. 

Janise and I had never particularly gotten along. But I loved her. She would steal my clothes and rip my homework and giggle when I yelled at her. But when her father had died she would cry and cry and cry at night, and I would hold her and stroke her hair and let her sleep in my bed. I still remember her words, I wish he would come back. Why won’t Daddy just come back? I can still hear her choked sobs and feel her quivering body. 

“I remember you too,” she said in a soft voice so that Jayden (who was pointing out flowers in a low voice to Julie) couldn’t hear. I smiled at her but she just pressed the key into my palm and turned away. I could only imagine what these past few years were like for her.

The inside of my house had cherry hardwood floors covered in a permanent layer of sand and floral wallpaper and an array of windows that overlooked the harbor and its many boats. When we were little Jayden and I would sit on the deck and yell at the passing boats in our squeaky voices. They would laugh and wave and smile. 

I stood in the hall awkwardly as they took off their coats and hung them on the hooks attached to the walls. The staircase loomed to one side, made of sweet red wood and brown carpet. They slipped off their shoes and looked around.

The furniture in the living room was scarce: a small television and low coffee table and floral loveseat. Then they took in the kitchen and its brown cupboards and pale blue walls and foggy glass.

“Bed,” said Jayden unexpectedly. “I’m sure you remember where your rooms are, Janise, please show Julie. You’ve had a long day.”

Their rooms had been made for little them, with bright walls and tiny beds and buckets of toys. I hadn’t dared touch them, just in case they ever came to claim their possessions. The rooms looked like a shrine.

As soon as they were gone upstairs he turned to me. His eyes reflected the sparkling windows and glassy lake. He was wearing a t-shirt that was grey and faded along with jeans that looked as if he had folded them a million times the amount they were wrinkled. But he looked so beautiful. I was transported again, to those moments years ago.

The late night beach walks, our toes sinking into the sand and our bodies pressed together. The midnights spent on those docks as kids who were in the most unexpected and crazy love imaginable, lips pressed together, hearts beating as one. The days we spent in this exact kitchen, throwing flour at each other, our laughter mixing with the music that blared from the radio like a chorus.

He meant everything to me. And he left. Him and Janise and Julie were everything, and Jessie, the oldest Meller sibling, had taken them away like they were pawns to be removed from a chess board. But he was here now, and he was so close…

Suddenly his lips were against mine, hot and sweet and the same as years ago. His hands found my back and pulled my closer. Then I was kissing him and the flame left smoking for years was suddenly reignited and sparking with a fire as hot and strong as an inferno. I pulled him closer, closer, closer until my legs were around his hips, as if I could melt his body to mine. My hands tangled in his tawny hair, relaxing against the soft, golden curls. He pulled away just slightly, carrying me to the table and sliding me onto it. He stared into my eyes with love so profound that my heart threatened to explode.

“I spent years missing you, loving you, wanting you. I loved nobody else the way that I loved you but I thought-” his voice shattered into the little boy he once was, his lip wobbling. “I thought that as long as you were happy, as long as you had somebody who deserved you, I would be okay. I could be okay. But I couldn’t, I can’t, I want you and need you and…” I stared into those golden eyes, drinking in every fleck and every flicker. I wanted him. I needed him.

“When Jessie died I didn’t know who else to go to, you were all I had left. I just hoped that…” There were so many words left unsaid, but instead of saying all of them, thinking all of them, I cupped his face in my hands and kissed him.

“You are my north star, you will always bring me home,” I whispered against his mouth. “I love you”

----

My parents died before I turned one. My grandfather brought me to Port Stanley and we lived in the yellow house. When I was three we had neighbors move in next door. But Grandpa always joked that they lived here. Because they did, in a way. Everyday the Meller’s went to work and left their kids, a little boy and older girl, here with us. They slept over so much that Grandpa had given them rooms here. The boy and I grew to be best friends.

Then one day, after the Meller’s mother had announced she was pregnant with their fourth child, the father passed away. It was freak, random, a heart attack out of nowhere. The mother became so distraught with grief that she barely came to see her children and when the youngest was born, she handed her off. But my grandfather was old, he passed away soon after.

Jessie was only seventeen, not legally old enough to care for everyone, so the mother came around and moved into the yellow house. Two years later cancer had claimed her life. Jessie moved her siblings far away from Port Stanley, to their aunt in Seattle. But even Seattle brought bad luck for them, Aunt Sal died from old age and within a year Jessie had been in a fatal car crash and left her siblings alone.

Jaydey had come to me. Explaining everything in one text, hoping for refuge in his old home, with his greatest love. I had obliged.

Our family slowly grew until it wasn’t just Julie and Janise that we fed and clothed and yelled at. Soon we had children of our own, young, sweet children who cried mommy in the middle of the night and begged daddy to push them on the tire swing that permanently hung from our tree in the backyard. And Janise grew up and asked for our help with homework and boys and friends. And Julie grew up with us making her lunches and us telling her it was okay to be whoever you wanted to be. We  loved them equally, all of them, and we became a family.

Most of all we loved each other. And that was enough to get us through even the hardest days. The love that lasted years apart. The love that would not break.