Part IV

MAX

A man is measured by how he faces and moves in a world that is never without the painful reality that he is not solely in control of his own destiny. In these times when fate does its worse to him, he must have a solid foundation in his character's core of strength and honor. And this must be what he draws on.

The days pass. Work consumes my energies; my company has won a significant new government security contract and I have been set in charge of implementing the initial elements of staffing up and assigning inspection teams to assess vulnerabilities.

This has meant days traveling from one site that is now our responsibility to another. I have noticed that my immediate team treats me with caution, as my impatience with incompetence has grown more noticeable. New staff members that I am meeting on these trips, I can see, are intimidated, as much by my standards as by the unease of those closest to me.

When I was a military officer, I often found that the difficult time was building your cadre when you took over a new command. But once they knew the standards by which you measured them, a new focus takes hold. This is when a force will gel and pull together for the good of the unit ... and the success of the endeavor. The same, I am sure, will hold true in this enterprise.

I have spent scant time at home; no time at the pub. I am not welcome there, I know this. 

What I did to Uma in a moment of blind rage has, upon reflection and distance, begun to ring hollow. Still, those sentiments linger as a coal that burns deep inside. And along with that, I am finding the pain of loss never has gone away. I learned long ago to set it aside, the personal emotions, and focus instead on my job, my men, my duties.

This visit home has lasted three days so far. I would like to be gone again; but I must stay for the weekend as meetings at our headquarters will begin again on Monday.

I had another reminder of Ann today. She came to me in a dream. Again. When I woke, tears had left a damp spot on my pillow. The emptiness is the worst part. My pride will see me through, though. It must. It's about all I have left.

So as I lay in this cold bed, remembering the feel of her warm body next to mine ... I register how alone I am. Again.

I have not moved into the house I bought for her. Really, there was no time. Here, her presence still tempts me. It's all I have left of her. I know she won't come back. I know I made it clear to her that she would no longer be welcome. I offer a prayer to my gods, to watch over her with a ready sword, to protect her until ...

Until ...

This thought wakes me fully and I rise from my bed. Later, I am reading the morning newspaper and a story from New Orleans about a music festival catches my eye. I can remember, as if she's sitting there next to me, listening to her talk about this festival. How we would go some day. And how I teased her and asked could she really see me at such a thing. She told she would make it worth my while.

She always had.

I am determined to shake the melancholy. If I put my attention and will to it, I will succeed.

Apparently, though, I have yet to fully bring my force of will to this task for I find my path that day takes me jogging in the park nearby. This is a route where I used to take Buck running with me when Ann was working and I'd come in from a long trip needing her but making do with filling my time until she came home.

I smile at the irony of wanting to chase memories away and finding them enticing me along instead. And then I round a sharp bend and come face to face with a part of my past that haunts me to this day.

Uma!

In the split second before she sees me, I am taken again by the spirit and beauty that first fired me and held me fast. She is smiling, listening to music in her earbuds as she jogs. She hates to exercise so I must presume it is something other than a physical high that makes her smile.

By the time she is even aware there is another person near, I am right upon her. I reach a hand out to get her attention ... she looks up ... sees me ... freezes in mid stride. Her smile is a ghost. In its place, shock and ... fear. Of me.

I am reminded of the deer ... she would run away, crashing through the woods here, if I did not put a hand gently but unequivocally on her forearm to keep her here. I reach out and tug the earbuds out.

"I didn't mean to startle you, Uma," I tell her.

Her eyes dart around. She is frightened. "I wasn't watching where I was going," she says quickly.

"Please don't fear me," I say. "I mean you no harm."

She isn't convinced. It cuts into me. I deserve her fear after the last time we were together. I am still angry with her; but I am also fully aware of my own failings and I am suddenly so tired of our feud.

"There was a time when we did not fear each other," I say softly. Her breathing seems too slow. I am weary beyond all measure. Perhaps that shows to her when I drop my hold of her arm and say, "We should clear the air."

She looks around her; toward the offshoot of this jogging trail that neither of us were on. She indicates that direction. We walk together on a path that we both knew well once.

UMA

I hate exercise. I know you have to look after yourself and eat properly and all that jazz but it doesn't mean you have to like it, does it? Running is my least favoured exercise of all. I swim a lot and do yoga in fits and starts. Andy makes me run sometimes and I tolerate it then because I can usually get him to fool around and well, it isn't exactly exercise then, is it? Or it is exercise of a different kind - and that's the only adrenalin rush I ever get when sweating. But, as Andy runs every day, and is so much faster than I am, he mostly goes off alone and I roll over into the warm place he has just left in the bed and have an extra half hour.

I run when I am depressed. I'm not sure it is really anything to do with exercise. I think in some odd little quirky chamber in my brain it is an attempt to run away from myself, some lingering primal fight or flight response. I lost the fight. So now I run.

So there I was in the country park, jogging gear on and my favourite suicide music playing. Nick Cave this time. Lugubrious enough? My path was aimless. I would stop when my legs caved in. Or when I got to where I was going. That stop in the road called oblivion.

And I rounded a bend and ran almost straight into him. My nemesis. Maximus.

To be honest, my initial reaction was panic. The area where we were jogging was deserted. This time, Maximus has somehow got me alone. Considering the lack of restraint he had shown the last time we have been face to face in a crowded bar amidst my friends, it occurred to me in a flash that I was extremely vulnerable out here. It isn't that I regard Maximus as an abusive man, but...I was scared of him. He had really frightened me that other night. I was still struggling to deal with the fallout.

"There was a time when we did not fear each other," he said.

And the memories came flooding back in...

"The other night...at the bar...I spoke out of turn. It was unforgivable of me to treat a woman in that way." Maximus made the bald statement in a clipped and controlled voice as though he had practiced the phrase and it cost him a lot to enunciate those words. The ground beneath our feet was damp from overnight rain. I could smell the dank aroma of rich earth and wet vegetation as we entered the thicker woodland. A sensory trigger seemed to go on high alert in my brain as an unexpected emotion fought to replace the anxiety that Maximus' sudden presence had caused.

"I just didn't realise how much you hated me until then," I replied more honestly that I had expected. I was unsure where the admission of my hurt came from. It was something to do with that other feeling...

"Hate you? How could I hate you?" Maximus stopped as if genuinely surprised at my comment. His hand went nervously to his beard in that gesture he has when thinking. I used to joke he had replaced thumb sucking as a child with beard stroking as a man. He used to smile when I said that. I think that he knew it was true. "Why would I even care what you thought if I hated you?"

It was my turn to be amazed. But then Maximus had always had that ability, in one simple truth, to cut to the heart of a matter and lay it bare. Why indeed did either of us feel the need to stalk each other with such watchful unease? Time should have moved us a long way past that now to uninterested disregard.

"You told me I ruined your life. You said I broke your heart..." I reminded him of words spoken long ago.

"You could not have done that to a man who hated you..." Even now he did not spare my guilt at what I had done. But he had never felt hate. Then what had he felt?

I breathed deeply, tired of the old pain still gnawing, like an amputated limb that one feels on a cold night. What was the point of going over this old ground again? "If it's any consolation to you, I suffered too. You didn't leave me unmarked by it all..."

"I know. Whatever guilt you share, the blame lies more with me. It was my failure as a man that caused it. You did no more than behave as is usual for a woman of your time. You had that right. It is your time. I was the one who could not learn what you tried to teach me."

He spoke softly, staring ahead down the gloomy trail as raindrops dripped off branches like tears. Why had he not said that then? How different it would have made it all. If I knew then what I know now...

"No. You were in an impossible situation. I was not the right person to guide you through. A more gentle woman, a less difficult woman, a more loving woman would have never left your side...I was so cruel. So thoughtless. I had so much to learn..."

"...We both did. But the question is, my fair lady...did we learn from it? If we did not, then it was all in vain..."

I suppose when something monumental falls, there is a moment before the devastating rumble and sway, before the implosion and the terrible collapse, before the clouds of dust and showers of raining debris, when a hairline crack, invisible to the naked eye, first appears and runs haphazardly through every fault and weakness in the structure. Alexander used sweet wine to shatter solid rock where brute force would not presume to triumph.

And that moment the hard shell peeled away as his words coursed through us both and began the chain reaction to free us from the misery of bitterness and blame.

I heard a woman laugh and turned my head. For a second I had thought it was me, long ago, and that déjà vu that had struck me earlier began to knock again. Through the trees, I could see a couple; he was chasing her and had caught her up against a tree and they kissed. Just lovers walking on a dull morning who could only see that it was spring.

Maximus suddenly laughed softly, little more than a low chuckle. "I'll be damned if that's not our tree..."

"You remember that day?"

"Could I ever forget? Only you could have made me behave like a lovesick boy..."

We both laughed and a warm glow settled all around me as I looked at him framed in that soft sunlight. He is still so beautiful to me. I will never see him and not be amazed that a man could be so fine.

The couple had moved on, running further into the woodland. Suddenly he took my hand and pulled me off the track. "It must still be there..." And we plunged through the dripping foliage in search of the past.

It had not been that tree. "It must be one of these. I know it was here somewhere..." He said as he looked around from bark to bark.

"Why are we doing this, Max? Aren't we supposed to be fighting?"

He gave me a look by way of response but did not venture a reply, merely moving from tree to tree until his smile of satisfaction showed me that it was indeed still there. He held out his hand and indicated that I should join him. I stepped over to where he stood pointing to a carving in the wood. Umax

So silly. A play on our names entwined. Or my name with a kiss. He had carved it there one summer day as we had stumbled back to the path, our clothes still in disarray, sex   soaked and wrapped up in each other. He had kissed me against that trunk and then taken it in his head to write our names. He had said that tree will proclaim how we feel today forever. I had said, well until someone chops it down. He said even then, the wood will be indented with a little piece of our souls even should aeons pass.

I had wondered then at how deep symbolism and magic ran through his veins. His sureness had frightened me even as it intoxicated that part of me that was romantic and highly imaginative. Even there in the midst of our passions, his intensity had disturbed me. I was not sure if forever meant to me as long as my life, never mind for countless generations. How shallow we are today. As life expectancy grows, our commitment to ideas greater than ourselves seems to wane. Now we are the immortal gods and fear nothing but the loss of self. His age seemed suddenly to have been a more noble epoch when every man and woman saw themselves as links in a chain that even their deaths could not break.

"Why did we ever start fighting?" I said to him. He shrugged as if to say he could no longer even remember the cause.

"You're right," I answered in a whisper. "It wasn't such a big deal as we made it..."

He took my hand, this time gently. "Actually it was. A big deal, as you call it. A very big deal to me..."

"You're right."

He smiled. "We just agreed on something."

"So there is a first time for everything after all - but don't expect it to last!" I replied with my own warm smile.

"I would expect nothing more from your rapier tongue. You never miss an epigram. Horace would have found you so amusing... " I snorted and recalled how once we had exchanged lines from the Greats as idle love play. He had been so good at it that I had spent hours hitting the books again trying to outwit him. But I rarely did. His memory is so much sharper than mine - the consequences of a childhood spent rote learning poetry. I doubt if he had expected to put it to such use one day.

Back on the path, we sauntered along mostly in silence for a while, but it was a comfortable silence as if we had both given each other the permission to open locked doors inside each other and browse at will.

"I also wanted to say that I should not have attacked your man in that way. It was a very unworthy blow. It is not how I see the pair of you. I am happy for you. If this is what you truly want to make you happy..." Maximus was never easy on articulating emotional discussions. I knew this was a big step for him.

"He makes me happy. I make him happy. Neither of us is naïve about our situation. I do not know what future we have. But if we don't make it...I will bleed as much as he. What else can anyone say?"

Maximus nodded. "Why did we not reach that place? Why did we not reach that knowledge?"

"Because neither of us wanted to. Somewhere inside us, we were not ready for each other. Or we were not right for each other. But we loved each other. You know we did. Sometimes love heals but sometimes it tears you apart. It's still love though....."

He thought on my words for a few moments in that way he has of deep intense contemplation. "And are we ready now? Have we at last learnt enough, grown enough, to return to that place and use that emotion to put right what we once used like weapons against each other?"

I shook my head. "We can't go back. You should know that better than anyone. When the chance is gone, it is gone forever. Life only moves forward. I don't love you anymore. You don't love me anymore...but we sure give a good impression of a pair with unfinished business..." I smiled at him and reached out a hand. "I never hated you. I don't think you ever hated me. But we simply never found a place to put all the love we had felt. So we let it lie and fester and grow warped. Let's try and find a way that we can set it free...for the sake of all the times we spent in love and passion. You asked me if I learnt from you? Of course I did! That's why we are where we are now. You taught me how to love and what I needed from a man. I must have shown you something, too. For now you love Ann. And I love Andy. It's all part of the journey, Max...."

"Are you really happy now?" He played with my fingers in an old familiar way. "Tell me- he is really enough for you...? Tell me this is not just some bulwark against having to go out and live your life...Why him and not me?"

I hunched my shoulders. "I don't know why. Perhaps you never know the answer to such things. But you were wrong about him. He is not a toy. It is real. He makes me whole. He makes me love a man as he should be loved. I am free inside his arms in a way that I never felt before with any man....even you. Isn't that how Ann makes you feel? Free to be all the things you thought you could never be, even as you are more than ever free to be the person that you truly are?"

"She's left me. No....that is not the truth. I left her. It is over. Perhaps you have found the end of the road but I am still hopelessly stumbling on..." His pain was etched deep on his face as our intertwined names had been on the tree. I thought of that pain imbued forever on his soul through aeons of time to come.

"But why did you leave? Was this about her job? You have to compromise...!"

"No...not her career...or her desire to move back home. She asked me to marry her..."

I gasped. "WHAT? I don't understand? Surely...that was what you wanted? The necklace screamed that message...you bought a house together...why would you leave her? Just because she asked you? Did that offend your sense of what was proper? Come on, Max...surely you can get beyond that!"

He groaned and ran his hands down his face and then whirled around staring up at the sky. "She does not want to be my wife! She was prepared to bow down to what she considers a yoke out of her love for me. How can we live so at odds with each other? I do not want a woman to indulge me like a spoiled child! To appease me with sops to keep me quiet. I want a woman who wants me so much that she cannot breathe without my breath...because that is how I feel about her...she is the lifeblood of my veins. She holds my heart. I am an empty shell without her." He raised his voice as if crying out to the gods. "I want her to love me as I love her! I will accept nothing less!"

As his voice died away, there was an intense silence intensified by the background buzz of the forest. His passion was raw and as brutal as everything in his nature. But for all his astounding gifts as a man, he had failed to see the obvious truth that was in front of his eyes.

"She does. She just speaks a different language from you. She has just offered to lay down everything she ever thought she cared about, every belief and principle she had, her entire future...for you. She might as well have bared her breast to the knife. Marriage is just a word. It means different things to you than her. She meant the modern social institution of marriage. That is what does not interest her. You meant the eternal joining of two souls before the heavens. But you are both saying the same thing in your hearts. Nothing in our lives, no belief, or principle or desire or hope or convention or tradition is as important to me as you. That is what she was saying. And you walked away, your arrogant assumption that an offer of marriage should come from you and that a woman should faint at the honour...that is as crass as you thinking she meant this as a sop to you...what on earth are you going to do now to put this mess right, you stupid man?"

Maximus stood as still as stone taking in my words. He looked shocked, almost as if he had received some mortal blow. I saw him reel slightly on his feet and gasp for breath. "My God...I have wronged her..."

"Go to her. Swallow your pride. Make it right! She is as stubborn as she is fragile. What happens next - the fate of two lives - depends on you. Go to her and put it right. As once you should have come to me and told me what you told me today. For I think we could have surmounted the problems if we had only wanted to. And therein lies the tragedy. We were both selfish. And proud. And wrong. But we know better now. There is no forgiveness if you have not learnt!"

Maximus took me in his arms and held me. I know we both fought for composure. I cry easily; he does not. But make no mistake...Maximus cries.

"I am grateful that I had you in my life. I have never forgotten how you made me feel. I never regretted it. I mourned its passing... but...I could never ever live with a woman like you. That is not the same as saying that we did not love..."

He was so right. We had not failed. We had just not succeeded. There is such a world of difference there. "Again I have to concur. You are just a pain in the bum, Maximus...and I shall refrain at such a delicate moment of mentioning where else you often left your mark..."

He began to laugh and tilted up my face to his. I joined in and we let the delicious wave of erotic memory flow again between us. "We were never meant to be partners, Uma, but, by the gods, we were meant to be lovers..."

"Maximus...you were once the most important person in my life and because of that will always remain as one of the few people to ever have touched my heart...that is something, surely?"

He took my hand and placed it on his heart. "No less for me. Always there is a place for you there..."

He kissed me softly and then we broke away. Walking on hand in hand, I noticed he was rubbing at his ear. "Do you still have problems with it?  I bet you never use the eardrops, do you? I used to have to almost force you, remember? Why is it that men are so bad at taking courses of medicine like it was some admission of weakness or something?"

And so we fell into the old way of teasing each other as we strolled out of the park. I looked up at him as he talked and was back there for a moment. And then I looked down the path ahead and was glad that we were here now. I hope he makes it with Ann. I know it will never be easy for either of them. But I pray that this time they both are wise enough to have learnt from the past. I hope the journey is about to end for them and a whole new one ready to begin.

My own future is no less uncertain. But I intend to fight for it just as he must.

ANN

Inside the kitchen, I pull the larger container of ice tea from the fridge. It's slippery cold glass under numb fingers. Something outside calls my attention. I catch my reflection in the pane of wavy glass before me. I wish I were looking better; I hate that I look this bad when he sees me. No makeup, hair barely swept up, ratty shorts and tank top ... I think about every miscue I ever made during those longs times of loving him unrequited. Why is it always this way with me and him?

Why is he here?

Why come witness my misery?

Why be cruel?

The glass container is only inches from the big pitcher. I am a fraction of a second from pouring more ice tea into the pitcher that we've nearly emptied as we had that farce of a lunch, the three of us trying so hard to be polite and me not able to tell if Max was all right or if he was still hurting from what I've done to him.

My hand trembles. The glass jolts and then crashes onto the floor. I stand there, dumbfounded, in bare feet, with glass shards all around on the floor, with cold tea splashed on my legs and pooling under my feet. I cannot believe this! What am I going to do now?

"Stay still," his voice says from behind me, from the doorway.

I don't mean to move. I don't. But I am so rattled that his voice just makes me jump. He gives one his 'tsks' to me ... he's irritated, annoyed. I hear his feet crunching glass as he nears me. I feel him behind me. So close he could touch me. He picks me up, seats me on the counter next to the sink. He pauses to glance at me. I think he'll say something but my mom is at the door, alarmed at the crash of glass and now worried about cleaning up the mess I've made.

She starts to come in, to get the broom from the utility room. But Max waves her away, says he'll handle it; then tells me to not think about moving from my safe perch until he's got the glass safely cleaned away. How does he know? Oh, I forget. He knows me well that way. My mom and I both watch him sweep up glass and tea into the dustbin and then she's holding the garbage can for him to use. And slowly, he begins to put order to another of my disasters.

"You're bleeding," he says to me.

I didn't know it showed, I think to myself. 

He picks up my right foot and I see there is blood dripping; this is what he meant. I've been cut by the glass. Probably when I jumped. He swings my leg over to the sink and looks at the cut. Asks my mother for a bandage. Turns on the tap, holds the damaged toe under the water and begins to rinse the cut. I whimper because it hurts as he deftly removes the sliver of glass that had been lodged there.

Our eyes meet. His hand reaches out, moves a few stray strands of my hair behind my ear. His eyes study me, moving up and down, like he's remembering what I used to look like to him and wondering who I've become.

He snaps off the water. With a suddenness that catches me by surprise, he moves in very close to me. I blanch. I don't mean to. I lean back away from him.

"Is it really so hard to be near me again?" he whispers.

"No," I say. "Yes."

I can see my answer hurts him. He blinks, real quick, a few times. I want to reach out, touch his face, smooth out the worry lines. I want to not be shaking to be so close to him. I want to not know how he'd smell if I could bury my face in his neck. I want to not remember what I've done to him. I want to not remember everything I ever wanted with him.

Most of all, I want to not remember that he once said he wished for everything with me.

"Don't cry, cara," he says and this is how I know I'm crying before him. His thumb caresses a tear from my cheek. I'm looking in his eyes.

"I broke my mom's tea jug," I say because it's the first thing that comes to mind, as I quickly wipe away the remnants of the remaining tears on my face.

As if I'd summoned her, she's there with the bandage. I don't know why, but I just sit there, watching as Max puts a bandage on my toe. He is so gentle. When he's finished, his hand strokes up my foot until it circles my ankle; he squeezes in. You'll live, he says.

No, I won't, I wish I could say. 

From some other world, my mother's too gay voice calls out to us that she's off to run errands and that she will be gone for hours and I should be sure to take Max to the Museum of Art while I'm giving him a tour of the city because he told her how much he wanted to see it.

And then she's gone. We both hear the door slam shut. I know she's making noise on purpose.

"My mother likes you." I shrug, knowing I don't know what to even say to him. I look down at my bare legs. "How have you been?"

It seems such a polite way to start.

"I have taken on a new post for my company," he says. "How have you been?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him move closer to me. I swing my legs over the side of the counter, intending to escape. But he moves in front of me and I'm trapped.

"Fine." I say it. I clear my throat. "I've been fine."

"Really?" he asks me. "Your mother seems to feel differently."

My eyes snap up to his. "Leave my mother out of this, Max. She doesn't know anything. I'm doing fine. You don't have to worry about me. I'm fine. I am."

"Are you?" His voice is low, velvet. I could sink down into it. "Tell me the truth. At least do me that honor of being truthful with me."

I don't know why it comes out of me but it sounds angry and I don't know that I am angry. "You don't want to know. Trust me, Max. Look, I know you're here because you feel some ... I don't know ... some need to be sure I'm okay. So just ... please just accept that I'm fine and let it go at that."

"Don't be so prideful," he whispers. He moves in closer, his hands now on the counter on either side of me. He's so close. I can ... I miss his presence in my life in a way so tangible that it is a hard, grasping pit within me. "And don't presume to know why I'm here."

"You won't be around to pick up the pieces after you leave. I refuse to crumble before you. Please don't come so close. It's so hard ..."

"Anna ..." He says my name like it hurts him.

How can he always do this to me? I look in his eyes and I lose my way ... willingly. He's in pain ... it breaks something loose inside me.

"I can't even breathe anymore," I whisper to him. He touches my knee "Every day, I keep waiting to catch my breath but I can't because I was only breathing as long as you loved me. So I'm going through my life and I don't think I'll ever get over this. That's how I am, Max. Is that what you wanted to know?"

He nods, that quick movement he does. He's no longer looking in my eyes. He's looking out the window. Just being this close to him. He breaks me down.

"Why are you here?" I ask him. I want to touch him. I know I can't. I'd feel better if I could touch him. But later it would kill me to have touched him again only to be alone again.

"A friend recently helped me see that we had unfinished business, you and I. Unsaid words. I came here to say those words to you." He's still looking out the window. He seems to be unsure if he wants to say whatever it is he's here to tell me. I wait as if life waits on his words to me. He is so still. As if the air has stopped moving. And then his eyes move to look into me for a while before he says, slowly, "I have been empty. A shell of a man. You are my lifeblood. You say you can't breathe? Well, my heart no longer pumps."

I can't look anymore. His eyes are too bottomless. I run fingers down his cheek; but my eyes cannot look in his face one moment longer knowing I'm the cause of this and that I would give so much to be the one woman who'd comfort him.

"I know there's nothing I can do or say to make up for what I said or did ..." I tell him, my own unsaid words.

"Anna ..."

"No, you've been right about me all along. Let me say this." I swallow. Breathe in ...  shallow breath. "Nothing in my life ever prepared me for you, Max."

"Nor mine for you."

I let this tiny sigh escape. "I wish I'd been different. Better. Truth is, I went there, to Vegas, because ... because when I was driving back from here, knowing I would be moving and going through the steps to do that ... I had this sudden revelation. There's never going to be another man for me but you."

His eyes go through those striking moves, where I know I'm both glad what I say has an impact and sad that it is too late.

"And I saw that for the rest of my life, I would live with the loss of you. It was so awful to know how I'd regret it if I didn't just try. I never knew I wanted to be with you forever because I had never let myself want that. And that's why I went there. To try. I didn't go there to insult you or hurt you. And I'm so sorry I did."

Our hands have found their way together. Somehow, saying this is the right thing.

He tilts his head after a moment, says, "You are not the only one with blame in this. We share it. Equally. Your words hurt me, I admit that. I thought you didn't love me as I love you. As if your life depends on me to go on. This is how I feel about you."

"I'm sorry. You've always been so good to me, Max. I love you so but it turned out to not be good enough. You deserved more."

"That is not the entire truth, Anna." He shakes his head, confused, not sure what to say. I squeeze his hands. "I am a proud man. Too proud sometimes. My pride was my undoing that night. If I'd heard your meaning ... if I'd listened to what you were really offering ... yourself, with no reservation, I would never have let you leave."

I put my fingers on his lips. "Hush. You did nothing wrong. You were right, what you said. I had never once looked at it from your perspective. I'm glad you told me; it opened my eyes."

He drags my hand down. Bites his bottom lip. "We might have been wrong that night ... we were certainly wrong in what led to it ... but we were still acting out of passion for each other. I would rather live a life with passion for a woman I love than anything."

My hand is his captive. He twines our fingers together. I look at them, so oddly juxtaposed. So different ... and yet, somehow fitting so well together in their own way.

"I never meant to hurt you," I whisper. "I just never considered how a man like you would have felt about such things. I just never knew what you really wanted, how you see things in a relationship, your perspective. The irony is that I had come there knowing only that I had shocked myself to realize that I wanted a promise from you. I felt like I understood why you'd want to marry me if you felt that way, too. And this meant so much to me ... that I would see this future for us. I just didn't understand exactly what it meant until I was right there, in the marriage capital of the world. Because the promise I wanted was that we would commit to making a life together, me and you. Oh, but that's not how it came out and it just revealed how little I ever knew about real love."

I sniff back tears. I see them lingering on the fringes of his own eyes. How can it be? How can we have blown it and how can it be he is here, giving us both this chance to say these things? I wish things had been different that night. That living together had not ended with me running away scared only to find myself wanting what I'd run from. And through it all, I can see now, we still love each other ... but it apparently isn't enough.

"How did we get here, Max?" I say.

"We took a wrong turn," he says.

"We had problems. We weren't so good at living together."

Soft smile from him. He jiggles my hands in his hold. "We didn't really do that badly, did we, Anna? Are there not more good memories than bad?"

I wonder at myself. Why him saying this, with this sound of hope in his voice, why it makes me lose whatever control I've held onto in this day. But I've got tears falling and I put my hands over my face and I just cry. It feels as though my insides are raw; they hurt so from the emptiness. It's the good things of our life together that I mourn.

He wraps his arms around me, instinctive in his need to care for me. It makes me cry harder because I miss those times of knowing he would always be there to protect me against anything bad happening to me. He just lets me sob; holds me. Comforts me. Lets me use him.

I go to draw away when I reclaim some balance ... but then something happens ... he is in need ... has his own raw, empty places ...

He won't release me. He turns his head; his lips part and come close to mine. I breathe in the breath he releases. I feel my hands flex and realize I'm drawing him in closer, angling my body to welcome him. This is so dangerous. Oh. So dangerous.

Our lips meet. It's a question between us: do we do this? He presses the kiss harder; his tongue dips between my lips; I suckle, ever so lightly.

God.

In another breath, there is no denying the passion. We let our kiss overwhelm us. He leaves my head spinning. It takes me so long to just open my eyes after the kiss ...

I don't know what to say. If I could say what I wanted, it would be: don't ever leave me.

"Do you still love me?" he asks, his voice husky, so uncompromising.

"Yes, I do. It wouldn't hurt like this to see you if not," I say, unwilling to not be blunt.

One of his hands cups my face. "I have come to ask you ... can we forgive each other, forgive ourselves? Can we try again? It is what I want."

It comes from nowhere. I am not expecting this ... not this ... I shake my head. Disbelief. He blinks, nods.

"But all the problems we had ... the way I left you," I stutter.

"What problems we faced were nothing ... every couple struggles as they build a life of one from two separate lives." He growls, a tiny sound of impatience that he feels he's not saying the right words. He always worries about that. "Tell me this, Ann. How can we turn our backs on each other when it is clear that our love and passion for the other remains? Now that we've learned a bitter lesson, can we not actually grow from it? Don't we really see now that our words to each other today show that we want the same future? Come build it with me, Anna."

"Max ..." I can hardly think. "It is not that simple, I don't think. Do you? We fought, Max. Remember how we battled over things?"

"What did you expect? We are two different people; there are going to be times when our desires and opinions clash. A relationship is a constant battle." He is frustrated; I can hear it.

"I hated when we fought. It always scared me," I say. "But I was never so naïve as to believe it wouldn't be tough and I was never unwilling to work hard. Neither of us were."

"This is why we will move beyond what has happened. Learn from it. Make our union stronger."

"But you hated my independent nature and I suppose I wasn't real willing to knuckle under to your dominant ways. My God, Max ... Do you have any idea at all how very much I need you but wouldn't we be fooling ourselves?"

His eyes narrow, his chin rises. A sign he is sure of his footing even if he expects opposition. "We must accept the other as they are. Not struggle against their nature if it is their nature that has attracted us in the first place. I will never stop trying to take the lead even when I do not see that I am doing it, as it is in my nature to think and act like that. You must never stop resisting me all the way."

It is like someone opens a book and lets me read the answers. I get it, somehow. A clear moment of self-awareness: I want him to be like that.

This is why he is the only man who could ever capture my heart like he has. 

I want a man that uncompromising about his own nature. And he is never going to be scared or angered off if I say, 'you cannot do that!' Not that it means he'll agree or give in. Nor should he. And I want him to be man enough to see that he needs a woman like me to wake him up. Because it is my nature and I don't want to compromise on that, either.

And this is one of those times when he is going to take the lead. He moves in close to me. I can feel waves of him surrounding me ... his life force, I think, silly to have that thought but that's how it feels. His eyes hold mine, not letting go.

"No other man has ever been for you what I have. What you have felt in my arms, you cannot deny how it has been with me." His voice drops lower, rougher. I feel myself sweating ... softening in the face of what I'll never deny. My want, need of the life he gives me. "Come back into my arms."

He slides his hands to the small of my back and pulls me to the counter's edge ... he is between my legs. Even fully clothed, he makes me feel naked before him and in my mind's eye, I see him in his own glory.

His mouth is on my neck. That fast. That determined.

"Say yes ... say you'll try again with me ..."

And I'm lost ... utterly ... the moment his lips touch mine. Or perhaps I was lost the moment he looked in my eyes and I knew he'd kiss me. It takes the span of one kiss to unfurl what we've both held back ... the hopelessness that we'd ever forget what the other was like to hold and love and trust ... and how that was magic.

"Yes," I say to him.

No more words; we're beyond them. He lifts me from the counter. He shoves a chair away from the kitchen table. I hear it skitter away a bit. I'm wiggling in his arms. Kissing any part of him I can reach. Hugging him in so tight.

On the edge of the table, we turn frantic with the other. He tugs at the hem of my tank top. I yank his jacket down off his shoulders. Neither of us succeed; we're too frenzied. He shoves me onto my back. We move together. I can feel him hard. I feel his slacks against my bare legs.

"This time, it's forever," he says.

"Not here," I mutter, shoving him off me. He blinks likes he's waking. "My bedroom."

I'm at the back stairs when he catches up. You're limping, he says and sweeps me into his arms. I remember another time, so similar.

Up the stairs. I point to the right and then to the door.

I'm hanging around his neck. Smelling him. Trying to believe this is real.

Inside my bedroom, he stops cold just at the threshold. Slowly, he lets me down. I'm looking at him ... he's looking around ... taking this in. He steps around me, more fully into the room. I close the door behind us as I watch him.

Here ... inside the bedroom of my youth ... a place of sanctuary once that still bears the scars.

Even as he begins to circle the room, I am struck by how he seems to fill it. And I think ... how did I get where I am from here? And how do I move beyond?

And it is this man who is the answer to that last question.

It is not about sex. It is about trust. It is letting him inside and this is how I prove it.

He wanders around, looking back at me at first ... awkward to be a man inside a girl's bedroom. Chintz wallpaper. Posters of far away lands. Old school pictures stuck in the margins of the mirror above my bureau. My laptop on the scarred desk where I wrote so many years ago with a thick pencil on lined paper and dreamed I would someday make a difference with words. A bedspread of soft quilt made by my grandmother when I was 17 and already planning my escape. In a shadow box on a thin shelf, flower bead friendship bracelets and graduation cap tassels, one for high school and one for college. A bookcase that always seemed to overflow and yet still have room for more. Family snapshots I'd taken with my first camera that peek out in memories of the past between the orderly openings in a framed mat.

His fingers touch them all. He asks questions ... I tell him what he wants to know.

When he's finished the circle of my room, he returns to spend more time peering at the old school pictures on the mirror. Most are those tiny ones, wallet-sized so you can remember what your child looked like once. Some are me; most are friends.

"Is this you?" he asks about one in particular. He smiles when I say yes. He nudges it from where it's been wedged between mirror and frame for so many years I cannot believe have passed.

"Second grade," I say to him. I am clutching a black comb in the picture. They gave us combs, each of us got one so we would let some nice lady fix our hair neat before she sat us down in the stool before a backdrop. I remember not much of that; it's more the sense of it. I'd clung to that comb like it was pure gold, the greatest gift I'd ever gotten. I am wearing a gray plaid jumper, school uniform, white shirt. My hair is so blonde. I am so young, so natural. This was me. It is my favorite school picture. There is just something about the way I'm smiling. I have never seen evidence of me smiling that way again until recently, when I was living with Max and I was looking in a mirror and thought ... wow. Even then it was still rare; and he always commented on it, on how it made him feel when I said it was him that made me smile that way.

He holds the tiny picture, so fragile, in his big hand. A finger traces the outline of my young face. He looks back at me; an acknowledgement passes between us that is so serious.

"May I keep this?" he asks me. I can only nod at him.

He slips the picture inside his jacket's breast pocket. I stand in the middle of the room and realize that I have learned so much more about him just watching him learn more about me. His eyes took in details I'd not realized were there. This is how he honors me, you see?

"I can't believe you're here," I suddenly say. "I never thought this could happen."

He is standing near my bed and he just sits on the mattress, runs his hands out beside him to stroke the quilt, to take in the handiwork, to recognize it was made for me. And then he looks up at me, reaches out his hand. I go to him. Put my hand in his. He guides me down to sit on his lap. Where we can hold each other.

I have this instinctive awareness of him surrounding me and I feel the breath of life that he gives me. I wonder if he notices how deeply I can breathe again?

My fingers touch against something hard on his wrist. I look down at the silver cuff I gave him. I stroke it. I look up at him. 

Love conquers all. That's what is inscribed there on the silver cuff, only it's in Latin.

"Did you know that the full quote from Virgil is 'omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus amori'?" he asks me.

"Sounds so good from your lips," I say, touching him there. He pulls my hips closer to his groin. "What does it mean?"

"Love conquers all; let us too, yield to love." He looks in my eyes. "Anna ... I believe we seek the same thing, whatever name we assign it: a life with each other. I believe we want to see where that life takes us. I believe we want to swear our allegiance, our bond to each other. Whatever form that takes, that is up to us and no one else. Isn't that the promise you wished we would make to each other?"

I nod my head at him. "I promise you, Max, I am in this with you ... forever."

He shifts about, reaches into the breast pocket of his jacket. Holds his hand up. A gold ring. "This, Anna, is the symbol of my promise to you. To live my life for you and with you. Forever."

A gold ring. With a diamond. But unlike any I've seen. Not something he got in any mall jewelry store. This one is almost crude in some ways, but even at first, totally awestruck glance, I know it's a work of art. And then suddenly it dawns on me ... I've seen this kind of craftsmanship before, this style ... it is Etruscan. A memory floods over me and fills me.

I touch the ring as he holds it. "You had this made for me? From that shop in Tuscany?"

He nods, fights a smile, nervous because I haven't said what he wants to hear yet. "It had to be unique to be good enough for you, cara. It had to be symbolic of the ways our worlds can work together."

I look in his eyes. "Are you asking me to marry you?"

He blinks. Twice. I know this takes courage on his part. To ask me this straight out, to risk it all. To show me what he plainly wants in the face of the possibility I may disappoint him again ... is he rubbing the wound back to bleeding or is he opening it to sunlight to heal? On the other hand, surely he will see it took courage on my part to force him to take the risk.

"Marry me, Anna. We will define what it means to us, but I wish our union to be formal. I wish that because it is a gift I give you of my heart, my soul, my eternity."

I hold my hand up. It's one of those times when we speak better without words. He slips the ring on. I'm not scared. I know it will not always be easy. But I am so sure that my future is his and his is mine. Our union is up to us to define.

It seems so simple. It's nothing I ever supposed I would feel.

We both stare at the ring on my finger. And then stare in each other's eyes. I wonder what he sees in mine. In his, I see a man who is as sure of me as he is of himself.

He leans in to kiss me. His arms surround me. He burrows into me, pushing me over onto my back, my legs still atop his until he shifts and now we are groin to groin atop the mattress. One of his legs between mine. He is still kissing me, as if it will last forever. My hands are on his face and then my fingers weave into his hair to pull him into the kiss more. His hand pulls my thigh up higher, over his hip.

I remember this body. I remember how it feels, how it moves.

His hand covers each of my breasts in slow turn as he kisses me. And then he nuzzles into my neck, telling me I taste salty and sweet ... and his hand moves under my tank top. I pull the shirt off, wiggling under him as I do. He says, keep moving like that and I won't last long enough to satisfy you.

Big talk, I tease, thinking how we must re-establish our rhythm with each other ... but that somehow, that makes this more exciting. I begin to shove his jacket off. He sits up from me; shrugs it from his body. Then unbuttons his shirt, quickly, taking it off, one strong arm at a time. I stroke his bare arms, wrists to shoulders. He lets me look upon him. He wants me to. And then he lowers his bare chest to mine.

There's always an element of Max's raw, brutal nature that I have liked him to show me. He has always felt free with me in that way, knowing this. And I like to let him go ... let him start ... join his efforts ... make them ours ... he frees me to do that. And he knows how much I like that.

So we do let go with each other ... but it is still careful and only begins in a frantic way with him licking and sucking ... shoving my shorts off ... tasting me and muttering crudely of how he missed hearing me react to him. His fingers inside me; his tongue stroking. And grunting with me as I come and I've never forgotten the way he does that because it always makes me wild.

Wrestling his pants off; his shoes; his socks ... until he is nude and proud and I am begging him ... and he begs me ... and we murmur nonsense that means the world to us ... intimacies between us.

I spread my knees; it's not enough; I've forgotten what it feels like. He has to slow down; I am impatient. He has to be the one to calm us both. I am looking in his eyes as he enters me. He frowns in concentration until I moan and his face looks so soft all of a sudden.

He reaches down to kiss me just after he buries himself to the hilt. Just before we begin to move ... together ... and it takes nothing for him to give me the rhythm of this time. He drives in, relentless. What he says ... he is out of his control ... he wants ... he wants ... and it's all he wants. I come. He wants more. I whisper to him, my voice hoarse. He says, come for me. And I say, come for me. And we do.

And after, we lay there, panting, our hearts racing. Our hands clasping each other. Sweat slick between us. Other fluids pooling, running. For so long, time hangs between us. And then he carefully moves to turn on his back and draw me over him, where I am half on his chest, hugging in as he hugs me.

This bed ... way too narrow for us. Yet, lying entwined as we are, it is fine. 

I feel the air conditioning when it kicks on. It licks at the moisture on me and chills me. He warms me in his arms and then draws the sheet over us when that's not enough.

Outside my window ... does the world begin to spin again? It does inside here. It does inside me, I know. I take a big breath and snuggle in closer. I don't know that either of us sleeps; but we are in a daze.

What does he think of in this time? Is he like me, relishing this so hard he has room for nothing else? Maybe still a little shocked that we've somehow managed to fall completely apart only to find that somehow what we have is ten thousand times stronger, more significant? Shocked that what seemed impossible has now proven simple when we both were made to face what we really wanted with the other?

And maybe that wouldn't have been possible if we hadn't both faced losing it only to realize what we'd give to have it back? To each know, with certainty, that we couldn't ever be happy unless we have an eternity together?

How do you reach that point? I don't know ... but I know we're there.

I'm half dozing when I run through this day ... of seeing him here in my mom's house ... 

"Max?" I ask, my hand softly stroking his chest. His hands twitch on my back; he'd been asleep, I think. He mumbles something I don't catch. "Why did you come here anyway? Why now, I mean?"

"A friend only recently made me see that I had misjudged the depth and totality of your love for me." I raise my head to look at him. His eyes are open, half hooded, serious. "That the fate of both our lives depended on me swallowing my pride to put the mistake right. That I had to come here to win you back. To show you that I would do anything ... give you everything ... that you mean more to me than you may ever have realized."

I search his eyes. I would say to him that he never owed me that ... but I know that is the wrong thing to say. So instead, I climb up his body on the narrow bed and kiss him, lingering over his lips, letting my hands hug him to me, my leg over his caresses him closer to me.

"I love you so," I whisper to him.

"As I love you, cara," he says, helping guide my body back to where it was ... we both chuckle at the precarious nature of sharing this bed. "Your mother was most gracious to me, Anna. I hope I do not repay her hospitality by destroying her furniture."

I picture him at my front door that morning. My mother learning that this is the man she's suspected has been the reason I've been so withdrawn, so shut down. And then she must have begun to realize that he was not at fault; that this was a case of both of us going astray. And that he wanted to put things right. I know she would have taken to him. I picture him charming her in that unassuming way of his.

"What did you and my mother talk about?" I smile up at him, my chin in my hand atop his chest. "Not me, I hope."

His fingers play with tendrils of my hair and he smiles that mysterious smile of his ... the way I know he's got a secret. "No, not you. You confound her as much as you do me, so what was there to say?"

"Oh, you rat! I'll make you pay for that," I say, but I don't have much heart behind it ... the idea of these two ever comparing notes ... that's chilling.

"We talked of her garden. She gave me generous advice on how to care for plants in this environment."

I'm half-listening. "Her garden? Why would she yak about her garden to you?"

"Because I mentioned my plans to have one."

"A garden?" Then it dawns on me. I grin at him except then a million different thoughts come racing in my mind. My grin fades.

"What?" he asks softly.

"Mention of the garden -- it made me realize that you meant planting a garden at the house you bought. And I got this warm thought of being with you there, knowing you'd bought it hoping we'd live together there. But then I just ... I got this confusing garble of things."

"Garble? What troubles you? You never saw the house. I can assure you it was ..."

"I'm sure it's great. No, it was things like, now I have to turn in notice at the paper and then I know I won't find as good a job back there but I shouldn't care about that because I'll be with you. So I guess I don't. I'll find something. Until then, I suppose I'm leaning on you and ... oh god ... that does feel very awkward, like I'm taking from you and not giving ... and then I think, well, I think this is what you mean about giving me the world ... or maybe it's not and maybe it'll bug you or make you feel used and ..."

"Or perhaps the explanation is simpler. And perhaps none of those are choices you face."

"Doing it again, am I?" I say, blushing. 

He looks very coy. I narrow my eyes at him. He tries to look serious. "I have taken on a new post for my company."

"You said that. What does that have to do with ... with you gardening?"

"My headquarters will be in New Orleans." He pauses; I feel my heart stutter. "I am moving here. I'd like to have a garden. That's why your mother and I spoke of gardening."

I rise up away from him. His hands slide down my back as he slowly releases me. "You're moving here? To New Orleans?"

"Yes." His fingers play with one of my nipples. It tingles. "I negotiated for this new assignment. It's a new contract my company earned with the government thanks to my help. Providing security consultation at federal ports in the Gulf. I told them the only way they could keep me is to make my headquarters here. Where you are. I'm here because this is where you are. I'm here because ..."

"Because you love me that much," I say, my eyes filling with tears. "Oh, Max. I can't believe you would do something that major for me."

He tugs me down to his hold. "I would do anything for you, Anna. That is one example of my commitment to you ... it is what it means to me when I say we build our future together. It was something you desired, living here again, this job. Moving here to be with you was something I could arrange and so I did."

And this is how our rhythm with the other jolts back into being. I never knew it could be like this with a man. Not perfect, but ours.

I can breathe again. The blood flows in his veins again. I don't know much, but I do know this ... this is forever now.