Mess With Me – Bonus Scene

Sasha – Seven Years Later

I stand at the bus station at the south end of North Road, squinting at the bus heading to Lexington. It’s tough to see much more than the shapes of people through the tinted windows.

The bus station isn’t the happiest place for a lot of people, filled with sudden departures and difficult goodbyes. But there’s a lot of joy here, too. People reuniting with family. Grown kids returning from college for the holidays.

Me, saying goodbye to a young woman I’ve done my small part in preparing for a new, brighter future.

On the bus, a hand waves. Shyly at first, then with my exuberant returned wave, harder. The bus belches then, backing out of its stall. A moment later, the coach disappears around the corner onto Main Street. I really am happy. Beyond happy, with my life, and with this success story. But the moment the bus is out of view, the tears begin to fall, my chest aching.

You’d think after all these years of being in this business, I’d learn not to let myself get so attached to the women and children I help. But it’s impossible. Each one has a story that rips my heart out. Each time Glo and I welcome someone new through the doors of the business we founded six years ago—Atna, or Always Together, Never Alone—we open a new place in our hearts. Which makes the goodbyes so hard.

Today I said goodbye to Christine, an eighteen-year-old from Arizona who’s now heading to Kentucky for a chef’s apprenticeship. When we met her, she was on the run, betrayed by everyone she’d ever trusted. Now we have her set up with a job, an apartment, a mentor, and private therapy covered for the next five years, thanks to our connections across the country. She’s off to a bright future, which is part of why I’m so emotional. 

But I’m run down, too. 

Griff’s been gone for nearly three months. His work occasionally takes him far from our home, though it’s far less often than he used to travel before we met. 

Still, it’s another couple of weeks until I get to see him again. And it’s been a full week since I’ve heard from him. I was expecting the communication lines to go down. He always tells me what’s going on in the hopes I won’t worry. But it never stops me from worrying. It never stops the agony of going to bed without his presence next to me, big and safe and warm.

I wipe the tears from my eyes with the heel of my hands. I’m not going to have a total breakdown in front of the handful of people milling around. I turn around, heading for the parking lot on the other side of the building.

Then I freeze. Because there, leaning against the wall of the platform, his hands in his pockets, smiling at me, is my husband.

My heart leaps to my throat. I sprint toward him, hardly breathing, and throw myself in his arms. “Griffin!” I fall apart in his arms; at the feel of his body against mine. 

I feel him take a deep inhale, his face buried in my hair, his arms like a vise around my back. This was the longest we’ve ever been apart, and it was supposed to be longer. 

I can’t let go. I can’t do anything but cling to him. “You didn’t tell me you were coming home,” I say, muffled into his chest. “Why…how?!”

“I wrapped up early, Angel. It was too much.” 

I let out a sob. All the pain, all the joy, it all comes out of me at once. 

“I’ve got you baby,” he murmurs into my ear. “I’m home now. I’ve got you.” 

Finally, once I’ve calmed down enough to breathe, he pulls back and looks at me. He brushes the hair from my face, then kisses me so tenderly I feel like crying all over again. 

I’m not sure I’ll ever get over the way this man makes me feel. He holds me for what feels like forever, and we alternate kissing with just holding each other, both of our eyes wet with tears. 

When we finally pull apart, I look toward the empty bus stall. I’m unable to stem the flow of tears this time, and it’s getting embarrassing. 

“Hey,” Griffin says, pulling me close. “You okay?”

I shake my head. “No. I mean, I’m so happy, but…this work is hard. And when you’re not around to catch me when I’m down…”

“I’m always here to catch you, Angel,” Griff says. He steps in front of me again, both hands gripping my face. “Even when I’m not right next to you.” 

“I know,” I whisper. “Just…it doesn’t feel right when you’re gone.”

“I won’t do it again,” he says. “I’ll quit it all to be with you.” 

“You mean you’d be a full-time house husband? Run me bubble baths and rub my feet when I get home every night?”

“Absolutely,” Griff says, completely seriously. 

But when I laugh, his lips curl up in that sexy, lopsided grin I love so much. The one that only comes out for me. 

I embrace him again, this time leaning in like we’re dancing, his arms wrapped around my shoulders and mine around his waist. I tuck my head under my husband’s chin, the beat of his heart a warm, reassuring rhythm in my ear. 

Both of us know he’s not going to quit his job until he can’t physically do it anymore, and likely neither will I. There was only one time I took a leave, and even thought it was a mental break, I couldn’t stop staring at every stranger who kept their eyes trained down as they walked down the street; every child who looked too scared to respond when I gave them a smile. 

The work is hard, though I knew that as soon as I branched out from fitting women with new job interview wardrobes. I knew that when I had to do more, and went back to school to earn postdoc diplomas in psychology and trauma counseling. I know it now when I have to say goodbye to someone I cared for as dearly as if they were my own child. But the one thing that keeps me grounded—besides the reward of the work itself—is the love I have in my own life. And I know that’s true of my husband, too. 

After a while, we make our way to the parking lot, his arm wrapped over my shoulder like he doesn’t want to let me go.

“Did you drive?” I ask.

“Walked from home after dropping my bags off.”

“You didn’t head straight to the office?” I ask in mock shock.

He kisses my temple. “You really think I’d do that when all I could think about was seeing your beautiful face?”

“I was really all you thought about?”

Griff’s lips turn up in a smile. That may have been true in the beginning, but I know it’s not now. I unlock the car. “Want to surprise someone else?”

Griff checks his watch. “We’ll have just enough time to get there before the bell rings.”

North Road Elementary is a plain, one-story brick building set in a wide grassy field off Main Street. It’s quiet now, but in an hour it’ll be total mayhem.

“Should we just wait out here?” Griff asks as we get out of the car.

I plant my hands on my hips. “Griffin.” “What? I’m no hero coming home from war.” “You’re his hero.” Inside, I stop by the office to let them know what I want to do. They clearly agree with my enthusiasm about this plan because a minute later, the principal herself is escorting us through the quiet corridors.

“I just love these things,” she says, her voice bubbling with the excitement I feel.

Griff grimaces at the attention, looking at me like I’m going to be in trouble later. But it’ll be the best kind of trouble, I know. The only kind of trouble I get in with him.

I give him an innocent smile and he winks before turning back forward. We stop outside the shiny red door of one of the second grade classrooms, where the principal tells Griffin to wait outside. She knocks twice, then beckons me to follow her into the room.

“Hi there,” she says to the teacher, who turns and smiles. “We’ve got a special surprise for Leif Kelly.”

All the kids turned as we came in, and I wink now at our boy, who sits square in the middle of our classroom.

He’s got shaggy brown hair and freckles and ears that stick out just a little. He grins when he sees me, then turns a bright shade of pink, all the way to those ears, when he feels the rest of his class look his way.

“Hi, Mom,” he says, standing up.

“Hi honey,” I say.

A few kids giggle, but the teacher claps her hands while the principal gives them an over-the-glasses look. “Sorry to interrupt,” I say, “but I brought you a little surprise. Actually, a big surprise.”

Leif goes an even darker shade of crimson, but raises an eyebrow. He looks interested, if not a little confused.

“Come on in,” the principal calls.

I watch Leif as Griffin comes into the room. He flies from his chair. “Dad!” Leif sprints around the desks at lightning speed, hurling himself at his father, and I have to press my hand to my mouth to hide the happy sob lodged there.

The whole class breaks out in raucous cheers. And screams. Second graders love to scream.

Griff has one hand at Leif’s back and the other against the back of his head. I can tell by the way his brow furrows that he’s fighting back tears, too. I only last a moment before I run over there to join them, Griff opening his arm to pull me in. Both my boys wrap their arms around me and we stand in the cacophony of the classroom like a rock in a river.

“So does this mean we can go home early?” Leif asks when we finally let him go.

“Yes baby. We can go now.”

The three of us hold hands as we walk down the hall, Leif skipping happily in the middle, chattering away as Griff and I exchange a happy glance over his head. Unlike me, Leif’s an only child. But he’s so deeply loved and so surrounded by family; I’ve never once heard him say he’s lonely.

“Maybe we can have that picnic in space tonight?” I tell him. “Now that Daddy’s home?”

Leif grins.

“A picnic in space?” Griff asks, clearly confused.

I squeeze Leif’s hand. “Last week Leif told me his favorite season is fall.”

“And Mom said it was a good thing my name is Leif!” Leif chimes in. “But that’s when we came up for the idea for space picnics.”

Understandably, Griffin doesn’t look any less confused. So I explain that last night, we were having a hard time.

“Mom burnt dinner,” Leif said.

I grimace. “And someone got upset he didn’t get a perfect score on his math test.”

It was a tough night—we both ended up in tears. But I knew it wasn’t about dinner or math.

“We were missing you, Dad,” Leif says. “Mom said we needed a change of scenery.”

It was already dark out, so I’d thrown some frozen burritos in the microwave and we’d taken them outside onto the back balcony off Griff’s and my room. We bundled ourselves up in blankets and sat together on a lounge chair, snuggled close under the stars.

It had been the perfect stopgap remedy.

After some contemplative silence, Leif had said to me, “You know why I love fall?”

“Why?” I asked.

“I love it because I think fall is what space would feel like. Cold, but really pretty. A gazillion stars just like there’s a gazillion leaves out there on the ground. Everything’s quiet and hiding like the stuff underground waiting to grow.”

“It feels like possibility, doesn’t it?” I whispered.

He didn’t hear that part, or he didn’t get it. But I held him close all the same.

“We decided the only thing better would be having you with us,” I say now as we drive home together, finally back in our little unit.

“Then let’s do it,” Griffin says, his voice strangely tight.

Unfortunately, we don’t all fit on a single lounge chair. At least, not with the blanket covering the three of us. We make do though by pushing the two of them together and laying pillows down for our little guy to sit on between us.

Pizza finished, Griff pours hot chocolate from the thermos he prepared downstairs. He hands the first cup to Leif, who lets out an adorable sigh of contentment.

“I don’t think life could get any better than this,” I say. Griff strokes my shoulder as I lean into him. “I’m inclined to agree.” “Not me,” Leif says.

I laugh. “Oh no? What could be better?”

“If I were up there.” He points to the stars. “I’d look out my spaceship window and wave at you though, so you’d know I was okay.” “Wouldn’t you be lonely up there in space?” I ask, stroking my boy’s hair from his forehead as he sips his hot chocolate.

“No,” he says, looking up at me. He’s got a chocolate mustache on him I have to fight not to giggle at.

“Why’s that?” Griff asks.

“Because you’re never alone anywhere, not even in space, if you have love in your heart.” My breath catches. I look at Griffin. “Our son, the poet,” I whisper.

“It’s not a poem,” Leif says. “It’s just something Grandpa told me.” My heart swells. Leif and Griff’s dad are tight. Probably because John talks to Leif about his spaceman dreams with perfect seriousness.

“Well, that’s sweet,” I say. “Your grandpa’s a romantic.” Griffin sighs. “Must be one of those skip a generation things.”

But when he turns to meet my eye, there’s so much love in his I find my pulse lurching in my throat. “No,” I say softly. “It’s not.”

And as Leif points out all the constellations he and his grandfather identified together, I lean into my husband, the man who moved us to this place so we could help people; who built a life with me—a family—while never missing an opportunity to tell me how much he loves me.

“You’re the most romantic man I know,” I whisper, and I mean it, with my whole heart.

***

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