A glance up at the stage and the burning knot in my gut only twisted harder. Aly soaked up the attention—here was my girl entertaining. That firm grin dazzled against the stage lights as this Ethan guy held her next to his chest, politicking for the crowd. I wanted to hate him. I wanted to imagine violent things done to his body. He was no giant, not like me. But the guy had swagger, he had charm, that much I could tell just watching him dote on Aly. He entertained too, chipped away at the veneer of happiness she wanted everyone to see. And the look he gave her? That wasn’t forced. How could I fault him for looking at her the way I always had? How could I hate him for falling for the woman who still filled my dreams, who still kept my heart pounding with the smallest thought of her? Still, on principle, I decided to at least be annoyed by this guy.
“You mad, brah?” My kid brother stood next to me, arms crossed over his chest, mirroring my stance. Koa was thin, but still tall, coming close to my shoulders. Makana may have been close to Aly, but Koa was the reason she’d come around in the first place. My parents had been exhausted, worn out by their careers and the family they’d created for themselves after decades apart. Makana in utero was a burden Mom didn’t want anyone to think she couldn’t handle. But being heavily pregnant, working, and trying to take care of a little 18-month old monster named Koa took too much out of her.
Enter Aly and that amazing way she had for taking care of everyone.
She’d signed on to help out my parents and rein in Koa through the terrible twos. I’d managed to convince her to love me, as well, and in the process, she became family.
College, the NFL draft, her career, her ambition, the struggle of being in love with me, we survived it all. At least, I thought we had. Until that October night. Until I could not convince her stay another minute.
“No matter where I go, Ransom, my heart will stay with you.”
Did she still mean it? If she did, how could she say yes to someone else?
She wasn’t supposed to stay gone. I wasn’t supposed to forget that she had. Life wasn’t supposed to get in our way. But it had. We’d let it. The arguments beforehand had been brutal—
Aly unable to watch my games at the end for fear of another injury, her being petrified that one more concussion would leave me damaged permanently. Her telling me I didn’t see her. That I didn’t give her the respect she deserved, that my success was more important that hers. The shouting, the distance, the disappointment when I continued to play, when she kept away from my games, when she’d had enough of me assuming she’d stay even though I didn’t give her what she needed. Before I realized how quiet our condo was at night, before I noticed the smell of her perfume no longer lingered on our pillows, Aly was gone.
We tried. We came back together only to lose sight of how to maintain the life we’d wanted with each other. We tried again and again until, finally, we forgot to try just one more time.
“You gonna talk to her?” Just then, Koa seemed so much older than he was. Those narrowed eyes, the easy lift of his eyebrows as he watched me, like a man waiting. Like he knew I had a plan beyond what I’d told my folks I’d do: Remind Aly how much she loved me. Koa watched me, waiting, expecting me to give him a reassurance I wasn’t sure I could offer.
“Maybe.” I had no idea how I could. Was that even my place? To interrupt her night? Another glance at my folks—Dad talking on his cell as it kept ringing and buzzing with alerts and Mom speaking to her cousin Leann—and I realized that we were here, all of us, because of Aly. On the stage she twisted away from Ethan, doling out hugs and kisses as her students approached. She held center stage, touching those kids, laughing at them, those green eyes sparkling bright.
She belonged with us. I knew that. She always had, even more than a decade before when she first came into our lives out of necessity and stayed because she needed us as much as we needed her.
Ohana. Always.
Despite the small shock of the impromptu proposal, my folks walked up the aisle with my siblings tagging behind; I held back. I wasn’t ready to talk to Aly yet. I wasn’t strong enough. As I watched my family on stage, I noticed proudly that there were no judgments, in spite of the long stare Koa shot at Ethan and the way Makana rolled her eyes when the man tipped his knuckle under her chin. Aly took the offered hugs and kisses, letting my family congratulate her because that’s what you do—support, nurture, love even when you’re damn scared. Even when the person you love is throwing away their happiness with both hands. Watching them all up on that stage, seeing the way they looked at each other, seeing how Aly held onto my mom’s hand and interacted with my siblings, made my chest hurt. Would this end too with her marriage?
Aly and I were like a gentle, constant ripple, ever widening, intersecting to pull toward each other. Our friends, our family, our lives were connected, always would be and could be ignored, overshadowed by life, by the selfish pursuit to build ourselves into something resembling accomplishment, but what we were, who we were together would never go away. That ripple touched so much of who we had become; of who we were.