“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, sweetheart, but I have stamina for days.”
That he does. I go about making a day pack for Ava including the right snacks, water, her insulin kit, floppy hat, a spare pair of shoes and, of course, sunscreen. Then we head on out to enjoy the park.
Because we’re tired, we plan on only spending the day in California Adventure. Ava doesn’t know the difference between the two parks, plus there, she got to head into A Bug’s Land and go nuts for hours.
As she does just that, Bram and I hold hands and watch as she plays in the different areas, pretending to be bug-sized, darting in and out of water fountains. When it’s time to go on a ride, she grabs my hand and pulls me onto a Chinese take-out box that zooms around in a circle. Though these aren’t the rides I ever dreamed of riding, she’s having the time of her life. If it was up to me, of course, we’d be hitting up California Screaming and The Tower of Terror, but seeing everything through my little girl’s eyes makes it that much more fun.
We end the day with Bram and I grabbing a beer and wine in the faux vineyard before we hop on the Cars Mater’s tractor ride (which, in hindsight, isn’t the best idea after a drink). Bram and I have been taking turns on and off riding with Ava and though she’s less likely to shriek like a banshee around him, you can still tell she’s having a lot of fun. Scratch that – she’s having the time of her life.
The first two days at Disneyland and California Adventure are pretty much the same. We wake up early and head to the parks, breathing in the smell of churros, popcorn and turkey legs all while the tinkling music fills the air. We hit up all the kiddie rides – for some reason they have the longest lines – and then gorge on whatever food we can find. Somehow we manage to convince Ava to ride the Grizzly River Rapids with us and we all got so completely soaked that she was the only one who ended up loving it. Thankfully, the hot SoCal heat dried us off in minutes.
And of course she meets all her favorite characters including Eyeore and Sleeping Beauty. Bram and I both posed in some of the photos with her, though that wasn’t my doing. He volunteered to be in the pictures and Ava looked like she was over the moon about his wanting to be a part of it.
The truth is, I’m still a bit uneasy about the whole thing and I’m glad that there are pictures of her on her own as well. As much as I’m falling for Bram – and I know I am, I mean how can any woman worth her salt not love this man? – I don’t know what the future brings. I would hate to have us break up, break apart, or whatever it’s called, and then be stuck with these photographs. At least now if that happens, I can burn them, pretend he never existed, and still have photos of Ava left over.
I think Bram can kind of sense my train of thought though, because he’s being extra attentive and yet distant at the same time. I don’t want to bring it up with him the whole, “what is this, what are we?” talk because that tends to ruin the very carefree and fun thing you have, so I don’t.
But that night, as we’re lying in bed together after some slow, passionate love-making, Bram says, “I know why you’re hesitant with me.”
I stiffen, not sure what direction this is going to take. “What do you mean?”
“Oh come on,” he says. “You think I haven’t noticed the way you practically flinched when I asked to be in the photos.”
I take in a deep breath, wishing he didn’t bring it up. “Look, it doesn’t mean anything so don’t take it personally.”
“Well, I am going to take it personally,” he says. He turns over to look at me, propping his head up with his hand. “You don’t want me in the pictures because you still think I’m going to up and leave you, that this is just a bloody fling.”
“No, not exactly,” I say feebly. “It’s just that…okay, maybe it’s a bit of that. But you have to understand that it’s just been me and Ava for a long time.”
“Steph had said you were dating someone else for a while between Phil and…well, this.”
Did she now? It had me wondering how often Steph and him talked.
I sigh. “His name was Ben. He was a nice guy and that was that. Neither of us were really into the relationship.”
“But Ava liked him, didn’t she?”
I give him a steady look. “What makes you say that?”
He shrugs with one shoulder. “Because you seem scared that the same thing will happen again. That Ava will grow attached to me – that even you, yourself, with your damn heart in a cage – will grow attached to me too.”
I feel my skin go hot. “My heart is not in a cage,” I say, defensive. “And Ava has been attached to you from that moment we first went in your car. The damage with her has already been done.”
“But what about the damage with you?” he asks gruffly, peering at me even closer. “And how can what we have be called anything close to damaging?”
He really doesn’t understand, does he?
“Because….” I grapple for words. “Because, when you invite someone in and they leave, they take a part of you with them. It ruins the foundation. Don’t you see? It’s damaging when you pull the bricks out and the whole building collapses.”
He rubs a hand angrily over his face, letting out an immensely loud sigh. “Hearts aren’t bloody buildings, Nicola!” He throws the covers off of him and gets out of bed, pacing back and forth. He’s nude but for once, my eyes are drawn to the tension in his face. I don’t even think to look at his dick.
“I’m sorry,” I hiss at him, sitting up in bed. “I know they aren’t but, God, I wish you knew what it was like to be me. To just know what it’s like to be dealt the shitty hand.”
He stops and gives me an incredulous look. I regret saying anything. He’s that wide-eyed, his brow knitting with anger. “You think you’re the only one who has been dealt the shitty hand in life?” He leans forward with his hands on the mattress, looking me dead in the eye. “My mother never told me she loved me growing up. My father was never proud of me, no matter what I did. I had to live with that, deal with that. I was shipped off to boarding schools half the time because no one in my family knew what to do with me. You want to talk about the shitty hand, well I got it. I was fucking unwanted. And yes, I had money and I had everything else at my fingertips. But that doesn’t mean dickshit when you don’t have someone to tell you they love you.”
My breath is caught in my lungs. I can see his pulse ticking along in his throat, the desperation in his eyes that want so much for me to see him, the real him, to understand. And I do. Not in the exact same way, but I do.
He swallows and looks away for a moment. “Hey,” he says, his voice low. He climbs on top of the mattress toward me and I’m reminded of the first time we made love. But instead of that carnal desire as he approached me, there’s something else. That extra level of connection that I thought may have been only in my head.
“Nicola,” he says, placing both his hands on either side of my face, gazing into my eyes with such deep focus. “I know you’ve been burned. But I’ve been burned too. Maybe our ashes can make something beautiful together.”
He kisses me then with such force, such passion, I feel like the wind has literally been sucked out of me. I want nothing more than for something beautiful to rise from us together. I have my demons and apparently he has his.
We waste little time in getting intimate. He’s inside me and instead of the lazy, luxurious romp we had just before, this one is crazed and desperate. It’s like he’s handing himself to me, afraid if I don’t take it now, he’ll lose me forever.
But he won’t lose me.
Because I am absolutely in love with this man.
And that realization is terrifying. Because he was so, so wrong about hearts and buildings being different. They are the same. They are structures that keep us safe, that shield us from the elements. And the minute they start to falter, everything else is at risk.
A heart can be condemned, just as a building can be.