Dare Me

Lake

Four Years Later

Ella Caroline Pike came into the world at a gorgeous seven pounds and eight ounces. She was named with love after

Callum’s mom, my grandmother and, well, Ella Fitzgerald, to be totally honest.

She was the apple of Callum’s eye before he even got to touch her. I saw him brimming with love as he waited to hold her and the second she settled into his arms and stopped crying, that love overflowed. I never thought Callum and I could be more, even bigger than what we were. But Ella brought us to another level of bliss and she did every day from that one forward.

When he proposed to me, Callum had said that he couldn’t wait to spend the rest of his life watching the way I loved. But that pleasure was really mine. He stayed home a lot as I went back to school. I came back to find him passed out on the couch, his dark blonde hair tousled because Ella loved to play with it. She would be either peacefully awake but more often, fast asleep on his chest – figured it wouldn’t take long for her to discover how awesome it was there – and I’d smile through every minute of making dinner till my husband woke up and came up behind me in our kitchen, kissing the back of my neck.

I saw him love me in so many different ways and no matter how small or large, they meant the world.

I had finally stopped sleeping on the edge of the bed but like lots of girls, was always cold when I got in. Callum started laying on my side to warm it up before I got in. I drank iced coffee throughout the year and was probably too obsessed with pumpkin spice. Callum thought it was completely bizarre but got it ready for me, to my exact liking, down to the amount of milk as I walked around the house in the morning, brushing my teeth. “And she’s off,” he’d smirk to himself the second I stepped out the bathroom door.

On the few occasions that I’d still crawl to the edge of the bed, he’d either pull me back to him or cuddle up behind me, spooning me and brushing his lips along my shoulders. I stirred awake but never let him know, too content to enjoy the late-night kisses he needed to give even when he thought I was asleep.

He surprised me one day with something I never even told him had been weighing on me. It was a photo and a letter, written by the beautiful family in Richmond that had taken in baby Matthew, my half-brother. Callum held me as I sat crying at the kitchen counter, reading about what a relaxed but brilliant boy he was, exactly as I’d imagined him to be. Callum asked lightly about Matthew, going on when he saw that I was happy to tell more stories now that I knew he was okay.

As his wife, I could not, for the life of me, figure out why I had ever doubted Callum. His love for me came in so many forms I sometimes didn’t even recognize them. But I never, ever took him for granted. Not after the years I’d spent fighting to get back to him.

I realized how much love I’d missed of his during that stressful time on a night – one of the many – that I lay in bed on his chest. He was asleep. I stared at the rose gold bracelet he had given me for my twenty-seventh birthday in Scotland. It was a little looser now. Mommy life had slimmed parts of my body. Certainly not my upper arms or my legs, but my wrist was a little thinner, so as I lay in bed, soaking in the peaceful silence of Callum’s easy breaths, I let the bangle slide off my hand.

I gazed at it, sitting atop our plush, white comforter. It sparkled the way I felt inside and it was so beautiful I couldn’t believe I had ever let myself wonder if it lacked the meaning I’d expect in a gift from Callum. Years later, I shook my head, scolding myself for what I’d let that writer from the Times drive me to think. I was already back to full appreciation for the gorgeous piece when I noticed an inscription inside it. I’d never seen it before and as I read it, my lips spread into a slow but enormous smile, realizing that there were even times in our past that Callum had loved me without me fully seeing it.

Carved in the rose gold was our distinct declaration of passion and commitment. Despite being married now, being husband and wife, we still couldn’t always find the right ways to describe how much we truly loved one another. So I laughed against Callum’s warm chest that night as I read the word I remembered most from the night I lost my virginity to him. Engraved in cursive, it was perfectly plain and simple, because we were everything but.

Likewise.

The End