Born in January by Stephanie Van Orman - HTML preview

III

By the end of summer, she had little stacks of his books.

In an attempt to return his feelings, she ransacked the arts and crafts tent and made him the most masculine friendship bracelet she could manage. She ended up making a stack of them and dropping them in his lap when she walked by him.

One of the other guys stopped her and howled. “Why are you giving him those? Are you guys dating or something?”

Annaliese yawned. “I was bored, so I made them. I’l make one for you if you want.”

“Yeah, I want,” the guy said with eyes large with shock. He clearly didn’t think she’d make one for him.

“Kay. Next time I’m bored I’l make one for you.”

She made him a yel ow one with stars. She thought it was too girly for him to be happy, but it ended up being a thing where every guy in the camp wanted a friendship bracelet from Annaliese. She was swamped with requests. By the third day, Trip started helping her make them. Together they made enough for every guy in the camp and even some of the girls. It was lucky the rest of the girls acted like they didn’t want them or it would have turned into a labor camp.

Trip had a stack of black and navy ones on his brown arm, but one odd one that was yel ow with stars. It was one he knew for a fact she’d made.

EIGHT

Back from camp and in the real world, it took Annaliese about a minute and a half to get her mother to agree to send her to Trip’s school. Apparently, she had been wondering if Annaliese would prefer the change before Annaliese mentioned it, but she had been uncertain if her daughter wanted to leave her friends at her old school.

Once Annaliese had given her mother the green light, Annaliese’s life changed very quickly.

Each morning, Annaliese would wait at the bus stop, the bus would pick her up, and at the next stop, Trip would get on. Without a word and with his headphones on, he sat next to her.

She’d leave a flap in her backpack open and set it on the floor. He’d slide the little book in through the gap.

They tried to take as many of the same classes as possible. They’d write each other post-it notes and leave them within the pages and switch textbooks.

A school dance came up to celebrate the harvest. When someone asked Trip to the dance, he went. Annaliese went stag with a few of her friends who were also proclaiming their independence and went alone. Annaliese didn’t feel alone. Her eyes met Trip’s three times that night, and she wouldn’t have gotten more out of the event if she’d had a date of her own. It didn’t matter who Trip was out with… he loved only Annaliese.

Later at school, in the girl’s bathroom, Annaliese heard Trip’s date talking about him with one of the other girls as they vaped. “You would not believe what he told me.”

“What?”

“He told me not to ask him out again. He says he has to spread himself around, so I shouldn’t ask him twice.”

Annaliese flushed the toilet and came out of the bathroom stal .

“Hey, you’re that girl who’s always with Trip,” the girl said, deliberately exhaling her smoke away from Annaliese. “He was clearly blowing me off, but was what he said real? Does he only date a girl once?”

Annaliese nodded. “Yeah, that’s how he rol s.”

“Wel , have you been out with him?”

Annaliese shook the water off her hands and grabbed a paper towel. “I won’t date him. I’ve known him since he was four and I would never bother.”

“But you didn’t ask anyone else to the dance,” Trip’s date noticed.

“Yeah,” Annaliese shrugged. “I didn’t see anyone I thought was interesting. Maybe next year.”

She swept out and saw that Trip had been waiting for her to get out of the bathroom. Whether he heard any of that didn’t matter. She put his headphones over his ears and they went out to catch the bus.

***

It was months before Annaliese’s parents were out of the house for a few hours. Trip came over. He kissed her feverishly as soon as the door behind him was shut. When it ended, they were too bashful to look at each other. They went to her room and made a little bookshelf for al the tiny books he gave her. It was made out of gift boxes they’d bought together. Thus, on one

of her bookshelves, she had a box that looked like nothing. No one would ever guess that it contained entire books that were nothing but Trip writing ‘I love you’ in different ways on repeat.

At Christmas, they started wearing couples' rings, though no one noticed. They wore them on their middle finger on their right hands and they didn’t match. His was a Celtic knot and hers was fake diamonds al around her finger.

They read books to each other over the phone to pass the time.

Annaliese came to the library when Trip had permission to invite her to his Uncle’s house and they’d replace al the papers inside the chess pieces. The first time he fil ed his up entirely with the words, ‘I love you’, and he fil ed up hers entirely with ‘I miss you.’

No one noticed.

If Uncle Clement saw or noticed, whether he approved or disapproved, he said nothing.

Everyone else knew they were close friends. Everyone knew they were inseparable, but it seemed like no one knew they were a couple. Her parents would invite his whole family over for dinner sometimes and whenever any of his brothers teased that there was something going on, they’d both gag.

“Not if you paid me,” she’d say.

“I wouldn’t even date her once,” he refuted when his relatives wanted him to date everyone at least once.

“Then why do you hang out with her al the time?” his father once asked.

Trip looked at Annaliese like she was a bug while she looked at him like he was boring. “You know, not everything is about that.”

“Oh?” his father asked. For Trip’s father, everything was about love games…

Which may have been why Trip was so good at playing them under his father’s nose unaware.

“She’s my best friend. I’ve never had a friend like her, and I won’t be shy about it. She keeps the other girls away and saves me from a lot of nonsense.”

“You make a good argument for drowning her in a river,” Trip’s father laughed heartlessly as if women and unwanted kittens were the same thing.

When Annaliese had to answer, she said, “He helps me with my schoolwork. I’d be failing if it wasn’t for him.”

Everyone chuckled, even Annaliese’s mother, but what she claimed was completely true.

Between the two of them, Trip was much better in their classes than she was. She knew why that was true. It was because she was not her mother’s daughter. She was someone else’s daughter and her biological mother had not been a class act. Al the same, Annaliese said her prayers, did her homework, and hoped that she’d be able to hobble along long enough to get through law school. It was her mother’s fondest wish.

***

When spring came, Annaliese and Trip put their heads together for where they were going to go to camp. They decided they could not go to the same camp they went to the summer before.

Instead, they sought to find one that had loose rules. Something free-spirited and less structured so they might have more time together.

It ended up being a wash. Annaliese’s grades had not been good enough to go to camp, so she was sent to summer school to help improve her grades. Trip stayed home to keep her company, got his driver’s license, got a job, and saw her when they could both manage it.

Then school started again.

The harvest dance came up. No one invited either one of them. They were freaks. They liked it. No one paid attention to them. They went together, showed up late, danced quietly in the corner, and left early to make out in the car on a deserted street in an unfamiliar neighborhood.

They topped it off by coming home early too so no one suspected anything except that they were boring and no one liked them.

NINE

The day before Christmas Eve was the day that Trip and Annaliese celebrated themselves.

They met at the mal , as they were pretending to go Christmas shopping as friends. They went to a restaurant where they thought they wouldn’t be seen to exchange gifts.

Annaliese had bought Trip a col ection of ebooks she had loaded onto a memory card that she was giving him in a watch box. She thought that would be classy.

Alone in their dark booth. He opened it and said he’d like it more once he could see what books she’d bought him, but he was too nervous to plug it into his phone to look at them just then. He needed her to open her present first.

He handed her an envelope.

Annalise was delighted. No matter how many love letters he gave her, she loved them al .

The envelope was fancy, with a wax seal, and felt thick and expensive. She opened it and was confused. It looked like an invitation.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Open it,” he encouraged.

She did and she had to read it several times before she understood what it said. “You want to marry me?”

He nodded.

It was an invitation to Trip and Annaliese’s wedding on January twentieth, the day after Annaliese turned eighteen. It was to be at the courthouse. There would be no guests, no presents, and perhaps no honeymoon.

Annaliese opened and closed the invitation in her hands. “This is because of sex, isn’t it?”

“Sort of,” he answered, desperate not to be misunderstood. “More than anything, I wouldn’t like to give you the impression that I want to have sex with you in a casual way. I want to be with you forever. I feel that offering you marriage is the best way to show you my love rather than ravaging you in the backseat of my car.”

Annaliese was contemplative. “Looking at this invitation, it does sound a little like our wedding night might end up happening in the back of your car.”

“Perhaps, but no matter where it happens, I want you to know that it didn’t happen casual y. I want to declare that you are the only one for me and I, for one, am completely ready to spit in the face of the patriarch of my family and say I want only you. Except I’m not the only one who would need to be ready to do that.”

Annaliese paled. He was right. She agreed, “I’m not ready. If anything, I’m less ready than I was two summers ago.”

“I know,” he said, touching her knee supportively under the table.

“It’s becoming more obvious every day that I am not real y her daughter. I am nothing like her. I’m an arts student and she wants me to study law. Talk about putting a square peg into a round hole, but anytime I try to talk to her about how that path might not be right for me, she is so… unbelievably nice. She says she’l pay for everything, She says it doesn’t matter if I don’t do wel the first time. She says there’s enough time in the world for me to learn slowly if that’s what I need.”

“Annaliese, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this. What would you think of us taking the same degree in university together?” Trip offered kindly. “I’l go and be a lawyer too and I’l help you along… every step.”

She groaned. “You don’t want to be a lawyer.”

“I don’t want to be anything. I can’t think of a career for myself. I know one thing, I want to be with you, and maybe if I’m supportive of your mother’s dream for you, we can come out as a couple sooner.”

“If she found out I married you, she’d be so angry. She’d feel like it was a betrayal.”

Trip didn’t exactly go pale, but he went cold and clammy. “I don’t want to put any pressure on you, but what wil happen to us if we try to go on like this?”

Annaliese knew what he was talking about. She forgot the exact moment when she had started wanting to go to bed with Trip. It had been so long ago that it had become a hazy thing in her memory. He was right. They couldn’t go on the way they had been, kissing each other when they were final y alone and not doing anything else. They couldn’t break up either. They were too close with every aspect of their lives interwoven.

She put the invitation down between them. “I can’t get pregnant,” she said sternly.

“We’l be careful.”

“More than careful. My biological mother was seventeen when she got pregnant with me, the same age I am now. If I were to get pregnant, there is nothing in the world that would scare me more.”

He jumped on that. “I’ve been reading about it. If we get started with our preparations now, we can be ready to be very careful on our wedding night.”

She had been about to say more, but the sincerity in his voice prevented her from adding anything. Trip had always been very courteous toward her. She couldn’t believe he would turn into a selfish jerk if he started sleeping with her.

“I want at least the first night to be in a hotel for privacy's sake,” she added.

He nodded. “Okay.”

She hesitated to say more, thinking of her mother and her expectations of her. “And things wil go on as they have, stil keeping our relationship a secret, except our arrangement wil be permanent?”

“We can have a fancy wedding for everyone else when we graduate from law school,” he said softly.

She breathed and ran through different scenarios in her head.

“We don’t even have to get different rings if you don’t want to.” The need in his voice broke her down the rest of the way.

“Let’s get married on the twentieth.”

Trip looked both ways before he bent down and kissed her on the mouth. Thus far, it was the first time he had kissed her in public.

TEN

On the twentieth of January, Annaliese got up and went downstairs for breakfast. It was a Friday, so she was planning on going to school. She kissed her mother on the temple as she sat at the table munching on a bagel.

“What are your plans for the weekend, dear?” her mother asked, her voice sensitive and kind.

“I’ve been waiting to ask you because I was too shy, but I was wondering if you’d let me go ski ng with Trip,” she asked, matching her mother’s tone and cadence. “You know, as a present for my eighteenth birthday.”

“Ski ng with Trip?” It sounded so respectable when her mother said it. “Of course, you can.”

She whipped open her purse and handed Annaliese a gorgeous gold credit card. “Get your own room at the lodge and charge it to that.”

“I think Trip might have paid for the rooms already,” Annaliese answered weakly.

“Then shop, pay for ski rentals, or whatever you want. It’s your birthday and your teacher cal ed me and told me al about the improvement in your grades. Have a good time!”

Annaliese took the card and thanked her mother with tears in her eyes.

“Why must you look so sad?”

“I’ve just been feeling worn down lately.” The reason why was because she’d gone on birth control pil s and they were playing havoc with her body, but she didn’t tel her mother that. She only said how grateful she was to go ski ng and how she was sure she’d have a lovely time.

“Trip is such a good boy,” her mother continued. “When it comes time for you to date, I hope he’s stil around.”

It was on the tip of Annaliese’s tongue to say, ‘Why wait? You could come to our wedding this afternoon!’ But even in her head, it went badly. Even lesser versions of the truth went badly.

Instead, she reverted to her old repertoire, and said, “I can’t get together with Trip. It would ruin a perfectly good friendship.”

“Atta girl,” her mother said pleasantly.

Suddenly, Annaliese got strangely giddy. “Wil you let me skip school today? I’d like to go shopping and Trip won’t be leaving until three.”

“Go ahead, dear. I’l cal the school.”

Instead of going to school, she went to the mal and tried on dresses. She thought she could claim to have found the perfect grad dress. Otherwise, there was no reason for her to come home with a formal dress. However, if there was one thing she wanted (other than to marry Trip), it was to get married in a pretty dress.

The one she chose was pure magic and she was happy to throw it on her mother’s credit card. It was champagne gold sequins that broke at her knee to a tul e mermaid with a stripe of gold at the bottom, but the tul e bottom was optional. Annaliese stuffed it in the bag and wore the dress out with a black overcoat over top when she left the house that afternoon.

She met Trip at the courthouse. It was ridiculous. They both wore hats and sunglasses.

They felt it was necessary since Annaliese did not know if her mother would be in court that day and Trip didn’t know if Uncle Clement would be there either. They snuck up to the third floor where weddings took place and got married more quietly than anyone had ever gotten married before.

They felt weird, trying to celebrate a wedding in the dark.

Annaliese wore a black overcoat and sunglasses, but for the actual wedding, she stripped the coat and the glasses and looked like she was made of more gold than Cleopatra. It would have been a spectacular display except that Annaliese had been eighteen for one day and because of her nerves, she looked three years younger.

Trip was just as bad. He opted to wear a black turtleneck to the wedding, but he was so ragged from nerves that he looked ten years older when he took off his sunglasses.

They both kept shushing the justice to keep his voice down, so no one would hear him.

It was the first time that Annaliese heard Trip referred to as Christopher. She knew that was his name because that was his father's and grandfather’s name. Most people didn’t realize that Trip was short for triple because he was the third.

They signed the papers, kissed, and received odd looks from everyone who saw them. They would have stood out more, except a lot of couples popped into the courthouse to get married suddenly, so the staff smiled and wished them wel and no one realized who Annaliese and Trip were. After al , it was his uncle who was the grand lawyer and not his father. No one would mistake Trip for his uncle’s son. His uncle was a famous womanizer who ‘apparently’ had no children.

The newlyweds made it to the car. Annaliese told Trip that she had permission to go ski ng with him that weekend. He hooted. He had permission too. Had they real y fooled everyone into believing that they could never be anything but friends?

Trip drove to Courtenay where they could ski on mountains with ocean views. He parked at the resort he’d made reservations at.

Annaliese was nervous as Trip got their key and handled their luggage. Everything about the place intimidated her and she felt a sick feeling spiraling from her gut.

“Feeling okay?” he asked her as he unlocked the door to their room.

“Nope. I feel gross. How are you feeling?”

“Like al of this should have been harder. Your mother gave you a credit card and told you to go nuts? I played the birthday card too and my father gave me a whack of cash and told me to have a wild time. I don’t know exactly what he thinks I plan to do, but his reckless abandon has me worried. If I don’t come back with a scar, a tattoo, and a cocaine addiction, I think he’l be disappointed in me.”

Inside the hotel room, Annaliese walked to the window. The curtains were tied and she looked out onto the slopes where the chairlifts were stil taking skiers up the mountainside. Trip left the lights of their room out and came up behind her, encircling her waist with his arms. He kissed the place behind her ear. Normal y, he didn’t get much further before he had to stop.

Not this time.

He didn’t stop kissing her.

They were alone at last. He’d give her everything he had in exchange for this night, this life, this moment, and the one after that.

No matter how many times he said he loved her, wrote that he loved her, and showed her that he loved her, it was al leading up to this moment for him.

For the first time, Annaliese gave him everything.

ELEVEN

When they got back to society, it was about a thousand times easier for Trip to act like their relationship was a mere friendship. He asked Annaliese to be his grad date and told everyone they were going as friends. Al the tension was out of his shoulders. The time he spent with Annaliese on weekends was better. Helping her with her homework was easier because he wasn’t distracted because when they were alone, al the old restrictions were off.

Life was sweet.

Annaliese wouldn’t have liked to talk to anyone about teenage marital bliss, but she was much happier with their new arrangement too. She feared Trip would stop writing her little love books if they got married, but he didn’t stop. He stil got on the bus and slipped a book into her backpack. If they ate lunch somewhere, he would reach under the table, slip her shoe off her foot, and put her foot in her lap, where he would treat her to a foot rub while they waited for their food. Sometimes Annaliese wondered if he chose the restaurants with the slowest service in the city just so he could rub her foot longer.

Annaliese’s mother was pleased with her choice of grad dress and was unaware that she had used half of it as a wedding dress. In retrospect, Annaliese’s mother was sorry she found a grad dress so easily and took her out shopping several more times before grad actual y came, fil ing her wardrobe like she was creating a trousseau.

Trip and Annaliese chose the local university because they thought she could get into it and sent in their transcripts. She took political science because she believed the classes would prepare her for law school. Trip took the same classes, not caring for a second that he was not taking a degree he was even the least bit interested in.

The summer between high school and university came. Since they had chosen to attend a university close to home, they made Annaliese’s mother blissful, like al the difficulties in raising someone else’s child had been nothing. How could it matter who gave birth to a child when she turned out so perfectly?

They lived at home for the first year of university, but by the second year, both of them were getting annoyed. They were getting tired of saying goodbye after spending their days together and then being forced to part ways at night.

In the second year, they rented two studio apartments that were in the same building and final y got to live together, though the situation was not ideal. It would have been nicer if they had been on the same floor. As it was, they traveled between their apartments in their housecoats with toothbrushes sticking out of their mouths.

“Let’s just move in together,” Trip begged one day as they walked through the hal of their building. “We can decorate it like a girl’s place. Put anything you want in it and I’l hide my clothes under the bed…” he trailed off.

Annaliese’s mother was standing in the hal way. Someone had let her in the building without her being buzzed in and she heard what Trip said. Not only that, but both of them were in their underwear and housecoats. Annaliese was walking back to her apartment and Trip had fol owed her because he always walked her back to her place.

“Annaliese,” the old woman said sternly.

As primly as any dutiful daughter, she welcomed her mother with a smile and a kiss and decided to try her luck at winning her over with charm. After al , she was twenty years old and

she thought her chances of getting her mother to listen to her were better now than they had ever been. She told Trip to go get changed and to meet them upstairs in her room.

Annaliese was lucky when they went inside her apartment. It was extremely clean and wel cared for. It made her feel more like an adult and less like a bratty child.

Trip changed his clothes, combed his hair quickly, and made it back to Annaliese’s apartment before she had finished changing.

She set her mother down in the only comfortable chair in the apartment. She pul ed two folding chairs off the wal and put one down for Trip and one down for her.

“Let’s talk about dating,” Annaliese began with a smile that she hoped didn’t make her look like a defiant child.

“You two are clearly not dating. How long have you been sleeping together?” her mother asked coldly, the unforgiving wrinkles around her mouth puckering distasteful y.

Annaliese was deeply unhappy at her mother’s way of slicing up her and Trip’s love and for a moment, she was unable to answer.

Trip was faster. “This is a misunderstanding. We were doing laundry together. We’re just not shy about our bodies. You know how kids are these days.”

She glared at Trip. “Answer me!”

Annaliese took a deep breath and had the courage not to answer her. “Mother, I have the highest respect for you. I have always wanted to do things exactly as you wish, but asking me not to date has been a bit much for me.”

“You never complained,” her mother pointed out.

“Yes. That’s how much I have wanted to fol ow your instructions.”

“Al right,” her mother said, straightening herself and breathing calmly. “I understand why you fel into temptation. I wil forgive you completely if you gather your things together and move back home again—today.”

“But–”

The old lady cut Annaliese off. “I understand why you fel for him. He’s been there for you since you were a baby, held your hand through everything, and he’s been a gentleman enough not to take up his father and uncle’s disgusting habits. But Annaliese, it’s time for you to do this next bit without him. If he truly loves you, he’l wait until you are finished law school.”

“There’s no way that I can get through law school without him. I’m stupid on my own,”

Annaliese said without flinching. “I wouldn’t have even made it this far if he didn’t match the classes I had to take. He’s been tutoring me through it al .”

“You’l never respect yourself if you don’t do it alone,” her mother said inflexibly.

“Then I’l never respect myself because I would never be able to do it alone.”

The situation was tense. Annaliese had given Trip strict instructions that he was never to tel her mother that they were married. No matter what provocation came, no matter what she said, no matter what good he thought he could do, he had to let Annaliese handle her mother in her own way. Mostly, that meant avoiding her mother and going behind her back. Trip hadn’t minded doing that, but he also looked forward to the day when he could tel his old men that he respected women and that he respected Annaliese so much that he had already been married to her for over two years. He was completely committed.

It was a blow for him when he discovered the secret Annaliese had been keeping from him.

“If you don’t come home today, I swear to you, you wil lose me and you’l end up exactly like your biological mother,” the pitiless old woman said strictly.

The words that came out of the woman’s mouth were not like a slap. No, it was like she had shot her straight through the heart. Annaliese’s eyes went wide like the moment of surprise when your heart stopped.

Trip turned to catch her, to put pressure on her wound, but where should he put his hands?

There was no blood, just a sputtering like blood that spewed from her lips.

“Didn’t she tel you?” the old lady continued.

“Tel me what?” Trip asked in a cold panic.

She stood up, looking down stonily at Annaliese. “Her biological mother didn’t surrender her to social services, or ask for help. She wrote a note, overdosed on the sick little cocktail she was injecting herself with, and left Annaliese al alone with her corpse in a room for three days before Annaliese’s crying became too much for the neighbors.”

Trip stopped dead where he was.

Annaliese’s mother continued coldly, “I have loved her and cared for her in a way her real mother couldn’t and I only ask for the opportunity to put Annaliese on the correct path, so that she wil always be safe, always be provided for no matter what man comes and goes from her life. No matter what help you gave her, Trip, I believe you meant wel , but I don’t want to see you with my daughter again until she has finished law school.” She looked down at Trip with her dead brown eyes. “Help her pack.”

“Wait. I love her,” he said, on the verge of breaking his promise to Annaliese and spil ing to the old lady that they were legal y married. “I love her and I only want to help her. If you’re scared she’l get pregnant–”

“I’m not scared she’l get pregnant because she won’t be with you anymore. I’l wait downstairs for half an hour. You’d better have her most important things packed and her in my car before my timer goes off,” she said, with her hand on the door.

“Or what?” he burst.

She didn’t look at him. “You don’t want to know.”

The old lady left the room with a click of the door and the clack of her heels on the hardwood floor in the hal way.

Trip wrapped his arms around Annaliese and held her closely. Suddenly, he realized why the dead rabbit scared her so much al those years ago back at the camp. He held her again while she cried like she was a little girl al over again.

“We have to do what she says,” Annaliese wailed once she could get a few words out. “I have to do what she wants.”

“Why? Can’t we tel her we’re married because everything is fine between us? I’l never leave you and…”

“It won’t be fine to her,” Annaliese shrieked, cutting him off. “It won’t be! I have to go down there and leave with her. I have to. We can’t tel her we’re married. She’d file for divorce for me. I don’t want to divorce you. Even if I have to move back home and we have to go back to how we were living when we were married and stil in grade twelve, fine, but I have to go home.

I can’t let her file for divorce.”

The last thing in the world Trip wanted was to go back to the way they lived when they were stil in high school, but there was nothing else to do at that moment. Fol owing his wife’s instructions, he went around the room and picked up the things she said she needed most.

He felt sick that he was not one of them.

When the half-hour was up, Annaliese sat in her mother’s car, blowing her nose and covering her eyes with a pair of sunglasses.

Trip didn’t get to kiss her goodbye.

TWELVE

Annaliese sat at the breakfast table with her mother and spooned out the sections of a grapefruit. She was unhappy with the situation of living back at home, but she didn’t let it show on her face. She slid the mask of calm indifference over her face and wore it like it was underwear—the kind of clothing you never forgot to put on because you always put it on first.

She stil saw Trip during her classes at university, but it was hard to find other places for her to see him.

Their relationship had turned into the weirdest thing in the world. Instead of sneaking around like teenagers with a secret, they were sneaking around like they were having an affair. Except she was having it with her own husband.

They had a large break in the middle of the day on Tuesdays, so they’d simply go home to his studio apartment to be together for a few hours before the final class of the day began. Her weekends were watched fiercely. She was trotted off to the bal et, the opera, the theater, and anything else her mother could think of to keep her busy.

Her mother was happy during this time. Annaliese could tel , and she tried to appreciate the pleasant aspects of her current situation.

The fact that her biological mother had died and she was trapped in the apartment with her corpse for days was the one thing Annaliese had never been able to forget. She was best at forgetting it when she was with Trip. For one thing, he hadn’t known about the crowning spike of her painful past. For another, he was so dazzling and bright that it was easy for her to forget things that made her unhappy.

Annaliese could not believe it when her mother brought it up in that way, using her trauma to control her. Her mother did it because she was afraid. She was afraid of what would happen to Annaliese if al the boxes weren’t checked... if al the Ts weren’t crossed. She used the only tool she had left to make Annaliese proceed on the only safe path forward. Annaliese understood, but it didn’t make hearing those things any more palatable.

For the first week after Annaliese returned home, she was flung into the nightmare she had so steadily avoided when she was with Trip. He was gone, except when they sat next to each other in class, except in the precious two-hour gap on Tuesdays when he pressed his skin against her and comforted her. He never spoke to her about the things that she neglected to tel him. His consideration meant everything to her. Every time she touched him she compared every square inch of his skin to gold.

But she had to snap out of it. The nightmare was making her lag in her classes. If she lagged in her classes, she’d never get to be with Trip.

At the very least, the little books kept coming. He began writing them again and sliding them into her backpack. Sometimes he prepared more than one a day. He tried to say things that were more meaningful than ‘I love you’ over and over again, but a lot of the time, that was what came out when he started writing.

The third year of university started. She and Trip took al the same classes again, arranging for more than one break a week in the middle of the day. That year she got him on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Or contrary-wise, he got her on Fridays and Tuesdays.

On Annaliese’s twenty-first birthday, her mother asked her what she would like as a present.

She said, “I’d like to go ski ng with Trip. Could I do that?”

Her mother sighed. “What would you spend the weekend doing if I forbade it?”

Annaliese went to her room and brought out the gift boxes. By that point, there were ten boxes. Annaliese opened them and showed the tiny bookcases fil ed with tiny books.

“What is this?” her mother asked curiously. “I didn’t realize you had a hobby like this.”

“I didn’t write them. Trip wrote them. He’s been writing these tiny books for me for years.”

Annalese chose one at random and showed her mother how to open it so that it revealed a whole page of writing.

The one she picked was one that was written the autumn before they got married. Her mother read it careful y. “This was written four years ago. How long has Trip been in love with you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe since we were children. He confessed it the first time when we were sixteen and has been standing by my side ever since. You must know that I stil see him and he stil helps me with my classes.”

“It’s very noble of him to do that when you aren’t sleeping with him,” her mother said flatly.

Annaliese didn’t answer. If her mother wanted to believe that, Annaliese wasn’t going to correct her. She packed up the books and put them away.

Her mother tried to speak to her again. “I have nothing against him. I keep tel ing you, it isn’t about him. You can marry him when you finish law school if you both stil want to.”

For Annaliese, it was like talking to a brick wal .

Annaliese wanted to leave home, she wanted to cal it quits, to declare that she loved Trip with al her heart and she had to go to him… except that wasn’t true. If she closed her eyes, she remembered being a child who had just lost her mother and the fear inside her that tainted everything. For the first few years after being adopted, Annaliese would go check to see that her new mother and father hadn’t died in the night. Then she’d curl up on the floor to wait for them to wake up.

As an adult, Annaliese couldn’t imagine the goodness in her mother’s heart to take her into her home.

When Annaliese arrived, she had been swarming with lice, covered in bed bug bites, and caked in filth. Her name had been spel ed Annaleeze like her name was a sneeze, and not like she was a precious child with a bright future. Instead, her name was the joke of a teenage drug addict. Her new mother treated her sores and picked her hair clean even though she was a high-power lawyer who had hardly touched a child in her life. She also changed Annaliese’s spel ing to something beautiful and the way her new mother said her name made her feel like she was a precious child after al .

She remembered the new mother, so eager to do things right, so eager to spoil her with love and attention. Reading in a rocking chair. Watching cartoons together. Swinging at the park.

There was no scraped knee or broken dream that her new mother couldn’t fix with laughter and love.

Trip had been there too, on those Sundays in the library, in the garden, and under the swaying trees. In those days he was a child, not a man who could give her the safety and security an adult could provide. Trip had been there for her when she needed him for the last five years, but her mother had been there since the tragedy and Annaliese couldn’t ignore it.

Not only that but sometimes in the present, she wondered if her mother was wel . Her sixty-fifth birthday was coming up and sometimes waves of pain crossed her features like a shroud of pain fel upon her.

Annaliese couldn’t leave her mother, so she made do with Tuesdays and Fridays.

THIRTEEN

Then there were al the ways Trip and Annaliese’s relationship broke down.

For the last year of their political science degree, Annaliese had already taken al the core subjects she needed, so there were a bunch of options she had to take, and Trip didn’t need to be in those classes. It was a chance for them to grow in different ways. He took computer science courses while she took art. They stil timed their breaks and got Tuesdays and Fridays, but they didn’t see each other during the day as often.

Then there was the time they had to study for the LSATs and Annaliese’s mother hired private tutors to help her study. Trip wasn’t al owed to be around for that.

Annaliese passed the exam with more breathing room than anyone expected. Her mother thought it was because the tutors were better at teaching her than Trip. That wasn’t it at al . If Annaliese didn’t pass, she couldn’t go to law school with Trip. She had to pass.

Trip didn’t pass. He failed it by a hair’s breadth.

He took the exam, but when it came around, he hadn’t seen his girl for weeks. There had been no Tuesdays and Fridays and he was having a hard time focusing. Not only that but there was a mean little part of his brain that knew he didn’t have to get into law school. He didn’t need to pass, only she did and if her mother was paying for tutors then what did it matter if he tutored her or not? He didn’t even study by himself.

He should have passed.

The fal -out for his not passing was incredible. His family, not just his father and his uncle, but his brothers and his mother too, were very disappointed. The discovery he made while he scrambled for another career was jarring. He didn’t want to do anything else. If Annaliese was going to be a lawyer, he wanted to be a lawyer with her.

She went to law school and floundered. Tuesdays and Fridays were a thing of the past and when a day came up where she could slip away to see Trip, he was usual y working.

He was going to take his LSAT again in the spring, but for the time being, he was putting his political science degree to work and had gotten a job working at the Victoria Legislature. Each time she saw him, her teenage husband with the headphones over his ears was further and further away.

He wore suits. He got a better job and then another better job. Soon it was clear that if he stayed working for his MLA, he would have an extraordinarily cushy job he didn’t have to get elected for. He gave up his studio apartment and bought a condo with incredible views.

When Annaliese visited him, it was like visiting your date’s home for the first time, and nothing like going home with her husband. At least, they had decorated their crappy studio apartments together. The feeling of distance grew as he had more and more of an adult life that had nothing to do with her. He had friends he met in the evenings when she wasn’t around.

After a while, the whole thing felt very much like having an affair with a married man.

Actual y, she was the one cheating… on the people in her life… cheating everybody. She was only keeping half of her promises.

The little books had stopped when he no longer sat next to her in class. Instead, he wrote her a love letter a week. It was typed instead of handwritten and placed in an envelope that arrived with a bouquet of flowers. Annaliese’s mother saw nothing inappropriate in this and al owed it.

He had become an ordinary lover instead of the secret, whimsical one he had been.

And the letters changed over time. ‘I love you. I need you. I’m dying without you!’ turned into ‘holidays are coming up and if you’re not free at Christmas to see me then I was thinking I’d go ski ng with a few of my friends. How are your classes going?’

Annaliese started writing him back. She sent him half-finished letters because she stopped knowing what to say to him and she couldn’t bear to send him nothing. If the letters and bouquets stopped, she would have nothing.

Her life was terrible. She hated law school. She hated a school where Trip wasn’t there. It was like she had been jolted back to her old high school where the competition was fierce and there was no handsome boy to smile at her and shield her from al the drama that went on if she tried to talk to people.

She woke up and missed waking up in Trip’s arms until she couldn’t quite remember what that felt like. One day she realized that it had been three months since a Tuesday or a Friday.

Annaliese felt so out of sorts, that she almost cal ed a doctor for a checkup and then she remembered you didn’t need a doctor when you were lovesick.

She wasn’t the only person in the house who wasn’t doing wel . Her mother was sick. If the old woman knew what she was sick with, she wasn’t tel ing. If she didn’t, it came on so stealthily that it snuck up on even her.

The morning that Annaliese heard from her father that her mother had passed away during the night, it was a blow to her.

A blow.

FOURTEEN

It was March. There was a huge fuss at the funeral. Trip was there, surrounded by his whole family, but there were so many people there who demanded Annaliese’s attention that he couldn’t get near her for longer than a few minutes.

At her house after the funeral, he came with his family. But once again, Annaliese was thronged by people who had to tel her one last story about her mother as their way of saying goodbye before they left.

By the time al the mourners had gone, al of Trip’s family had gone too, but he stayed.

Annaliese was not concerned about what her father thought of her and she took Trip to her bedroom. They didn’t talk. Trip took her black clothes off her, pul ing them over her head, and comforted her like an adult.

When she woke up in the morning, he was gone.

At the breakfast table, her father said that he had seen Trip leave that morning. “Was everything okay last night? Were you real y upset? Is that why he stayed?”

Annaliese gave a shadow of a smile. “Daddie,” she said softly. “I’ve been married to Trip for over five years.”

He gasped. “Legal y?”

She nodded. “Legal y.”

He threw down his napkin. “Why have you been living here?”

She put a hand to her forehead. “You know why. Because mom wouldn’t listen to me. Her and her damn arguing. Her lawyering. You knew I had to be a lawyer or she would never give me and Trip her blessing. I didn’t tel her we got married. If I had, I thought she’d force me to get a divorce.”

He nodded. “I see your problem. I’m sorry. I couldn’t talk her out of it. She just said she knew what was best and I should back off. She felt that way because I was her fourth husband.”

Annaliese stared. “What?”

“You know, she didn’t actual y get her law degree until she was thirty-eight. In her twenties, she was married to a country boy and when she only had miscarriages, he dumped her stuff out on the lawn. Husband number two was a white-col ar worker, but he was unfaithful. It was pretty tough on her when she had miscarriage after miscarriage and he was off doing whatever, whoever. She stayed in that marriage for eight years before getting up the courage to leave him. Then she was married to Clement.”

Annaliese nearly died at that announcement. “Trip’s Uncle Clement? If they were married, why did you let her visit him al those Sundays for al those years?”

He chuckled with a twinkle in his eye. “It didn’t matter. I wasn’t concerned about them having an affair. When they were together, he wouldn’t let her even try to get pregnant. He didn’t want any of those bloody messes on his watch. Instead of letting her drive herself crazy over motherhood, he convinced her to go to law school. I’m not sure if she would have made it through if he hadn’t held her hand, but he wasn’t dependable enough for her in other ways. He didn’t want her to adopt because I don’t think he enjoyed a single child until Trip was born. If you came over, he had an excuse to invite Trip to the house. I don’t think any sight in the world made him happier than Trip sitting in his library with a pretty girl sitting across from him. He had

such high hopes for Trip. That Trip would lead the life he couldn’t, or wouldn’t.” Her father sighed and scanned his memory. “The truth is… I’m not sure if your mother and Clement were legal y married. She had so much shame about the things she had done wrong in her life, she may have just said they were. It didn’t real y matter to me.”

Annaliese felt like screaming. “She could have told me al that. Like the daughter of an overdosing drug addict wouldn’t understand mistakes.”

“Hmm…” he said softly, rol ing over what his late wife never said in his mind. “She thought it was her responsibility to make sure you had something more… something better. Her life never real y improved until she graduated from law school. Your real mother expressed a similar sentiment in her last letter. She wanted better for you. My wife became obsessed with keeping that promise. Did she keep it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I have to go to law school to live happily. There are tons of people who have never gone to law school who find a way to live in this world.”

“Wel , you certainly don’t have to finish law school to make me happy. You can move in with Trip tonight with my blessing. He’s doing wel . I don’t mean to do this immediately, but I was thinking that I’d like to col apse this house in the next few years.”

“Where wil you go?”

He looked around at the empty six-bedroom house that surrounded them. “Somewhere smal er.” He leaned forward and patted her hand with his warm one. “The point is that you don’t have to stay here. I’m over seventy and I don’t need a place this big. A six-bedroom house is a lot for a family who only had one daughter, but I think that your mother thought this house was ful with only you in it. It’s because you fil ed her heart.”

Annaliese let the tears spil down her cheeks and her father held her.

When the moment had lapsed, Annaliese cal ed Trip. There was no answer, but she left a message that she had spoken to her father and she needed to talk to him. She went to her room and started boxing up her things, so she could do exactly as her father said and move in with Trip that night.

Except, he didn’t cal her back.

By the time he did cal her back, two days later, she was rethinking the whole thing. He was sorry, but his phone had been on the fritz and he had been very busy with work and family problems. He was coming by the house. In an absurd panic, she fled the house and even though he waited, she didn’t come back until he had gotten fed up and gone home.

No matter what misunderstandings were plaguing them, they needed to talk. They were married! Annaliese cal ed him. No answer. She left another message, apologizing like a preteen about her lack of communication.

He cal ed her back, but she heard a woman laugh on the other end of the line, went temporarily insane, and hung up. He cal ed her back a second time, but she was too scared to answer the phone. What if he told her that he’d found someone new? They’d been apart for months.

That was the state of things when she saw him at the dinner party, couldn’t bear to see him and had to leave.

It was stil the state of things when she asked him if he was seeing someone else as they played chess in his new library—the same one from their shared past.

FIFTEEN

Annaliese looked at the pieces on the chessboard. Trip was going easy on her. Not only was she having trouble remembering how to play chess, but he was control ing the game so completely that he was choosing which one of her pieces would topple his pieces.

“Trip,” she said quietly, ignoring the game in front of her. “What I’ve done to you feels inexcusable. You’ve been beyond patient and I’ve done nothing but take advantage of your goodness. If you’ve had enough, you have to tel me.”

“Why would you think I’ve had enough? You’re the one who’s been avoiding me,” he said like he was the source of the patience fountain.

“I’m sorry about that. I heard a woman laughing on your end of the phone and I wondered if maybe you’d met someone new in the months we hadn’t seen each other.”

“I haven’t done anything of the sort. This whole situation put us in a love desert, but it was never supposed to last forever. Your mother didn’t hate my guts, she just had ideas that would only be satisfied by one thing. You told me that was the deal when we were sixteen. You didn’t deceive me. This has sucked, but that hasn’t been your fault.” The patience fountain was drying up as he raked a hand through his hair. “Now, do you have anything you have to tel me?”

“Like what?”

“Wel , is there another man? Did you meet someone in law school who saw you the way I saw you, like a little stalk of wheat who didn’t understand the work involved in legislative drafting and needed a hand?”

Annaliese groaned. “No, but only because I told them to get lost. I failed half of my courses this semester.”

“Good girl. No more law school?”

“No! No more law school,” she burst, half like she was screaming and half like she was throwing up.

He got up from his chair, came around the table, put his arms around her, and pul ed her close to him. Resting his chin on the top of her head, he asked quietly, “What do you want to do instead?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care. What are you doing? Can I go along with you until I have had time to think about it?”

“Yeah. I stil haven’t given up my condo downtown. Do you want to live here or do you want to live downtown?”

She pul ed away from him. “There’s a choice?”

“Of course there is. This house has no mortgage on it. I own it completely. If you want to live here, we can.”

Annaliese felt herself fal . His arms came around her and he stopped her from fal ing on her bottom on the hardwood floor. She was crying. “How can I ever pay you back for letting me have that last bit of time together with my mother? How can I ever thank you for waiting for me?

How can we be in a fair relationship when al I’ve ever done is take from you?”

“Have my baby.” He didn’t even hesitate.

“What?”

“Seriously. Have my baby. We’l live here and have little children run around this house the way we did.”

She panted, surprised. She didn’t even know Trip wanted children. “I’d throw out my birth control pil s tonight, but if I get pregnant tomorrow, what wil everyone think? No one knows we’re married.”

He laughed. “If you’re game, I’l work it al out.”

SIXTEEN

Trip and Annaliese had a garden wedding that summer. She wore an empire waist dress that cinched just below her breasts and though she wasn’t very big yet, the maternity wedding dress was chosen on purpose. Al of which surprised the salesgirl who sold them the dress.

Annaliese bought a dress intended for a pregnant woman when she was stil slender as a wil ow branch. She also brought her groom to the bridal boutique and asked his opinion about which dress to buy, but they had a hoot as she tried on dresses and he thumbs-up or thumbs-downed them. They also didn’t shop around. They found a dress they liked on their first shopping trip and bought it without visiting over and over. It was al very perplexing.

The wedding vows they spoke in front of their family and friends were not overseen by someone with legal authority. They had her father pretend to marry them, saying al the flowery words and giving al the blessings they needed to hear. After he proclaimed them husband and wife, several lawyers stood up to clap and then rushed Annaliese’s father to say that what they had witnessed was not a legal wedding ceremony. He told them to calm down. They knew it wasn’t legal. Trip would explain everything. The lawyers stomped off to the reception in a col ective huff.

At the reception under fairy globes, Trip got up and said, “It says on your program that this is the toast to the bride. I’m giving it. I would like to thank my darling wife for becoming my darling wife… five and a half years ago.”

The gasp from the attendees was one of the rewards Trip got for enduring al the hardships of being married to Annaliese.

“As some of you noticed, what you witnessed in the clearing just now was not a legal wedding. We know. Annaliese and I have loved each other since we were children and had to wait a long time to turn eighteen. As many of you know, we were both born in January, so as soon as we’d both had our birthdays, we got ourselves to the courthouse and got married without any kind of parental consent or knowledge.”

Trip beckoned for Annaliese and she joined him in front of their family and friends to come clean.

He went on. “We had a weekend away ski ng to celebrate our wedding and then went back home to our own beds on Sunday night. The next day, we got up and went to school. I know a number of you have fantasized about what this kind of relationship would look like or feel like. I wouldn’t recommend it. We managed to convince everyone we were best friends and nothing more. It feels like I have waited forever to come in front of al of you to say what I have always dreamed of saying. I love Annaliese. She is al I ever wanted and I have waited so long for the chance to say it.”

They kissed and their crowd of wel -wishers clapped, hooted, and whistled for them.

“Annaliese has an announcement to make,” Trip said into the microphone before handing it over to her.

“We’re expecting a baby… in January.”

The End

A Note From Stephanie

Hel o Dear LIttle Ink Drinker,

By now, you’ve probably guessed it. I’m an independent novelist and times are tough. If you enjoyed my novelette and would like to support me, it’s as easy as leaving a review. Please do!

Thanks,

Stephanie Van Orman

Independent Novelist