Drown #8: reclamation day, part 2

December 2085. Justin Kim is 25, Stephanie Nova is 26, Willow is 3. 

* NSFW


So, just like that, the world wasn’t going to end.

Stephanie drank some carrot juice from her new juicer and lamented that while she might get to do a lot of things in her lifetime, she would never get to be an Olympic figure skater. It all seemed so silly and inconsequential, and normal.

Things she might get to do: see her daughter grow up, get divorced and married again, have a twenty-sixth birthday, see Europe and maybe Africa. Go to the moon. She would get to worry about the mundane kinds of things that people did, like what on earth would the holidays look like with two divorced couples and three sets of parents who didn’t get along?



The skies were full of nothing but clouds now and the sounds that filled the air were wind and rain and birdsong. The airplanes began to fly again. The world wouldn’t end, but the planet was still destroyed. The empty skies were beautiful, but unbreathable.

Left to nature, it would take a thousand years to replenish the amount of oxygen that humans were used to in the atmosphere. So planes flew over with carefully calculated jet trails. They needed to terraform the Earth. They needed to reclaim the air and undo what wrongs had been done to it. They used what technologies they had learned from the earlier parts of the century to combat global warming, so they were ahead of the curve in that respect. It would not take a thousand years to replenish. The air would hopefully become breathable again after five years. Until then, people were instructed to continue the air filter procedures they had learned.

Humankind reclaimed their planet. They took back what was theirs.

But it was too soon to let down their guard. In the coming years, there would be patrols running in the solar system. And they hoped to remain in contact and learn from their new allies in the cosmos. They were training new troops to relieve the ones who had been fighting for so long. Forces would be put out into space on a rotation. They had hopes to bring people home for the holidays, some who had been away for three long years.

Stephanie received a notice of Jeremiah's return date. She was instructed to meet her service member at their local ISCA building on December 18th, 2085 for pickup.

The world was not ending, but for Stephanie, it would never be quite the same again.

***

The holiday season of 2085 was an enthusiastic one. Everyone celebrated like they thought they would never see another holiday again. Because, for a time, they truly believed that might be the case. They put up their Christmas tree before Thanksgiving was over. On Thanksgiving, they had so much to give thanks for.


Just after Thanksgiving, Lucy and Violet's family came to find them. It happened like this all over the world. Husbands found their wives and children. Families were reunited and made their new homes. People found their families and took back what was theirs, their jobs, their lives, people made right what had gone wrong.


In those months, every day was Reclamation Day for someone.

And this once bustling house was now reduced to six.

***

Alice looked forward to the spring and she spoke of plans to open the university in January for the spring semester.

Stephanie recognized the glimmer of purpose in her mother's eyes. She had work to do again, and she loved the idea of it.

"You don't mind if your father and I move back into the campus estate, do you? It would be wonderful to save time on that commute every day. We'd do like we did before, weekdays on campus and weekends here. What do you think?"

"We don't mind at all," Stephanie said. She didn't think the last thing of it.

"Great," Alice said. "I know you two take care of everything there is to do around here anyway. So much better than we ever did."


But Stephanie did think something of it, to be honest. Stephanie felt capable for once in her life. She remembered the first time her mother had left her in charge of the house, three years ago, when Willow was a newborn and Jeremiah was going off to war. Stephanie had felt so lost and broken back then. Now the girls were older and Stephanie felt stable and truly happy. Maybe it was just growing up. Or maybe it had to do with Justin.

Her mother didn't even ask if they'd be okay on their own. She just assumed it.


And then there were four.

***

Stephanie thought of her marriage to Jeremiah like a tiny blip on the timeline of her whole life. Looking back on it from this vantage point, it barely felt like a moment. But he was her husband—for a little while, he was—and she promised him some things, even if she didn't intend to promise him everything. She felt like she owed him a place to come home to after the war, after she forgot about him and fell in love with someone else shamelessly and completely. She owed him a place to come home to and a couple weeks to get on his feet. She owed him that much, at least, didn't she?

Jeremiah had no one else to come home to. He never spoke of his family, who were dispersed and out of contact. Now that she thought of it, he never spoke of any childhood friends or anyone at all except for Bella, whom he spoke about constantly.

So she prepared their home for his homecoming, as awkward and temporary as it would be.

And the simple fact of it was that he and Justin should probably not stay in the same house. So Justin agreed that for a short time, until things were settled, he should go stay with his parents.


It made them both sad to pack up his clothes, his books, his toothbrush and hair gel, his pictures, to even be as thorough as picking up a dirty lost sock underneath their bed. Stephanie wanted to tell him to stay. But she needed some time to sort things out with Jeremiah, and first that meant not telling him exactly how shamelessly she’d been cheating on him and living with her lover for the past two years. Not telling him she was kind of engaged. That would be the absolute wrong thing to come out with first. However much Jeremiah might have guessed already, she didn't want to rub it in his face. She was just trying to make this as easy as possible.

So she would even have to take down the pictures of Justin that her parents had hung on the walls over the past couple of years. "Just for now," she said. "Not because I’m ashamed, but because they’ll make him mad. I know they will, and he’ll get mad and he'll ruin them. I’d be really sad if he ruined them."


"It’s okay," Justin said. "I know. When it’s all done, when everything settles down, we’d probably want to get a real place together somewhere for us and the girls, right? I mean, we weren’t going to live in your parents house forever."

She smiled. He made it sound so normal and easy. It gave her hope that it could actually be that normal and easy.

"That sounds nice," she said. "Maybe you can start looking at places."

***

Mornings were quiet now without a newborn in the house and without her parents here to wake up absurdly early with their morning clatter downstairs. November went by so fast. The first two weeks of December went by, too. Jeremiah's homecoming was just four days away now. It was almost time. She hadn't seen her husband in almost three years and in just four days, he would be home. He would be here, in this house, and he knew what she'd done, what she was still doing. He knew it all and he was coming home.


Stephanie opened her eyes to that thought. She also found that Justin wasn’t in bed next to her and she panicked. He was only in the shower, she soon realized. He was going back to work because that was what people did. She kept forgetting that people were working again, going to regular jobs to pay their regular bills in this world with no air.

But the bed felt cold without him and she didn't like it. She was making him leave and she dreaded for how long it would be before they were together again. She feared that she was already doing it all wrong.


He came back from the shower. "Hey, you're up."

"The bed got cold. I couldn't sleep."

"Do you wanna get back in bed really quick before I go to work?"


He dropped his towel and climbed under the covers with her, smelling clean and wet. She was trying to think positive, she really was. But then she kissed him and he kissed her back and she worried that one of these times might possibly be their last time together. Their last time ever. It could happen—something could go horribly wrong, they weren’t impervious to it. In fact, where Stephanie was involved, failure and misfortune were almost a given.

His touch felt divine, but she couldn't stop herself from feeling all the panic and worry and indecision all at once. She pushed back the covers and started to cry.


"I don’t know where he’s going to sleep," she told Justin between sobs. "If I ask my parents to sleep over, he can’t sleep in their room. But I don’t want my parents to not stay over, either. And I don’t want him to sleep in our bed, but I don’t want him to sleep in Willow’s room either, because she doesn’t really know him. Can I ask him to sleep on the couch after he just got back from war for three years? Is that rude? Willow could sleep with me and he could have her bed, and that would be fine, but he’s too tall for Willow’s bed. He’s too tall for the couch, too, probably. But I don’t want him to sleep in bed with me, I don’t want that at all."

"Steph, I don't know about leaving you to do this on your own. Maybe I should stay?"

"You can't stay," she said. "He would definitely kill you. He would kill you so bad. You can't be there when I tell him."

"Will your parents stay with you then?"

"I think so. If I asked them to, they would. For a few days, at least."


"He can sleep on the couch," Justin said. "He’ll be fine. It’s not even a bad couch. I slept on it plenty of times and it's actually okay. It’s all going to be okay."

"Okay," she said.

"But maybe bring Willow to bed with you anyway. And then you can lock your door when you go to sleep."

"I didn’t think of that," she said. "Oh, god, I didn’t even think of that."

"It's okay, you're thinking of it now."

"I'm not ready. I just want more time."

"There isn’t more time."

"I think I might throw up."

"I’m sure he’ll find that very charming." Justin grinned at an idea. "Actually, that could work in my favor. Just be as gross as you can and he won’t want you anymore, and then I can have you back. I'm going to feed you chili with extra beans the night before. You can gas him out of the house. And don't try to tell me that girls don't fart. Because you do when you've had beans and it ain't pretty."

She laughed and cried at the same time. "I love you so much," she said.

"I love you, too," he said. Then he glanced at the time. "Damn, I have to go."

He whipped on his clothes as she stood naked and wiped her ridiculous tears. His shirt had two buttons undone and his tie was slung loose around his neck to fix later. Before he finished any of it, he wrapped her up in his arms.


"You can do this. This is the beginning of everything for us. They’re coming home, so we can get our divorces and make it all real."

"Okay," she said.

"I’m gonna think about you like this all day."

"What, crying?"

"No, I meant naked."

She laughed softly.

"My parents will watch the girls Thursday night," he said. "I want to take you out for your birthday. And we can spend some time together because it might be…"

He stopped. He didn't say, "the last time," but what he almost said must have been about the same thing and he knew it.

"It might be a while before we can again," he said. "Just a little while, Steph. It can be done and over with as soon as you're ready for it. But you better get dressed because I heard the girls singing in their beds. They’re gonna be banging on the door in two minutes."

***

Stephanie remembered the only way she’d been able to talk to her best friend during the years she’d been with Jeremiah. She thought of them like truth bombs. Three minutes while Jeremiah was using the bathroom. Ten minutes while he was in the shower. Then she suddenly felt panicked at how it used to be, for those two years she had to box up her heart. She felt compelled to tell Justin everything she ever wanted to say in case she never got the chance.


They had pastries at the cafe for her birthday dinner and she told him everything she ever wanted to tell him all at once, no matter how trivial or embarrassing or profound. "Freshman year in college I used to keep a picture of you under my pillow. And I was almost going to say yes to being best man in your wedding, but now I'm glad I didn't. And you are by far the best lover I've ever had. And you have incredible eyelashes. And I wonder sometimes what our kids would look like ... if we ever got the chance to have any together."

He smiled. "How many would we have?"

"Two more," she said, "to make four total. If you don't think four is too many."


"Four kids." He puffed up his shoulders and gloated at her, looking virile and eager. "Wow, I better get a promotion."

She laughed at him.

They didn’t say so, but they both understood that they’d been blessed with a freedom that never would have happened had Jeremiah not gone off to war. Jeremiah never would have let them get close enough to fall in love the way they did, so freely and deep. He would have made sure of that. Their love would have had to be contained to three-minute truth bombs, careful and discreet, never knowing how it felt to let that love grow and blossom and take over their whole hearts. Never knowing how great love could feel.

Maybe not for anyone else on the planet, but this war had been a true blessing to Stephanie. It had changed her life in ways that were brilliant and terrifying all at once.

And maybe for that reason, she had the foreboding feeling sometimes that she was bending her fate, that she had stolen something that was not meant to be hers. She dreaded now that Jeremiah would come home to take back what was his. Like everyone else in the aftermath of this war, he would have his own Reclamation Day. He would reclaim his family and put right what he thought was wrong. He would try, anyway.

—

Justin was glad to have Stephanie for her birthday. She turned twenty-six this year. He felt like he’d watched his gangly tomboy of a best friend grow up into the most gentle, loving, beautiful woman he’d ever known, inside and out. He watched her bloom and now he had to give her back.

"Do you remember two years ago, Christmas?" she asked him. "We laid on the floor together in the dark and watched the Christmas lights blink. You wouldn't kiss me that year, but I knew you wanted to. Let's do it again. Let's do it again and kiss this time."

"Can we do more than kiss?"

She giggled and stripped off their clothes.


"I don't want us to make a big deal of it," she said. "I don't want to feel like it might be the last time. I just want it to be like regular, ordinary, Thursday night sex. Good as it always is."

So that was what they did, they had ordinarily wonderful Thursday night sex with the breathtaking twinkle of Christmas tree lights in each other's eyes.

She didn't move off of his body when they were done. Soon they would have plenty of time to be apart, now they just wanted their bodies to touch at every length, from their toes to their hip bones to their ribs to their lips, like they could melt into each other and become one single being.


"How long will it take you to tell him?"

"I don't know," she said. "How long do you think it should take?"

He felt bad for asking that now. She should take as long as she needed. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't decide that for you, Steph. You need to decide that."

He couldn't rush her. That wasn't fair. He believed in her love and he believed that she would do it when she was ready. But what if she changed her mind? What if Jeremiah changed her mind? Justin had heard the way he talked to her.

"But how do you know you don’t want to be with him? You haven't seen him in three years, how can you really be so sure you don't have any feelings left for him at all? He’s tall, dark, and handsome—that’s what you used to say. That's why you fell in love with him, isn’t it? What if he charms you all over again?"

She shook her head. "Impossible. I fell in love with him because I couldn’t have you."

"So, basically, this is all my fault."

"Yup," she said and grinned.

"But just so you know, if you felt like you needed to, for closure, I wouldn’t be mad."

She touched his cheek. "But you would be so sad."

"I’d be devastated. It’s not fair, maybe. But I wouldn’t be mad at you."

"I know you wouldn't," she said. "But I still don't want to."




They watched the lights and they didn't have much more to talk about. They'd said it all already. They'd worried about every little thing, every way they could imagine to worry.

So he traced mindless shapes over her belly, around, across, up, down, a star, a whirlpool that circled her belly button and ended in the middle. She giggled softly and he held her there.

"I'll try to call you tomorrow night," she said, "if it all goes well."

"But you should call me if it doesn't go well, too," he said. "Call me if your parents can’t make it. Or call me if they don’t want to stay overnight. Call me if he upsets you. Call me if you need anything at all. Or just call me anyway to say hi or good night."

"Or I love you," she said.

"That would be nice, too," he said. "Are you scared?"

"Not right now."

Now he felt more scared than she did. His sweet, gentle Stephanie. He felt like he was sending a mouse to do battle with a bear. But this was her marriage and her battle to fight. Or maybe that was wrong—she never would have been in this position if he hadn't been so blind when they were younger. It all felt wrong. He remembered something she said once about choices and mistakes, about how some mistakes you couldn't come back from. The path you were meant to be on doesn't just get lost, it gets erased from history entirely. But how did you know what the mistakes were until after you made them?


"Are you cold?" he asked. "Do you want to go to bed?"

"Not yet," she said. "I never want this to end."

"It won't end. You and me, Steffie, we go on forever. Nothing can change us."

"You promise?"


"We already did. 'Whether it works or whether it doesn’t, let’s never let it change us.' Remember? I promised and you did, too."

"I still do," she said.

***

And then there were two.

Stephanie wasn’t sure what she should wear on the day of her estranged husband’s arrival. Casual, but not so sloppy that it would be disrespectful. The forecast called for snow, so she dug out their snow boots and made sure the car was fully charged. She wasn’t sure what to wear or what to say or how to act. It made much more sense to dress Willow on the occasion of meeting her father for the first time that she would remember, so that was what Stephanie did. Stephanie cut Willow’s hair and her two pigtails were now light and bouncy. She picked out a kitty shirt and her favorite flower necklace.

"You look so pretty, girlie," Stephanie said.

"You look pretty, too, Momma," Willow said.

Stephanie wondered if she should have tried to look less pretty, considering her intentions.

"Are you excited?"


"Uh huh," Willow said. "Is Jussin and Lily coming, too?"

"No, sorry, baby. It's just the two of us today."

It was all she could ask all week: Is my dada fun like Jussin? Is my dada nice like Jussin? Will he read the Turtle and Duck book? Will he do the voices? When is Jussin coming back?

They raised these girls together—they never said "yours" or "mine," just ours—and now Stephanie had to worry that would be very obvious to Jeremiah. Willow didn't call Justin "daddy" but she loved him as the man who'd raised her since she was an infant. She loved him like an integral part of her family, the only family she'd ever known, as messy and complicated as it was perfect.

It had only been eighteen hours since Willow had seen Justin last, and already she was going through withdrawals. Stephanie understood how she felt. They would get him back as soon as they could, but first they had to put right their wrongs.


This would be the beginning of everything.

"Here we go, girlie," Stephanie said. "Here we go."

—

footnotes: the paths // the promise