from myself, part 2

November 2083 - Micah and Mariah Buchanan are 25, Quinn is 15 months. (Madison Riley is 61.)

* warnings: NSFW/kids. Soundtrack: "Songbird," by Fleetwood Mac *

Micah looks out the window because he can't bring himself to look this man in the eyes. What he has to say isn't good news, and Micah already knows this. Out the window there's a dumpster, the street below, and his car parked with forty-five minutes left on the meter. "Your ideas are good," the team leader says. "But I don't know what you think we can do for you. We can't reasonably offer a place on the team without the proper certification."

"Oh, of course," Micah says. The room feels devoid of air. There's a plant in the corner, but it must be fake, because he imagines the lack of air would cause the veins and capillaries of the thing to collapse upon themselves, cause the leaves to shrivel and fold and wilt.

But they don't.

Micah smiles, a half-smile. "You know, I was just trying it out, seeing if it was a good fit."

"Well it looks like you're primed to enter the program if you like. And the sketches are good. Just a few years, pick up that degree, and we can talk again."

"Sure," Micah says.

"But we'll still consider the sketches, if you don't mind. You'll be compensated, of course. No need to let good work go to waste."

He tries to pretend it's not deflating. A master's degree is just not in the cards for them right now - not for him. Not when they're only twenty-five with a toddler, with their entry-level salaries and student loans to pay back, and a mortgage that was much bigger than they should have gotten, and her tuition bills to pay, and her charge card that she uses like it's made of Monopoly money. He will not ask her father for help if it kills him!

But he lets them take the sketches anyway. That way, whenever he passes through the corner of Washington Avenue and University Drive, and he sees a bus stop there, he can feel like he's done something in his life. Even if it's just one tiny something.

She's home with Quinn most days when he gets home from his work. Their life, in moments, can feel ridiculously traditional. Most nights, she even has dinner in the oven, and tonight, it smells like lasagna. But he doesn't demand anything from her. She's always liked to bake.

"How was your day?" she always asks. It's not a token gesture. She waits to hear his answer. He'd figure after having to listen to the days of strangers for her work she wouldn't want to be bothered with his troubles too, but still, she always asks. He doesn't normally have many troubles.

"Fine," he says. It isn't the right time. Not now. Maybe he'll bring it up again after she's finished her courses, at a time when they could actually do something about it. They can't both be going to school and trying to hold this family together at the same time.

They're only twenty-five. It doesn't feel it sometimes.

He knows things didn't turn out the way they'd expected. Too much, and too fast. He knows this. But he doesn't know how to make it up to her. He can't right the things that went wrong, and he wouldn't take back the way they've ended up. They'll just have to do it the hard way. He'll gladly do it the hard way, if she will. He hopes she still wants to do this with him.

They barely have much time together before she has to be out the door for her night classes and sessions. But she never leaves without a hug and a kiss goodbye.

She and Micah spend most of their days apart. She's at home, with Quinn, while he works. And he's at home with Quinn in the nights when she schedules her sessions and classes. This is all for her - she didn't get the space, or time, or youth, or the long engagement, or the wedding she wanted, so she gets to finish her degree.

She misses all the time they used to spend together, back in college when time was free and plentiful. It doesn't help things, to be spending so much time apart when everything feels so complicated. But she knows now that the way she loves Micah was never complicated - it was everything else that was complicated. It was complicated from the start. She always felt like she did something wrong, right then at the start, so that she'd try to move forward and only end up tripping instead.

Quinn is napping and the house is quiet. She wanders into this space that's become his little makeshift studio. He doesn't mind her being here - he's never been one to have secrets to hide. She likes to look at them, and not just the ones of her. Those actually make her nervous. She stands there with his sketches spread out around her, some for work, and some for fun. Just for fun, he always says. He draws her for fun. She never realized how many. They've accumulated over the years.

But there's something about them all.

Her eyes. When he draws her eyes, they look so sad. That's how he sees her, so sad.

It's that, more than anything, that breaks her heart.

Why should she be sad when she has everything? Why should she feel so unfinished when she's sharing her life with the man she loves? She has everything but this one single thing. Peace. And it's the only thing in the world that she can't talk to her husband about.

When she loved James, she had given him her entire heart, and when she left him, she did something wrong. There was a piece she never got back. So she carries around this gap, this scar of a failed love that had meant so much to her at the time. He meant everything to her at the time, but no one ever knew that.

No one ever knew.

James was right - she'd made the right choice. But she did it wrong. So she grabs Quinn from her nap, wraps the child up and whisks her out into the cold. And Mariah drives them into the city, to see her mother.

Madison is working that afternoon. Mariah bursts into her mother's office, sits Quinn on her lap, and pulls up a chair.

"You never knew him," she tells her mother.

"Never knew who?" Madison says.

"My first boyfriend," she says. "Micah wasn't my first boyfriend."

"Well I know you dated," Madison says.

"No, not just dated," Mariah says. "His name was James. We lived together in the Academy House, for two years. He wanted to marry me."

"I was scared to let you meet him," Mariah says. "Because he was into some bad things. I didn't think you and Dad would like him. But he loved me, I loved him too. And then I met Micah. And I knew what the right choice was, but I did it so fast, and now there are all these things I keep remembering, like I'm remembering things about this person who never really existed."

So Mariah recounts the entire history of this first, precious, failed, love. She remembers the way he smelled like motor oil from working on his car. She remembers their long lazy mornings in bed. She remembers how quiet he was, impossible to talk to sometimes. She remembers how she tried anyway to dig into his stiff mind, if only for one tiny fragment of what he was thinking. She remembers their fights, about how many outfits she had to try on before they went out, or about how he always snuck away from her parties because all the people made him nervous, or about whose career ambitions were more ridiculous. She remembers that neither one of them ended up doing what they thought they'd do anyway.

She remembers everything, how they worked, and how they didn't work. She lets each memory in, every single one that wants to come. She takes it, she holds it in her mind, and she feels it. Then she lets it out to make room for another. Then another, and another. She lets herself remember everything.

And her mother listens, in a stunned silence. She listens to everything, and she doesn't speak, and she doesn't try to ask questions, and she just rubs Quinn's back gently when the child starts to get restless. Together they relive the entire history of this doomed young love. Until finally, they've felt it all.

"I don't want to be with him," Mariah says finally. "That was never the question. I love Micah - he's my life. But there was a time James was very important to me. And I just need to tell you that. I needed you to know who he was."

Madison nods. "Okay," she says.

As Mariah drives home, the air feels lighter. The first smells of winter feel brisk and so fresh. Quinn's chatter in the back seat even more whole than she could have ever imagined. It's a different kind of closure. The things that were so quickly brushed under the rug are taken back out and given light. Love is given credit for what it was.

***

She has sessions and classes late into the evening most nights. Then it's a twenty-five minute drive home from the city. She's tired in her mind more than her body when she comes home, after working to solve the problems in everyone else's lives.

He falls asleep on top of the covers waiting, the lamp left on and the book dropped from his hand. He doesn't remember what page he was on. She closes the door lightly behind her, but he wakes anyway.

She steps out of her shoes first. He watches her undress, sliding the sweater from her shoulders, bending in perfect angles to pull her dress up over her head. She does it with grace. She does everything with a such painfully careful grace. If she hadn't told him otherwise, he would have sworn she'd taken ballet as a child.

She gets a nightgown from the dresser and comes to sit on the bed, the fabric clutched in her hands. On the baby monitor, Quinn breathes in sharp, but deep, exhaling in a slow staccato. It's on his mind still, the flop meeting, the deflation. He said he was just trying it out, but to be honest, he had been hoping something would come of it.

And no, his week did not go fine. No, it was actually pretty shitty. He wants her to know this – his wife, his best friend – she should know this, but at the same time this lousy career move feels so insignificant compared to whatever is missing here in this room.

Her touch at his arm is tentative, but she leaves her fingers there on his skin.

“I miss you,” he tells her.

She nods, taking his face in her hand, rubbing her thumb over his unshaven cheek. “I know,” she says. "I'm sorry."

She leans in to kiss him. In her lips, he feels the tremble of a stunted cry.

He takes her into his hands and they lay back across the bed.

When they make love, it's like they'd been drowning, like they're gasping for air. When he touches her, she holds his hands to her skin. When he leans down to kiss her neck, she smiles and tilts her head back so he can kiss her more. When he moves over her, she locks her legs around him so they move together. When she comes, she holds him pressed firm to her body, and she doesn't let him go.

And then they don't move. And the air is still. And Quinn's breaths on the monitor are soft then, slowly in, slowly out. And the tossed sheets tangle around their legs, and their legs wrap around each other, and their lungs, pressed chest to chest, are timed in perfect compliments, so that they can't tell who breathes in or who breathes out.

And they were meant to be more than the aftermath of all these things left unsaid and the wrong turns they've taken. They were meant to be so much more.

*******

(footnotes: part 1)

notes: to be continued with part 3, which by the way, will be the conclusion of this storyline.

This one is when it dawned on me what she needed, by the way. And there were some hints in the author's notes here. And you're probably thinking, that's IT? That little thing? It seems so simple, doesn't it?

But when I was writing her there at Bella's wedding, and in the thoughts after it was finished, I knew that this was what she needed to let it all finally come to a rest. So I thought I'd let her brew that information for a couple more months and then finally have that realization herself. She's been a very difficult girl to make sense of ;)