Chapter Text
“Our first excursion out of the city got cut short, so, if you don’t mind a lot of time in the car today, I thought we’d go out toward the national park lands.”
“Of course,” Honey agreed.
“I’ve been thinking about what I said about needing to learn to relax and be content and at peace. I thought we’d head for one of the waterfalls this morning.”
“There should be some beautiful ones in reach, even without our serious hiking gear,” Honey said from her research over the years into her dream vacation.
🔍
The falls Brian was leading them toward were several hours inland from their hotel on the coast. The drive gave them time to talk, about everything, and nothing. Brian felt like they were finally moving in the same direction by the time they got out of the car to walk in to the falls. He hoped Honey felt the same way.
The waterfall he’d chose was tall and narrow, falling into a pool lined with mossy stones. The images online had reminded him of the peaceful creek in the fern gully. They sat together along the bank, Brian’s arm around Honey’s shoulders.
After a few minutes, Honey tipped her head back to look at him. “Stop thinking,” she advised.
“Hmm?”
“You want to find peace and contentment in a place like this? It’s right in front of you. Let go an embrace it! Stop thinking,” she repeated.
“But…”
“If it’s too important to let go, it’s important enough to say it, not hold it in. If it’s not important enough to say it, then let it go and be present in this moment, not the next one, or the last one.”
It was going to take practice, Brian realized. It was harder than it sounded.
🔍
The other location Brian wanted to visit was known for spectacular sunsets, but it was only an hour from the falls. That left them plenty of time to meander along, stopping wherever the expansive landscape caught their eyes. The geography was vast, and caught them off guard a few times, when they thought they’d just walk over to the top of that knoll to get a better view of the area, and “that knoll” turned out to be a twenty minute walk away, rather than five.
In New York, with the Adirondacks to the east and the Catskills to the north, the mountains were close, giving them a shortened horizon. With nothing significant rising up to break the horizon, it was much further away than they were accustomed to, which made their brains’ mental calculations based on relative distances skewed.
Brian could explain exactly what was happening in both their eyes and brains resulting in the misjudgments about distances, but he hadn’t spent enough time in places with a true horizon, like this, to be able to correct for it.
Fortunately, their afternoon was meant to be lazy, and they were in no particular rush, so a fifteen minute stop turning into an hour was…more the point than not.
At last, Brian decided they should actually head for their real destination, if they wanted time to get something to eat before the hike out to the balconies, the overlook that was supposed to have the best views, before the sun went down.
“This has been fun, Brian,” Honey admitted as they waited for a table at the restaurant they’d decided to try for dinner. “Thanks for planning it.”
“You’re welcome,” Brian said, more from habit than anything. He still believed Honey deserved more thanks than him. This had been her dream vacation destination, for a start.
🔍
They were clearly not the only ones who had the idea to hike out to the overlook for the sunset. Well, calling it a hike felt generous to Brian. It was only, what, a little over a mile from where they’d left the car, all maintained, and accessible, so… just a walk, not a hike. Especially after a few of their “just to that rise” walks earlier in the day.
But now they’d arrived in the midst of a crowd. They drifted off to find their own vantage point, but Brian saw some of the other families and couples had picnic baskets and he kicked himself. That’s what they should have done. He should have realized a popular destination at a popular time in good weather would be crowded. They should have planned to get here earlier, before the crowd, with a picnic dinner and the best vantage point claimed before anyone else.
But they hadn’t planned ahead, because this vacation wasn’t about The Plan. It was about Honey. Brian tried to talk himself down, but if they didn’t get good views or pictures of this sunset because Brian hadn’t thought it through, another disappointment in Honey’s life, however minor, would be his fault, and he knew he’d racked up a list over the years.
Then the sun got low in the sky, banding the landscape into deep purple mountains in the far distances, and bright red, orange, pink, and gold stripes across the sky. The crowd fell away. The Plan fell away. The lack thereof fell away. There was just Honey, and him, and perhaps the most beautiful sunset he had ever or would ever see. Honey glowed, her smile broad and content, lighting up her face even more than the last rays of sun striking against her cheeks.
“You’re beautiful, Honey,” he whispered in her ear. She turned, kissing him eagerly.
🔍
The next morning, as they walked through a museum, Honey slid her hand into Brian’s. “Okay, you’ve given me a lot of time to talk, and vent, about our relationship. What about you?” Honey asked him. “Be honest with me. Did you truly have no sense anything was amiss before this week?”
“I wouldn’t say I had no sense. I knew the distance and schedule had been wearing on us and on our relationship. I had never gotten to the point where I questioned whether it was worth trying to fix us, whether the problems were greater than my will to solve them. It sounds, though, as though you have asked yourself those hard questions.”
“I have,” she agreed.
“I hadn’t,” Brian reiterated. “I care deeply about you, Honey, and I want to make this work. I think it can. You are right; we have issues, especially communication-wise. I thought it was all related to not having time, but now I think a lot of it is that I didn’t make the right use of the time I had. I can learn, though, Honey. I see a future for us that I want. I think it could be as good as anything the others have.”
Brian drew Honey close. “I want to be able to give you magical and perfectly perfect. I’m certain you can give that to me, but if you just don’t see any possibility of me providing all you’re looking for, it’s okay to be honest with me. I don’t want you to feel trapped in something that you think has no hope of working long term.”
“I still dream of the future and see you in it. I’m not completely ready to give up on you, Bri,” Honey confessed. “But, I need to feel loved and needed. I need to know that I—and especially our kids—will always be the most important thing. I cannot let any child of mine ever wonder, the way I did, if they are wanted or if either or both of their parents love them or merely tolerate them.”
“Our kids would be loved,” he promised her again.
“I know, because there will be no kids until I’m certain of that. But I don’t want to just talk about my issues. I know you want to fight for us; I’ve heard your promises to be there for me and the hypothetical children. But what about you? What are your hopes for the future? What do you need from me? Or am I just perfectly perfect already?”
Brian laughed. “Of course you are just perfectly perfect.” He sighed and gave serious thought to his answer before speaking again. “I talked to Jim once about us and told him I thought we might be in love with the idea of being in love with each other. Honey, I am steady and responsible and dependable. I will be there for you and the kids. But I’m human. I may have bad days; I might get stressed or upset, and I need to know that’s okay, that I don’t have to be steady every second. I need to know you will be there, for me, in my weakest moments. I’m also me. I’m not going to be happy being just Dr. Mr. Honey Wheeler, any more than you’d be happy as just Mrs. Dr. Brian Belden. Though I like and respect them both very much, I’m not your father, and I’m not Jim, either.”
“I know you’re not,” Honey said.
“You know it in your head,” Brian agreed. “But sometimes you act like you expect me to be them—or fear that I am them. That’s the hardest thing about it. I don’t know whether it’s what you want or your worst nightmare. It seems to change day to day.”
“I’m sorry, Bri. It’s not intentional. I love them both dearly, but sometimes….”
“Sometimes they make you crazy. That’s family, Hon.”
“And in the sort of future we’ve been talking about all week, you’re my family, eventually.”
“And we’ll love each other dearly, and make each other crazy sometimes,” Brian told her.
“But will we love each other more than we make each other crazy? Or will we just make each other crazy?” Brian didn’t respond. “Brian, what are you thinking? You’re not saying anything.”
“I’m sorry,” Brian said. “I know it would be rude of me to laugh, but your bout of insecurity is rather endearing.”
“My insecurity?”
“Honey, what else do you call it? We’ve been together for more than a dozen years. We’ve definitely loved each other. I know I’ve driven you crazy. In the interest of self-preservation, I won’t comment on whether or not you’ve driven me crazy,” Brian teased.
“Brian!”
“My point is, we already love each other dearly and make each other crazy. Why should we think that’s going to change in the second dozen years, or the third, or seventh?”
“That exactly my point, too,” Honey insisted. “If you’re already making me so crazy I’m questioning the whole concept of us, and we’re only in the first dozen years, what’s it going to be like in the second dozen? How do we make it when we’re married, and living together, if we can’t even manage now? This is serious, Brian. This isn’t me being cute, or endearing.”
“I like endearing,” Brian told her.
“Endearing is going to crumble in sickness and poorer and worse and whatever else is in vows, and I’m not going to be one of those socialite women who latches on to someone until she—or the guy—gets bored and then moves on to the next one. I do not want arm candy. I do not want a name I can flash. And I don’t want to be the trophy wife, or the name you can flash. Do you understand, Brian? I still introduce myself as Honey for a reason,” she told him as they emerged into the midday sun. “Because I want to be me, not Madeline G Wheeler, social princess.”
“I have never traded on my relationship with your family, or Di’s,” Brian said, outraged that she would even suggest it. He sat on a bench they were passing and tugged her down beside him, taking a moment to breathe and manage his frustration. “And you can’t have it both ways. You can’t think I’m arm candy or a name you can flash – which is ridiculous, because I’m just a Sleepyside Belden – and then be worried about being a trophy wife. Either I’m good enough for you—and your concerns about being a trophy wife are unfounded—or I’m not good enough for you, in which case a) I’m not a name you can flash and b) why in the world are you still with me?”
“Why in the world—! Why in the world am I still with you?” Honey barely managed to keep her voice at a reasonable volume. “Because I love you!”
Brian sat back, reassured for the first time all week. “Well, that’s the one thing we’ve got.”
“This is not Breakfast at Tiffany’s!”
Brian grinned. “And that’s two. ‘Cause, as I recall, I think we both kinda liked that song.” He pulled out his phone. It took him only a few seconds to find the song online. He turned up the volume and hit play. “Come on, Hon. I know our lives have come between us. But we’ve still got at least the one thing, right? Can we try?”
“I don’t know, Bri,” Honey said. “I see you, the only one who knew me, but now your eyes see though me. … So what now?”
“We start at the beginning, Hon. I still see you running toward the house, full of excitement.”
“Diamonds will do that.”
“So diamonds really are a girl’s best friend?”
“I remember you, Jim, and Mart getting pretty excited about that diamond, too.”
Brian shrugged good-naturedly. He pulled her closer. “I also remember you forgetting all about the diamond when our eyes locked,” he whispered conspiratorially in her ear.
“I didn’t forget about the diamond. I couldn’t reveal Schoolgirl Shamus Inc. secrets to perfect strangers.”
Brian laughed. “Nice try. Jim didn’t start in with that joke until months later.”
“So you want to start over again at the beginning, with me running to you,” Honey clarified.
“It seems like a good enough place to start,” Brian said.
“Of course it does, to you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Brian demanded, and then he said gently, “Honey, what’s wrong with starting with when we met?”
“Nothing,” Honey said. “Starting at the beginning, it’s logical.”
“But?” He prompted.
“But it’s starting with me running toward you. Me chasing after you, trying to get a date out of you between classes, and internships, and shifts. Me running toward you, begging to be noticed, begging you to care.”
“Honey, I care.”
“Brian, please. Who was at the hospital with coffee and breakfast sandwiches the last time your shift got extended into a double with no notice, even though you didn’t call because it was too late at night?”
“You were. I appreciated it.”
“You’re welcome. Brian, the Bar exam? It’s not a single test like a college final. It takes days. Who even noticed that I wasn’t in Sleepyside? Yeah, I heard you say ‘the Bar is a big deal’ the other day. But I also heard ‘but I didn’t even wonder where you were when you were taking it’. Because it’s always me running to you, not the other way around.”
“Honey,” he tried to protest, but he stopped himself. “I’m sorry, Honey; you’re right. I’ve been pulled in so many directions and you’ve gotten the short end of the stick every time. It’s not right. It’s not fair to you.”
“Now we’ve got common ground to start from,” Honey told him.
“So our common ground is that you have a right to be pissed at me, to want to leave. Can we negotiate that?”
“How so?”
“Can we also agree that this is complicated and messy for both of us and that neither of us have been completely happy up to now? That we both have to work on this, together, to make this work?”
Honey considered for a couple minutes and then nodded stiffly. “We can agree to that.”
Brian took her hands in his, rubbing a thumb over her knuckles gently. “Can we also agree that, if we didn’t love each other, we’d have left each other by now?” Honey nodded again. “Then that’s something,” Brian said.
“Yeah, but what do we do with it that changes the outcome from the current one?”
“I don’t know yet,” Brian admitted.
🔍
The longer their vacation went on, the more Honey found herself wavering. She was just about ready to pull the plug when they’d arrived, but now? The longer they spent together, talking about their relationship—and everything else—the more Honey remembered all the reasons she loved Brian. The bright futures she had once envisioned for them drew back, maddeningly closer to within reach. If working on their relationship meant she could have this, she agreed with Brian that this was worth fighting for. She just feared that the more realistic conclusion was that everything would go back to normal when they went home, and she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life resenting Brian’s career, not when he was so good at it and clearly made a difference.
“Brian, can we talk?”
Brian discarded the first three responses on his lips, fearing they’d spark another argument about how much time he hadn’t had for her up to now. “Absolutely,” he settled on.
“You said you want to fight for us, whatever I need from you to believe in our future as fully as you do.”
“And I meant it,” Brian assured her.
Honey nodded. “I think it’s become clear to both of us that we both need to work on communicating better.” Brian nodded solemnly at that. “I need you to be in contact with me every day, whether that’s in person, or on the phone, or just a simple text saying, ‘shift ran over; crashing.’”
“Fair enough,” Brian agreed.
Honey winced. Of the demands she was making of Brian, this one felt the least fair of the bunch. Responsibility for initiating contact should be shared equally between them, right? But she’d been initiating…everything… for so long that, fair or not, it felt like it must be his turn.
“And a minimum of three dates a month that we actually make. I want to demand at least one date a week, but I know sometimes stuff happens, or I’m working one shift and you’re working another, so you can have one freebie a month.”
“You deserve more than that,” Brian admitted. “And now that I’m taking over Dr. Ferris’ practice, my schedule should at least be a bit more consistent, so I’m hoping, at least, that this will be the easiest of your conditions to fulfill.”
“I hope so. Brian, this week…it’s been beautiful. It’s reminded me why I fell in love with you and all the dreams I had for our future. If this is how it can be, I’ll fight for it with you, but if this is vacation mode, the exception, not the norm, then I can’t live with our relationship like it’s been for the rest of my life.”
“I still believe we can have a wonderful future together,” Brian told her.
“I hope so, I really do,” Honey agreed, letting herself cuddle into Brian’s arms as he reached for her. “I love you, Brian, and I do believe that you love me. My doubts are about whether we can make our lives and wants and needs fit together, not about the sincerity of our feelings.”
“I haven’t made it easy for you to believe my life is compatible with anyone’s, not since I got accepted into medical school. I know that Honey, and I full intend to do everything I can to show you the future of our dreams is still ahead of us.”
🔍
As a child who had grown up on Looney Tunes, Brian knew he couldn’t travel all the way to Australia and not visit Tasmania, even if he didn’t end up seeing a real-life wild Tasmanian Devil. When his absent Googling to see what there was to do on the island (besides hunt for a cartoon character and feel like a kid and/or that he was failing at adulting), showed many of the best sites in Australia to see the Southern Lights were in Tasmania, he immediately knew they needed an overnight on the island.
Knowing weather was not the most biddable thing, and that their chances of picking a night and actually seeing the Lights was unlikely, Brian still wanted a night in Tasmania. He and Honey—all of the Bob-Whites, really—loved stargazing. Anywhere with good views of the Southern Lights had to have good night sky views, and the constellations—the whole night sky—was different here than in New York. Stargazing was definitely on the itinerary.
They took a boat. Supposedly, helicopters were just as good a way to see the famous rock formations and shoreline cliffs in the sea between the mainland and Tasmania, but Brian never thought the sense of scale, of grandiosity, hit him as hard from above as it did from the bottom of a thing. It meant an early morning the first day and late night the second, but—as Brian kept trying to remind himself—this trip wasn’t about efficiency, it was about experience. He hoped Honey didn’t mind, since this was the other part of the trip he’d planned before their arrival, and therefore without consulting her.
Once they were out to sea, away from the attention-grabbing rock formations and cliff-faces, most of the other passengers dispersed, leaving Honey and Brian a little privacy at the rail near the bow. “I love the ocean,” Honey confided, leaning into the sea breeze.
“Bobby’s like that,” Brian admitted. “At first I thought he just associated the beach with vacation, because it was where we always went growing up.”
“I remember your dad taking him and Moms to the beach after that copperhead bit him, when I first moved to Sleepyside.”
Brian nodded. “It’s cheap, close, child-friendly, you know? It was an easy vacation spot. But even now, when he’s travelled with your family some, and a lot with the Lynches, and for athletics, he still loves the ocean. Or at least the beach.”
“What about you?” Honey asked. “Where do you go and just feel...right?”
Brian shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t really have an affinity for a place like that.”
🔍
Brian didn’t know how long it would take them to get from the dock to their lodging for the night. It all depended on how often they stopped. If nothing caught their eye, it looked like there was a week’s worth of things to do in the area right around their hotel. If everything caught their eye, well they had the return trip to make a couple more stops.
The first part of their journey took them through farming country, and it felt like everywhere there were little Crabapple Farms. They’d stopped for lunch before they set out, but when one of the berry farms advertised ice cream, they stopped to try it.
Brian hesitated for a minute, not seeing his beloved mint chocolate chip. Vanilla Bean would make him just as boring as the others claimed, surely… but he didn’t even know what some of the flavors on the board were. He liked strawberries, though, so he went with that.
His eyebrows shot up when Honey asked for a scoop of lavender ice cream.
Honey raised an eyebrow right back. “I didn’t come more than half way around the world to have ice cream I can get in the supermarket.”
Brian raised his hands in surrender, because she had a fair point. He hesitated again when she offered him a taste, after he asked how it was and her only answer was “It’s…different.”
Brian took a small amount on the tip of his spoon and let it melt on his tongue, not sure what he was expecting. “It tastes like…like lavender would taste if it was a taste and not a smell or a color,” he said sheepishly, because while it was decidedly strange, he actually kind of liked it.
Honey nodded agreement with his assessment and swiped a taste of his strawberry ice cream which had a much richer, bolder flavor than he remembered from scooping strawberry out of the three-flavor bucket at the last ice cream party he’d attended.
Honey looked at the shelves of jams and jellies on sale alongside chocolates and ice cream. “Do you think we’d be able to get any home safely for Moms? Would she even want to try someone else’s jam?”
Brian nodded, “As long as it’s something she doesn’t make. So one of those berries we don’t even recognize. It’s sweet of you, Honey. Moms will appreciate it.”
Honey smiled shyly as she picked a flavor. “I keep going over the list in my head, trying to make sure I have souvenirs for everyone I should and I’m not leaving anyone out. I still have a couple things to pick up, but we have a little over two days yet!”
🔍
Nothing else really caught them up with an urgent need to stop as they continued toward their destination; both Honey and Brian were content to take in the new scenery as it passed them by. They arrived in the small town where they’d be spending the night late enough that they could check into their hotel as soon as they arrived, but early enough that they wanted to do something more than just go to dinner and hang around their room until it got dark enough to go stargazing. However, neither of them was sure what exactly that should be.
Honey suggested they ask at the front desk, and did so once they’d stowed their bag in their room and freshened up. Brian found himself a little startled at how helpful the man at the desk was, and chided himself for thinking he had to do everything on his own. Hotels thrived on tourism. It was in their best interest to be helpful to tourists, and to know where to point tourists for a good time. Happy tourists would talk up their hotel, to other travelers and to tour guides and attraction operators, who would in turn suggest the hotel back to other tourists. Everyone won, when he wasn’t stubbornly trying to do everything alone in a vacuum.
“Nature abhors a vacuum,” Brian quoted to himself as Honey returned to his side.
“What?” She asked.
“Nothing—just reminding myself that asking for help isn’t a sign of failure.”
Honey laced her fingers through his. “That’s what he’s there for,” she said puzzled, but let it go. “Anyway, he says there’s a train route that goes along one of the rivers and through some of the rain forest and winds up in a fishing village with really good and very reasonably priced fresh seafood for dinner. He said by the time the last run gets back, it’ll be just about peak stargazing time, and one of the best vantage points is actually on the hill between here and the train depot.”
“Perfectly perfect, as my girlfriend would say.”
“Would she now?” Honey teased, leading the way.
🔍
Brian always thought they got good seafood in New York City, but he found a whole new love for several kinds of fish that evening, and Honey asked him on more than one occasion if they’d died and gone to heaven while she was busy taking pictures, because it was that good. And she’d eaten in some of the top restaurants in the world, with food prepared by the chefs people would kill to taste.
🔍
Full of good food, satisfied with a day well spent, and eager for the star-gazing when they got back, Honey and Brian allowed the rumbling of the train to lull them into a contented doze as they headed back. Brian couldn’t deny how good it felt when Honey settled her head on his shoulder instead of the back of the seat or the window. Then he, too, drifted off, waking only when they pulled back into the station.
He and Honey walked hand in hand up the hillside that would carry them above the interference of the town’s trees and buildings, leaving them with a clear view of the night sky. They couldn’t have asked for better weather. The evening was cool, but both were wearing a light jacket and were perfectly comfortable. They found a comfortable spot and settled to stargaze, looking up to find there wasn’t a single cloud to mar their view and the view was magnificent, better than either of them had dared hoped for.
The stars were absolutely everywhere, and the Milky Way was visible in all her glory, stretching across the sky like she owned it, which, Brian realized, she honestly did. They lay there in quiet awe for a while, before yawns started to creep in and they agreed they’d better go back or risk spending the night on the hillside.
Then they sat up and as their eyes tracked back toward the horizon, they saw the mostly red glow, tipped with green in places, that was even more breathtaking than it had been in so many photos they’d both seen. “I figured what were our chances, picking one night at random,” Brian breathed. “I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Or yours.”
Honey nodded. “I knew it was usually easier to see the aurora in the southern hemisphere than the northern hemisphere, and I thought I knew how … how inspiring it would be, if we did get lucky and see it, but this is…special.”
“Maybe once in a life time for us. A moment we’ll never forget,” Brian agreed.
🔍
With some confidence about how long it would take them to get back to meet the boat to the mainland, Honey and Brian were free to plan a few detours and excursions into their return. The first was taking a chairlift to the top of a dormant (truly defunct) volcano that had picturesque views of the ocean and inland Tasmania, as well as the coastal fishing villages.
Mist was coming off the ocean in the cool of the morning, lending a slight air of mystery to everything below them, a mystery even Brian—who always felt like he’d been the last to jump on the Bob-White mystery bandwagon every time a new mystery landed squarely in their—or, more precisely, Trixie’s—lap—could find himself enamored with.
Honey couldn’t get pictures of it to come out well and grew frustrated. “May I see your camera a moment?” Brian requested.
“Might as well; I can’t get anything decent.”
Brian accepted it and scrolled through the settings, adjusting a few, before handing it back. Honey tried again, more out of frustration than anything and the pictures came out crisp and clear, exactly as she’d expected them to when she first started trying to take pictures of the fog enveloped village below. “What did you do?” She demanded.
“I may or may not have had an undergrad classmate with a borderline obsession with wilderness photography as a method of decompression. I won’t give you the four years’ worth of photography lectures I heard, but the gist of it is that these days a consumer model camera like that is perfectly capable of taking what would have been a professional quality image when our parents were our age with any conditions or subject matter, and, in many conditions, even higher quality. The problem is that consumer model cameras are configured to be point and click in the majority of scenarios, and a one-size-fits-most configuration falls apart in edge-case scenarios, like a landscape shot with diffuse light from an overcast sky, fog, ocean, and fishing village with a love of gray outdoor paint. I may or may not have picked up a few things from her about which settings to change in the one-size-does-not-fit-this cases.”
“Well, thank you. And thank her.”
“You’re very welcome.”
🔍
Their next detour was to a conservation and education center harboring one of the “reserve” populations of semi-wild Tasmanian Devils. The regional government had begun an initiative to isolate a few healthy populations of the endangered species when illness and collisions with cars began to take a serious toll on the wild populations. The center also had a few car encounter survivors who were too injured to be released back into the wild, but who had been rehabilitated enough to be spokes-creatures for their species.
Brian and Honey both had the opportunity to pet one of the tame Devils. Honey bought a shirt that read “I went all the way to Tasmania in search of Taz” on the front, with a classic image of the Looney Tunes character, and “And I found him!” on the back, with an image of the real thing.
“Do you have a whole other wardrobe I know nothing about?” Brian asked, because he’d never seen her wear anything like that.
Honey shook her head. “He’ll probably never wear it, but it’ll be worth it for the expression on his face. My Dad is a bit of a Looney Tunes nut, and a huge Taz groupie.”
“Mr. Wheeler?!”
Honey nodded, grinning widely. “He hides it. Says it doesn’t portray the proper image of a successful CEO of an international corporation. Mother uses fancy socialite-type words, but she basically just calls it his guilty pleasure.” Honey shrugged. “Watching Saturday morning cartoons with Dad was pretty much the only memory I had of spending time with my parents without any other staff before I came to Sleepyside.”
“That’s sweet. And sad.”
Honey nodded. “Exactly why I’m forever grateful to Trixie and Jim for the complete overhaul in my family dynamics.”
“I guess you would be,” Brian agreed. “I remember Dad always being busy. Long hours at the bank, or at least it felt like it to a five-year-old, and the Saturday shift sucked; everyone else’s dad was home on Saturday! But when he was home he was ours, 100%. And Moms… I don’t have to tell you.”
“No,” Honey giggled. “I think everyone under the age of fifty in the whole county knows what kind of mother Moms is. And envies the green out of grass, wishing they were Beldens.”
“While the actual Beldens have all found it far too easy, at various times in our lives, to take it completely for granted. To be frustrated, knowing better than to lie, when we’re not okay and she asks if we are. To be frustrated by the chores it takes to keep up an active farm and household of six when all we want to do is go off with our friends.”
Honey shrugged her slim shoulders. “The grass is always greener. I think it’s normal to hate your chores as a kid, and to, at some point in your life, to feel cornered by a simple ‘Are you okay?’”
🔍
The final morning of their trip saw Honey and Brian returning to the beach and climbing up on the rocks, as they had their first morning. Though the past two weeks had not gone as either of them had expected, neither could deny it had been exactly what they needed. An opportunity to share honestly, away from the scrutiny of friends and family, away from the stresses and distractions of work and ordinary life, away from the normalcy of routine. The weeks reminded them both that (and why) they loved one another, and made clearer where the major bumps in the road were that they needed to work together to smooth out, or else detour around.
When they were climbing down off the rocks, one of the locals walked by. “You’re tourists, aren’t you?”
“We are,” Honey admitted, wondering if they’d done something wrong. She hadn’t seen any signs about not climbing on the rocks.
“Would you like me to take a picture? You look lovely together, with the ocean and the sunrise behind you.”
“That would be wonderful,” Brian agreed, handing over their camera. “Thank you.”
“Maybe sitting on the rock there, just at the edge of the water?”
Just into the water, actually, Brian thought, but he kicked off his shoes as Honey did, because the friendly local had an eye for the photo, and Brian could see it would be a beautiful picture.
The water swirled around their ankles as they got settled together on the boulder.
“One, two, three.” Honey leaned her head against Brian’s shoulder and he put his arm around her slim shoulders.
“One more,” their photographer suggested.
“One, two, …”
Honey and Brian both jumped as what felt like buckets of water drenched them from behind. “Gleeps!” Honey shrieked, jumping to her feet, before she and Brian started laughing.
“That’s what we get for sitting in the ocean,” Brian said as he followed her back onto drier land. The woman who had offered to take their picture looked as though she wanted to laugh but wasn’t sure it was appropriate. “I’m sorry,” she told them both. “I didn’t think the waves were crashing that high. The spray behind and around you was so pretty, but I didn’t mean for you to get soaked!”
Honey and Brian assured her they were fine, and worked on wringing out enough water from their clothes and hair that they weren’t dripping.
“I have to get going,” the woman admitted, handing the camera back to Brian.
They nodded and thanked her again for the picture. It wasn’t until they were almost back to the hotel that Honey checked the pictures the woman had taken for them.
The first was a lovely picture of them, cuddled together on the rock, the ocean lapping around them, the sky on fire behind them.
The second was priceless. She and Brian were there, just as before, cozy and oblivious. They were outlined by the spray of the wave just about to hit them.
There was a third, both of them drenched and laughing, half in the ocean, half out.
“She had a great eye for the frame,” Brian said. “I could tell when she first suggested we sit out there, but I can’t believe she caught that middle shot, with the wave just about to crash all over us.”
Honey nodded. “Makes it worth getting soaked,” she joked. “It’s a good thing I hadn’t showered yet, or put on the outfit I intended to wear the rest of the day.”
🔍
They spent the rest of the day finding souvenirs for the final people on their lists, packing, and cementing a last few memories of a trip that hadn’t been at all what they expected but was exactly what they needed.
They arrived at the airport in plenty of time for their overnight flight. The airport was busy, clearly a major city’s international airport, but compared to JFK, it felt calm and controlled. The security checkpoints were far less of a hassle than Brian was expecting, but he found it didn’t feel any less secure.
It did mean that they were at their gate more than an hour before their flight. Honey laced her fingers through Brian’s as they settled in to wait. “Thank you.”
“For?” Brian asked, confused.
“This. Vacation. Australia. I know I wasn’t as excited as you probably expected at first, but I really did enjoy these past two weeks. I don’t know if I ever really thanked you for the gesture of planning this vacation to a place I really have wanted to visit for most of my life. I do appreciate the effort, and the patience with my doubts.”
“Always,” Brian assured her.