Twenty Four Weeks - Episode 17 - "Twenty Eight" (PG) by James David Denisson
Twenty Four Weeks - Episode 17 - "Twenty Eight"
Written by J.D.Denisson.
A sequel to the movie "This is Where I Leave You".
Characters and back story based on the novel "This is Where I Leave You" by Jonathan Tropper.
Copyright 2016 J.D.Denisson.
Previously?
"You okay," I ask her. She looks well. She looks wonderful. Gone is the faint look of self-loathing that I wanted to see when we were separated but I can't stand to see now. I suppose we still are separated, but things are different now.
She nods, puts her left hand up against her chin with her elbow on the table. She smiles at me. I see a flash of light on her left hand.
"How does it feel," I ask her. "The ring," I clarify when she frowns.
"Oh." She pulls her hand away and looks at the band I gave her nine years ago, studies it.
"Strange," she says, "and familiar."
?
We sit at the table, the four of us. Wade pours the wine and gives Quinn a glass of mineral water. He winks at her as he pours it out and I raise my brows at her half smile in response.
Chloe has prepared a rack of lamb. Wade's favourite. Quinn takes in the smell of it and starts in. Her hunger has increased of late. She was always watching what she ate before, but now she is pregnant. Eating for two, she says now.
"So," Chloe says to me casually, "I hear we have you to thank for Wade's meteoric improvement in the ratings."
"Well, I think he's got a lot to do about it. I just keep the show running."
"You do a lot more than that," Wade adds.
I shrug.
"You've been a good friend," Chloe tells me, and places a hand on my arm. "You're really looking out for him. Really, the change in him is because of you."
"I'm not sure that's true."
"It is. He tells me what you're doing for him. I'm so grateful he's got a friend at work looking after him as hard as I am at home."
"Maybe not as hard," Wade says slyly, meaning the sex, I suppose.
She slaps him. "Shut up," she says playfully.
I glance at Quinn. She's got both brows up but she's quiet. She's hardly said anything.
"And Quinn," Chloe says, turning to my wife. "Wonderful Quinn. Wade says you're five months pregnant."
"More or less," Quinn tells her.
"That's terrific. You're going to be the best mother in the world."
"Yes mam," Wade adds and lifts his glass. "To Quinn and her baby," he says and we follow suit. Quinn sips her bubbly water in silence.
"You two," Chloe keeps going, "you're so brave after everything, sticking together, bringing your marriage back from the edge. You guys are such an inspiration."
?
"Take my friend. Now he takes me to some marriage thing..."
I'm going cold and red in the face all at once.
"They're telling me how to make my woman happy and it's all about emasculating yourself. I mean, damn..."
My finger is on the mute button and it's shaking.
"My friend, he's a wuss, 'cos he lets his woman call the shots. You gotta go to this thing, you gotta change for me. And he just goes there and listens and hands her all his power..."
Wade doesn't get to say anything else. He's cut short as I push him hard across the room. His head phones are still on and the cord snaps taught and pulls his head sideways. He gets up in a second but I'm on him.
"What the hell, Wade!" I yell.
The problem is I've not pushed the mute button and this is all on air. This is live to the city right now. Our differences are now being broadcast in over ten states.
My fist hits his mouth, splits his lip, dislodges a tooth. There is blood running down his face. At the same time he crosses with his right into the side of my face. My whole head jars at the impact and I'm instantly dizzy and I fall to my knees.
"Son of a?!" Wade yells. "You broke a tooth."
"Ass," I yell back as the room spins around me.
?
"And so, I make this my pledge to you: I will love you always. I will stand by you forever. I will listen to you, I will hear you, I will see you. I will give you forgiveness and grace without measure and without condition. I will shelter you, treasure you, protect and keep you safe while I have strength. I will never forsake you, deny you or betray you for as long as I live."
Then I think of something. I quickly pull out my wallet and extract from it the wedding band that I had been hiding there. Now I'm talking off script and I don't care.
"And I give you this ring - new and perfect - as a sign of these promises to you..."
Quinn is crying still, shaking her head. She pulls off her old band and hands it to me. Then I slip on the new one and she looks down at the plain ring with wonder.
?
I climb into the bed next to her. She wriggles over to me and takes my hand, looks at my fingers in the light through the blinds.
"We're going to have to get you a new ring too," she says.
"If you want."
"I do." She sighs. "Everything is new."
Twenty eight
Monday
Quinn calls me at the station a little before I'm due to leave to pick her up after work. She's going to meet me at a shopping centre not far from her building. She has a surprise for me. I'm not sure she can top the surprise of last week.
The centre is busy. Christmas is a month away. People are everywhere. I can't find her right away, but I do eventually. She's standing there all beautiful and pregnant, stylish and wonderful. She's in a dress that allows for a little room in her front, and her hair is down like she's wearing it now. She smiles an easy smile as I walk up to her. She leans in and kisses me on the lips - not the dismissive obligatory kiss that she was giving me months ago - but the soft and honest kiss of a woman truly in love like I'm used to now. I love those kisses. They were the only things keeping me going in our month long period of abstinence. Now that we're making love again after six months, I still find I love those kisses, still want them, still need them, as much as I need to lie with her naked and feel her wrapped around me like a glove.
"What are we doing?" I ask her. "What's the surprise?"
She smiles again and takes my arm, leads me onward. "Wait and see," she says.
We don't go far. Nearby is a jewellery store and I instantly know what she's up to.
"You really don't need to do this," I tell her, but she shakes her head.
"This is important. You were right to get a new ring for me, because everything is new. I'm a little ashamed I didn't think of it myself."
"Ashamed?"
"Maybe not quite that much, but I should have thought of it too."
"Are you kidding? After everything you did, I'm not surprised."
"I suppose you're right. But we're going to fix that now. Can I?"
She puts out her hand and I wrestle off my old wedding ring. It doesn't want to leave now its back on, it's stubbornly holding on, but I pull it off over my knuckle and put into my wife's open hand. There it sits, waiting to be replaced.
"Wait here," she says, and she enters the store.
I feel naked, exposed now. My hand no longer signals my connection to Quinn and I feel the loss keenly. I didn't realise how much she had gotten into me now, more than she had ever been. When we were first married, and I had that ring there for the first time, I just didn't understand what it all meant. I loved her, but I never let her all the way inside me, never let her know that real me. And then when she was gone, I lamented her leaving, but anger ruled me, prevented me from seeing just what I had lost. And n
Grant and Mary were very clever in their plans. They had our rings back on soon after starting, liking them to the bonds between Quinn and I, linking them to the wonderful memories of our past, not the recent ones that held only pain.
She finds me staring at my left hand, at the space where my ring was missing, when she returns ten minutes later. She smiles when I look up, like she knows what I've been thinking and she feels it too.
"Do you want me to give it to you here?"
"Sure." I shrug.
"It just... I have something to say."
"Ah."
"But I don't care who sees us, who hears us."
"Right," I say with a nod. "I don't either."
She nods back and takes the ring from a small blue box. "Judd... this ring... it means so much more to me that the first one I gave you, because when things became hard I forgot about how we are connected and I betrayed that. I betrayed the promises that I made when I gave you that ring. This new ring is a sign of my new pledge to you, and I want you to wear it to be reminded of that, and be reminded of me and our bonds together. Judd, will you wear it for me?"
I nod, smile. I hold out my hand ready to take it. "Of course I will," I tell her.
She slips it on and it slides into place perfectly where the old one sat.
My old ring was plain and simple. Quinn's new selection was a little more ornate: gold in a strip with white gold edges. I suppose she wanted to make it distinct from the first, so that we would know - that I would know and remember.
I kiss her again to seal the moment. I'm aware that we're kissing for quite some time and people are walking around us, staring. Maybe they feel a little jealous of