If It Takes Forever: Chapter 28

Previously: Chapter 27 – Abrazos Rotos [A]

Last chapter of If It Takes Forever, well, ever.

Rating: A.

* * * * *

A few words…

I just want to take a moment to thank each and every one of you who has commented on any of the chapters, through thick and thin, in lots of different places. I’ve been on a less-than-frequent updating schedule, to say the very least, and I want to thank you all for sticking with it, even when it looked like it would never get done. And I appreciate those of you who read and don’t comment because you’re important, too.

You’ve all been stellar.

[On a technical note, this chapter’s flashback refers to events in Chapter Nine, only from a different perspective.]

* * * * *

Chapter Twenty-Eight: If It Takes Forever

Ashley was definitely crying. She was trying to hide it by surreptitiously wiping at the corners of her eyes and ducking her head, but it was really very obvious. It made Spencer smile, but she said nothing because she didn’t want to embarrass her girlfriend in front of their friends. Instead, she reached down between them and took Ashley’s hand in her own and gave it a light squeeze.

They were watching Cinema Paradiso, one of Spencer’s favourite films, with Jen and Pete. It was the first time that they had had anyone over to Ash’s apartment since it had formally become ‘their’ apartment. Spencer’s lease had been due for renewal at the end of August anyway, so they had agreed that Spencer would move the rest of her stuff in at the beginning of July when school let out. It had taken only one trip with a small trailer. She hadn’t appreciated just how many of her possessions had already made their way into Ashley’s apartment until she had to box up what was left of them. Some of the furniture had been given to Jen and Pete and some of Spencer’s friends from work; the rest had gone to Goodwill.

As the film ended, Spencer noticed that Pete, like Ashley, was wiping his eyes to avoid being caught shedding a stray tear or two. Shaking her head with amusement, Spence turned to Jen.

“Wanna give me a hand with the coffee, so it’s strong enough for you?”

Her friend smiled knowingly in reply. “Sure,” she agreed. They both got up, Spencer taking time to drop a quick kiss to the top of Ashley’s head, and walked over to the kitchen area.

“God, those two are incredible!” Jen hissed. “Do they think we can’t see them?”

She looked over towards their respective partners. Both were still rubbing at their eyes. She smiled fondly. “It’s kinda cute that they think they need to pretend that they’re all big and tough and that we’ll buy the act.” She drew some water from the tap and filled the coffee pot with it.

“You are sickeningly in love,” Jen snorted. “Give it a year and see how cute you find it then.”

“Oh, you worship the ground he walks on,” Spencer retorted, “and don’t you pretend like you don’t.” Jen just gave her a bemused smirk.

“He’s an idiot, but he’s my idiot, I suppose.”

“You two going to get married any time soon?” Spencer asked nonchalantly while finishing up with the coffee maker and reaching up into a cupboard to get a plate.

“God, no! You sound like Petey’s mother. She’s desperate for us to set a date.”

“But you think you will one day?”

“I’m sure we wiil. But it’s not like there’s any rush or anything.”

“No, no rush, I guess,” Spencer murmured. “But, do you think about it? I mean, is it something you think you want to do, you know, eventually?”

Jen looked at her with a slightly confused expression before she snapped her fingers. “Oh. My. God. You’re not, are you?”

Spencer placed a finger over her lips. “You think you could maybe shout a litle louder, Jen? There are people in San Francisco who probably didn’t hear you.” She glanced over towards the seating area, but it was a large apartment and it didn’t look as if either Ashley or Pete had overheard anything. They appeared to be channel flicking and arguing good-naturedly over what to watch next.

Her friend grabbed her arm and leaned in towards her. “Are you planning on…”

“What?” Spencer grinned slyly. “Planning on asking my girlfriend to marry me? Maybe.”

“Oh. My. God!”

“You said that already,” she deadpanned.

“You’re serious?”

“Of course I’m serious. It’s hardly a joking matter.”

“And you don’t think it’s kinda hasty when you’ve only been living together two weeks?”

That caused her to chortle. “You think I’m rushing into proposing to the girl I’ve been in love with for nine years?”

“Well, when you put it that way, I suppose not.”

Spencer looked over at her girlfriend and, as if blessed with some kind of radar, Ashley’s head immediately turned in Spencer’s direction. They held each other’s gaze for only a moment or two before the brunette winked and went back to bickering with Pete. Spencer felt her heart constrict with love. She folded her arms over her chest and shook her head wryly.

“I waited far too long to find her again,” she commented softly. “Then I was too afraid to tell her how I felt about her. And it’s really stupid because I’m pretty sure I’ve known since day one that she was the person I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with. I don’t want to waste any more time. She’s my everything and all I want to do is stand up in front of God and everyone and tell the whole world how I feel about her.”

Jen – who had just sat through one of the most moving films Spencer had ever seen without so much as a quivering lip, who could watch the death of Bambi’s mother without flinching and who could happily sit through a double bill of Imitation of Life and Madame X without recourse to a box of tissues – pulled a surprised Spencer into a hug while trying to gasp back a sob.

“You two are the most adorable thing ever. And I better be your Maid of Honour or I’ll hunt you down like a dog and shoot you dead in the street.”

Spencer chuckled. That was more like the Jen she knew and tolerated. “Well, you’ll probably carry that threat out if I don’t, so what choice do I have?”

“Exactly,” her friend agreed, ending the hug and taking the coffee pot from the hot plate and pouring four cups. “But no pink and nothing with bows.”

Spencer tipped a packet of oat and raisin cookies onto a plate. “Trust me, my girlfriend is totally not the pink frilly bow type. I reckon you’re pretty safe.”

“So, can I come with?”

“Come with where?”

“Ring shopping,” Jen stated scornfully, as if it was the most obvious thing.

“Oh. I hadn’t really thought about that yet.” She bit her lip with concern. “How the hell am I going to afford a ring that’ll impress my trust fund baby girlfriend?”

Jen shook her head. “Good God, woman, are you totally dense? That girl’s crazy about you. She’s not going to care if you give her a plastic decoder ring from a cereal box.”

Spencer still looked worried. “You sure?”

“As sure as any human being can be. Not a doubt in my mind,” Jen asserted, picking up the cups and motioning for Spencer to bring the cookies. “Come on, we’d better get back before the natives get restless. But don’t think that this conversation is over. I’m calling you first thing Monday morning as soon as Pete’s left for work.”

“You’re not going to tell him?” Spencer was surprised. If the roles were reversed, she would tell Ashley immediately.

“Oh, he couldn’t keep a secret if he was bound and gagged and placed in solitary. He’d tell Ash almost immediately.”

As they rejoined their partners, Pete started complaining to Jen about Ashley’s refusal to let him have control of the remote. Ashley, meanwhile, leaned in and bumped shoulders with Spencer.

“What were you two being all girly about over there?” she asked quietly.

“I was just telling her about bursting into your office to tell you I loved you,” she lied smoothly. She was quite impressed at how quickly and easily the explanation had come to her.

“Not all of it, I hope,” Ash murmured with a chuckle, only loud enough for Spencer to hear.

“Oh, like you’d object to me telling the whole neighbourhood that we had awesome sex on top of your desk,” she whispered in return.

“Twice,” Ash pointed out with a smug grin.

“Twice,” Spencer agreed.

Ash leaned up and brushed her lips against Spencer’s cheek. “God, I want you so much right now. Wanna meet me in the bedroom to make out?”

“Yes, but I’m not going to. That would be rude to our guests,” Spencer replied.

“But I’m dying here.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You don’t know that for certain. I might be dying of frustration and a broken heart.”

Spencer reached her hand out to brush away a strand of hair from Ash’s forehead and smiled lovingly at her girlfriend. “One, you do not have a broken heart because you know that I absolutely adore you. And, two, if you don’t behave just now, you’ll not get rewarded later.”

“Oh, like you could deny me anything,” Ashley scoffed, although her tone was more certain than the slightly wary look in her eyes.

“You really want to put that to the test?”

Ash looked at her, weighing up her options. “Probably not.”

“Good choice,” she replied, patting her girlfriend’s knee appreciatively. “That’s exactly the sort of decision making that gets you rewarded later.”

Ashley’s retort was cut off by Jen waving in front of their faces. “If you two are quite finished with your sex talk,” she stated pointedly, “your guests were wondering if we might break out the Wii and have a quick game of Samba de Amigo.”

* * * * *

August 2006

There were moments in every person’s life which, though apparently meaningless or inconsequential or thoroughly mundane at the time, turned out to be the sort of pivotal event on which whole existences turned. The best example that Ashley knew of that situation was in October 1998 when she ended up going with Aiden to see a Film Society screening of The Big Easy. They weren’t even supposed to be free that evening: they were meant to be in a sports bar, watching the World Series, but the Yankees had swept the Padres in four games, so there was no baseball that night. And, because of it, her life had changed forever.

She had turned around in the middle of the movie, compelled by a force that she did not comprehend to look for something. She hadn’t known what she was looking for until she had found it. The second she had seen Spencer Carlin, she had known. She hadn’t been willing to admit to herself that she had known. In fact, she had spent three years doing everything she could to hide from the truth that she had known pretty much instantly: that Spencer Carlin was the person that she was destined to love forever.

It was strange to think that it was the exploits of Scott Brosius, a farmboy from Oregon, that most unlikely of heroes, which had changed her life forever. Well, technically, it had been the relief pitching in Game 4, and specifically Mariano Rivera getting the Yankees out of a bases-loaded eighth inning, which had finished the Series early, but it was always the image of Brosius that came to Ashley’s mind whenever she thought of that year’s World Series. She didn’t even like baseball that much, but he had remained her all-time favourite player because of the unwitting role that he had played in bringing her to Spencer.

There were other moments in a person’s life which should have been momentous, but turned out to be a minor blip in the road. That pretty well described her nine-month marriage to Aiden. It might be unfair to her ex-husband that she thought of their ill-fated liaison in those terms, but it didn’t make it any less true.

And then there were events that were both huge and noteworthy at the time and also the stuff of legend, even in retrospect. And, at that moment, the most apt example was Jerry’s most recent phonecall.

Jerry didn’t call that often, maybe once or twice a year, but it was the only link that Ashley still had to her old life, her life with Spencer, and she considered it important to have at least some minor tie to the only real happiness she’d ever known. When he had called to say that Aiden had bumped into Spencer in New Orleans and that she was living in LA again, working as a teacher and openly dating women, Ashley’s mind had kicked into overdrive.

She had spent the four years since she had left Aiden working on making herself into a person she could face in the mirror. It had been neither quick nor easy. She had taken almost a year just to be able to face living in LA by herself. She would always owe Kyla for being there for her and helping her to just get up in the morning without feeling like there was no point to her existence at all. It had been Kyla who had suggested that she contact her lawyers and find out if she owned some kind of business, no matter how small and tangential to the music industry, which could offer her a place to start over.

She had spent a further year learning the music publishing business as best she could. There wasn’t one of her employees that she didn’t know personally because she made the time to find out how every part of the company worked and to value the input of each member of the team. When she had decided to start investing half of her father’s publishing royalties into finding and developing new songwriting talent – not traditionally part of a publishing company’s job – she had talked it over with the whole staff. She couldn’t claim that she gave her employees the creative freedom or the generous perks that Pixar or Google offered, but she prided herself on giving people a say in the company’s future and in treating her employees as co-owners, albeit minority shareholders.

Throughout it all, at the back of her mind, she acknowledged that everything she did was to make herself worthy of Spencer Carlin’s love. It didn’t matter that they had not seen each other in five years. It didn’t matter that she thought that they would never see each other again. Personal demons rarely made logical sense anyway. There had not been a day that had passed in the previous five years which had not featured thoughts of Spencer. She had pushed the longing aside and told herself that everyone felt the same way about their first love – that you never really loved the same way again – but she knew that it was more. She had dated and she had had sex, but she had only ever loved one woman, one person. She had only been in love once and she accepted that she would never feel that deeply or keenly again. Spencer had been The One. And she had blown it.

And when Jerry had called, she felt like she had been released from some kind of prison. The prospect of Spencer Carlin living in the same city had served as a reminder, a sign that she remained incomplete as a person without the blonde in her life. Their past history would probably preclude any kind of a romantic relationship – and, if she was honest with herself, she was terrified of exposing herself to that level of vulnerability, when the loss of Spencer had nearly destroyed her last time – but she hoped that they might get back to being best friends. She missed that element of her life with Spencer, almost as much as she missed everything else. She hadn’t let anyone get that close to her since Spencer. No-one else had ever inspired her to open up the way that Spencer had; no-one had ever understood her so fully.

The first thing she had done was to check the phone book, but there was no ‘Carlin, S’ listed. Like a love-struck highschooler, she had driven by Spencer’s parents’ house. She had driven by several times, more than considered normal. She had seen both Arthur and Paula coming and going. On one occasion, she had even seen Glen, which had made her smile to see how mature he looked. She had not, however, seen Spencer. Many times, she had dialled the Carlins’ number, only to chicken out before anyone answered. She had no idea what she might have said.

The internet had proved no help: all she had found was some references to Spencer Carlin having attended Havenhurst University between 1998 and 2002. That much, she already knew. She then remembered something that should have been quite obvious to her in the first place: she had a legal team of her own. She had made a few calls and found out that there were various public records searches that could be carried out. Within a few hours, she was looking at her screen at an email which contained Spencer Carlin’s current address and phone number. She stared at it as if it might give some sort of clue as to what she should do next.

What would she say to Spencer, if she called? Should she turn up in person? What if Spencer had a new girlfriend or had patched things up with the girl from New Orleans? What if she had banished thoughts of Ashley from her mind, wanting nothing more than to forget everything that had happened between them? Could she possibly cope with seeing Spencer again, only to be turned away? Having built her whole life around coping without Spencer, was she brave enough to go back and re-open those old wounds?

She spent a couple of hours debating what to do with the information she posessed before going home to think it over. She thought of nothing else all evening. She couldn’t sleep for thinking about it. She spent the whole of the following day in a mixture of quiet contemplation and unsuppressed frustration. She went home again and fell asleep on her couch, exhausted from both lack of sleep and the sheer emotional overload. This continued for a full week. She was utterly paralysed by fear: fear of having a second chance with Spencer – even as friends – and fear of having no chance at all with Spencer.

On the eighth day after she received the email with Spencer’s contact details, she made a decision: she would definitely contact Spencer, but with the intention that they would only be friends. That would be the best thing for both of them. It was entirely her fault that everything had gone so wrong last time and she knew that what had happened had caused Spencer a great deal of pain and, no matter how she felt personally, she couldn’t possibly bring herself to hurt Spencer again. The only choice, therefore, was to keep things strictly platonic: that would protect them both.

She arrived at her office full of resolve and intending to call Spencer forthwith, but things kept coming up, interruptions that allowed her to prevaricate. By late afternoon, she had run out of stalling tactics when there was a loud beep, indicating the arrival of a new email. She glanced at her inbox, ready to quickly scan and delete whatever it was, when she felt her mouth actually drop open with shock. Sitting nonchalantly above a whole page of unanswered business emails was a message entitled the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses.

She hardly needed to look at the sender to know that the message came from Spencer Carlin.

She placed both hands firmly in front of her, just staring at her screen. She didn’t open the message. She was pretty certain that there was no need, that the entire message was contained in the title. What more could be added? That single line told her almost everything she needed to know.

It told her that Spencer had been thinking of her, at least since Aiden, if not before. It told her that Spencer not only remembered everything between them, but she wasn’t afraid to bring it up. It told her that Spencer wanted to see her. It told her that Spencer still felt something, definitely something good. It told her that she had a shot at getting back the missing part of her life, the other half of her soul.

She stared at it for a good ten minutes until, suddenly, after eight days of inaction – five years, eight days and ten minutes really – she knew immediately what to do. She hit ‘reply’ and changed the title of the email to nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands and put her office number in the body of the email. She clicked on ‘send’ before she had a chance to change her mind.

She knew that it was the most momentous action of her life to date and that it would be a moment that passed into legend.

* * * * *

“Jesus, I thought they’d never leave,” Ashley grinned, slipping her arms around Spencer’s waist.

“Ash!” Spencer admonished. “They’re our friends!”

“Yes, they are, but you’re my girlfriend and I’d rather be alone with you.”

“You’re incorrigible. And insatiable.” Spencer smiled as Ashley’s hands found their way under the hem of her shirt and started working their way upwards.

“And you love it.”

“I love you,” Spencer corrected, turning in her girlfriend’s arms to face her. She lifted her own arms and looped them over Ashley’s shoulders. She arched her back as she felt the brunette’s fingers tracing random patterns across the small of her back. Having waited so long to finally say it, she now could hardly stop herself from telling Ashley how she felt all the time.

“That never gets old,” Ash murmured, dropping her head to softly nuzzle Spencer’s neck.

“What doesn’t?”

“You saying that. You loving me.”

She chuckled and turned slightly to whisper low in her girlfriend’s ear, “Ashley Davies, I am head over heels in love with you. I always have been and I always will be.”

They kissed softly for a few moments. That was definitely one of Spencer’s favourite things about living with her girlfriend: the easy expression of love and affection between them. Yes, they had what Spencer was pretty certain was a more-than-averagely active sex life, but the little things made her just as happy. Back rubs and soft kisses and lying in bed together watching TV, were all important, too. She even enjoyed grocery shopping with Ashley. In fact, she still got a thrill from that. It was just something that made her feel grown-up, like they were a proper couple. Of course, they were a proper couple which, in itself, seemed like some kind of minor miracle.

She could see now, looking back on everything that had come before, every other previous relationship that she’d had, that there had always been a part of her that had been held back, waiting for this, waiting for Ashley. It seemed incredible to her that she had allowed herself to go on for so long without the brunette in her life when Ashley was as essential to her as breathing. She knew that there was nothing that she wouldn’t do for her girlfriend, no sacrifice that would be too great. Having lost her once, she would give her last breath to protect what they had this time around. She tightened her hold on her girlfriend and hugged her fiercely, as if afraid that just thinking about losing her might make it so.

“Hey,” Ash murmured against her neck. “You okay?”

She nodded weakly and tightened her grasp even more. “I’m never letting you go,” she whispered, tears pricking at the corner of her eyes.

Ashley pulled back and lifted her hand to tuck a finger under Spencer’s chin so that they were looking at each other. “You will never get rid of me again. I promise.” She placed a tiny kiss of reassurance on Spencer’s lips. “What brought this on anyway?”

Spencer shrugged and looked away. “I just realised how much this is what I’ve always wanted – you and me, like this, I mean – and I don’t ever want to lose that again.”

“You won’t. We won’t.” Her girlfriend smiled and rubbed her thumb across Spencer’s cheek. “Go on through to bed. I’ll tidy up in here and join you in a minute. You need anything?”

“Maybe a glass of water.”

Ashley flashed her a grin and dropped her free hand to give her a gentle slap on the ass. “Go on, get. I’ll be right in.”

She nodded and headed towards their bedroom as Ashley started to pick up the glasses on the coffee table.

“Hey, Spence?”

She stopped in the doorway and turned around. “I’m in love with you, too, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.” She entered the bedroom, a big sappy grin on her face at the thought of how lucky she was. She quickly stripped off and changed into a tiny green silk baby doll nightie that she knew Ashley particularly loved. As she brushed her teeth, she looked at her reflection. She was happier than she had ever felt in her life and it showed. And she knew that she’d always feel this way, as long as she had Ashley. She was still grinning to herself at her own good fortune when she came out of the bathroom to find a very serious-looking Ashley sitting at the foot of the bed. She turned to look in Spencer’s direction and a familiar flicker of arousal passed across her face.

“You look incredible.”

Spencer smiled back coyly. “You look pretty fine yourself.” She moved towards Ash, intending to straddle her girlfriend’s lap, but Ashley prevented the action by standing up.

“I, uh -” Ashley stopped and took Spencer’s hand in her own. “Look, um, I know this isn’t exactly how this is supposed to be and I haven’t really thought all of this through. In fact, when I’ve thought about how I might do this, I’d kind of pictured something more along the lines of a quick flight to Maine and a rental car so we could go back to our beach and everything -”

Spencer’s heart started racing as she anticipated where the conversation was headed. The thing that she realised more and more about her and Ashley was that, deep down, they were really quite alike. Both of them had been afraid of where this second chance might take them and both of them had let those fears rule them for too long. But they were both ultimately brave enough to risk everything for each other because they knew it was worth it.

“Anyway,” Ash continued, “I sort of realised that we’ve never really done things the right way and, somehow, despite everything and despite ourselves, that’s always seemed to work for us. So, I recall that I once told you that I thought that you could be all kinds of brave if you were in love with the right person and I think we both know that I completely meant that person should be me.” She gave a self-deprecating and nervous smirk. “Well, I feel like I should be the brave one this time because you’re the one that’s kind of done all the running here -”

Spencer tightened her grip on Ash’s hand as she felt the tears starting to fall. She smiled equally as nervously at her girlfriend, whose eyes were glistening with emotion.

“And I wanted to say that I’ve been so fucking stupid but that I can see that now. I’ve been scared and stupid and I should never have let you go in the first place, but I’m not going to make that mistake ever again. You are everything to me, Spencer Carlin, and I feel like I have loved you forever. And loving you is one of only two smart things I’ve ever done in my life.”

Spencer really didn’t want to interrupt what was the most beautiful, perfect, rambling thing she’d ever heard, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Two? What’s the other one?”

The brunette smiled, her nose crinkling. “Answering your email. You know, I never told you this, but I was literally about to pick up the phone to call you when you sent that email.”

“Really? How did you get my number?”

Ashley gave her a sly grin. “After Jerry told me you’d seen Aiden, I put my legal team on it.” She shook her head. “I hope you don’t interrupt all your proposals like this, because it’s really not polite.”

Even though she had known where this conversation was headed from the second that Ash had started speaking, Spencer still gasped at the mention of the word ‘proposal’. This was real. The girl she loved, the girl she would always be in love with, was going to be hers forever.

Ashley smiled weakly, dropped to one knee and took a deep breath, still clutching tightly onto Spencer’s hand. “I have been in love with you since the very first moment I saw you and I fall in love with you a little bit more every day. You are all I’ve ever wanted and all I’ll ever need. I have made more mistakes than I can count, and I can’t promise you that I won’t make more, because I can pretty much promise you that I will. But I’m not complete without you, Spence, and I’m not afraid of that any more. Will you marry me, Spence? Will you be my wife?”

She sank to her knees in front of her girlfriend, not caring that she was crying openly now. “Yes. Oh God, yes, Ash.” She leaned forward and kissed the brunette softly, their arms finding their way around each other. As they both deepened the kiss, she could feel Ashley’s tears against her own cheek.

Ashley pulled back, a bashful look on her face. “I don’t have a ring,” she murmured.

Spencer laughed, lifting her hand to cup her fiancée’s cheek. “I don’t care. I wouldn’t care if you gave me a plastic decoder ring from a cereal box,” she chuckled, rubbing a tear from Ash’s cheek with the pad of her thumb. She laughed again at the other girl’s confused expression. “I would marry you in our jeans at a drive-through wedding in Vegas.”

Ashley inclined her head, closing her eyes at the feeling of Spencer’s hand rubbing her skin. “It’s not legal in Nevada. I checked. We’re gonna have to go back east or Canada. There’s Europe, I guess – Spain or the Netherlands. Anywhere you like, Spence, as long as it’s legal.”

Spencer kissed her girlfriend lightly. “I’d marry you anywhere,” she reiterated. “I don’t care, as long as there’s me and you.”

“God, you’re so beautiful,” Ashley murmured reverentially. “Are you sure? Are you really sure that you want to put up with me for the rest of our lives? I can be hard work, you know.”

“I can’t think of anything I want more than to make you mine forever.”

A glint of the old Ashley appeared as she gave an arrogant wink. “Wrong way ’round, Carlin. This is totally me making you mine, staking my claim, marking my territory, making sure no-one ever thinks that they have a shot with you. Because you belong to me and I don’t want you to ever forget it.”

“Never,” Spencer agreed, kissing Ashley softly.

“Ever?”

“Always.”

“You’ll be mine forever?”

“Forever.”

* * *

FIN