March 2015

“Everything okay, sis?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer Taleah’s question at first. The two of us were sitting in the garden of the Tin Shed Café in Thirroul, waiting on our lunch orders. It was a beautiful day – blue skies as far as the eye could see, with not a cloud in the sky and just a bit of a breeze – but I couldn’t muster up the energy to appreciate it.

“I think he forgot, Leah,” I said at last.

“Forgot what?”

It was a few moments before I could bring myself to say it. “Our anniversary.”

“That doesn’t seem like him,” Taleah said, her tone thoughtful. “What makes you think he’s forgotten?”

“I just…” My voice faltered briefly. “He wasn’t home when I woke up this morning. He left a note but all it said was that he needed to go out and that he’d see me tonight.”

“Maybe he had band practice?” Taleah suggested, sounding entirely reasonable.

I shook my head. “No, they usually do that over Skype. Newcastle’s too far away for them to get together all that often. And besides, if they’d had a full band practice planned I probably would have gone up as well.”

“He wouldn’t have forgotten, Rue,” Taleah said. She gave me a smile, one I tried my best to echo. “I have to believe that. He’s probably planned something spectacular. You know what he’s like.”

I did know what Taylor was like – more than two years after we’d met, and two years to the day since he’d first asked me out, I knew him as well as I did Lisbeth, and as well as I knew my sisters. I knew how he took his coffee and his tea. I knew what he ordered at Gloria Jean’s, Starbucks and Subway, along with his backup orders. I knew the exact location and description of each of his scars, and the stories behind all of them. I even knew the meaning of the tattoo on the back of his left shoulder, and that he planned to get a second tattoo in a year’s time. And I was well aware that he knew me just as well.

“I do know what he’s like,” I agreed at last. “And I really hope you’re right about him not forgetting.”

It wasn’t until well after lunch, while Taleah and I were walking out of the IGA supermarket just up the street from the Tin Shed, that my phone buzzed in my pocket. “That’ll probably be Tay now,” I said, and handed my shopping over to Taleah so I could get at my phone without letting go of my walking stick. So that we didn’t get in anyone’s way, we parked ourselves in front of the Horizon Credit Union branch next door to the supermarket, and I opened the message. Sure enough, it was from Taylor.

Hey rue :) can you meet me at the botanic gardens after sunset tonight? Got something i want to ask you. Love you :)

A second message popped up just as I finished reading the first. It had just one line of text in it – a date. 06/12/2012.

“Sixth of December 2012 – that’s the day you two first met, isn’t it?” Taleah asked once she had finished reading both text messages.

“Yep,” I replied. “Just before their last show at the UniBar.” As I was speaking, an idea was beginning to take root in my head. “Can you help me get ready this arvo and drop me off at the Botanic Gardens before you head home?”

“Yeah, of course I can,” Taleah replied. She eyed me. “You’re going to wear the same outfit you wore to the show that night, aren’t you?”

“If I can find all of it,” I replied. I took my phone back from Taleah, locked it and slid it back into my pocket. “Come on. I want to have a shower and make a start on dinner before I go out.”

The first thing that Taleah did once I had closed the front door of the house behind us was hang a right straight into the bedroom I shared with Taylor. I planted myself on the bed and watched as Taleah slid the left side of the wardrobe open. “These don’t look like yours,” she said, staring at the shirts, jeans, jackets and pants that made up a decent portion of Taylor’s clothing.

“That’s because they’re not,” I said with a chuckle. “Mine are on the right. I have a few drawers as well.” I nodded over at the chest of drawers that stood against the wall across from my side of the bed. “I think the T-shirt and the leggings I was wearing are in my drawers – T-shirt’s maroon and in the second drawer from the bottom, leggings are black and in the bottom drawer – and my skirt’s probably hanging up in the wardrobe. I was wearing my Chucks as well.”

While Taleah went digging through my clothes in search of what I planned to wear that evening, I took my claddagh ring off and twisted it around in my right hand so I could read the inscription on the inside of the band. I usually wore it on my right ring finger with the point of the heart toward my wrist. “‘The best is yet to be’,” I murmured.

“Pardon?” Taleah asked.

“It’s the inscription inside my ring,” I explained. “‘The best is yet to be’. Taylor got it from a John Lennon song.” I slipped my ring back onto my finger. “So, any luck?”

“Found your T-shirt and leggings.” Taleah held them up so I could see them, before tossing them at me. I caught them one-handed and got back to my feet.

“I’m going to hop in the shower,” I said. “If you find my skirt while I’m in there just hang it off the doorknob or something.” I slipped past Taleah and opened one of my other drawers just long enough to dig out a clean bra and knickers, and went to have my shower.

At around seven-thirty that evening, Taleah drove me into Keiraville. I couldn’t stop fidgeting during the drive – my fingers kept worrying at the hem of my skirt, and I kept tapping my right foot on the floor of Taleah’s car. “Calm down, Rue,” Taleah said as she drove around the roundabout at the end of University Avenue, taking a left into Irvine Street. “We’re nearly there.”

“You’d be fidgeting too if you were me,” I retorted.

Minutes later, Taleah pulled up at the Murphys Avenue entrance of the Wollongong Botanic Gardens. Just up the street, parked next to a telegraph pole, I could see the familiar dark blue of Taylor’s car. I undid my seatbelt and leaned down to my feet so I could grab my handbag. “I want you to tell me everything, okay?” Taleah said as I went to open my car door. “I have a really good feeling about this.”

“I hope you’re right, Leah.” I gave Taleah a shaky smile and opened my car door, taking my folded-up walking stick from my handbag and snapping it out to its full length before putting my feet on the ground outside. “I’ll call you tonight.”

The gate into the Botanic Gardens was padlocked shut, I discovered when I got close enough. “Excuse me!” I called out to one of the gardeners – they were standing in the car park, winding up a long green garden hose with their back to me.

“We’re closed, sorry!” she said without turning around.

“I know, and I’m really sorry, but my boyfriend said to meet him here after sunset,” I called back.

The gardener stopped winding the hose up and turned to look at me. “Are you Ruby McCormick?” she asked, and I nodded. “That boyfriend of yours is a real character,” she said with a laugh, and she came over to the gate. “He’s waiting for you in the Rose Garden,” she continued as she unlocked and opened the gate so that I could slip inside. Out of a pocket she took a little torch and a folded piece of paper that turned out to be a map of the Botanic Gardens, with the route that I was apparently meant to follow highlighted in purple. “Good luck,” she said as she handed them to me.

The route highlighted on the map took me past the duck pond with its rotunda, along a tree-lined path to the bright red Japanese bridge arching steeply over the creek that fed into the duck pond. The wooden railings on the sides of the bridge had been wrapped in long strands of fairy lights, with tealight candles spaced along the bridge’s top railing. As I reached the middle of the bridge, I could see that the branches of the tree on the other side were also draped in fairy lights. The path that led from the bridge to the Rose Garden was lined with even more candles. I switched the torch off and slipped it and the map into my bag – I didn’t need them any longer.

As I neared the hedge that surrounded the Rose Garden, I could hear someone playing an acoustic guitar and singing. The song wasn’t one I recognised, but the voice…

“Taylor,” I whispered. Nobody else in the world sounded like that when they sang.

The sight that greeted me when I rounded the side of the hedge made me suck in a stunned breath. The gazebo in the middle of the Rose Garden was ablaze with light – candles with flickering flames, even more fairy lights, and so many paper lanterns that I couldn’t count them all. Standing right in the middle of the gazebo, still playing his guitar and wearing the same outfit that he’d been wearing the day we’d first met, right down to his bright red Converse sneakers, was Taylor.

“Hey Rue,” he said as I came up to the edge of the gazebo. He gave me a smile as he lifted the strap of his guitar off his shoulder and over his head, and propped it against the garden bench that sat on the gazebo’s left side.

“You…you did this?” I asked, staring at all of the lanterns, candles and fairy lights that filled the gazebo.

“Yep,” Taylor replied. He sounded rather pleased with himself. “What do you think?”

“I…” My voice faltered for just a second. “I love it. It looks amazing.”

He grinned before pulling me into a hug. “Happy anniversary, Rue.”

“I thought you forgot,” I mumbled into his shirt.

“Hey…” He slipped a couple of fingers under my chin and tilted my head up so I could look right into his eyes. “I could never forget something as important as our anniversary. Okay? I’m sorry if anything I did made you think that I forgot.”

“Okay,” I whispered, and pulled back just far enough so I could swipe at my eyes with my right hand. “So, um…what did you want to ask me?”

He didn’t say anything for a minute or so. Instead he took a few steps back, shoved his hands into his pockets and started pacing back and forth in front of me. I didn’t push him to talk, knowing that this was his way of organising his thoughts.

“Ruby, what I’m about to ask you…it terrifies the hell out of me,” he said at last. “It has the potential to make me look like the world’s biggest idiot, but at the same time it could also make me one of the happiest people alive.” He stopped pacing right in the middle of the gazebo and turned to face me. “I don’t believe in much. I don’t believe in a higher power, I don’t believe in soulmates, and I don’t believe in fate. But I believe in us. I believe in you and me.” He ran his hands through his hair, making it stick up all over his head. “I love you Ruby, with all that I am. You’re my whole world – my sun, my moon, my stars…you’re my everything. Meeting you was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

He came up to me again, picked up my right hand in both of his, and put it on his chest. I could feel his heart beating steadily beneath my palm, and his chest rising and falling as he breathed. “I’ve forgotten how many times this almost stopped both times I was sick,” he continued. “And every day I thank my lucky stars that I survived. I am so thankful that I’m still alive, that I’m still breathing and that my heart is still beating, because it meant I got to meet you. And if you’ll have me, however long it ends up being, it means I’ll get to spend the rest of my life with you.”

And with those words, he dropped down to his knees and took a dark blue ring box from one of his pockets, opening it to reveal an engagement ring – its band was in the shape of a silvery braid that had been set with a single small ruby, with what looked like tiny diamonds set into one of the braid’s strands. “Ruby Therese McCormick…” Here he trailed off, closing his eyes for a few moments, and he took a deep breath. “Will you marry me?”

“Holy shit,” I whispered. I clapped my hands over my mouth to stop myself from screaming. “You…you’re not kidding, right?”

“I’m not kidding. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Ruby.” He managed a small, shaky smile. “If you’ll have me, of course.”

For the longest time I didn’t say a word. Instead I looked at Taylor, studying him as if I was trying to memorise the most important things about him. Eyes the same shade of blue as the sky in summer – the first thing I saw when I woke up each morning, and the last thing I saw before I fell asleep at night. Light brown hair shot through with blonde, thanks to all of the time he spent out in the sun and the surf, that was the perfect length for me to run my fingers through. A smile that brightened my world whenever I saw it. And a voice that, anytime he spoke or sang, was enough to bring me to my knees.

“Yes,” I whispered finally. “Of course I’ll have you.”

That was all it took to make Taylor’s eyes light right up. He got back to his feet, pocketed the ring box again and took my right hand back into both of his. “First things first,” he said with a smile, and took my claddagh ring off my right hand. He flipped it so that the point of the heart on my ring pointed toward him and slid it onto my left ring finger. Only then did he take my engagement ring from the ring box and put it on my finger, sliding it home against my claddagh ring. “Perfect.”

We were both quiet for a little while after that. Neither of us needed to say a word – I was content to just be close to Taylor, and I knew that he felt the same way.

“I love you,” I said at last. “More than anything.”

He smiled and bent down to kiss me. “I love you too,” he replied, before drawing me close and wrapping his long arms around me. “I think we’re going to be all right, Rue.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Because forever never ends. And you, Ruby…” I felt him kiss the crown of my head. “You are forever for me.”