My Life as a Holiday Album (My Life as an Album #5) - L.J. Evans Page 0,43
you’ll mess it up?
When perfection keeps you haunted,
All we need is your best my love.”
Performed by Sara Bareilles
Written by Sara Bareilles
It scared me sometimes to think about how much I loved Eliza. Because my words to her were true. I’d abandon everything for her. My career goals. My determination to serve. Everything. The few short weeks I’d been at Initial Flight Screening in Colorado had proven that. Hell, I’d almost walked away from it mid-session because she’d gotten more and more distant with each call I’d made. Like she was protecting herself from the inevitable breakup. As if she were waiting for me to say a final goodbye.
When I’d first seen Eliza at her brother’s football party, I’d been frozen into a stillness my roommate had laughed at me for. All I’d been able to do was stare at her red lips and dark hair, thinking she looked like Snow White, Audrey Hepburn, and yes, a dark-haired Chloë Grace Moretz. She was Eliza Doolittle, Holly Golightly, and so much more rolled into one.
I was a sucker for classic movies. I was a sucker for her.
It was why I’d agreed to marry her the day after I’d proposed. The arguments she’d posed had made complete sense. Why should we have waited? Why should we have been apart? Of course, my parents had listed a whole score of reasons why―the fact that I hadn’t even met her parents being at the top of the list.
We may have been dating for a year, and I may have met her siblings and a couple of cousins, but fate had plotted against us when it came to her parents or the rest of her family. I’d never been able to go home with her, and when her parents had been in Knoxville, something had always come up. It was ridiculous but true.
Now, I was meeting them for the first time when they’d become my in-laws.
When I’d married their daughter without even telling them.
My stomach rolled, and I swallowed hard as I drove down the highway. ‘Z’s restlessness next to me only added to my own. We’d made a decision, and now we had to face the consequences, but in truth, I’d do it all over again. The fact that I got to call this glorious woman my wife made me the luckiest man on the planet.
When we pulled up to the security gates tucked into a huge stone wall at the entrance to their drive, the tension in my jaw reached an all-time high, clamping my teeth together painfully. I tried to work it free with a hand, and Eliza’s hand joined mine, reassuringly.
“I love you,” she said, and it almost made the tension disappear. “They’re going to love you, too.”
I was pretty sure her brother already didn’t love me. He’d scowled and growled and shed dirty looks in my direction the few times we’d met. I wanted to believe it was just because he was being protective, but I could never truly be sure. When I’d gone to pick Eliza up for our second date, he’d been waiting for me at her and her sister, Ginny’s, apartment. He’d taken me to the side and promised me the wrath of the entire football team if I hurt her.
It hadn’t changed anything in how I’d courted her, though. I’d already been moving at a slow crawl with our relationship because I’d known the moment I’d seen her across the crowded party that she was special. I hadn’t wanted to screw it up. I’d wanted to place every foot just right.
Until now. Until I’d up and married her without any of her family being there.
As we drove up to the house, a woman, who looked nothing like Eliza except for her height, came running down the porch steps. Eliza was out of the car and in her arms before I could open the door.
“Mama,” Eliza said, hugging her tightly.
As much as my ‘Z said she was ready to be away from her family, this moment made me realize she didn’t even know, herself, how much she needed them. It made the doubts resurface. Doubts about taking her away from not only everything she knew and loved, but from her classes and the future she was making for herself.
I’d forced my dream to become hers.
As I approached, ‘Z turned to me with that same glorious smile that had caused the room to swirl when I’d first seen it.