Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 86574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 433(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 433(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
He sent a photo of my handwriting.
Carys: That says organic peaches. Sorry for my chicken scratch.
Deacon: I was gonna say… ;-) Mine is totally organic, by the way. But got it. Peaches. Organic.
He followed that with five peach emojis.
Deacon: Ironically, the peach emoji represents ass. So you can imagine where my mind is going right now.
Next, he texted an eggplant emoji and a peach.
Carys: That reminds me, get an eggplant, too. Gonna try to make eggplant lasagna tomorrow.
Deacon: Yes, ma’am.
The texts stopped for a while. Then I received a photo of a black, lace thong draped over his hand.
Deacon: After all that talk of eggplants and peaches, I walked by the ladies’ underwear section, saw this, and pictured you in it, bent over in front of me. Now I’m fucking hard in the middle of Target.
Deacon: I need to get in line, but it’s not safe to leave this aisle at the moment.
Deacon: Shit! An old lady is looking for granny panties across from me, and I’m hiding in place with a stiffy.
I doubled over in laughter.
Deacon: I shit you not, I think the old lady just farted.
Deacon: Fuck my life.
Deacon: That’s it. I’m moving out of here. I’ve got the cart in front of me to hide my junk. And thanks to her, I’m not that hard anymore anyway.
Carys: Will you just come home before you get into trouble? LOL
Deacon: Heading home. With the thong. You. Me. Tonight. It’s on.
I sighed. We’d had our ups and down, but I really did love this man.
Deacon: By the way, you’re a size small in shirts, right?
Carys: Yes. Why?
Deacon: I got you something.
Carys: Uh-oh. Let me guess. Low-cut neckline?
He sent a photo of a plain, white, fitted T-shirt with a simple message on the front: I Heart My Boyfriend.
My face hurt from smiling.
Carys: You know, before we got together, I used to refer to you as the “Anti-Boyfriend.”
Deacon: Oh really? Well, the “Anti-Boyfriend” found the one.
I sighed.
Carys: Hurry back.
One more text came in about five minutes later.
Deacon: Picked you up a coffee from the Starbucks in here.
He sent a photo of the cup, which had a message written in black marker. At first, I thought it said, Carys Like Paris. But then I looked closer and realized he was getting me back for the peaches mistake earlier.
Carys Likes Penis.
EPILOGUE
Deacon
Getting Carys to fully believe in me didn’t happen as quickly as I’d hoped. And there was no formal discussion or announcement when things had finally crossed the barrier of trust. Our being back together happened slowly and organically. I spent every day for months showing her I wasn’t going anywhere, and taking the time to learn how to be a good partner to her and a father to Sunny. Because I’d put in the work, I finally reaped the rewards.
In the five years since Carys entered my life, I’d learned many things, including the following, in no particular order.
One: You can’t prove yourself with words, only actions.
Two: You can’t choose who you love. It never mattered what I told myself about not getting into a relationship with Carys. From the moment we connected, I was destined to lose the battle with my brain.
Three: Full freedom can’t be achieved until you forgive yourself. I finally sought therapy for my fear of failure and harming others and learned how important self-compassion was to my recovery.
Four: It’s not all about you, Deacon. There were things in life far more important than myself. Sunny taught me that. When you have children, they come first, always.
And finally, I learned blood doesn’t make you family. Sunny is my daughter, and it doesn’t matter that I didn’t technically make her. The only caveat? I had to share the father role with Charles. She called neither one of us Dad. I was Deek and he was Cha-Cha. But we both believed we were her father, neither of us willing to give that designation to the other. So we accepted that Sunny would have two fathers, each checking and balancing the other and holding each other accountable.
My daughter is a trip. She recently learned to twerk, thanks to Charles’s daughter, Talia. At five and a half, Sunny’s speech was still a work in progress. While Carys and I could understand almost everything she said, it wasn’t always clear to others. But we’d been told that with continued therapy, her speech would improve as she got older. She’d be able to meet all the same milestones as a typical kid, just on her own schedule. No one knew exactly what the future would bring for Sunny in terms of living independently, but I had high hopes that she would achieve whatever she set her sights on. I’d be there cheering her on until the day I died.
Of course, it wouldn’t have been possible for me to fall in love with Sunny if I hadn’t fallen in love with her mother first. A couple of years ago, Carys and I left Sunny behind with Charles for the first time and flew to Vegas to get married. It was four glorious days of having my beautiful ballerina all to myself. Soon after we got back, we moved to the suburbs of New Jersey so we could have a yard.