200 Years Together Novels & Stories

"I'll take it." They stayed on the porch until the night turned properly cold, talking and quiet by turns, twenty years of marriage behind them and—if they were fortunate, if life cooperated, if love continued to do what it had always done for them—many more years ahead. Not because it had been easy. Because they'd never stopped choosing it. Twenty years. And counting.

We’d built peace, raised children, learned to lead both separately and together. And now we were beginning again. Five years ago, I’d fought to keep us together. Now, I was fighting to build something even better. And this time, we were doing it side by side.

This disgusted him most of all. It had been 7 whole years since the incidence of their first meeting; they were now 24 years old. That was the same amount of years wherein she had been in a relationship with Mason, one of his best friends. A long-term relationship like that, which had sustained over the turbulent test of time, meant only one thing: they loved one another.

She responds. "Oke, ou se de yon koup oswa yon bagay? (Okay, are you two a couple or something?)" I ask. They both laugh in unison. "Non, nou pa yon koup. Nou te vrèman zanmi pwòch pou plis pase ven ane. Nou te grandi nan ghetto a menm ak travay wout nou yo. (No, we are not a couple. We have been really close friends for over twenty years. We grew up in the same ghetto and worked our way up.)" Officer Durant answered.

I was sure they often gather together. I heard her let out a deep sigh. “To be honest, it’s been years since they last played like that.” I furrowed my brow and turned to her. Did she mean that after all these years, they’ve only played together now? But that’s impossible. Oliver also mentioned earlier while we were eating that they often hang out together because they’re in alliances. “How many years has it been since they last played and were all together?” I asked curiously. This time, she looked at me. There was an emotion passing through her eyes that I couldn’t quite put a name on. “It’s been seven years.”

Claudia in the productive silence that meant she was writing. David had his coffee. I had mine. The garden was quiet in the way it had learned to be quiet. Not empty quiet. Full quiet. The kind that had people in it. "I've been thinking," he said. "Tell me." "Twenty years in June." I looked at him. Twenty years. The number arrived with the specific quality of something that was simultaneously impossible and entirely exact. Twenty years since the contract dinner. Twenty years since two people had sat across a table and tried to make the largest thing either of them would ever do manageable by reducing it to terms.

I couldn't believe how much time has passed since I met Adrian and the rest of The Decadence of The Fallen. It's been more than a year now but somehow, it feels longer. We celebrated birthdays together. We supported each other through our failures. We cheered each other on with every difficulty we faced. We've been through so much already. The ups. The downs. The in-betweens. I mean I couldn't even imagine a life without them anymore...

“More than that, I can’t believe it’s been that long. It feels as though it was only yesterday that we were at the academy together.” Anatol nodded with a grin. “Unfortunately we’re not that young anymore,” he replied. “And our pact has only grown older with time.” “Stronger, too,” added the scrambled man. “Without a doubt. Neither of us would’ve ever achieved what we have without the other. And now here we are, each of us with our own troublesome youngsters to teach, to mold. Both our families have come a long way since then. I can’t wait to see what the next thirty years will bring us.”

That we'd have a lifetime of moments like this. Together. Always together. For love. For each other. For the future we'd just claimed. ---

Looking at Connie, whose face was barely visible under the white veil as she slowly walked to him, Jerome could not help but tear up. They had already waited for more than 30 years for this day. When they were young, they disregarded everything to be together. Even now, nothing had changed, they also did everything they could to be together. After parting with each other for 30 years, they had experienced life and death and they were finally together right now. Fate had bound them together for the rest of their lives. Under everyone's amazement, the elder smiled as he handed Connie's hands to Jerome.