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“Sizzling.” I laughed. “What about me?” I tugged open my overnight bag and pulled out the reindeer antler headband I’d grabbed from April at work earlier in the day. She’d agreed to let me keep it because she said it looked cute as hell on me. So, that was a hopeful opinion. I put it on my head and looked at Daniel.
He grinned. “Adorable.”
I turned around, shaking my ass, and saying, “Want to play Santa and his reindeer later?”
Daniel chuckled and grabbed me from behind. “I want to do lots of things to you later.” He kissed my cheek, and spun me around, pressing our foreheads together. “Look, I’ve been thinking…”
“Yeah?”
“I just need you to be honest with me about one thing.”
“Okay?”
“Ifheshowed up today, or tomorrow, or whenever, and said that he was out now, and that he’d chosen you, that he’d broken up with her—”
I scoffed. “Daniel, that’s not going to happen.”
“But if it did—”
“It won’t.”
He gripped my hips harder. “I know you love me, but you loved him too.”
“Yeah, I can’t deny I did.”
“And you still do.” He tried to step back, but this time I held him fast.
“No. I don’t.”
I didn’t love Adam. I felt a lot of things for him: responsibility, guilt, remorse, lingering lust, annoying fondness, hate, and even more mixed-up stuff than that. But love? That sweet, honeyed emotion that wrapped me up when I was with Daniel? I didn’t feel that for Adam. Not now, and maybe I hadn’t ever? Almost from the start, what I’d had with Adam had been poisoned.
“Daniel, if it was between you and him, I’d choose you. I’d always choose us.”
“You’re sure?”
“Baby, I wouldn’t be here now if I wasn’t sure. You’re not my second choice. You’remy choice.”
Daniel’s lips trembled. “Baby?”
“Hmm?”
“You called me baby just now.”
“Oh,” I chuckled. “You callmethat, don’t you? Is it weird if I call you that too? Do you want me to call you something different?”
He pressed his lips together before saying, “Only if you calledhimthat.”
I shook my head. “No, never.”
“Then I’m good with baby… Baby.” He let me draw him into a hug, and we comforted each other, swaying back and forth. The room felt like warm and welcoming, a place where our love was safe to grow.
I wanted a picture of us, just like this, but I’d have to break out of his arms to attempt to set up the camera, and it wouldn’t be real then, just posed. I committed the memory to my heart, my mind, and my cells instead.
One day, I’d take a photograph that echoed this feeling. Somewhere out in the world, whether in nature or in a city, I was sure I’d find it again. Love, I’d come to realize, lived everywhere if you just looked for it.
***
We pulled upto Robert and Barry’s house to find the party was already in full swing.
