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He tucks my head under his chin. “God I love you,” he says. I feel him relax beneath me. “So we just need to get through this year.”
“Yes, and this year will be fine. I have more to worry about with Allison than you do with Ryan.”
“With Allison?” he laughs. “Now you’re just making shit up.”
“She’s evil,” I insist. “Like soap-opera evil. I can totally see her drugging you and getting herself knocked up to trap you into marriage.”
“Never,” he says. “I’m going to suffer through the next year, and stay a million miles from her … ”
“And all other girls,” I interrupt.
“And all other girls,” he continues. “Because someday I want to come back to this house with our kids just so I can tell them about the agony you put me through all summer … ”
“Agony I put you through?” I laugh. “What about my agony, Mr. ‘Elle is too young’?”
He continues as if I haven’t spoken. “And they’re going to know, just like I do,” he smiles, “that I’d live through the bad parts a hundred times just to find myself where I am right now.”
He kisses me, and I think of all of my imagined futures, and his. The days and months and years each of us spent working toward things that may no longer happen. But when James describes our future together, it doesn’t have that same ephemeral quality my other dreams had. It’s real, as solid as the memory of something I’ve already lived through, as palpable as the thing that’s tied me to him since I was child.
“Don’t forget about Max and Ginny and their kids,” I tease. “They’ll probably be here too.”
He shudders. “You’re destroying my fantasy.”
“I think maybe they’d be perfect together,” I argue.
“I really need you to stop talking,” he insists.
“But seriously, James, don’t you think that … ” His mouth closes over mine, as he stands, scooping me up as he heads for his room.
“What are you doing?” I grin.
“Shutting you up before I require years of therapy,” he says. “You forced my hand.”
“I’d apologize,” I sigh happily, as the door shuts behind us. “But I’m not really sorry.”
“Yes,” he laughs as he throws me on the bed and whips off his shirt. “I didn’t figure you were.”
