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“Jay,” I said.
“Stella,” he replied, still playing with my hair.
“Not long ago, mere months in fact, you told me in no uncertain terms that you would never marry.” I forced a casual tone even though the mere memory of that conversation stung.
Some of that lightness left his eyes, and I hated myself for being the reason.
He didn’t reply. Jay remembered that conversation. Of course he did. He knew that that wasn’t all I had to say. So he waited.
“I know that the time we were apart changed a lot of things,” I continued. “I know that it made things become clear. But I just want to make sure that you’re not doing something that you don’t want to do just to keep me. The reasons you have for not wanting to get married are valid. More than valid. And they were concrete until recently. Yet now you’re agreeing not only to a wedding but one that will most likely have a long-retired pop group singing at the reception and will be attended by many, many people.” I bit my lip. “It’s ... a lot.”
Jay leaned forward to put his wine glass on the coffee table in front of us, then he took mine from my hand and did the same. His hands found my neck, gripping it, forcing my attention to him—which was where it had been the entire time. He wasn’t the only one who still felt the cold shadows of our separation.
“Stella.” He voiced my name in a low rasp. “I get to stand in front of a crowd of people and vow that you will be mine until the day I die. I could not give a fuck about the fanfare of it all.” His eyes roved over my face as if it was the first and last time he was ever going to see me.
His intensity never dulled.
“As for what I said about marriage, that was in the midst of the lies I was telling myself.” His thumb brushing against my jaw. “That was before I lived my life with the ghost of you in it. I’m not saying I’m going to be good at being a husband. I’m not saying I’m not going to fuck up. That my past won’t negatively influence periods of our lives, that it won’t be a battle against the uglier parts of me. But I’m making a promise that I won’t let them win.”
It wasn’t hearts and flowers. It definitely wasn’t Keats, but to me, Jay’s words were poetry.
It took me another week to have the conversation that I should’ve had the night that Jay asked me to be his wife.
No, I should’ve had this conversation much earlier than that. But conversations like this one weren’t allowed before.
He was cooking.
It was something he did often. Although my cooking skills were actually skills now, Jay liked feeding me. He liked serving me.
It was safe to say I liked it too
“You know, I agreed to be your wife before I actually really knew what your life entails,” I told him, sipping my wine. Liquid courage was definitely needed for this conversation.
“I told you what my life entails,” Jay replied, his drink untouched in front of him. It unnerved me, in the midst of serious conversations, his unwillingness to fidget. His emotional courage to stare unblinking at me. I, on the other hand, needed something. To fidget with the fabric of my pants. My hair. A drink containing alcohol.
“You told me in your vague, ominous, ‘I’m not good for you, and I may or may not be a mob boss’ kind of way,” I refuted.
“I’m not a mob boss,” Jay corrected.
I canted my head. “Okay, you’re not a mob boss, but you manage a ... ‘stable’ of sex workers? And you may or may not have people killed? Even though I’m not educated on the complexities of life in the underworld, I know there’s more than that.”
His stare was inscrutable. “Yes, Stella, there’s more than that.”
I waited. He didn’t speak. I waited some more. He still didn’t speak. “Well,” I snapped. “What else?”
Jay stared at me for a few beats more before he turned his head down to the cutting board and his onions. It was his nonverbal way of saying the conversation was over.
I leaned forward, snapping my fingers at him. “Nuh uh. You don’t get to choose when the conversation finishes now. I’m your soon to be wife. I’m your equal. And I’m entitled to know what in the fuck my husband’s life entails.” I was getting pissed off now. And obviously, I was not hiding it.
“You are entitled,” he concurred, still looking at the onions.
I gritted my teeth and waited for him to speak once more.
Thankfully, he did. But he may as well have stayed silent. “But I’m not going to tell you.” He looked up in time to see my glare.
