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“Something like that, yes.”
“Exactly! If I can make something work for a year, there’s no way I’m giving it up. Besides, if there’s any chance that romance shit is legit, for me, it’s with Eli. And if you tell him I told you that, I’ll murder you and make it look like an accident.”
“Ha! Okay, your secret’s safe with me, I promise. Now would you get my locket?”
“Are you sure you want to wear that? You wear it every day, you know? Don’t you want to wear something extra special?”
“This is special,” I answered softly, fingering the smooth, worn metal as Courtney fastened it into place. “This is the most special piece of jewelry I have, and I can’t imagine getting married with anything else.”
“All right, if you say so, but why? Why is it so special to you, I mean?”
I smiled and thought back to my thirteenth birthday, so long ago, but so clearly imprinted in my memory that I was sure it would never fade at all. Neil had given me the locket for that birthday. He had walked from his house on the hill to my front door with locket in tow, sitting inside of a little velvet box very similar to the one he’d presented my engagement ring with.
My mother had answered the door and had retrieved me for the red-faced, nervous boy standing there and waiting for me. As Courtney led me to the vast backyard of Neil’s family home, the scene for our small wedding, I could still see that little boy version of Neil standing there and waiting for me. I could see him in the man that was waiting at the end of the aisle. He had waited until my mom had left the two of us alone and then he had shoved the box towards me, asking me if I would be his girlfriend at the same time.
“Do you, Fay, take this man, Neil, to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
“I do.”
“And do you, Neil, take this woman, Fay, to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
“I do.”
“With the power invested in me by the state of Alaska, I now pronounce you man and wife. Neil, you may kiss your bride.”
As Neil leaned in and kissed me, kissed me as he officially made me his wife, I could still see that time so long ago when he had leaned forward and kissed me chastely after I had told him that I would love to be his girlfriend. I realized in that moment that he was still at least some of that little boy, while I was still some of that little girl. We were those versions of ourselves as well as the versions we were now, and we would be both and more as we went about the process of growing old together.
I kissed him back, and as he took me by the hand and led me down the aisle and back towards the massive house the two of us would live in now, I
thought I might have just caught the faintest glimpse of what it meant to love a person for the span of a lifetime. It was too big to hold onto, and I was sure that I would lose sight of it sooner rather than later, but in that moment. I felt that I understood everything. It filled my heart with joy.
“Follow me,” he said.
“Follow you where?”
My thoughts had been such that I had been paying more attention to what was in my head than to where I was going. When I looked up, I saw that he was in the process of leading me to the master bedroom. Over the course of the last year, Neil had seen to it that almost the whole interior of the house had been made over, and the master bedroom was now where we slept. It was a lovely room, and one I still felt grateful to be able to call my own, but I wasn’t too sure why we were going to it now. All of our friends were still downstairs, getting ready to party and celebrate our wedding, and our bedroom had nothing to do with that. Still, his fingers were intertwined with mine, and he was leading me towards the bed, his intentions suddenly crystal clear.
“But Neil, we can’t! There are people waiting for us down there!”
“Let them wait. I love you, Fay. I love you, and I want to show you that.”
The part of me that wanted to play a good hostess was anxious to fight him and insist that we go downstairs and save what he had in mind for later. But there was a whole other part of me that I wasn’t sure had even existed before this second relationship with Neil. In so many ways, it was a continuation of the relationship we’d been a part of for almost all of our lives. This was the part of me that wanted to let him love me, that wanted to love him back, and this was the part of me that won out.
I didn’t put up any kind of fight. Instead, I raised my hands over my head in a submissive gesture that made him smile a little. He took the simple white shift I had chosen as my wedding dress and pulled it over my head, laying it out gently so that I could put it back on again when we were done. My arms came down, and I stood before Neil, naked. I stood before my husband and looked up at him with wide, expectant eyes. His face looking back at me was all sweet smiles and tender lines, and when he kissed me, it was after cupping my face in both of his impossibly large, strong hands.
He kissed me slowly. His lips moved on mine with something approaching timidity, feeling for my reaction as he went. Practically on my tiptoes to do it, my arms moved up to his neck and plunged into his slightly disheveled hair. I pulled him toward me as I used my tongue to separate his lips. I slipped it inside of his mouth, smiling as we continued to kiss. He groaned into my mouth.
I could feel him growing hard against my hip, and one of my hands began to slide down his chest, taking my time to unbutton his shirt as I went. He wore no undershirt beneath, and very soon, I had his bare chest exposed so that I could run my hands along the length of his muscles and feel his heart hammering underneath his skin.
“Are you nervous?” I asked with a smile, half joking and half serious as I peered into his eyes intently.
“Of course, I’m nervous.”
“Are you?” I asked again, genuinely surprised by his response. “But why? How could you be nervous about being with me when we’ve been together so many times before?”
“I’m always nervous when I’m with you. Every time I look at you, every time I touch your skin, there are always nerves.”
“But why?” I laughed, my hands still moving over his skin, moving down to the buckle of his belt as I liberated him from his pants. “I don’t want to make you nervous! That’s awful!”
