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Sixteen
When we parked in front of Michael’s building, he turned to me. “Wait here,” he said. “I have to do something first.”
“Okay.” My heart thrummed in my chest as I imagined everything that we had ahead of us. “I’ll wait here, then.”
Michael stamped a quick kiss on my lips, but I pulled him back in by his lapels. He groaned in earnest as our lips collided, sliding against each other’s, speaking of things to come. He slipped his tongue between my lips, surprisingly tentative and gentle. Our tongues danced, and Michael, getting excited as he does, pressed his body against mine. He gently nibbled on my bottom lip, sighed into my mouth contentedly. I pushed thoughts of Andrew out of my mind as my husband slid his hands down my body, marking his territory, claiming me.
As he ran his fingertips across my nipples, I arched into him, pressing my softness to the harder planes of his body. I felt him grow larger underneath my hand. Though part of me ached for all of him, another part of me dimly recognized that I also ached for another.
When Michael pulled away, he smiled with semi-swollen lips. “It won’t take too long,” he promised. He kissed me again—punctuation at the end of a sentence, before stepping out of the car and closing the door gently.
As I watched him go, thoughts of Andrew dissipated and I sighed to myself, a content smile stealing its way across my face. Forget Andrew, I thought. This is just what I imagined. I thought back to the night that Andrew and I lay on my couch after watching Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in Romeo and Juliet.
We lay there in silence, processing for a while, before I said, “Romeo and Juliet were fools.”
“Fools?” Andrew frowned. “Do tell.”
“What person in their right mind pretends to kill herself so that she can run away with her lover?” I scoffed. “Who wants to set themselves up for a life of being on the run?”
“Maybe she wanted to take that chance for love.”
“Love.” I snorted. “Love isn’t like that. That’s infatuation.”
Andrew waited.
“Love is about commitment,” I continued. “It’s waking up every day and doing what’s best for the health of the two people in the relationship. You see that person and you may feel some butterflies at first, but you stay even when you don’t. It’s hard work sometimes, but worth it.”
“Sounds like a lot of duty.”
“And?”
“And where’s the romance?” Andrew flicked through the channels while shoveling popcorn in his mouth. “Where’s the spark?”
“The spark is infatuation, not love,” I insisted. I sat up and twisted to look at him. “My ideal marriage will be comfortable, not an upheaval of my whole life. We will have built a life together, really gotten to know one another. Our families will accept the spouse as one of their own. Life will be less chaotic, not more.”
“I see.” Andrew stopped at Cartoon Network. Daffy was chasing Bugs Bunny around a tree. “Sounds like you have everything laid out.”
“Of course,” I said. “Don’t you?”
Bugs appeared in a nurses’ outfit. “Not really, no.”
“You don’t know what you want out of a relationship?”
“If it’s me and the other person, and we’re in it together, the rest will fall into place.”
I sighed and catapulted myself against the couch. “Sounds chaotic.”
Andrew looked at me then, and my breath caught in my throat. Even then, maybe more than now, Andrew’s casual magnetism always caught me off guard. I could never get used to the intensity of his eyes, how they captivated and held me prisoner. And he always held my gaze for longer than anyone else did, his eyes seemingly searching for something. They made me feel like I was on a life raft in disorderly waters, and my only way home, my anchor to this life, was through him.
Finally, he looked away, back toward the screen. “Life is chaotic, Ace,” he said finally. “Sometimes, it’s better that way.”
When Michael came back to the car twenty minutes later, I was humming happily to myself and readjusting my hair. He tapped on the passenger window. “Alright babe, come on out.”
He waited for me to carefully step out of the car, a hand out just in case I needed it. Such a gentleman, I thought happily. I held onto the car door instead.
He shut the door firmly and tucked my hand into the crook of his elbow. As we walked up the stairs, my heart started slamming against my chest. This is it, I thought for the second time that day. This is forever. My mind meandered through a number of daydreams in which Michael and I sat at the kitchen table of our new home, reading the paper together, laughing, joking. Later in life, our kids would fly into the kitchen and demand breakfast, which would already be on the table, perfectly cooked. I would put the coffee on, and Michael would kiss me goodbye as he headed to work.
When we reached Michael’s apartment door, he turned to me. “Close your eyes.” I closed them immediately, bouncing on the balls of my feet.
