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“You know there’s a camera on us right now. We’re up on the jumbotron,” he mentioned when we broke apart. “And the cheering is for us, too.”
I hadn’t even heard it. “I don’t care. I don’t care about anything but you, and us being together.”
“Come on. I think we better go together off this field.” He waved to the crowd, took my hand, and we started to walk along the sideline. “Are you limping? Is your foot all right?”
“It just hurts a little.”
“Maybe I better carry you. Also, I like keeping you close.” He swept me up into his arms, knight-style, and I rested my head on his shoulder as we went toward the tunnel. I had a few things to tell him about where I’d been for the last twelve hours, but it could wait a little while longer.
“Did you say something, honey?”
“I was thinking about how much I love you,” I answered. “Maybe I said it out loud.” But this wasn’t a dream or imagination; it was real, and it was me and Bowie. It was better than anything I could have thought up, and I got to live it.
Epilogue
“Would you call this the foxtrot or the samba? I can’t quite remember the difference.”
“As your dance instructor, I’m very displeased.” I looked up and tried to frown severely, except that I smiled instead because he was just so handsome and I was having so much fun. “You should know that this is the basic rumba box step, except you’re holding me way too close.”
“Not close enough,” he said, and adjusted our bodies. “There we go. Now I can really feel you.” He rested his cheek against my hair. “Mmm. That noise in the living room couldn’t be from our kids, could it?”
“Probably it is. I was thinking that if we close our eyes, they might not see us out here.”
“Let’s try it. I’m hard to miss, though, because I’m a little oversized. You’re hard to miss too, but it’s because of being so beautiful.”
It was nice that he still thought that, seven years into marriage and with me in my pajamas on our patio. Bowie had retired from football two seasons before but I had finished with the Wonderwomen a long time before that. With everything that had happened in the months after we’d gotten married, with the police investigation, then the Woodsmen going to the championship game, and then my foot surgery—schoolwork had gone out the window, and then we’d decided to travel, too. My graduation had gotten delayed by a year. I’d cheered the season after that but it had been my final one, because towards the end, I’d started to get sick in the mornings and had developed a taste for coleslaw that I’d never had before.
And seven months later, Julianna had been born. We’d named her after Bowie’s mom, who had made some large changes in her life: the day she met her granddaughter, she decided to go into a treatment program and quit drinking entirely. Then, fourteen months after Julianna, we’d introduced Garrett Bowman (the fourth) to the world, and then came Henry and Emerson, and they’d been a big surprise.
“You do understand how babies are made, right, Sissy?” Aubin had asked me when we’d brought them home from the hospital. But she’d been smiling down at the little pink-capped head on her right arm and the blue-capped one on her left. “Good Lord, they’re cute.”
My dad had been in the driveway with the two older ones and crowing about the newest Bowmans to Mieke, our neighbor. “Is anyone watching him?” my sister asked us. “He might show them how to hotwire a car.” Bowie had decided she could have been right, and intervened.
We were now taking a break from babies. The cottage was feeling a little small, maybe small enough that Bowie might have needed to plan another addition to the original building. Post-football, he’d gotten his contractor’s license and had been almost as busy as when he’d played.
Except there was always time for dancing.
“Daddy? I think that Henry climbed up the chimney,” Julianna announced as she opened the French doors from the house. Bowie had replaced the old ones years before.
“Why do you think so?”
“We still see his leg, but that’s all. He says it’s fun in there but I don’t believe him. I’ll tell him to come down.” She disappeared.
“Maybe I should go deal with that,” I said, opening my eyes. “I’d hate to lose another one to the chimney.”
“You’re good right here.” He glanced toward the house, saw that we were unwatched, and squeezed my butt. “How’d this get so cute?”
“Kiss me, please.” He did, until we heard a thump from inside.
“Got him!” a voice called, and in a moment, four small people joined us on the patio. One was covered in soot.
“Hey there, Bowmans,” my husband said to our brood. He winced at Henry, whose blonde hair had turned black. “Looks like we’re going for a swim.”
“Yay!” they cheered, and in a moment, we were heading toward the lake, Bowie and I each with a little one on our shoulders and holding a slightly larger one by the hand.
We stopped on the shore and looked across the sparkling water as the kids played in the shallows. The sun was moving behind the hills on the other side of the lake as another beautiful summer day drew to a close. We’d swim, read some books to the kids, put them to bed, and then dance some more. Probably naked, too.
“I know what you’re thinking, Mrs. Bowman, and I agree.” Bowie put his arm around me. “It’s not too long until bedtime.”
