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“Yes, please and thank you,” Elle says.
Beau goes into the house and the rest of us sit in silence for a minute, taking in the view. It’s spectacularly beautiful here. I like the idea of Mila and I getting a place here, though I want something cozier than this.
We’ve only had one small argument in the past six weeks, and it was about who was supposed to turn the coffeepot timer on, so it was minor.
I check my phone for calls or texts, finding a message that piques my interest.
“Did you see the text from the realtor?” I ask Mila.
“No.” She picks up her phone to look at it.
We’re looking for a new place. She wants a home she can display her art in, preferably with a wine cellar, and I want a place that feels lived in with room for us to grow.
“Five bedrooms,” she says, scrolling through the photos. “Ugh, the kitchen. But we could remodel it.”
“Wine cellar, though.”
“Ohhh…I just got to those photos. Okay, I like it.”
“Great views,” I say, one of the photos showing a sunset over the mountains right outside the living room. “No sex room, though. We could always add one.”
“I’m sorry, a sex room?” Ford asks.
“We’re not having a sex room,” Mila says, not looking up from her phone.
“Sure, we are. She’s got sex room money.”
She laughs. “It’s not about money. A sex room is just weird. We can have sex in any room we want.”
“True, but can we hop in a sex swing in any room?”
Elle bursts out laughing. “Sex swings are weird.”
The boys and I have been hitting the whiskey hard today, which may explain my continued insistence on a sex room in our new house.
“I’m going to have a room within the room, like with a secret door. You go into the room and it’s like some MI-6 Mission Impossible shit with all the guns on the walls, but they’re all sex toys. A dildo wall. A whip wall. An anal plug wall.”
Mila and Elle are both laughing now.
“I’ll let you explain this to the realtor,” Mila says.
“He’d get it,” I assure her. “Jared doesn’t look like he gets much ass. I think he’d appreciate a room dedicated to pleasure.”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
Beau walks out with a tray of drinks, a little umbrella tucked into each one. The women take them and Ford pops the tops on the beers for the guys.
Mila holds her drink up and looks around at each of us.
“To new friendships,” she says.
Elle is the first one to raise her glass and clink it against Mila’s. Some of these people are new friends for me and others I’ve known for a few years.
But something tells me we’ll all be there for each other for a very long time.
“She was going to get deported, wasn’t she?” Ford asks me the next morning when the two of us are taking a run. “That’s why you guys got married.”
“What makes you think that?”
Mila can’t get deported anymore, but I still think we need to keep our secret. Our marriage is real now, but it didn’t start out that way.
Ford stops and takes a towel from his waistband, using it to wipe his sweaty face.
“It explains why none of us knew you guys were dating,” he says, still catching his breath. “Because you weren’t. You were single and you were a good solution to her problem.”
He’s not even asking me. He’s already convinced.
“I love her,” I say.
“I know. And she loves you too. I can see it all over both your faces. I’ll never say anything about my deportation theory, by the way. But it came to me last night when we were all sitting in the hot tub. I knew you never would have made a move on her and she wouldn’t have made a move on you.”
“Get over yourself, Sherlock Holmes. She’s my wife and that’s all that matters.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t believe you got married before me.”
We both get a drink of water and resume our run.
“Are you and Elle planning on marriage?”
“At some point. We’re not in any hurry, though.”
“It’s different than I thought it would be,” I admit. “Marriage.”
“How so?”
“I love that she’s mine. She’s got my last name now. I never get tired of her. Like even right now, I can’t wait to get back to the house and see her.”
Ford nods. “I get it. I’m that way with Elle. When you have a person, it’s different than just having a girlfriend, you know? Elle’s my person.”
“It’s good to see her and Mila getting along.”
“Those two are so much more alike than they realize,” Ford says, chuckling. “Who wants to tell them?”
I cringe, wiping sweat from my brow. “Good luck with that one.”
“What if I had no hair, only one eye, warts all over my body, and no fingers?” Mila asks me that night.
