“Wow, that was fast.”
“Are we ready for this?” I asked him.
“What do you mean? This was all your idea,” he laughed.
“Yeah, I know. I just hope that I can do a good job with it.”
Michael turned me around in his arms until I faced him. Then he took the folder out of my hand and set it down on a nearby table.
“This isn’t a medical facility,” he reminded me. “It’s just a nice, safe place for people to come when they’re down on their luck or feel alone. Just having a place like this where people can go with no questions asked, that already means you’re doing a good job with it. Besides, look at what you managed to do with the halfway house. That place is a huge success and has helped tons of teenage kids. Now you have this place where you can help adults that need it, just like your aunt. Which, by the way, she seems to be doing pretty well here.”
“Yeah,” I said with a smile. “I never thought that Naomi would be reformable, especially not after all that she has done. But she genuinely seems to want to be better and do better now.”
I looked over and saw Naomi helping Sarah get acquainted with where things were in the house.
“She still hates men though,” I joked.
“Yeah well, no worries there. I plan to stay completely clear of her until we leave,” Michael said. “And speaking of leaving, come on. I want to take you somewhere.”
I thought he was referring to somewhere inside the building, but when he handed me my coat, I realized that he meant we were going out.
“What about Naomi?” I asked.
He thumbed over his shoulder. “Adam and Rob are still here. I’ll tell them that they’re on guard dog duty for a few hours.”
“A few hours?” I asked. “Where are we going?”
He grinned. “It’s a surprise.”
On the ride to our surprise destination, I couldn’t help but stare at Michael as he drove. I kept my hand in his lap and my fingers rubbed against the soft fabric of his jeans. He looked happy, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of whatever surprise he had in store for me, or because things were going okay at the moment. There hadn’t been any intimacy since the storage room incident with Adam. Mostly because we had been so busy and so tired with getting The Sanctuary opened up. But also, because the four of us had been working tightly together, and I didn’t want to do anything to rock the boat.
Adam still hadn’t talked to me much about my choice and about the fact that I hadn’t told him and Rob. We mostly just worked together during the day and talked about other things instead, as if we were avoiding the emotional issue altogether. But at night, Adam would curl up around me just like the four of us always slept. And no matter how much division or coldness there was within awkward or uncomfortable moments of the day; all of that melted away while we slept touching each other at night. It was like we couldn’t even stay upset with each other if we tried.
Of course, at some point in the near future, Adam and I would still need to finish that conversation.
My decision to choose Michael and my decision not to tell the others, was something that still needed to be discussed. Rob hadn’t mentioned anything about it at all, and I wondered if Adam had even told him. I felt sure that he would have. It would have been hypocritical of him to be upset at me about “omissions” and then fail to tell Rob about what he knew. So I was pretty certain that he had told Rob already. Although I didn’t know why Rob hadn’t said anything to me about it yet.
“Okay, so no thinking about anything else right now,” Michael said as he pulled out a silk scarf to tie around my head so that he could cover my eyes. “And also, no peeking.”
“How could I peek? You have a scarf wrapped around my eyes,” I giggled.
“True,” he said as he gently helped me out of the car. “I just don’t want to ruin the moment.”
“What moment?” I asked as I held onto his arm while we slowly walked into a building.
I could tell we were inside someplace now because the noise of the city streets was dampened, and the chilly breeze was gone. It was silent wherever we were though. It didn’t sound like there was anyone else there, which made me instantly tingle, thinking that this was a romantic surprise. We climbed a lot of stairs, and I mean a lot of stairs. Then I heard a creaking door open and the sounds of the city again.
There was an even gustier and chillier breeze now as I wrapped my coat around me, and Michael grabbed me nearer to him.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yes!” I said excitedly.
When he pulled the end of the scarf loose and it fell down from my eyes, I couldn’t believe where I was standing. I looked over at Michael, who was standing next to me with a wide smile and a look of absolute adoration in his eyes. Then I looked out across the rooftop of the aquarium. I saw the spot where Michael first grabbed me, in that heated moment where I didn’t know whether to be afraid for my life, or afraid for my soul. I saw the greenhouse where Michael and I had first made love to each other. And perhaps more than anything else, I saw the night play through my head again when I first knew that I loved him.
I didn’t know it then; at the time, I just thought that my emotions were running wild and that at most it was probably lust from the thrill of the moment. But looking back on that night; I knew it. I knew it right down into the core of my being. I knew that Michael would be the one.
Michael took my hand and we walked over to the edge of the roof.
“Right here is where we stood,” he said. “The exact moment when I was trying to figure out if we were going to be enemies or lovers.”
“Perhaps we were a bit of both,” I said. “Or perhaps we started as one thing and have ended up the other.”
“Enemies to lovers?” he asked. “Well then, in that case; I’d like to get to the lover’s part now.”
He pulled me closely into him and I let my body press against him as we kissed.
“This was a nice surprise,” I smiled when our mouths pulled apart.
“Oh, but this wasn’t the whole surprise,” he grinned.
Michael took my hand and led me to the greenhouse, then he pulled out a small ring of keys from his pocket.
“How did you get the keys to the aquarium?” I asked.
“I just called in a favor,” he answered elusively.
When he turned the doorknob and pushed open the greenhouse door, I didn’t even need to walk all of the way inside to see what he had done. There in the center of the greenhouse, was a pile of our fur blankets from Asheville, for us to lay on and wrap around ourselves. There were candles lit along the inside of the walls. The air was perfumed with the scent of flowers and the starry sky cast the perfect amount of dim light into the greenhouse.
