I lose track of time. I lose track of her orgasms. She twines around me, her skin hot, her eyes glossy. My hands tug on her hair, and my lips crush hers, my teeth nipping at her neck, her earlobe, her jaw. The sounds she makes send me into another realm. My mind is a blurry haze of desire and love and passion.
And at last, after we come together one final time, I pull her close and whisper in her ear, “I love you. I’ve wanted to say that for so long.”
She runs a hand down my chest. “I love you. And I feel like I belong to you, and you belong to me.”
“That sounds about right. There’s something pretty spectacular about falling in love with your wife.”
A little later, after I rummage through the hotel fridge, I announce that we must go out to eat. “I’m starving, and I can’t subsist on peanuts.”
We dress and head outside on a summer night in Manhattan. “Show me around New York City, Mrs. Ellison.”
She does, and we extend our trip, staying for the weekend, enjoying the sights. I introduce her to Oliver since he’s back in the States again, where he lives. He takes us all to a fantastic bar in Chelsea. Gin Joint is jumping, and Oliver seems to have commandeered an entire corner with his friends, and one of his cousins on the other side of his family, a bloke named Jason who’s from London and works here now. It’s a veritable crew of Brits and Americans, but Oliver quickly loses interest in us when the pretty blonde walks in.
He waves her over. “Summer, I thought you were ghosting us.”
“Ghosting you? Never,” she says, then introduces herself before she sits next to him.
Pretty soon, he’s enrapt in some conversation with her about whether the fries from this place are, as he puts it, last meal worthy, and she’s laughing, and telling him he’s crazy.
I lean back in my chair, put an arm around my wife, and whisper, “He has no clue that he’s mad about her. But I bet he’ll figure it out so very soon.”
“I bet he will too,” she says.
Then, I kiss my bride.
The next day, I meet her brother and his wife and kids, as well as her parents, since they’re back in town after a holiday. We get along fantastically.
So well, in fact, that I make sure they know that when they’re in Paris next month, we want them at our wedding.
EPILOGUE
Elise
Twilight drapes over Montmartre. Strings of flickering lights hang from the iron posts that hug my courtyard.
That’s all I have for my wedding decorations, and that’s all I want. With the soft light fading above us in the sky, and the curving cobbled street beyond the front yard, this is the ideal setting.
Christian taps a spoon against a champagne glass, and all our guests quiet down. I stand next to him at the top of my steps, my arm around his waist. “Thank you so much for coming today and for joining us as we tie the knot again,” he says.
Our friends and family cheer, and the ceremony begins. There is no aisle to walk down, no flower girls tossing petals, no string quartet playing tunes. This is a simple ceremony, but already it’s my favorite one.
Because everyone who matters is here. Gathered in my small front yard, which blooms with August’s soft pink and pale-yellow snapdragons, are all the people who matter most to us. Joy holds hands with Griffin, Erik stands next to Veronica, Oliver is here too, my family is gathered close, and Christian’s mom is here as well as his father and his wife. Christian’s not close to his dad, but it still feels right that he’s present.
The officiant clears his throat and marries us once again. This ceremony is nearly as fast as our first one, but it’s better because we can finally say out loud how we feel.
“I promise to love you, cherish you, and adore you for as long as we both shall live,” I tell him, and Christian says the same words to me.
“Kiss the bride, finally, will ya?”
Christian laughs at his brother’s directive, then says to me, “I’ll keep doing that for the rest of my life.”
He kisses me under the twilight sky on our street, in front of my home, where we now live together.
I loop my hands around his neck, and I’m still holding a bouquet of flowers, tied together with a slim rope. It’s a true hodgepodge, with a few roses, some stargazer lilies, a couple of daisies, and some zinnias. This melting pot of petals is courtesy of my new blog readers, the ones who follow my occasional posts about flowers. They didn’t send me a perfume bottle, and I didn’t want one. Instead they chose the flowers for my bouquet. Lilies for beauty, daisies for innocence, roses for love, and zinnias for lasting affection. I love that it’s completely haphazard and completely meaningful in a whole new way.
Most of all, I love that the promise of the zinnias feels possible as I kiss my husband once more.
Later that night, we all go out to dinner down the road, where we pretty much take over the five-table bistro, toasting with endless glasses of champagne and wine. At one point, Christian grabs me as I walk by and pulls me into his lap. He wraps his arms around me and nuzzles my neck. “At last. I can finally be a kept man.”
I laugh and drop a kiss to the end of his nose. “You know what that means, if you really want to be my trophy husband?”
“What does it mean?”
“It means you have to service my needs, any night, any time I request.”
He puffs out his chest. “I believe I do that already.”
“And I think you’re pretty damn good at it.”
Christian is anything but a kept man. He’s his own man, carving out the life he wants, picking up the jobs he wants, whether it’s talking all day for dignitaries or businessmen, or advising top companies on entering new markets. He makes his own choices, and most of all, he doesn’t let it demand all his attention, like he did in his twenties. He’s learned how to take in work at a pace that makes him happy.
As for me, I’m still working hard, and hope to for a long time, since I love my job and taking care of my employees. Most of all, I love having the kind of relationship that consumes me at night and brings me peace during the day.
I suppose it was fate that brought Christian into my life one fine summer day on a boat tour, but it’s not going to be fate that keeps him in it.
It’s going to be me, loving this man, and giving him my heart all the days of my life.
ANOTHER EPILOGUE
Christian
“I have one final question.”
“Hit me up with it,” I say as I walk along the avenue with today’s translation client. I expect the Swedish DJ to ask me the fastest route to a new underground club or how to find an out-of-the-way record store.
“Would you happen to know where the best sweet shop is in Paris?” He cups the side of his mouth as if what he’s sharing is oh-so-secret. “I want to pick up a little gift for the lovely lady.”
I laugh because do I ever know the answer to that. “Fortunately, I know exactly where to send you.”
I point him in the direction of Veronica’s nearby shop, and he thanks me, then nabs a taxi.
He was a fun client, an interesting guy with a toddler back home in Stockholm, and a wife he couldn’t stop talking about. As I shuffled him from meeting to meeting with French music execs, he showed me pictures of the little blond tyke and his equally blonde mum.
Weirdly, I didn’t mind looking at kid pictures, and that’s never been my thing, per se.
