29. Charly #2
He gets up off the bed, crosses over, and takes the toiletry bag out of my hands so he can hold them instead.
“Hey. Look at me a sec.” He ducks down till I do. “You don’t have to give me anything. A kid, whatever. I already married you. Twice, even, which honestly was overkill, but I wanted to be sure you got the message.”
I laugh, wet and stupid.
“If it happens for us, I will lose my entire mind with joy, you know I will. I’ll be unbearable.
I’ll cry in public.” He brushes my hair back off my face.
“And if it never does, I am still going to be standing right here. Married to you. Stupidly in love with you. Calling you wife until you finally make good on threatening to kill me.”
“It’s not a threat. It’s a promise.”
“See, that’s the romance I signed up for.” He cups my face. “Your body isn’t the rent on this thing, Charly. There’s no rent. Nobody’s keeping a tab. You live here now, for free, forever, whatever happens.”
“That’s so dumb.” I’m fully crying now, the good kind. “You live here now. Who even says that.”
“Me. I say that. I’m extremely romantic, ask anyone.” He kisses my forehead, then the tip of my nose. “Now finish packing. You fold like my grandmother, and she’s been dead six years.”
We’re terrible at packing, it turns out, because every time I get close to zipping the suitcase he finds a reason to pull me back against him, and I keep telling him we’ll miss the flight and he keeps not caring.
“We are going to miss this flight,” I tell him, somewhere around the fourth time he’s pulled me back against him instead of letting me pack.
“We’re going to be fine. We’ve got loads of time.” He hooks his chin over my shoulder and peers into my half-empty suitcase like it’s fascinating.
“We’ve got an hour and a half and you haven’t packed a single thing.” I wave a folded shirt at the disaster of his side of the bed.
“I know. I keep getting distracted.” He turns his head and kisses the side of my neck, slow, not letting go. “You smell good. It’s a real problem for me right now.”
“Clarence. The suitcase.” I try to wriggle out of his arms and get nowhere.
“Right. Yeah. Packing.” He finally releases me, grabs a fistful of his own shirts, and drops them into his bag in a wad. I wince, and he points at me before I can say it. “They’re going in a bag. They’ll be a mess either way.”
“You’re an animal.”
“You knew that. You married me anyway.” He drags the zipper shut over the lump of clothes and swings the bag off the bed. “Twice, even. Come on, let’s get out of here before I find another reason to keep you in this room all day.”
***
By the time we make the airport we’re running on no sleep and pure adrenaline, and somewhere over the Atlantic it all catches up with me.
I’m wrung out, crying at a movie I’d normally roast, and my stomach’s been unsettled for the last hour.
I chalk it up to airplane food and last night’s wine and the meds, since the clinic warned me those can leave you feeling rough.
“Hey. You okay?” Clarence pulls back to look at me, his hand coming up to my cheek. “You’ve gone a little green on me, baby.”
“I’m okay. Just wiped out.” I turn my face into his palm. “And then this dumb movie got me. The dog finds its way home, Clarence. After all those years.”
“Oh no. Not the dog movie.” He’s fighting a smile and losing. “You want me to turn it off?”
“Don’t you dare, I need to see if the dog’s okay.” I wipe my face on his sleeve, which he lets me do. “I think I’m just running on empty. It’s been a lot. The good kind of a lot, but still.”
“Then sleep.” He shifts so I can fit against him better, tucks his arm around me. “Put your head right here. I’ve got you. Italy will still be there when you wake up.”
“Wake me up if they come around with food.”
“I’ll guard the pasta with my life.” He kisses the top of my head, and I close my eyes against the warm solid weight of him, and I drift off somewhere over the ocean and don’t think about it again.
I wake up to his hand on my knee and his voice in my ear, soft.
“Hey. Wife. Wake up, you have to see this.”
I open my eyes and lean across him to the window, and there’s Italy underneath us, red roofs and hills gone gold in the afternoon light, and my breath just goes.
“Oh my God.” It comes out thick. “Clarence. Look at it.”
“I’m looking.” But when I glance over, he’s not looking out the window at all. He’s looking at me. “Best view on the plane’s right here, honestly.”
“That’s so cheesy.”
“I know. I’ve got a hundred more like it. You signed up for a lifetime of this.” He brushes my hair back off my face, and his thumb catches a tear I didn’t know was there. “Hey. You’re crying.”
“I used to talk about coming here when there was no version of my life where it was ever going to happen.” I laugh, wiping at my face. “And now I’m just, I’m here. With you. It doesn’t feel real.”
“It’s real.” He pulls me into him, both arms, my face tucked into his neck, and holds on while the plane bumps down onto the runway. “All of it’s real. I keep telling you that.”
“You do. You really do.” I pull back just enough to look at him, and then I kiss him, slow, not caring that the woman across the aisle is openly watching us.
By the time we get our bags and push out through the doors, the Italian afternoon hits us full in the face, all warm air and noise and somebody’s radio playing somewhere down the row of taxis. I stop on the curb and just breathe it in.
“What’s that look?” he says, watching me.
“I owe you an apology, I think.” I lace my fingers tighter through his.
“For what?”
“For making you say it a hundred times. That I’m enough, that you’re not going anywhere.” I shake my head at myself. “You’ve shown me over and over and I kept making you prove it. The chapel, the ring, all of it. You shouldn’t have had to work that hard.”
“Hey, I didn’t mind the work.” He bumps my shoulder with his. “I’d say it a thousand more times.”
“I know. That’s the thing, I finally believe you.
” I look up at him, and for once there’s no knot in my chest. “All that stuff with the clinic, the baby, I was so scared of it. And standing here, I actually mean it when I say it’s okay either way.
If we get a kid out of this someday, I’ll lose my mind, I’ll be unbearable about it.
But if it’s just us? You and me, the whole way out?
That’s a good life. That’s a really good life.
I’m done waiting around for the good part to start. We’re in it.”
His eyes go bright, and he doesn’t say anything, just waits.
“It’s just you and me from here to forever,” I tell him. “That’s already enough. It was always going to be enough.”
And then I kiss him, right there on the curb in the sun, with our luggage at our feet and the whole rest of our lives in front of us.