Magnolia
The moment the word leaves my mouth, Lukas crushes his mouth to mine. We’re a fumbling mess of lips and teeth, and my hands tug on his sweatshirt, trying to shove it up and over his head without breaking the kiss.
We laugh as we stumble, and then his pants come off. My sweatshirt is tossed to the side, and my leggings are pushed down. There’s a chill in the air, and my body breaks out in goosebumps, but then Lukas wraps his warm body around me, picking me up and wrapping my legs around his waist.
He stumbles a few paces to the side to press me up against a wall. With a forearm tucked under my ass to hold me up, his other hand comes to rest on my cheek, thumb stroking gently. I wrap my arms around his shoulders, my hips taking on a mind of their own as I grind against him.
We don’t need foreplay. Don’t need to speak. He lines himself up and sinks into me with ease.
I groan at the sensation, my head dropping back and hitting the wall with an audible thud. Lukas grumbles, pulling us back and turning. Slowly, carefully, he kneels with me still in his arms, fumbling to spread out his discarded sweatshirt as a makeshift bed.
Once he’s satisfied, he lays me down on my back, then he rises to his forearms, hips thrusting as he lets loose.
A smile crosses my face, thinking that almost twelve years ago we handed over our virginities to one another on the floor of this exact room. It was different back then, obviously, both of us were nervous, excited, a little unsure of what to expect from it all.
I loved Lukas, that much hasn’t changed. But it’s a different love now, a worn-in love. One that comes from distance, time, growing as people. One that also comes from pain, from fights, from angry words and bruised egos.
As teenagers, we thought we were invincible. We knew we’d end up where we are today, together, but I don’t think either of us could have anticipated the ride it took to get here.
“Lukas,” I moan, my toes curling as my orgasm starts.
He groans against my neck, his face buried deep in my hair, and I do the same, clinging to the muscles of his back, pulling him to me and pressing my lips to his shoulder.
My back arches to meet him, and he slides a hand under my ass, fingers digging into my skin as he lifts my lower body off the floor.
My screams echo off the walls surrounding us when I come, and not a moment later, he pauses as his own orgasm takes over.
He pulls out, rolling to his back with his arm wrapped around me to take me with him. I immediately crawl into my favorite spot, pulling his arm open and draping it around me. My cheek falls to his bicep, where his Magnolia and Ivy tattoo rests, and I smile against his skin.
We’re still panting when the sun finally sets, shrouding the room in darkness. The kitchen light that Lukas had turned on to show off the chandelier glows from down the hall, the beam nearly reaching us where we lay.
“I love this house,” I tell him, and he hums his agreement. “I love you.” He twists his head to press a kiss to my hair somewhere.
“I love you, sweetheart.”
Rolling onto my elbows, I prop myself up to look around the space, my mind racing with all the ways I want to decorate.
Lukas sits up, twisting around, so his chest presses against my back. He pulls me to him with his long legs spread on each side of me. “Baby,” he whispers, and a hand comes up to smooth back my messy hair.
When I twist to look over my shoulder to face him, I’m taken aback by the sudden serious expression. “What’s wrong?”
His eyes search my face before a small smile crosses his closed lips. “I don’t want to say this, but…” He huffs out a breath. “I think you need to go back to Paris.”
I physically jerk back at his words. My body twists to face him. “What? Why? I—”
He reaches out to snag my wrist, bringing it to his mouth to kiss my skin. He scoots forward, pulling me to guide me onto his lap. I straddle him, and he holds me close, forehead resting against mine. “I think you need to go back to Paris, but temporarily.”
I rest my head against his, not ready to acknowledge what he’s saying.
“I think you should finish this season. You’ve worked so hard, Mags, so fucking hard to quit at peak time.
I know you’re sad, lonely, and I hope you know that I don’t ever want to be apart from you, not for another day.
But you have fans, Mags. You have people that have followed your career from your first day in France and have watched you grow into the magnificent woman you are.
They deserve to watch one final show. You deserve to be standing on stage, hearing the roar of the crowd as you take your final bow.
“I want to be there, too. I want to watch you dance your last professional ballet. Then I want to go home with you and help you pack up your apartment. I want to be the one that gets to close that chapter with you before I bring you to our home. Maybe some of it is selfish, but I think you should do it for you, too.”
Tears burn my eyes. This, this is the Lukas I know. The sweet boy I’ve always loved. The one who was my greatest support, my biggest fan, my absolute best friend.
“I think you’re right,” I agree, my head falling to rest on the swell of his shoulder. Tears trickle down my cheeks, dripping against his bare chest. “But…” I puff out a breath. “I don’t want to do long distance again.”
“Me neither,” he croaks. “But we’ve done ten, almost eleven years, baby. We’ve made it that far, what’s…” he trails off, counting. “What’s another five months? It’s five more months, then we get a lifetime together.”
I know he’s right. I know if I really didn’t return to ballet, if my performance last week was truly my last, there might be a day down the road where I look back and regret the way I went out.
But if I finish out the season, give my company notice and, like Lukas says, get to dance on stage one final time, that’ll be a memory I’ll hold forever.
I sit up, and his hands come up to smooth away my matted hair. When I peer up at him through tear-filled eyes, he’s smiling. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Lukas.”
He smiles, and his palm comes up to brush over the side of my face. He cups my chin, thumb grazing my cheek. “Forever.”
A relationship takes work. Well, it takes work to have a healthy one, anyway.
We loved each other as teenagers, yes, but love was easy then when the biggest responsibility we had was finishing homework on time or getting home before curfew.
I think a lot of relationships fail, not necessarily because the love changes, but because life is stressful. A demanding job, financial strain, a decline in health, each one takes a toll on a person, and we tend to want to place blame on someone other than ourselves.
You can fall in love with someone as a teenager, and the beauty of making a relationship work is that you get to fall in love with them again and again.
He was a different person when he was twenty and played baseball.
He was different when he became a Marine.
He was different when he lost his way and became the angry man I didn’t recognize anymore.
He’s different again, today, but in some ways, he’s back to the teenager I first loved.
I’ll see different versions of him in the future, too.
I’ll see the version that really steps into fatherhood, one that raises his children, teaches his kids to play baseball, and how to ride a bike.
He’ll be a different man when Ivy has her first broken heart and runs to him for comfort.
When we get old and gray and our health starts to fail, we’ll learn to lean on each other in a different way, and I’m sure I’ll love him all over again.
Love looks different once you know what it’s like to cry together, to fight together, to shed tears over making a relationship work. Because even when it’s hard, I can’t imagine trying to make it work with anyone else.
When it’s all said and done, I’ll be able to look back on this life we created together and know that it was worth all the pain we went through.
All of the hurt, the distance, the tears, the lonely nights, and unanswered messages.
The way we had to fight to find our way back to each other—getting to be with Lukas is worth it all.