by Penny Reid
Anterdec’s New York City driver, Sam, takes our bags and delivers them to our corporate suite at the company’s finest hotel in Manhattan.
“Where is he taking my bag?” Shannon shouts over the sound of the copter.
“To the hotel.”
“Aren’t we going there?” she asks, looking at me with curiosity.
“Not yet.” First things first.
Shannon is remarkably silent on the limo ride to our destination, giving me half smiles and little caresses. Sex in the limo in a new city is a bit daunting, and for once I don’t want to sleep with her.
I know, I know. Back up the limo. That’s right.
I don’t want to sleep with her. Not now.
I’m too wound up, too full of cortisol and adrenaline and testosterone and whatever hormones drive me to ask her to marry me. My cup runneth over and I’m both full and empty, both free and chained. Cupid’s arrow struck me but it was attached to a rope that binds me to Shannon. We’re tied to each other for eternity.
The proposal is just a formality.
“How can you get away from work like this?” she asks, as if the thought suddenly came to her. “Isn’t the New Zealand launch a big mess? How can you take two days off?”
I give her a puffed-up, proud smile. “Got it all under control. Dad handed me that big mess, but with the right management I got new subcontractors in on the development, a crack software support team, and we sent coupon codes out to sixteen thousand subscribers as an apology. Sales are through the roof, systems are functional, and Dad can go eat a pile of monkey dung.” That little condition for getting Mom’s engagement ring didn’t work. I bested Dad.
She gives me a half-pleased, half-sick look. “Can we talk about something other than poop?”
I squeeze her hand and laugh.
As the limo stops in front of the sleek silver and glass building, she smiles.
“The MOMA! I’ve never been.” Her smile dazzles me as we enter the Museum of Modern Art.
“I know.” We get out and enter like everyone else, though I have a membership card. When your family donates the equivalent of the GDP of a small island nation to the arts, you get free admission and ten percent off the gift shop like everyone else.
We walk in, bookshelves and brochure racks everywhere, and I take Shannon past all of it, to the right, pressing the button for the fifth floor on the elevator panel.
“What are you doing?” she asks, puzzled yet intrigued. Her earnest brown eyes search mine, and she squeezes my hand. Mom’s ring rests in my front pocket now, no longer needing to be hidden. Shannon knows I want to make this right, to propose and ask her to marry me, but she doesn’t quite know the particulars.
But you can be damn sure there won’t be tiramisu within a hundred feet of us.
Years have passed since I’ve been here, but the route is ingrained, an invisible hand guiding me.
“Wait! Dec, I want to look at—” Shannon objects as we fly by other paintings.
“We will. Trust me,” I say back, squeezing her hand.
“Is this some special speed tour? Like speed dating, but for the MOMA? Ten seconds per painting?” she jokes.
We turn a corner and then there we are.
The Van Gogh gallery.
I stop so fast that Shannon bumps into me from behind, her body soft and yielding. I’ve become a brick wall, shrouded by a supernatural sensation, an eerie feeling that is a combination of déjà vu, grief, and pure joy. My muscles pulse and my heart begins to beat so fast it feels like my chest shudders. I’m numb and on fire, cold and tense. At ease and alive.
I can feel her here. My mother. Her ring is in my pocket and her soul is smiling on us.
Maybe Shannon will get a chance to meet her after all.
“Honey, what’s wrong?” Shannon asks, turning me toward her, hands on my cheeks. All I can do is blink. Senses on fire, ears perked for sound, it’s as if I can hear her if I just focus enough. Feel her. Call her.
My eyes catch on the painting that is my destination and I take one step toward it, then two, holding Shannon’s hand and bringing her there. My hand crushes hers but she doesn’t flinch, her purposeful strides matching mine. She does not question me now. She only follows.
And there it is.
We stop, captivated, Shannon’s eyes on the painting.
But mine are on her.
And there, in front of tourists wearing earbuds to listen to guided tours in their native language, amidst parents with toddlers in backpacks and elderly people in wheelchairs, in the swirling pleasure of humanity in every shade, every voice, every belief, I drop down to one knee, Mom’s ring already in my palm before I look up at Shannon’s beautiful face, and I say her name.
“Shannon.”
A hush fills the already-quiet gallery.
“I came here as a boy on the edge of manhood with my mother. We stood in front of this very painting, and she told me that one day I would find my morning star. The yin to my yang. The love of my life.”
She pulls her fingers to her mouth, covering her lips, and tears fill her eyes, a shaky smile making her ethereal.
“You are the star that lights up my darkest nights. You are the sun that I revolve around. We met in a men’s room—”
The hush becomes a series of troubled murmurs in the background, and Shannon laughs, then sniffs.
“—and you nearly broke my penis on our first date—”
The crowd around us gets bigger. Shannon’s openly laughing now.
“And I wouldn’t have it any other way. My life before I met you was neat and orderly. I had all the control. All the power. My world made sense and if it didn’t, I made it make sense. What I didn’t have was any of the love, Shannon.” My voice catches, wobbling as I say her name. “You brought back love.”
“Oh, Declan,” she says, bending down, eyes filled with tears, searching my face.
I’m determined to do this just right, and swallow, hard.
“You brought the love that I needed, even when I had no idea I was living with a hollow hole where my heart should be. That I’ve been living half alive without you and thinking I was complete.”
I hold up the ring.
“You have the other half of my heart, my love. And I think I have yours. Will you marry me, Shannon, so we can be whole, together?”
The crowd gasps, collectively holding their breath. I’m right there with them.
And then:
“Oh, yes, oh yes yes yes,” she whispers as I slide the ring on her left ring finger.
It fits perfectly.
I stand and we kiss on the shining floor of the gallery on that fifth floor at the MOMA, a security guard clearing his throat, the crowd around us applauding and calling out congratulations.
I can’t hear any of them, though, over the sound of our hearts beating in sync.
We take our time. Shannon’s fingers move slowly over the buttons of my shirt, soundlessly opening me to her touch. Moonlight bounces off the diamond resting in its platinum setting, her left hand weighed down by the newness of the ring. The thin band of metal is cold against my bare chest, the sensation making me sigh as her palm slides under my shirt, following the planes of my body.
Another button, another breath, another look. She kisses me on the breastbone, then over my heart, my own hands gentle at her waist, my body primed to make love yet held in check.
We have all night.
We have all our lives.
“Thank you,” she murmurs against the soft skin of my neck, just under my ear.
“For what?”
“For loving me.”
My breath catches. “I never had a choice.”
In the open room we’re two bodies, two hearts pumping blood, four lungs exchanging air, four eyes and hands taking in the terrain of each other’s body. Her lips on my neck are the sweetest movement, my hands finding her hot skin and sliding up the rolling hills of her breasts, the supple silk of her nipples as they tighte
n like sculpting desire with my own hands.
The suite I booked is all clean lines and dark wood, dim lights and wide windows, thirty-nine floors above the city and the bed is as big as a small field. We undress each other, the clothes pooling at our feet with whispers and the hushed sound of gravity at work. Soon we’re nude, bare before each other in all our glory, and her eyes captivate me.
Slow blues music plays in the background as I pull her into my arms, thighs embedded between hers, the curvature of her spine against my forearms like it was hand-carved to fit my grasp. Her lips and tongue meet mine with abandon, love so different now, forged in commitment and declaration, in promises and—soon—vows.
I asked. She said yes.
Now we show each other how true it all is.
My wanting has a new tone, a different tenor, changed irreparably by my proposal, her acceptance, our joining. At home, wanting Shannon took on a crude sort of steamy demand, like a second set of veins and arteries in me, a pulse that could only be tamed by sex.
What I feel now is so wholly changed that I cannot call it the same. This is sultry. Mature. Ripe and lush, a give and take that is less about quenching a need and more about tending a flame. She dances in my arms, a slow, languid journey we’ve only just begun.
“I love you,” she whispers against my mouth.
“I know.”
We recline on the bed, hands slow in their ministrations, achingly aware of everything. So many times I’ve made love with Shannon and never noticed the arch of her thigh, this small mole on her hip, the way she bites her lip when I kiss her there.
How could I have missed so much that has been right in front of me all this time?
“We’re really doing this.”
She doesn’t mean making love. “We are, Mrs. McCormick.” My own words make me shiver. She joins me.
Her hand spreads against my navel, fingers hooking one by one against my skin. “I like the sound of that.”
I slide one hand to a place where her pleasure often starts. She grinds against me and makes a thick sound from her throat.
“And I like the sound of that,” I say as I dip down, down, down to a place where I won’t hear more than the coursing of blood through her body, twinned with mine in rhythm.
The only place in the world I want to be.
Minutes later she pulls me up, sweat lingering between her breasts, begging to be licked away. Her mouth is fast on mine, urgent and pleading. Her thighs part and a steady hand takes me home.
The second I’m in her she opens her eyes, staring up with a depth that makes me see other dimensions. Layers of love. The faces of children we have not dreamed of yet.
And the unfolding of the rest of my life.
We make love with our bodies, striving to match with flesh what we see in each other’s souls.
We fail.
Guess we’ll just have to try again.
And again and again and again.
For the next sixty or so years.
’Til death do us part.
Chapter 18
The Momzilla
Someone’s using a mirror to reflect the sun on my face, like I’m an ant under a magnifying glass. The pinpoint of heat on my cheekbone is maddening. I crack one eye open and shut it, fast, before I’m blinded.
Not a magnifying glass.
That’s Shannon’s diamond.
It’s morning in NYC, the muted sounds of traffic outside below us a backdrop for the day after the best day of my life. Shannon’s next to me, warm and soft, brown hair a tousled mess and stretched across my chest like tentacles claiming me.
Her mouth is open in a half smile, as if she’s dreaming happy thoughts, and in repose she is ethereal. Otherworldly. Soft and vulnerable.
And she’s mine.
I’m hers right back, too. We’re each other’s love, and in a year and a half or so, we’ll make it official. The wedding, the license, the piece of paper that deems us legally husband and wife isn’t that important. It’s a symbol.
We’re already joined.
We’ve been joined since the day I found her with her hand in that damn toilet.
Love at first flush.
She moves, rolling over and rubbing her eyes, a shaft of strong sunlight shining in her face. Unlike me, she doesn’t get a tiny tan from it reflecting off a prism. Her face moves toward me, arms wrapping around my neck, ring hand sinking into my hair and cupping the back of my head as we give each other a morning kiss that makes me seek out her warmth.
The kiss breaks and she whispers:
“We have to tell my parents. Your dad, too.”
I groan, the feeling a rebel cry from my fellow men throughout the ages, stretching back to the dawn of time, to cavemen past with mothers-in-law who drove them nuts, too. I’ll bet all those cave drawings aren’t of wooly mammoths being stabbed with spears. If you look close enough, they’re mothers-in-law.
“I thought waiting for the ring to, uh, come out was the worst part of all this, but Marie? Planning our wedding? You’re killing me.”
“Just get us into Farmington Country Club and she’ll be happy.” She waves the ring around in the sunlight, a tiny white spot jiggling on the ceiling and walls like a very expensive laser pointer. If Chuckles were here he’d be a furry ping-pong ball, trying to catch it.
“Your mother will need her own reality television show. Momzilla. She’ll make Bridezillas cringe in fear.”
Shannon laughs. I don’t think she realizes how serious I am. “It’ll be fine,” Shannon insists, cuddling up against me, her creamy thigh nudging up along mine, knee headed toward my hipbone. That lush warmth drives all thoughts of Marie away and makes me think maybe this wedding won’t be so bad after all.
Shannon’s phone buzzes again. She sighs, and the thigh disappears as she gets up. While I like the warm skin on mine and miss it, the view of her ass is spectacular. A guy could get used to seeing that every day for the rest of his life.
My throat closes.
I will get to see that ass every day. For the rest of my life.
How did I get so lucky?
“It’s Mom,” Shannon says, reading her phone. “She wants to know if we can get a cake topper with a woman’s hand in a toilet and a guy in a suit giving her the thumb’s up.”
I groan again.
Millions of men through time and space groan with me. I’ll need their support.
“And Agnes wants an invitation, too.”
This is going to be a long process.
Shannon says something into the phone and I hear Marie’s scream of joy. The two speak in fast-forward breakneck speed, until Shannon calls out,
“Honey? What do you look like in a kilt?”
I have no idea, but I have a sinking feeling I’m about to find out. At my own wedding.
A single kiss on Shannon’s shoulder makes her giggle. As I cup her breast with one wanting hand, she stifles a moan. Marie’s voice chatters on, dominated mostly by three words: Farmington, helicopter and kilt.
I don’t want to know.
Peeling Shannon off the phone turns out to be easier than expected when she tells Marie to call Farmington and book it.
Click.
“I need coffee,” Shannon declares, looking around the room. She pads off to the bathroom. I walk over to the balcony and look out over Central Park. The view is spectacular.
I look at Shannon.
Even better.
My own phone buzzes suddenly.
“You need to answer that.”
“No, I don’t.”
Shannon pokes her head out from the bathroom. “Yes, you do. It could be your dad.”
“Why would my dad call me? He has nineteen-year-old assistants to do that, and they just call Grace, who calls me.”
“It could be Grace, then.” I crawl back into bed, determined to ignore my phone.
“Hey! There’s no coffee in this hotel room!” Shannon shouts from across the room. “What kind of fancy hotel do
esn’t have a coffeemaker in it?”
They assume you’ll order room service, but instead of explaining, I seize my chance because I’m a guy, and that’s what we do.
“You’ll just have to help me wake up the same way you did back home that one morning,” I say, holding the sheet up so she can crawl under.
“What about me?”
“I’m happy to wake you up that way, too.”
She laughs, a throaty sound that makes me tent the sheets. “That makes me sleepy, Dec. Caffeine is what I need.”
“I promise that my wake-up method will not put you to sleep.” I leer at her. “If not that, how about a nice bath in the tub? I’ll soap you up. You’re a dirty girl.”
BZZZZ.
She reaches for my phone and tosses it at me. It’s Grace. I answer.
“I’m just going to take off my makeup,” Shannon says from the bathroom doorway.
“Don’t take too long!” I call back. “I can’t wait to soap you up.” I wave her off and turn my attention to the phone.
“Hi Grace.”
“Declan, I’m sorry to bother you, but Shannon’s mother is on the phone requesting that we reserve the corporate helicopter, a jet, and a yacht for an unspecified date in 2016. Does Anterdec even have a yacht? And what does she mean when she says she needs fifty bagpipe players and a dozen kilt tuxedoes made from McCormick tartan as well?”
And Shannon wonders why I have Resting Asshole Face.
Epilogue (sort of)
Shannon
“I’m just going to take off my make-up,” I shout out to the main room as I slip into the bathroom. Behind me is a jacuzzi bathtub bigger than the neighborhood pool I swam in as a kid. Geez—this place can have a tub like that but can’t bother with a basic Keurig machine in the room?
Barbarians.
“Don’t take too long!” Declan calls back. “I can’t wait to soap you up.” He’s just proposed (heh—I love that word) a long, hot soak in the tub and I suspect Declan has plans to make a certain part of his anatomy a loofah for a certain part of mine.