by Twyla Turner
“Split the atom, maybe.” He jokes to break the ice. “But first, I would like to take you to dinner, if that is okay.”
“I’d like that.” I turn to look at his daughter. “As long as Amalie can come too. I’d like to get to know her.”
~~~
We settle in at my favorite café. Etienne let me choose the table. Of course, I picked my favorite spot. Outside, across from the market.
We sit for several awkward moments. Not really sure where to begin. Amalie looks back and forth between us.
“Where have you been? I was waiting for you.” Her little voice says from her booster seat.
“Healing, sweetie.” My voice is shaky. “Just healing. Sorry, it took me so long.”
“How have you been? How is Travel Noir doing?” Etienne asks.
“The business is going really well. Modern technology has grown the business by leaps and bounds. I actually have multiple tour guides on the payroll now. I can’t do it all on my own anymore.” I smile happily.
“That is fantastic, Ryn.” Etienne reaches across the table and squeezes my hand.
Electric pulses, immediately shoot up my arm. The hairs raise, along with several goosebumps. His eyes see the reaction, and he looks up at me. There’s banked fire there. And love. Absolutely nothing has changed. It’s like being transported back in time.
“How about you? How was life in Paris? How are your parents? Raquel said that your father was sick some years back.”
“He passed, unfortunately. It was lung cancer. He was a heavy smoker.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. I got to spend some time with him before.” He clears his voice. “My mom is doing well. She remarried about a year ago to a nice man. She helped me a lot with Amalie when she was a baby.” He smiles down at his daughter as she colors a paper menu.
“You’ve experienced so much loss in the last five years.”
“But I have gained so much. And I hope to gain more.” He looks at me meaningfully.
I fidget with the necklace laying against my chest. His eyes watch me.
“You still wear it.”
It’s the same North Star necklace that he bought me years ago.
“For some reason, I never thought to take it off.” I drop it back to its place on my chest self-consciously.
“Maybe because you knew our story was not finished.”
“Maybe…”
“God, Ryn! I cannot tell you how good it is to see you.”
“I think I have a feeling.”
“I do want to tell you that Vanessa spoke of you often before she died. She was so grateful to you for what you did. She tried to call you to tell you. But after you did not answer or return her calls, she figured it was best to let her gratitude go unspoken.”
“Yeah, I just couldn’t at the time. Hell, even now, I found it hard to come. I saw you two together once, right before I moved to Cannes. You looked really happy. I’m not ashamed to say, it nearly killed me. I wasn’t sure I could do it again.”
“I am truly sorry that we were the reason you felt you could not stay in the city you love.”
“It’s alright. Everything turned out really well.” I give him a reassuring smile. “So…what made you come back.”
“I had hoped…” He leaves the thought unfinished, but I understand completely. “Are you…are you seeing anyone?”
He seems so unsure. It’s so not like the Etienne I knew.
“No, I’m not.”
His eyes fill with hope as he nods.
“Good…”
~~~
Etienne lifts a sleeping Amalie out from the backseat of his car. He’d traded in his motorcycle for a regular car long ago, right before she was born. Choosing a safer mode of transportation knowing that he was going to be a father.
I follow him as he carries the baby into their new flat. It’s similar to the one he used to have. Open and airy with large windows that probably got tons of light during the day. Though this apartment has closed off bedrooms instead of the loft he’d had before. More privacy for father and daughter.
I lean against the doorframe to Amalie’s pink and purple decorated room. Etienne lays her down on her bed. She blinks up at him sleepily.
“Où est Ryn?” Where is Ryn?
I step forward so she can see me.
“I’m here.”
She holds out her little hand to me. I come forward and sit on the edge of her bed.
“Will you stay with us now?” She asks so sweetly.
My heart squeezes.
“I…I don’t know.”
“I need a mommy and papa needs a wife. He is lonely.” She whispers the last part as a child often does. Not quietly at all.
I blink back tears. I glance up at Etienne. His hands are shoved into his pockets, his eyes just as glassy as mine.
“I am lonely too.” I turn back to Amalie.
“Then you should stay. You need us too.” She says firmly like it’s a done deal.
“It is not that easy, ma chérie.” Etienne steps in. “That is for the adults to discuss. Go to sleep now.”
She nods before turning on her side. I get up and follow Etienne out into the living area. The silence is awkward after that exchange with his daughter.
“Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay. She’s sweet.”
“She is persistent.”
“I see that.”
“Would you like a glass of wine?”
“Sure.”
He pulls a bottle of white wine from the fridge and grabs glasses as he continues.
“She feels like she knows you after I told the story of how she came to be. She asks me to tell her the story almost every night. It is what inspired the collection of paintings. I have been thinking about turning them into a picture book just for her.” He finishes and hands me a glass.
“That would be wonderful! She’d cherish that for the rest of her life.”
“I have to finish it first.”
“What do you mean? I thought it was already finished.”
“No. I have one last painting to do.” He stares at me from across the kitchen island intently with those jade eyes.
“Then why have the exhibition if the collection wasn’t done?”
He sets down his glass and walks around the counter towards me. His hand, still stained with paint, reaches up to cup the side of my face. My eyes close all on their own. His touch soothing me. Erasing years of separation and heartache.
“Because the ending depends on you.”
My eyes open and I search his. There is nothing but naked honesty and love.
“I have never stopped loving you, Taryn. Yes, I loved Vanessa, too. You sacrificed everything for me to have the life you felt I deserved. And for that, I let you walk away from me. To live the life worthy of your sacrifice. And I was happy with her. But do not doubt for a second that I did not think about you… Every. Day.
“She was like food and water. The nourishment that I needed. But you…you have always been the air. I can survive for a time without nourishment, but I cannot survive without air.
“I started the collection for Amalie, but I finished it for you. I became obsessed with it because I knew it was the only way I could find the path back to you.”
His thumb wipes away the tears streaming down my face as I look up at him. Never in my life, when I stepped out of that taxi earlier, did I think the night would bring me here to this moment. A second chance. As if Vanessa was returning the favor…the gift, I had given her.
“Say something,” he says urgently. “I know this is not what you expected. I know that raising a child at this stage of your life is probably not what you dreamed of. I know I am asking a lot of you, but-”
I press my fingertips to his lips to silence him.
“I want the happy ending.” I shrug slowly.
Strong arms wrap around me tightly. Soft lips crush mine. I’m lifted off of my feet, and I wrap
my legs around him as he carries me to his room. The wine, forgotten.
There is no room for preliminaries. No time for courtship. We’ve already been there and done that. Too many years have passed apart. Too much time has already been wasted.
We strip each other down. Desperate to touch the skin we had once been so familiar with. I feel the shyness I’d felt, in the beginning, all those years ago, creep up on me. I’m fifty-one now, and he’s thirty-six. My body has fought valiantly against the gravity that has slowly pulled and tugged at it. I still look great for my age, but that doesn’t stop the self-consciousness. At least not until I look into his eyes.
“You are just as beautiful as I remember.”
“So are you.” I kiss his lips. “God, I missed this.”
He lays me down on his large bed and slides in next to me. Our hands roam over each other to reacquaint ourselves. His mouth travels down my body. A body that has felt asleep for half a decade. It quickly reawakens under his skilled hands, lips, and tongue.
After years without, my climax comes hard and fast. My body arches and trembles and writhes in ecstasy that has been denied me for far too long.
“I have missed your taste and the way you lose yourself when you come,” Etienne says after crawling back up my body.
“It’s all your fault.” I pull him down for a kiss. I’ll never tire of kissing his plump lips. “You’re too damn good.”
He lines up his body with mine. Gradually, he slides within my depths, giving us both time to savor every inch and sensation. I gasp as my body stretches and expands to accommodate his extensive length and girth.
Wow! I forgot.
He punctuates the first long thrust with a hard, swift roll of his hips. Hitting that secret sweet spot only he was ever able to find.
Dear God, I forgot!
I forgot how good he feels. I forgot how good sex could be.
We stay close together. Skin to skin as Etienne pumps into me. Unwilling to give up the feel of our bodies fully connected again. His arms wrap around my back. My hands bury themselves in his hair, basking in the feel of it again. Our bodies rock together rhythmically. Our orgasms building slowly, poetically.
When they hit, we clutch each other tighter. Gasping and panting against each other’s lips. Holding back our cries for fear of waking the sleeping child down the hall.
Soft kisses pepper my face. I laugh shakily as tears slip down my temples. Etienne stops abruptly and looks down at me with excitement radiating from his eyes.
“Marry me.”
I don’t think. Just feel.
“Yes.”
He crushes his lips to mine, kissing me deeply.
“Tomorrow?” He says between kisses.
“Yes.”
He did give me a different ending. A happy one. One that was long overdue. That night we picked up where we had left off. As if the years apart hadn’t changed a thing.
The next day, we called all of our friends, and they dropped whatever they were doing without hesitation. I dressed in a pretty white sundress that I bought in that same shop where he’d first asked me on a date, all those years ago. Etienne wore nice jeans, a dress shirt and tie with a black suit jacket. Amalie wore a pretty pink dress with white lace details. I styled her hair in a little ballerina bun on top of her head with a pink ribbon to finish it off. The perfect little flower girl.
Raquel being Raquel, pulled together the joyous occasion in just a few short hours. We decided to have the ceremony in the gallery surrounded by the paintings Etienne had created about our story. Amalie stood in between us, smiling up happily as we exchanged vows. The reception was held on Raquel’s spacious rooftop terrace. The Nice sunset and eventual starry sky was our backdrop as we celebrated into the night. Wrapped in each other’s arm as we danced. Often with Amalie between us as Etienne held her in his arms, sandwiched between us.
A happy little family I had no idea I needed or deserved. Only one person missing from the event which would have made it perfect. Kari.
Fifteen years later, the love between us has only grown and blossomed. Just as our amazingly thoughtful and sweet twenty-year-old daughter. I was old enough to be Amalie’s grandmother, but none of us seemed to mind. From the moment she asked me to be her mommy, I claimed her as mine. Though I never forgot to talk to her about her real mother and how wonderful she was, even if I’d only known her for a short time.
Etienne did finish the collection. The final painting was of the three of us, little Amalie in the middle holding our hands as we walk towards a field of flowers the shape of hearts. Little angel wings on Amalie’s back, symbolizing that Vanessa will always be a part of her. And I helped Etienne get the paintings printed in a little book for Amalie just before her fourth birthday. She’s cherished it to this day.
Our lives have been so filled with love and passion, that the heartache and sacrifice was absolutely worth it. And even after all of these years, at our ripe ‘old’ ages of sixty-sixty and fifty-one, our sex life is a hell of a lot more active than either of us could have guessed. Somehow, I’ve never stopped turning him on, and he’s never failed to get my pipes working.
~~~
“That’s the thing. Everyone seems to think that life, love, and sex ends at a certain age. That when you get older, you stop wanting what everyone who is younger wants and needs. Yet, some of the best parts of my life began at forty-four. And it’s only gotten better. With one exception.
“But maybe with sharing my story, she’ll finally hear it and come around. A mother can still hope.
“So, to my daughters. Both of you. By blood and by chance. Live your life fully. Take that leap. With no regrets…”
Kari’s nose honks loudly into a tissue as her mother’s voice fades away, ending the audiobook. She looks down at the crumpled tissues surrounding her and laughs around her tears. The tissue box lays empty beside her. She’d gone through the whole thing just from listening to the second half of the story.
Her mother’s life had been extraordinary, and she’d missed so much of it. So many of her mother’s greatest moments tainted by the fact that Kari refused to be there. It is something she knows she’ll always regret. But while she still has breath in her, she knows she can fix the time that is left.
Kari grasps her phone and dials the unfamiliar foreign number in the email that came with the link for the audiobook. The line on the other end begins to ring, and Kari cringes realizing she didn’t checked what time it is in, she assumed France, before she placed the call. But it’s late in California, so it’s probably a reasonable time there.
“Bonjour,” a pleasant young voice answers.
“Hello, Amalie?”
“This is she,” the woman says flipping to English.
“Amalie, this is Kari Reid.” Kari gives her maiden name so that there’s no confusion.
“Oh! Hello, Kari! So, you listened to the book.”
“I did.”
“Perfect! What did you think?”
“I’m ready.”
Epilogue
Today is the day of my wife’s first book signing. A book she put her heart and soul into.
She had heard through the grapevine of her friends back home in the U.S. that her daughter has been going through an ugly separation. Kari did not know it, but Taryn has watched over her from afar for the twenty-two years they have been estranged, which is part of the reason for her wanting to write her story. That if she were lucky, Kari would read it and find solace in it.
Thanks to Amalie, Taryn is about to get her wish and more.
I lean against one of the pillars in Raquel’s gallery where the book signing is being held, proudly watching the love of my life sign a book and smile up at the reader. Ryn is as lovely now as when I first met her here in this very place.
Her hair is cut low around the sides and back with a little length on the top, showing off her beautiful curls. It is all silver now with a pure white streak in the front. Honestly, it is the only sig
n that she has aged. She says that she sags a bit more these days, but I do not see it. I don’t know. Maybe I am biased.
I have enough lines in my own face now for the two of us. Although she says she loves them and thinks I look sexy and rugged. I guess she is right, from the looks everyone tells me I get from the women who see me. I would not know. I am too busy staring at my gorgeous wife.
The door opens, and I pull my eyes away from my muse of twenty-two years. Amalie, dressed in a bohemian sundress just like her mother used to wear, adorned with her mother’s jewelry I saved for her, walks in with an older woman. Immediately, I recognize Kari. She looks almost exactly the same as she did in her twenties. Very much like her mother, she ages well.
The way she carries herself and the unsure look in her eyes reminds me of when I first met Ryn. She is at that point in her life where she is desperately searching for an awakening, just as her mother once had.
Amalie’s eyes search for me, and she smiles brightly when she spots me. She looks so much like her mother every day. Looking at her hits me in the gut and fills me with fond memories.
“Bonjour, papa!” She kisses my cheeks.
“Bonjour, ma chérie.”
We both turn and watch as Kari clutches a copy of the book in her arms as if she is using it as a shield to protect herself if things do not go well. She steps up to the table between her and her mother. Waiting.
Taryn looks up to greet the next reader. She falters. She only blinks for a few moments as she absorbs her daughter’s every feature.
“Kari?” She says breathlessly.
“Hi, ma.” Kari’s voice shakes.
Ryn slowly stands and walks around the table. She raises her hands to Kari’s face and holds it gently. Tears fall down her face as she gives Kari a watery smile. She throws her arms around her daughter and hugs her tightly to her, rocking from side to side.
I look down at Amalie, and she is wiping away tears from her own eyes. I spy Raquel a safe distance away, and she too is dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.