The Innocent

by Candice Raquel Lee

  “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

  I fell into his eyes again. I had no words for how he made me feel. Unfortunately, the food came, and we had to let go of each other. Our appetizer was laid out before us on a gold and white plate. The meal was delicious. I enjoyed everything.

  “You like?” Cristien asked.

  “I love,” I said, quickly swallowing.

  “Good.”

  The cheese cake for dessert was beyond description. I ate each morsel with deliberation, while Cristien watched me, his head on his hand.

  “What?” I asked, pulling the spoon from my mouth.

  “Nothing,” he moaned.

  I rolled my eyes and forged ahead. When I was done, he got up to pay the bill so we would not be late for the opera. I gazed at the dark water and the stars. I put my arm on the railing. Well, I guess tonight isn’t the night, I thought, a tiny bit disappointed, but not really. After all, this was probably the best night of my life bar none.

  And again my heart expanded, grew a little more, to fit all the love I had for him.

  “Alexa, are you ready?” Cristien asked from beside me.

  I had not even heard him return, I was thinking about him so hard. I looked up with a slightly embarrassed smile on my face. My chair squeaked when I pushed it back. Then he dropped down on one knee. From behind him, three musicians strode up, playing “Adagio for Strings” by Albinoni on violins.

  “A friend gave this to me to read to you. He said it would guarantee a ‘yes’.” Cristien’s eyes were so gorgeous as he pulled a scroll from his jacket. “It’s a poem by Tagore, a poet from India.”

  He cleared his throat, and read:

  “I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.

  My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs that you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms in life after life, in age after age forever.

  Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age old pain, its ancient tale of being apart or together, as I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge.

  Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time: you become an image of what is remembered forever.

  You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount at the heart of time love of one for another.

  We have played alongside millions of lovers, shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell—old love, but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

  Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you, the love of all man’s days both past and forever: universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life, the memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours-and the songs of every poet past and forever.”

  He finished, then pulled a small box from his coat pocket, opened it, and asked, “Will you marry me?”

  And with tears in my eyes, I said, “Yes. Yes, forever.”

  The waiter and musicians clapped. Somehow I got into Cristien’s arms. I held onto him. I knew nothing until he pressed the ring onto my finger. Then I saw it. The white-gold band was made of two sets of folded wings encrusted with diamonds and surrounding a large central diamond. All I knew was that it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. We left the restaurant in each other’s arms.

  I don’t even know how we got to the car. Maybe we flew. The time it took for me to sit in my seat and for him to go to his was an unbearable eternity. The moment his door closed, we were in each other’s arms again, kissing, touching as if his proposal had somehow made us all new to each other.

  “Are you happy?” he whispered with closed eyes.

  “I’ve never been happier.”

  He smiled a little, “Neither have I.”

  I don’t know how we let go of each other, but in time we did. We held hands while he drove. Every now and again he brought my fingers to his lips. We glanced at each other, but we did not speak. It was one of those moments in life that sound could desecrate. It was one of those moments in life when silence is holy, when it binds more than any words could. A time beyond words.

  We drove away and the street light was caught now and again by my ring. It flashed and sparkled like a tiny star.

  “Do you like it?” he whispered, watching me.

  “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “I made it for you,” he told me peering into my eyes.

  “Made it?” I asked when understanding dawned on me. He had made it for me? He was the most perfect man in the whole world. I stared at him in awe.

  “I wanted to give you the world.”

  “You have,” I sighed, “you’ve given more. You’ve given me yourself.”

  We met a sudden red light, and he kissed me.

  All Roads Lead to Rome

  After Cristien drove us home and parked in his spot, he whipped out a little black body suit from the glove compartment. He let it hang from his index finger while I looked from him to it. Then he pointed up until I understood. We were going to fly.

  I changed, and we took off from his balcony. Sometime during our flight, love ignited lust. I ended with my legs wrapped around him, my hands in his hair, pulling his head down past my neck to my cleavage. We plummeted to the rooftop.

  “God’s bones, woman, you’re going to drive me crazy,” he growled after we crash-landed.

  “Sorry, succubus moment.” I started to untangle myself.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” he said holding me. “So, when are you going to marry me?”

  “I don’t know. I guess when the semester is over.”

  “Come on,” he cried, shaking me. “That long?”

  “Mr. Incubus can’t wait?” I joked.

  “It’s not that,” he said, touching my cheek. “I want to be with you, not only because of the physical yearning I feel for you but because I can be with you, eyes open, real, more real than anything I’ve ever had. I want to know what that's like, loved and loving. Can you understand?”

  Yes, I could. I could taste that desire in myself too. It reached out for him every time he touched me, wanting to pull him in, to make us one, break all the bonds of flesh. I wanted him that way too. I said yes again. He grabbed me and hugged me.

  “We could go to City Hall next weekend,” he suggested.

  “Next weekend?” I cried, “I have a paper due on the Tuesday after.”

  “I’ll write it for you,” he said, taking me in his arms again. “I have one-hundred and eighty degrees. I might as well make use of them.”

  “Okay, but nothing long-winded, and make it sound like I wrote it,” I grinned.

  “Sure,” he said, picking me up and swinging me around. He flung us off the roof, and we did not go home until the sun threatened to rise.

  I woke to the sound of rustling paper. Cristien was reading my poem in the light of day. He smiled at me when I opened my eyes, and it struck me that I was engaged to him, to my beautiful one. I glanced at my ring and the shock hit me again. It had not really had time to wear off. My mind spun, my heart was faint. I was going to be married this weekend. I would be his wife forever. It was what I wanted, and yet I could not help but feel surprised. It was as if I had acquired something I had pined for but had no time to really own, to make mine, to understand even.

  I moved slowly. Rising, I never took my gaze from him. Curiosity filled his eyes. His dark brows raised slightly. I touched them, traced them with my fingers. I caressed every curve and angle of his face. I brushed his lashes with my fingertips, making him close his too-bright eyes. They really weren’t human. They were too perfect. They belonged to the sea, a wave caught and held in the bowl of his iris. The poem fluttered to the bed, and then his arms were around my waist.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked. His lips seemed to kiss each word as it formed. It took a moment to break the spell they cast over me, so I could try and put what I was feeling into words, and
even when I started to speak I knew it could not be expressed fully. I attempted to encompass the totality of my feelings, my emotions, my experiences in the last few weeks.

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “It’s a lot to process,” he said, smiling a bit ruefully.

  That surprised me. Was it too much for him? Was he having second thoughts? I remembered all he had said last night, but perhaps he had changed his mind. Perhaps things looked different in the light of day. Something in me dropped to its knees in despair. But I didn’t want him to do anything he didn’t wish. I didn’t want to force him. Even if I wished it. Love changes you, turns you into an unselfish fool.

  “We don’t have to get married so soon,” I offered, struggling not show my feelings.

  “I know I’m asking a great deal of you,” he told me.

  “No,” I said, trying to explain.

  “Wait, listen,” he pleaded. He sat up and pulled his legs out of bed. The sheet had slipped from his chest. He had moved from my grasp. He left me stranded like a mermaid on the shore, his broad muscular back facing me.

  “Cristien.” I reached for him. He didn’t understand. He had to.

  “Please listen. I want to say this to you.” He moved only to keep from my touch. He sat against the headboard facing me. He took a long breath, his face pained.

  “You’ve been very understanding, I know, about my past, about everything.” He shook his head, his countenance disturbed. “I never thought I would meet anyone so forgiving, so perhaps I’m pushing a little. I don’t know, but I’ve been waiting so long for you.”

  With his last words he changed, and I thought I saw his true age. For a moment, I saw a stone worn almost featureless. It took my all my joy away.

  “Before you, my life had no meaning.” He smiled sadly. “I know men say that all the time, but for me it’s true. I lived before you, but I only drifted, I only survived. I don’t know where the years have gone. When I try to think back, all I see is a road leading to you. Everything I’ve suffered, learned, stolen, craved and lost has led me to you.”

  His eyes were distant then as if he were seeing some path far and long. Then he focused on me, and my heart began to tear.

  “I’m so tired of my life, Alexa, tired to death of it. Of the nothingness, of never touching anything, of never . . .” He broke off, shaking his head and grasping at the air with empty hands. “You won’t ever know how it feels, and I’m glad I can spare you that. That is my only solace.” He lifted his head and his eyes were feverish. “But I’m ready for a change. Maybe I wasn’t eight-hundred years ago. I was an ignorant, flea-covered barbarian who thought the answer to life lay at the edge of my sword.

  “You would’ve turned from me in disgust if you had met me then and rightly so. I could never have understood you or what I understand now. I believed love was sex and a lady’s favor on my arm. I believed my worth was tied to my knighthood, to the battles and tournaments I won, to my ego. I deserved the fate I got. I deserved to be what I was, to have Lily spurn me the way she did. I wouldn’t have deserved one line of your poems. I hardly deserve them now, but I want to.” He leaned forward to pull me into his arms, gently. “I’ve been waiting eight-hundred years for my Fairy to come and take me to Avalon. I’m so close now. I can taste it,” and he brought my hand to his lips and kissed it. “I don’t want to wait any longer. I’m ready to be with you, to start my life with you, to start fresh. I know it’s sudden, but is it too much?”

  No. Never, I thought, shaking my head. I reached up and kissed him because he needed to be kissed. I stroked his face from his brow to his jaw. He needed to know how perfect he really was. He deserved even more than me, much more than me.

  “I’d marry you tomorrow,” I told him, and I meant it.

  “Don’t tempt me,” he said, smiling.

  “I thought it was my job to tempt you,” I teased, pressing my lips to his ear. “I am a succubus after all.”

  “Not for long. I’m going to make an honest demigoddess out of you yet.”

  I laughed. He leaned down and kissed me. It was one of those kisses that is passionate and sweet at once, innocent and lustful, bold yet shy. They are kisses like no others. They take the breath and touch the soul. They last an eternity and never long enough.

  “So,” he breathed when our lips parted, “When do I meet your mother?”

  My eyes flew open, and I sat up. I hadn’t even told her about him. What was I going to tell her about him? What could I tell her? I didn’t even know.

  “You’ve told her about us, haven’t you?” he asked, his voice tinged with disbelief. When I didn’t answer, he folded his arms over his naked chest. His muscles flexed artistically, making me want to smile, but his annoyed expression stopped me.

  “Well, no, not yet.” I was trying to figure a way out of this one. “You know, it’s been kind of up and down with us,” I explained. “I was waiting for the right time.”

  “But last week,” he asked, wide-eyed with hurt, “didn’t you believe me?”

  “I did,” I said, throwing my arms around his neck. “My mother isn’t one of those kind, lovey-dovey mothers you to tell anything to.”

  “Oh, come on, Alexa,” he said, holding me away, so he could scowl in my face, “how could falling in love with me not come up in the conversation?”

  “You don’t know my mother.”

  “You’re calling her right now.” He got his phone off the dresser.

  “Not from your cell I’m not,” I cried in a panic.

  “Why not?”

  “She has caller ID. She’s going to know I’m with a guy,” I told him.

  “That’s a good beginning,” he said, pushing the phone at me.

  “No, it isn’t,” I said pushing it back.

  “And why not?”

  “Listen to me,” I explained, “she does not want me with a guy.”

  “But you are with one.”

  “I know. I just would like my mother not to go ballistic when I’m giving her the good news. She’d probably disown me and pour ashes on her head if she saw your number.”

  “I seriously doubt that. Alexa, you’re telling her today we’re getting married,” he said.

  “Married? I can’t tell her I’m getting married!” I screamed.

  “Why not?” he shouted back.

  “In the middle of the semester? You are joking?”

  “Now what’s wrong?” he asked. “Hymen removals must commence in the summer to be sacrificed to the dark gods?”

  “No. She wants me to finish school.”

  “You will.”

  “She has very specific ideas about how things should go,” I explained as gently as possible. “She doesn’t like when things, especially in my life, don’t go the way she’s planned.”

  “Newsflash! Nothing in life goes the way we plan it. I’m sure she didn’t plan to get knocked up by an incubus, but she did.”

  “I’m supposed to be different from her. She spent a lot of money to make sure I’d be different.”

  He looked at me, fuming. “You’re going to call your mother and tell her something.”

  “Why?” I asked. “I never tell her anything. Why should I start now? Dishonesty has worked really well for us. We’re pretty close now.”

  “Call your mother.”

  “Why?” I asked again.

  “Because I’m starting to feel like you’re ashamed of me,” he said, slumping.

  “You?” I cried. “No, I’m just afraid of my mother.”

  That made him even more angry. “Face your fears, Alexa, because after the semester is over we’re going away. I don’t know where, around the world probably, and I don’t want your mother putting up child-find posters all over the place.”

  “I’ll tell her we’re engaged tonight after she gets off from work. How about that? And then when the semester’s over, I’ll tell her we got married,” I offered.

  “What’s the difference?” he asked, blinking.r />
  “No big hang up fight for one, with her yelling at me that I ruined my life. It’s not like she’s coming to the wedding.”

  “Why not?” he asked. “We need a witness. I thought it would be nice if it was your mother. You think she really wants to miss this?”

  “She wouldn’t come.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  I nodded. “Yes, I do. If I told her I was getting married this weekend, she’d hang up on me and never speak to me again. So, then she couldn’t go to the wedding.”

  “You have to be exaggerating,” he told me.

  I shook my head.

  “Alexa, I thought you would want family. I don’t have any to offer you,” he said, lowering his head.

  “You’re the only family I need.”

  “We still need a witness.”

  “Ask Lance. He’ll last longer than my mom anyway,” I joked and then it hit me I would outlive her. I mean, I knew I would, I guess, but I had never thought about it before. Cristien chuckled at my joke. When I didn’t respond, he grabbed my shoulders, startling the morbidness out of me.

  “What am I going to do with you?” he asked, shaking me.

  “I’m not that bad.”

  “No, you’re absolutely perfect,” he said, falling back onto the bed with me. “That’s why I can’t believe your mother could be so crazy.”

  “In this case, the fruit rolled far from the tree.”

  He laughed again. “So, what are you going to tell her?”

  I considered a moment and then realized I had nothing to say. I believed I knew him so well, and yet I hardly knew any details about his long life.

  “I don’t even know where you were born.”

  “You know all the important things,” he told me, rolling us until I was under him. “We have forever to find out all the trivial matters about each other.”

  He started kissing me again.

  “Wait. Where were you born?” I asked over his lips. I was thinking Atlantis or Thebes, though I knew he wasn’t that old. “Does it still exist?”

  “I was born in England, up north,” he said, moving to my ear. “But that was a long time ago. I’ve been a citizen of the world for much longer and in America for the last four hundred years.”