by M.L. Cameron
wouldn’t. I liked that Ana never seemed to try and force me to forgive her. She just sort of lived with what had happened and we tried to move on.
♪♪♪
We sat down with the lawyer and he smiled at us while opening his briefcase. “Now, I’ve already talked to your father about what has been decided on and he chose not to come to this meeting.” Ana nodded and I gripped her hand. She looked up at me and smiled softly. “The jury has decided to allow Scarlett to leave the detention center and take on a ten year parole. At the end of her parole there is the chance it could be removed from her record but that’s very unlikely. Your father was very upset when he heard this, and I want you to understand that these are very good terms.”
“Of course,” Ana said. “I think it’s completely fair. I think that going through two years in a detention center was enough but I don’t get to decide on those things. Thank you for meeting with us Mr. Jones.” She stood up and they shook hands.
“Ms. Faith, could I speak with you for a second… Privately?” He looked pointedly at me and I just shook my head, walking out of the room. I couldn’t hear any of their conversation and I hadn’t done any of the freaky mind tricks since Ana had gone to New York without telling anyone.
I waited in the lobby for a few minutes until she came storming out of the office. I followed her to the elevator where she violently stabbed the button to the parking garage. “What did he want?” I asked and she just hit the button again. “That won’t make it go any faster.”
“I know. Okay? I’m mad. I’m allowed to be mad. You know sometimes you act like you’re never mad or upset or over the moon about anything. It’s so hypocritical.”
“All right.” I stepped into the open elevator and she walked in behind me. I stood in the corner, waiting for her to calm down and tell me. She would calm down, Ana could never be mad for more than five minutes. She never hated anything or held grudges… If she did there was no way I would still be around. Her heels clicked as we walked to the car, the footsteps sounded through the empty concrete structure. I could actually feel her calming down with every step.
I opened her door and when she got in she shut her eyes and I was blocked off from my beautiful, blue-eyed Passion. I got behind the wheel of the rental car and waited a few seconds before starting it up. “He asked me if I was interested in dating his nephew…” Ana grumbled.
“What?” Then I wasn’t sure if I was pissed or not. So I just put the car in drive and made my way toward the exit of the ramp. I paid my toll and waited for Ana to continue.
“He asked if I was interested in dating his nephew. I told him no, that I had a steady boyfriend and he asked who. I just sort of looked at him and said, ‘Well, Luke… We’ve been together nearly four years now.’ Then he said, ‘Oh, you two just never seemed like the couple type.’ That you ‘aren’t that interested in me.’ And how, if we are a couple, we should stop acting like siblings. So apparently not having sex means you can’t be a couple.”
I waited for her to calm down again. She had gotten aggravated just talking about it. “I hate it when people do that. Make their stupid assumptions and then think they know everything about people. That’s not the first time someone has told me that we act more like siblings than like a couple. And it’s also not the first time someone has asked me if I would consider dating their nephew, cousin, brother, son, grandson, best friend, and so forth.”
A red light turned green and we started moving again. “What do you want to do about it Ana?”
“Nothing, I’m just complaining. I just don’t like it when people don’t realize we’re a couple. It’s not like we look alike in any way or really, really act like siblings. I don’t know.” She rested her head against the leather head rest and sighed.
The rest of the ride to the airport was quiet. The flight back to our dorm was filled with book pages turning and steady breathing.
“Are you going to talk to me Ana?” I asked as we walked into our apartment. She didn’t answer, just went to the living room and dropped her purse on the couch. I reached out and grabbed her hand. “It doesn’t matter what other people think, listen to me.” I tipped her chin up so she was looking into my eyes. “We are a couple, in a few years we’ll get married and…”
“I’m so tired of hearing ‘in a few years.’ I’ve been listening to you say, ‘oh it’s only a few years,’ for three years now. Nothing has changed, if anything we act less like a couple than we did when we were seventeen.”
Instead of responding I leaned down and closed my mouth over hers. She didn’t move for a second, like she didn’t know if she should push me away or hold me close. Luckily for me, she choose that latter and her hands tightened in my hair. That was when I realized… How long had it been since I had kissed her like that? Months maybe? I wasn’t sure… Mostly it was just pecks on the cheek and mouth before school or bed.
I pulled her impossibly closer and she pulled back for a second. “Sleep with me Luke,” she whispered and I shut my eyes, trying to come up with all the reasons for why we shouldn’t do it. I had hundreds of reasons, but at that moments I could barely remember any of them. Why couldn’t I remember them?
Instead of stopping though, I found myself asking her, “Are you sure?” She nodded and kissed me again. “I don’t want to do something you aren’t ready for…”
“This is something I’ve been waiting four years for, I’m completely sure.”
“But… What if you regret it when you get pregnant? There’s no way you won’t get pregnant…”
“Then we have a baby. Luke, I’m one hundred percent positive.”
I groaned and tried something else, “What if we got married first? This summer. It’s only like, a month away. We could get married and then, we’ll have a baby. Please Ana, this means a lot to me and you know that if we don’t wait you’ll regret it too.” She sighed but dropped back down to her feet from her tiptoes. “I’m sorry Ana…”
“Luke, there’s nothing to be sorry about. I get what you’re saying and I know that it’s true. I probably would wake up and regret everything that happened. I love you, no matter what. And Lucy would kill us if we didn’t let her help plan the wedding.”
“She’ll want you to wear her dress…”
“I’m going to wear my mother’s dress, and she’ll respect that.” Ana stepped away from me and into the bedroom. “Do you have class tomorrow?” I rolled my eyes and followed her, tugging off my tie and unbuttoning my shirt.
She turned around with a toothbrush in her mouth and the smell of bubble gum pouring from the bathroom. “I have one class at six in the morning and then I’m done for three days.”
“So what are we going to do?” she asked with pink foam in her mouth. She looked like a rabid Barbie doll. She spit into the sink and pulled out a string of bubblegum flavored floss. When she turned back to look at me she looked like she expected me to have an answer.
“I think I’m going to go get a ring. Without you. So you have to find something to do.”
Her eyes went wide. “You should call my father, or someone to go with you.”
“We’re across the country from everyone.”
“Not your family. Oh, call Grandpa Jack.”
“Why?”
She ran her tongue over her teeth and pulled her hair from its tight bun on the top of her head. “Because he’ll be able to uh… keep you company.”
“Why don’t you go hang out with him then? I have no problem with going to jewelry stores all day, by myself.”
“Or Charlie, I bet he would love to spend the day with you.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and slid my shoes and socks off. “Are you afraid that I’ll pick out a bad ring?” I asked and she shrugged. “Really? What about that necklace thing I got you last valentine’s day?”
“It was a bracelet and I loved it, but Lucy helped you pick it out. The last time you bought me jewelry was freshman year, for my birthday, that ugly necklace thing.”
; “Yeah right, and I picked out that bracelet. Are you sure it’s a bracelet…?” I could have sworn I got her a necklace for valentine’s day…
“Would you like to compare?” She opened the drawers in the bathroom and came to me with two different boxes. “This is a necklace Charlie helped you pick out last year for Christmas. This is the necklace you got me freshman year for my birthday.”
I looked down at the two different pieces of jewelry and laughed. One was gaudy and big and dark blue. The other was simple and classy, pink diamonds were strategically placed for a nice visual effect. “Okay, okay. I’ll call Charlie in the morning.” She smiled and went back to the bathroom. She put the boxes back and rinsed her mouth out with bubblegum mouth wash.
I changed my pants and pulled the blanket down on the bed. Ana went to the closet and changed, when she came back to the big green and purple covered bed she was wearing a bright orange t-shirt and pink sweatpants. She turned to face me and I kissed her. “You remind me of a six year old sometimes,” I murmured.
“Why?”
“Bubblegum toothpaste, doesn’t it have a princess on the front or something like that?”
“At least I brush my teeth. And it’s Pooh Bear, he’s very sophisticated.”
“I brushed my teeth on the plane.”
“Oh, okay. That’s cool too.”
I grinned as she shut her eyes and settled in to sleep.
The next day I was taken through twenty different jewelry stores, shown two hundred different engagement rings and bands. Charlie walked around with me and every time I mentioned getting home to Ana he reminded me that she was with Jack and I didn’t need to hurry to pick a ring. “How does Mom feel about me picking out a ring?”
“She wishes that you would take hers but she understands that it’s right to pick your own and she isn’t ready to give up hers yet. So you’re safe on the guilt trip. What about that one?” he gestured to a ring under the class case and I shook my head. “You know, you keep complaining that you want to get home but you have yet to pick a ring.”
A woman came over to us and smiled widely. “Good afternoon gentlemen, is there any way I could assist you?”
I shook my head and Charlie rolled his eyes. “He’s looking for an engagement ring. Have you got anything that looks classy, not simple but not ostentatious, she doesn’t need a huge rock on her hand.”
“What kind of ring did you have in mind Mr…?”
“Prelapsarian,” I answered automatically, looking at the rows of rings in the display case. Charlie looked at me a little funny and I took a deep breath. “I want something with a little color, preferably blue. Just a classic, gem style cut. And I want it to be closer to simple than absurdly showy. She still gets a wedding ring.”
Five stores later I was able to find the perfect ring. Simple and elegant, just like Ana. When we got back to the apartment I did the whole, kneeling down, ‘Will you marry me?’ bit and laughed when Lucy was the only one with tears in her eyes. The ring fit Ana perfectly and looked like it was made just for her. “I love you,” I whispered when she hugged me.
“Well now we know the colors of your wedding,” Lucy said, looking at the ring.
Ana was sitting on my lap, her arm was outstretched to Lucy and Kaitlyn. “Doll, I think it’s time Kait and I went back home, alright?” Ana nodded and smiled at Jack. He was forcing Kaitlyn to leave, leaving me with some time to share with my mother and father.
They left and Ana was sleeping on my shoulder. “I love that you’re getting married,” Lucy said and I smiled.
“Thank you.”
“Before you have a child,” she added. “You know it probably wouldn’t be hard for her to have a child, since it would be full Artist. I mean, the pregnancy itself would last a month maybe two, at most. And the