Window Shopping

Snow falls around him, this man who can be both my hero and stand back and let me be my own. This one-of-a-kind man I can’t wait to marry in the spring.

I pack every ounce of love for him into a smile. “I matching robes love you.”

“I matching robes love you back,” he rasps, emotion weighing down every word. Then he climbs the stairs, wraps an arm around the small of my back and walks side by side with me into the house.

THE END

It’s our first best Christmas together. First of many over the decades.

And with her, each one is better than the last.

“You’re home now.” But that’s not quite right, so I amend it. “We’re home now.”

“I’m one hundred percent here and I love you.”

The only thing—and I mean the only thing—that is keeping me right here, rooted to this spot where the bourbon is easy to reach, is my absolute faith in her.

I have grown up. I’m different. There are things of value in my life that have nothing to do with advantages. I earned them by being me. I made friends. I fell in love with a man.

Oh wow.

Yeah, I love Aiden. The way down deep kind of love.

It’s a wonder that my heart hasn’t climbed out through my mouth and taken off running on little legs toward the dressing room. As the man who has been seeing Stella naked on a regular basis since Monday, I am not surprised that she looks so beautiful. Not a smidge. Whether she’s moaning against the tile wall in my shower, drifting off to sleep to one of my Aunt Edna stories or staring out the window of my living room, brow wrinkled in thought, she’s never not messing with my pulse. Clothed, unclothed, the damn thing is erratic twenty-four seven. At this point, I’m pretty sure I’d cause an EKG machine to start smoking, so no. I’m not shocked in the slightest that she looks like an angel in the dressing room mirror.

For now, we’re…we’re a we. We’re real.

“We both feel real like this,” he whispers, slowly giving me his shaft, inch by inch until he’s buried deep and I’m gasping. “Everything about you, everything about us…is real.” He rears back and pushes forward, his forehead dropping to mine. “Feel it, Stella.”

When she tucks her head under my chin, I swear I’ve died and gone to heaven.