We’ve been together for what often feels like a lifetime, but now it’s beginning to seem like the blink of an eye. Nineteen years we’ve been in love, sixteen of which we’ve been married. There have been a few times through the years when we both wondered if we made a mistake, but most couples have times like those. The main thing is that we survived. Endured. We weathered the rough patches and came out better for having gone through them.
I can look back and say with absolute certainty that I wouldn’t have wanted to travel the road of my adulthood with anyone else. I know without question that if I could live another two hundred years, and Nate lived with me, I’d want to spend every second of those years with him. He stayed when he didn’t need to. He forgave when he didn’t have to. He overlooked, held his tongue, held my hand, and now he’s holding up his end of the bargain—in sickness and in health.
Because that’s who Nate is.
And that’s what love is.
“Where’d you go?” he asks from his place to my left.
I can’t tell him what I was thinking. I don’t want to dull this precious time. I don’t want to remind him that our most challenging days are out in front of us.
Ahead.
In the future.
After Europe.
We both know it. I don’t need to remind him of that.
We made our choice.
We are in it for the long haul.
Together.
No point in talking about it all the time. It only makes things more difficult.
That’s why, as quickly as I can, I push the skis back into the closet and force the smile I’d been wearing only moments before back into place. Then and only then do I turn to look at him. “Nowhere. Just enjoying the view. And the company.”
Nate’s answering smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes and only one side of his mouth turns up. He knows me.
All too well.
“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
He reminds me because he knows.
He knows.
I nod and turn back toward the view, working hard to keep my expression free from the sadness that burns at the back of my eyes. And I hope against hope that his camera didn’t capture it.
Five
It’s my Life
Lena
The room is curiously bright, and I wake to a feeling of disorientation. After years of nursing, I’m not accustomed to sleeping until the sun is high. For a few seconds, I forget where I am.
For once, I’m not worried about today or tomorrow or next year. I’m not aware of my circumstance. I’m just…dazed.
I raise my head off the pillow and look at the window across from the bed. It’s tall and wide, and the curtains are long and white. The view beyond the panes doesn’t look familiar. All I can see is brick and the edge of another window. It looks like a city, but we don’t live in a city. We live in the suburbs.
That’s when I remember where I am.
I’m not in my room or my city. I’m in London. I’m waking in the middle of the day, in a foreign land, after being up for over twenty-four hours straight. This is the first full day of the best three months of our life.
Until the worst ones begin.
It’s infuriating that thoughts like those seem always to be at the forefront of my mind, but I know it’s normal, too. Anyone in this situation would be the same way.
Consumed.
But I never give up trying not to be, so resting my head back onto my pillow, I let my mind wander instead to the previous evening. The suite Nate arranged for us is beyond anything I could’ve hoped for. Every posh amenity I can think of is at my fingertips.
When we arrived, we were shown to our room right away, and it made quite an impression. It was cleanly made up in stark white and jet black. The only splash of color was the rose petals, laid out in the shape of a heart, on the crisp duvet. It had made my lungs constrict when I saw them. The scene was befitting of a couple who was just beginning their life together. I understand Nate’s reasoning for having the room set up like that, though. The bed had been adorned in just such a way when he’d carried me across the threshold on our honeymoon so many years ago. He was reminding me of his love, of how it hadn’t changed, of how it wouldn’t die just because one of us will, and I appreciated it for that reason alone. That’s why, when I saw it, I forced a grateful smile rather than shed my bitter tears.
Turning my attention to today, I note the fact that I’m in bed alone. I neither see nor hear any evidence of Nate, which leave me free to take stock of my body in complete privacy.
Gently, I push the covers off and let my hands skate over my bare skin. Some part of me expects to be able to feel what’s going on beneath the surface, even though I know I won’t.
“Don’t get started without me,” a deeply familiar voice says from behind me. I jump guiltily and crane my neck to look at my husband where he stands in the doorway that leads out to the living area. Between his fingers, he twirls a single red rose. On his lips, he carries a smile that’s allll man.
A blush stings my cheeks at his insinuation.
“I…I wasn’t…” I begin to explain.
Nate pushes himself off the doorjamb he’d been leaning leisurely against and walks slowly to the bed. Bringing the rose to his nose, he inhales and then sets one knee on the edge of the bed, stretching out across it until his face is inches from mine.