40. After All This Time

40

AFTER ALL THIS TIME

Asher

This won’t be our first night together in bed. It’ll be our third as husband and wife. But we’ve shared beds before this too. Like the one in the ice hotel. We shared a room on that trip—that was the point. To freeze together.

Then, there were our sleeping bags, lined up next to each other in the tree tent.

Another time when we went on a tour of amusement parks up and down the California Coast, we shared a room in the All Aboard Inn, a hotel with suites built from old train cars. We pretended we were rich Europeans solving a murder mystery.

But this time is different for me . Since it’s the first time I’ll get in bed thinking too hard about the future rather than the present.

It’s all I can think about even after we forage the fridge for leftovers, even after we return to the bedroom, even after we slip under the fresh sheets and covers .

I meet her gaze once more, taking in her still bee-stung lips, the flush on her cheeks, her playful eyes. Then, those two books on the nightstand. They’re just books, but they’re also the signs of Maeve. They’re positioned a little haphazardly, like she does live here. Not like she was trying to make them neat as a guest. But like she’s comfortable in my home.

Is this even real? I run a hand down her arm like I need confirmation. Yep, real. She’s here, and she’s not leaving, and she’s not laying down rules, and she’s got my ring on her finger.

She’s my wife for the rest of the season.

It’s a wild, addictive thought, and my mind won’t stop thinking it, over and over. It’s barely ten. I’m not at all tired. I’m not even sure she is, so I say, “Do you want to watch something?”

“As long as it’s not a drama.”

“Do I look like I’d play a drama?”

“Nope,” she says with a pop of her lips, then runs a hand up my chest, playing with the hair on my pecs. It’s a familiar gesture, one I hope she turns into a habit. But her brow furrows. “Asher?”

That tone. The question in her voice. I tense. “Yeah?”

“I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to be friends. If we had sex,” she says, vulnerable, looking up at me. “But this is nice. I think we can. And I’m so glad.”

Has there ever been a more double-edged sword in my existence? Her words should be good. But they’re a reminder of how far apart we are. And what we stand to lose if this goes sideways. Still, I say from the heart, “Me too.”

Because I don’t want to lose her. Ever .

When I reach for the remote on the nightstand, Maeve slides closer, snuggling tighter against me. Fuck, that’s nice. My heart thuds hard. So loud she has to be able to hear it. I will it to quiet down.

I run my hand over her hair again. I can’t seem to stop touching her as I aimlessly search the streaming options, barely paying attention to the screen.

But then she freezes for a few seconds before she inches away from me.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

She backs away more. “I don’t want to crowd you in bed.”

That won’t do, her slipping away. “You’re not crowding me,” I say, meeting her gaze in the soft glow of the room, shaded blue and then green as the TV screen reflects on her face.

Worry lines her eyes. “It’s cool. Not everyone likes to cuddle.”

“I’m not everyone.”

“I know.”

“Is this your way of saying you don’t want to cuddle?” I counter, slightly guarded. I hope that’s not what she’s saying.

“No. It’s that…I want to be respectful of your space,” she says, full of tact.

I scoff. “Fuck respect,” I say, then raise my arm, inviting her back into the crook of my shoulder. “Get over here. And fuck those everyones who made you think guys don’t like to cuddle.”

She smiles. “Well, well, well. I guess I’ve learned you’re officially a cuddler.”

“Shut up and cuddle,” I say, then haul her against me.

“There you go again—giving me orders.”

“And you love them,” I tease. She does, and it’s easier to just be in this moment rather than think too hard about what happens tomorrow, next week, and next month.

She primly pulls the covers up. “I’m an independent woman. I don’t want a man to tell me what to do.” She pauses and shoots me a mischievous look. “Unless we’re in bed and he wants to hold my throat.”

That’s a hell of a roadmap. She’s in her sleep cami, so I slide a palm over her chest, up her throat, then around it, gently holding her in place. “Such a good wife,” I say, low and smoky.

She shivers, then whispers, “Next time.”

Two perfect words. A simple promise of more. I’ll take what I can get for now. Rather than push my luck, I find a comedy and turn it on.

Sometime into the second episode, she goes quiet. Then, her breathing evens out. She cuddles even closer in her sleep. I pet her hair. It’s perfect. Totally perfect with her here post-sex. With her comfortable with me. With us slipping back into the way we were.

With no regrets.

But even so, I don’t fall asleep. There’s too much happening in my head. Too many questions. Too many thoughts. Quietly, resting her head on the pillow, I slide away, tucking the blanket over her shoulder. I get out of bed in my boxer briefs, pull on a hoodie, and pad downstairs. My laptop’s on the kitchen counter, and I wish it were baseball season. I could fuck around in some baseball forums, talk trash anonymously about the city’s two teams even though I promised Everly I wouldn’t do that again. I need something, anything, to keep me busy because my mind’s a cluttered freeway right now.

I stop at the silver machine, flick it open, and toggle on a browser window. But I don’t have anything to ask Google.

Instead, I close it, head to the hall closet, and open it quietly, taking out a small box from the top shelf. It’s a Lego plant—a prickly pear.

Maeve got it for me for Christmas as part of a whole succulent collection. I go into the living room, flipping on a lamp. I pop open the box and quietly sort the pieces on the coffee table. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, and I need something to focus on now besides my own tangled thoughts.

But as I’m building the terracotta pot, my attention snags on a frame on the other side of the room.

I set down the plastic arm of the cactus, and head over to the frame to inspect the picture more closely even though I’ve seen it before. It’s the photo of Maeve reading in the tree tent on one of our Big Adventures, curled up on her side in the sleeping bag, a book light illuminating the well-worn pages. I can’t tell what she’s reading, but I bet it’s one of her mother’s books. She loves those, says she reads them till the pages fall out. Pretty sure that’s what she was reading that night.

As it grew darker over the Sierras, I snapped some pictures of the starlit sky from the tree, then turned around and saw her like that in her orange sleeping bag. I remember thinking she’d want to look back on that someday. I took the photo for her so she could remember it.

That was six years ago.

I stare at the photo till my vision goes blurry with memories.

I set it down, but I don’t return to the couch. Something is tugging at me. There’s a pull in my chest. A quiet chorus in the back of my mind that’s growing a little bit louder. Telling me to keep going. Keep asking. Keep looking.

I circle back to the kitchen, pick up the photo of her in the lavender field with the dog in the corner. That was three years ago. She’d wanted to visit Lavender Bliss Farms so fervently that she’d planned it for months. There was one weekend for the peak bloom, she’d said. So we drove to Darling Springs and wandered through the lavender maze, then scoured the fields, the farm’s dog trotting at her side, like he wanted to adopt her. No surprise—Maeve has that way about her. She’d scratched the dog’s head, tossed him some tennis balls, then sniffed every lavender bush, it seemed. She told me scent was most directly linked to memory. “And the more I sniff the lavender, the better I’ll recall this feeling someday. This sweet summer joy I feel right now,” she’d said. “Someday I’ll paint this and call it That Summer Memory .”

I didn’t want her to miss that feeling, so I took a picture.

Or so I told myself.

But now I wonder…

I turn and take a tour of all the photos of her I’ve framed. The graduation shot, taken more than seven years ago. The ice hotel from five years ago. One from four years ago after she rode a double-loop upside-down roller coaster, and her cheeks were flushed and her hair a mess when she stepped off it. “My heart has never beat so fast,” she’d said.

So I took a picture.

Telling myself it was for her.

It was for her to remember .

It was for her someday.

I walk over to the small mirror by the front door. The one I hung up last night. Her art. Her almost kiss. Her friends’ advice— keep snacks handy.

And in the reflection, I’m looking at the truth of my actions. I didn’t hang her art for the camera crew.

I didn’t hang it for Maeve.

I hung it for me. Because I love it, and I love making her happy. So she’d feel at home here.

All these other pictures? I didn’t take them so she’d have a record of all our days together. I didn’t take them so she wouldn’t lose a memory.

I took them…for me.

So I’d have them.

So I could look at them.

So I could return to them.

As I return to each one, I finally see what I was doing seven, five, four, three, two years ago from behind the lens of my phone.

I was slowly, over time, day by day, falling in love with my best friend.

Miles was right. He was so damn right.

I circle back to the lavender photo in the kitchen. That Summer Memory . My heart thunders mercilessly in my chest. It hammers so hard it nearly hurts.

Because here, after midnight, with Maeve sound asleep upstairs, and me being chased by relentless thoughts all day, I have an answer I didn’t know I was searching for.

My heart isn’t broken.

I don’t come with an expiration date.

I’m not radioactive with romance. Nothing lasted after I met Maeve because I was falling in love with her all that time.

And I didn’t even know it was happening. Last night, I realized how I felt. But now, I can see this feeling started years before we made a pact at her brother’s wedding. I run my finger absently along my silicone ring as I stare at the photo in the dim light of the kitchen, wondering how I missed this all along.

I can’t miss it now, and I feel freer, lighter, joyful even at the realization. I’m more than capable of love—for all this time, for all these years, it was always her.

I’m not cursed at all. True, my other relationships didn’t last for more than six months. But the real six-month curse is that half a year was as long as I could be distracted from the actual love I’ve felt all along for Maeve.

I breathe out a long, relaxed breath, feeling like one big, huge question has been answered.

But in its place is a whole new one. How do I get my wife to fall hopelessly in love with me too? Ideally, before she moves out at the end of the season.