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"I told you I had a surprise."
"Isn't it sex?" she asks, but her cheeks turn red.
I shake my head. "Family meeting."
"At this time of day? But it's seven in the morning in New York," she says, quickly calculating the time difference.
"Yes. Come, it won't take long."
About a week ago, Serenity wrapped up her first season at the New York City Ballet. At first, when she told me she wanted to go back, I was tense, thinking it would be too much pressure, given all the shit we’d been through.
I was wrong. Diving into dance rescued her at a speed that I don't think even the therapy she continues to do would have been able to.
We arrive in the main sitting room of my house on the island, and I see the surprise on her face when she notices the eighty-five inch TV on, with our entire family, plus Debra, appearing in small frames.
"Hi, guys," my girl says. She waves shyly, like she always does when she's exposed to too many people at the same time. It'sincredible the difference between Serenity'sPrima ballerina of the New York City Balletpersona and her family girl behavior.
She only wears the professional persona in her role as a public figure. Inside the house, she's one hundred percent open to me, and like the selfish fucker that I am, this makes me feel ten feet tall.
Before she can ask what's going on, I turn her to face me, and in the same movement, I kneel at her feet. I vaguely hear the women in my family say something, but my concentration is one hundred percent on her.
"I don't care what your name is," I begin, repeating what I've been telling her since we found out about the identity change. "I don't care which world you come from, what your last name is, or that you have the ugliest toes I've ever seen . . . To me, you're completely perfect. From the beginning, what caught my attention was how true, passionate, and committed you are to every little thing you do in your life. I gave you the time I thought you needed, and my brothers can testify that it was a hell of a struggle for me to control the desire to make you mine. But I can't wait any longer. Marry me, Serenity. Be my wife and the mother of my children."
Even though I didn't rehearse what to say, I practiced a mini-script of whatto do, so now would be the time to give her the ring, but nothing with Serenity is predictable. My love for her doesn't follow rules, so she doesn't give me time to even pick up the box. She throws her arms around my neck, still standing, and cries, holding on to me.
"I love you, Ares. Maybe there are some parts of me that will always be missing a piece, shards that got lost along the way. But what I feel for you is complete. You are my perfect fit. Yes, I want to be yours."
Serenity
EPILOGUE 1
Maybe we should have waited.Somewhere, in a handbook for brides, it’s probably written that you should take everything slowly: choosing the wedding venue, carefully planning the party, making sure everything will be perfect.
Ares and I, however, do not dream of perfection. We want something real.
Our love is not a flowery path, lined with impeccable flowerbeds and exquisite landscaping.
It is bumpy, with several rocks out of place, some trip hazards, and a lot of fights.
Sometimes, his arrogant way of assuming that he can and should decide everything for me makes me want to kill him.
Sometimes, his arrogant way of assuming that he can and should take care of me, protect me, and eventually, cross some boundaries, makes me love him even more.
He's not perfect. I'm not perfect. Still, we were made for each other.
I've decided on a wedding on our island—yes, he says it's ours, and I won't argue. I’ve learned to pick my battles.
I didn't want anything big, just the people who were by my side at the worst moments of my career. The friends that life gave me, the family that I never had.
The only family I want, because with each passing day, I've been trying hard to forget about JeAnne.
She made a deal with the prosecutor and got a relatively minor sentence considering the number of crimes she’d committed: twenty years with the possibility of parole in ten.
I don't care whether she stays behind bars forever or gets out tomorrow, because for me, she doesn't exist anymore.
There's something I remembered the other day, something I only told Ares. In researching my past, I learned that I was never registered, but I don't remember ever being called by any name other than Serenity. I asked Ares to have the lawyer visit her and ask her if I had another first name, even if it was never registered.
Her response was that she’d always called me by the same name as her boss's daughter because she thought we looked alike. Even without registration, I was already Serenity.