Page 121 of Time After Time

“And?”

“It’s three, now,” he says, incredulous.

“So?”

They laugh at me. I don’t give a shit. I want to see my girl. I want to see Em. I want to….

I meet her at the airport. We kiss so hard and long that someone passing by cries out, “Get a room!”

We do…get a room. Well, we get my whole house, and we don’t leave it for the whole weekend.

We make love. We fuck. We reconnect…in every room, over almost every piece of furniture.

“I think my vagina is broken,” Ember claims after Idon’t know how many rounds of sex. She’s leaving in a couple of hours. Back on a plane. Back to Boston.

The pain in my chest has already started to throb.

I’m going to miss her.

The sex is amazing. It’severythingI remember and more. But it’s the conversations afterward that I miss the most, because it’s simply not the same on the phone.

“Mama is asking when we’re getting married.” She licks my nipple.

I nuzzle her hair with my chin. “Tell her that we’ll do it as soon as you say yes.”

She raises her head. “You haven’t asked.”

“If I ask now, will you say yes?”

She frowns. “We’ve only been dating for two months....”

“See.”

She kisses me. I kiss her back.

When I tumble her onto her back and slide into her again—thrusting, feeling, needing—she cups my cheek, her fingers soft, grounding me.

“We don’t need to be married to be together,” she whispers.

No, we don’t. But being in the same city would fucking help.

I don’t say it aloud, but the thought pulses through me.

Doing this every night—loving her like this, holding her afterward, falling asleep with her tangled aroundme, and waking up to her skin in the morning light—that would be better.

That would be everything.

I hold her hand as I drive her to the airport a few hours later.

It’s hard to let her go. Tomorrow we’ll be back to our everyday rhythm.

There will be times when I’m in surgery and she’s got meetings, which will mean hours without contact.

There will be times when we simply can’t talk, and all we can manage is a text message at the end of the day saying:I love you.

And I do. More every day.

“How do you feel about taking some time off in April?” I ask.