Alexis
Finn and Cara were turning one soon. Greyson had always wanted a little girl who looked just like me and he got his wish. Little Finn, he was all Ratcliffe just like all those who came before him.
Greyson was taking me somewhere for a surprise and it was our first time away from the twins since they were born. Paige had won the drawing. We had to have a drawing because everyone wanted them. Dylan and Dominic offered to take our animals. Heather worked with them now, an official employee. Vice President of Research and Development. They were still rolling in the dough, more and more as the world shifted to one of automation, and Heather came to them with fresh new ideas.
Tara and Mandy moved to New York, Tara to take a job at one of the top publishing houses in the country, and Mandy for a teaching job at a private school in Westchester. They were living in our apartment. The only restriction we put on them was to leave the mural, but it was a touch of home that they both needed. It had been hard on Paige and Grant having the girls living so far away, but the twins had a private plane so they could visit as often as they wanted.
After the twins were born, Greyson gave me a stack of letters from my mom to my dad. He had to read them to me because I couldn’t stop crying. Hearing her words, getting that insight into her when I never thought I would, it still made me choke up. There was a lot of my mom in me and that made me really happy.
The book on the Ratcliffe family was done. It was in fact a coffee table book, a best seller. The diamond was in a case, but not one in the living room. It was an invaluable family heirloom so the case was alarmed with sensors, but in our bedroom so we could see it and remember the magic that had touched us too. Greyson and I couldn’t wait to share the story with our children about the long line of incredible people who had come before them. But it was the menagerie of people we had picked up along the way that were our true family, as real and strong as any family could be. We’d been blessed.
The screenplay I’d been working on was in post-production with an award-winning lead actor and director. Nomination rumors were beginning to circulate. Maybe there’d be another case, this one in the living room, for a handsome golden bald man.
I was sitting outside. Greyson had run out. He didn’t say where. I heard his car and moved from the deck to greet him. I rounded the house then stopped. Greyson was coming up the drive and with him was my dad. I was a forty-year-old woman, but when I saw my daddy I ran to him like a little kid. He caught me as I threw my arms around his neck.
He buried his face in my hair. “I’m sorry, baby girl.”
I said through my tears. “You’re here now.”
Greyson
I watched Alexis and her dad walking along the cliff, heads close as they got caught up on a lifetime of memories. He’d surprised me when he called to say he was coming. When he hadn’t come for the birth of the twins, I assumed he never would. I was happy for Alexis that I’d been wrong about him.
Everyone was coming over later, a chance to meet Finn and a chance for him to meet the twins. Watching father and daughter, all that he had missed out on, I would be forever grateful that he’d given me the kick in the ass I needed. Our story wasn’t without its ups and downs but when you fell asleep every night next to a woman who still made your body hum and your blood burn, when you still noticed new things about her, still felt that jump when she stepped in a room and still laughed at her jokes, that’s a story of a life lived and loved. I didn’t know what the future held, but I did know I would be at her side through all of it because there was nowhere else I wanted to be.
Alexis
My surprise was a trip to London, but it wasn’t until we parked at the O2 arena that I learned the real surprise. Greyson brought me to London to see The Cure. Our seats were far better seats than our first concert. His hand was wrapped around mine the whole night and like our first concert, when I glanced over he was watching me not the concert. The first notes of “Just Like Heaven” echoed around the arena.
Greyson touched his lips to my ear. “Every time I hear this song I think of you. At sixteen when you changed my life and twenty-one when you walked back into it. On our wedding day, I’ve never seen you looking more beautiful. Cleaning the house, doing laundry and dancing.” He grinned. “Carrying our children, watching you with your dad. Just like heaven. The lyrics couldn’t be more accurate.”
Unlike in our youth, it was me who kissed him. At sixteen I thought I understood what heaven was, but Greyson was right. It wasn’t a moment, or even a feeling, it was a lifetime with the one person who saw all of you, the good and the bad, and who loved you because of your scars and baggage not despite them. With Greyson, we had found our own version of heaven.
Several weeks after the concert, I sat in the living room reading the book I had written about Greyson and me. I had it bound, the first part, but knew there would be other books because we were still a work in progress. I loved going back and remembering. I flipped the page, but it turned farther ahead to the place that was marked by a folded piece of paper. It was worn and yellow but I remembered vividly the day I got it. Carefully, I opened the worn page to read the single line written so long ago. Everything that had happened with us from then until now and still I got gooey-eyed looking at his note; I still felt the rush of nerves in my belly. I felt sixteen again.
I knew Greyson had joined me by the heat that sizzled along my nerves. He sat right next to me and brushed his lips over my cheek.
“The twins are napping, finally. The social worker called too, left a message, making sure we’re ready for Jamie and Alex.”
Greyson and I were going to foster two young boys. Our family was growing, but there was enough love to go around.
His smiling eyes looked down and saw what I held. He reached for it. “You kept it? That was so long ago.” His gaze moved to me. “That first day in biology, what were you thinking?”
I grinned at the memory. “I had our lives planned, a romance to rival the greatest in history.”
Tenderness moved into his expression. “How did we compare to your imagination?”
“Real life is so much better.”
He took the book from me and placed it on the coffee table along with the note. “We’ve lived enough to fill two lifetimes.”
Yes we had.
“We know each other as well as any two people ever could.”
He wasn’t wrong.
He brushed his thumb over my lips. “So why is it that even now when I kiss you it’s like the first time?”
“Love.”
He threaded his fingers through my hair. Everything we’d been through and still he looked at me like he couldn’t get enough. Life wasn’t like the fiction I wrote. It didn’t follow a script; it didn’t have a formula. Our story was still being written, unscripted, real, he kissed me, and so unbelievably beautiful.