“Two margaritas, as ordered,” I say placing the dray down at the table and handing the women their drinks.

To call them women would be flattering them. In their daily lives their great-grandmothers, tasked with raising an army of children and maintaining order in their families.

But every evening in the tiny Mexican seaside town of Ciloteca, these ladies who must be pushing 90 leave their worries at home and come to this bar as they sit and drink margaritas and watch the sun set over the Pacific Ocean.

“Gracias, chica,” one of the women says to me and I smile. It’s the end of my shift and I put my tray on the bar counter and walk around the bar.

It’s a quiet evening today, the local soccer match that’s happening at the stadium has much of the town focused on that. I walk up to the bartender who’s counting the money for the evening. He turns to me and smiles and I return the smile back. No words need to be spoken as he leans over and I wrap my arms around him and we kiss.

I feel his arms go around me and his hands descend down my back as we kiss some more. I raise myself on my tiptoes as I feel his hands reach for and cup my ass cheeks. I smile into him and pull back.

“Lucien,” I whisper, “We have an audience.”

Lucien Stone turns around and the ladies are looking at us and smiling. Or rather, they’re looking at him.

“Hola, guapo!” one of the ladies says as she raises her glass at Lucien.

“Muy chico!” I say with mock severity as I pull Lucien closer.

The ladies laugh good-naturedly and I smile to see if there are any customers left who will get info on the teasing that is most likely to commence.

But there are none. The sun is on its trajectory in descending over the Pacific Ocean and the bar is empty. People are all at the soccer match.

“Guess we better lock up?” Lucien asks me. I nod and we start going through the motions in closing up the bar for the evening.

After the first night in the motel, we realized we couldn’t stay in Southern California.

The next morning, we really ended up leaving everything that we had behind, converting as much as we could to cash, and hitching as many rides as we could find until we ended up in Mexico.

Once down south, Lucien was able to take charge again, finding us a place to live and a restaurant to work at.

We didn't have much. But we had each other. And we were happy.

And knowing Lucien, it wasn’t long before he purchased the bar and restaurant outright. I continued to waitress and Lucien continued serving drinks, only now he did this from behind the bar as opposed to walking around with a serving tray.

Life has been good. I have the man I love standing next to me.

I peek into the back room and look at the bassinet as it sits quietly. I crane my neck to the side a bit.

“Babies can tell when you’re watching them, Kerri” Lucien says from behind me, startling me.

I turn around and stick my tongue out at him and he chuckles, walking over to stand behind me so we can both take a look at our beautiful little baby daughter, Miranda.

I feel Lucien place a hand on my shoulder and I reach up with my hand to grab his.

We could have maybe stood there all night, watching our little daughter as she slept, but we’re interrupted by one of the town boys who runs up to the bar.

“Senor Marshall!” the boy yells as he comes up to the open-air bar that Lucien owns. “Senior Marshall! You have a letter! From Estados Unidos!”

Lucien turns to me and I shrug. Neither of us have been expecting anything from the US. Lucien never had much to look forward to since he was in jail, and once I sent off the paperwork to the attorney regarding his case, I had stopped looking for mail as well.

So, it is with some haste that Lucien leaves my side and goes over to the boy, thanking him, and begins to read.

I look to Lucien’s face to see what kind of reaction he’s having as he continues to read. But then again, I realize that this is Lucien Stone we’re talking about here. Rock sometimes has more expression than you can find on the face of this man.

Bereft of an expression to tell me what Lucien is reading I go up to him, curious as to what he’s seeing. But he looks up at me as I arrive.

“They’re dismissing all charges against me,” Lucien says. “They’re even awarding me a summary judgment for all the time and suffering that I’ve already endured. But basically, when they re-examined my case, they found that I wasn’t the killer who they had thought of at first.”

“So, you're cleared?” I ask, clapping my hands.

Lucien shrugs. “Well, they say I got an additional one year for inciting a prison riot,” he says. “But they’ve said that it’s started retroactively from the date of the riot.

“But Lucien,” I say trying to figure out what’s happening. “That's….”

Lucien nods. “That’s right. Even that sentence ends today.”

The enormity of what is happening takes a minute to dawn. Lucien helps me along.

“You did it, Kerri!” He says, grabbing me by the waist. “You looked at my case and found the problems with it and you sent it in to the lawyer. I would be absolutely fucking nowhere without you.”

I blush to myself. I knew he couldn't have committed those crimes that he had been accused of and I remember myself thinking how amazing this man had been to me at the time. I think how amazing he really turned out to be. Like nothing I could have ever expected in any man.

And sure, I’m also happy and satisfied that the man I had held as mine had stayed this long and been this wonderful.

All this time, we stayed in Mexico because we could never go back home.

But now, with his sentence basically over and the state awarding him money for wrongful imprisonment, Lucien Stone has many options open to him.

I have become attached to the life we've built for ourselves. The bar on the beach. The sunsets over the Pacific Ocean. Moonlight strolls along the water as the tide rose. Sex on the beach every evening.

Was I ready to let this go?

“I don’t want to leave either, babe,” Lucien says, and I look up at him. I realize that he’s been staring at me.

“What?” I ask.

He smiles at me. “Just because I’m not running from the law doesn’t mean that we have to leave paradise, Kerri,” he says as he looks over at the room that Miranda sleeps in. “We have a life here. Friends. Purpose.”

I draw myself closer to my lover. We hadn’t gotten married because we were technically illegal immigrants in Mexico, with fake papers. But we could even get married now. I smile, thinking to myself that at a time like this, the first thing that was going through my head was marriage.

The two grandmothers finish their margaritas and wave at us, blowing kisses at Lucien as they leave the bar. The sun has set and dusk is now turning to night slowly.

“I don’t want to leave here,” I tell Lucien, raising my head to look up at him. “I love it here.”

He nods.

“I’m with you,” he says. “That’s all that matters.”

“And you’re free too,” I say with a twinkle in my eye. “You’ve been free down here.”

Lucien looks at me for a long moment and then he smiles.

“I may not have been in jail for a year, Kerri,” he says with a smirk. “But I can tell you that I haven’t been free since the day I fucking met you.”

Smartass.

I pull him close to me as we kiss. My hand descends down to his crotch for me to start squeezing his giant organ that's begun bulging in his pants.

There’s no rush to decide anything. The world is our oyster.

And for the first time, we’re free to do anything we like with it.

It’s an amazing feeling. Being free as a bird.

And making sure that you’re trapped with your soulmate.

Hey, it could be a lot worse.

But it isn’t. So, I’m glad.

The End