LENA
“Modern Love” by David Bowie came on, and his name flashed on the screen of my cell phone.
“I’m in the driveway. I got the Camaro out. Are you ready?”
“Almost. Be out there in five.”
“Don’t make me wait any longer, pretty lady.”
I smiled at his words.
It had been over a year, and my heart still fluttered the same way whenever he said something sweet in that flirty tone of his.
“I just need my earrings and my purse.”
I grabbed them and put them on by the mirror on the fireplace. My eyes fell on the pictures lined up on the mantel.
There was one with Amos and me holding baby McFly when we’d just gotten back from Tokyo. Violet hated it when I called my goddaughter, Emma, “baby McFly,” but I thought it was so cute. She looked just like Marty, hence the nickname. According to Marty, she’d been named after Emma Frost from X-Men, but Violet insisted the name was for Emma Watson, the actress who played Hermione and Belle and was a feminist icon for millions of young girls.
My eyes moved to the next picture, and I smiled looking at a photo of a disgruntled me and a smiling Maggie during our second year of college. Next, there was a picture of Amos’ brother, Taylor, when he was stationed in Afghanistan. Although they didn’t look alike, his smile reminded me of Amos’. I looked at a picture of the two of us at the release party in Japan next to another one of me and Rika Ishikawa taken that same night.
Tonight, I was wearing the same dress I’d worn more than a year before, even though it didn’t fit as well as it had the first time.
Paz Media and other local comic publishers had gotten together with the Portland Museum of Art and sponsored a retrospective on Ishikawa’s works.
It was the night of the opening, and I was nervous.
I knew we were going to be interviewed by the local papers about the retrospective and our contribution to Aiko.
After Paz Media had published the remaining issues and we’d fulfilled our obligations, Amos and I had turned down interviews with anyone who wanted us to keep talking about Ishikawa’s death and the manga.
When we’d gotten back from Japan, we felt emotionally drained and ready to start a new phase of our lives.
We had our work to get back to. We had each other.
He was my home, and I was his.
I still remembered how uncertain the future had looked that morning after Rika’s funeral, but I had been worrying in vain.
If anything had changed between us, it was only for the better.
We both immersed ourselves in our work and our life together.
I was about to finish Switch, and in a few months I was going to LA to help out with the show—Switch had just been green-lit by Netflix, and Amira and I were over the moon.
Amos was still hard at work on In Limbo, although I knew he had projects brewing for at least three different comics.
One of them was set in Japan.
We’d moved out of our respective apartments as soon as we found a place we both liked, and we’d been in the house for about eight months now. It was a charming two-bedroom cottage built in the ’40s. The second bedroom had been a studio for the two of us, one we would have to give up soon.
However small, this house was our happy place.
I grabbed my purse and turned off the lights.
I locked the door and turned around, finding my handsome life partner staring at me from the driver’s seat. His smile was contagious and made him look even more beautiful. No one looked as good as he did in a black suit, white shirt, and skinny tie.
I bit my bottom lip, suddenly wishing we didn’t have to go out and could just stay home.
Life with Amos so far had been everything I’d thought I would never get in life.
I craved his companionship as much as I craved him. I’d never thought there would come a time in my life when I felt comfortable and unashamed to admit I had found my other half.
“You look beautiful,” he said as I opened the passenger door.
“I’m not so sure. I wanted to wear this dress because of Rika, but it doesn’t fit as well as it did last year. Maybe I should go chang—”
“Come here,” he said, pulling my hand and forcing me to take a seat in the roaring Camaro. I let out a yelp and glared at him. He grinned, eyes playful, and leaned in to give me a soft kiss. I grabbed his bottom lip between my teeth and bit it gently.
Pulling back, he gave me a once-over, eyes glistening with love and amusement.
“Don’t change. Number one, we’re already late, and number two, you look beautiful. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“I believe you’re biased, Mr. St. Clair,” I replied, unable to contain my smile.
“Perhaps, but am I wrong for thinking the woman I love—the woman who’s pregnant with my child—is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen?” he asked, placing a kiss on my lips and a hand on my small, eighteen-weeks-pregnant belly, which I’d managed to fit into the dress. “If so, I don’t want to be right.”
“I look bloated.”
“Hush. You look beautiful, and don’t even get me started on your breasts,” he said, ogling me unabashedly.
I let out a long sigh.
“Fine. Can we go now?”
“Are you going to be okay talking about Rika-san after all this time?”
I nodded and thought about it for a few seconds. From time to time, I couldn’t help getting nostalgic, and ever since I’d discovered I was pregnant, I had been extremely emotional, which I wasn’t a fan of.
I had been thinking about her a lot lately. I couldn’t help thinking about the way life, love, and death are constantly intertwined, how there’s always something moving us forward, always a light pulling us up even when we’re surrounded by darkness.
“I will be. I’ll only say good things about her and will make her proud. Plus, I have you by my side. I couldn’t ask for a better life partner. You look very handsome, by the way.” I glanced playfully in his direction and patted his leg. He smiled at me, but didn’t seem to move, or even attempt to put the car into reverse to pull out of the driveway.
“You want to know what I think?” he asked, a bit hesitant.
“I always want to know what you think,” I said in a reassuring tone, and he smiled nervously.
“I personally think life partner has a terrible ring to it.”
I frowned.
“Would you prefer baby daddy?”
He fished for something in the pocket of his jacket.
“I would prefer fiancé,” he said, presenting me with a simple white gold band with a solitaire diamond.
I wasn’t someone who’d ever wanted a ring, but I couldn’t deny how stunning this one was, and it was probably the only type of engagement ring I could ever see myself wearing. I didn’t need jewelry to symbolize a promise, because I knew I had this man’s heart, and it was all I ever wanted to possess.
Still, there was so much beauty and vulnerability in the way he looked at me. My heart started thumping away in my chest, and my eyes danced between the ring and his face.
If he wanted to give me a ring and have me call him my fiancé, I could handle it.
After all, I was already having his baby.
Agreeing to a ring on my finger wasn’t as big of a deal as squeezing a human out of my vagina.
I held my breath and waited.
He looked at me uneasily, holding the ring between us.
“Is this the part where you bolt out of the car and run away?”
I stared at him, expressionless, and I saw his eyes go from hopeful to nervous.
I folded my arms in front of me and rested them on my growing belly.
“This is the part where I wait for you to propose.”
His face broke into a smile and he leaned in to kiss me, a few pecks at first, and then a longer, deeper kiss. I took his face between my hands and kissed him again and again, his hand still holding the ring, suspended between us.
“I love you, Lena Andrews. I’ve only ever wanted you. You’re the only person I want to share my life with—well, you and the children we’ll have.”
“Children? Plural? There you go being cocky again,” I teased him, saying the same words I had used once upon a time.
“What do you say, Lena?”
“Put that ring on my finger, baby daddy.”