He grinned, young and devilish. "You did this thing where you put your leg on the wall. Like a split, but standing." A quick shake of his head. "I need you to get back into whatever it is that allows you to bend that way."
"Ah, that's nothing special. Nothing I can't do with regular barre and Pilates classes."
"Then I need you to get back into ballet because you loved it," he said.
I tipped my face toward the sky, the stars. How many times had I stared at them, wondering if Jude was doing the same? Wondering where he was, what he was doing, what his life looked like now. Wondering how we'd fallen so far apart.
"You lost all the things you loved, Audrey," he went on. "You had to give up too much. I want you to get those good things back."
"I'll think about it."
"That's what I want to hear."
We listened to the noises of the night for a few minutes. Then, I came to the one question that'd paced around in the back of my mind since the other day. "Are you serious about not needing to get married?"
He brushed a kiss over my temple. "Completely."
"Your mother is expecting us to have a wedding," I said.
"Fuck. Yeah. You're right." He stared off into the parking lot, his brows creased and his mind whirring. A minute passed before he said, "What she really wants is for us to be together. If I tell her we've decided to skip a ceremony and all the other formalities, she'll be cool with that too. Especially if we let her throw us a party."
"My most sincere apologies, but I'm still traumatized from our last attempt at traveling to Sedona."
Laughing, Jude said, "Come on. You had fun in Grandwood Valley. You broke about eighty-four cowboy hearts, but you had a good time. I know because I died a little while watching you do it."
I wagged a finger at him. "I have two words for you: curtain lizard."
"That's an outstanding point. Thank you for making it." He kissed my forehead. "But my mom would understand if we told her we'd decided to shelve the wedding. She just wants us to be a family, regardless of the shape that takes."
"You don't mind that it's kind of…undefined?"
"We're not undefined. We've known exactly what we are to each other for almost twenty years."
"And what's that?"
I felt his grin when he kissed my cheek, the shell of my ear, the crown of my head. "Everything."
And yet it wasn't everything. Not by a mile. "Will that be enough for you?"
"Of course," he said, laughing. "What did you think I meant byeverything?"
"But…what if there comes a time when you want me to adopt Percy. I'm not sure about the specifics there, but it might be more difficult if we're not married. What then?"
He leaned back to meet my eyes. "You'd do that? You'd adopt him?"
"If you and Percy wanted it, yes, I would." I glanced away for a moment. "And if it came down to it, if we needed to be married in order for that to happen, then…I'd do that too."
I didn't want to make it sound like marrying him would be a death march because that wasn't it. Not at all. I just needed to teach my body and my brain that I could be safe in a relationship of that sort. That I wasn't trapped and I wouldn't be, not everagain. It would take time. None of this was quick work. But that was okay. We'd be okay.
"Thank you. Thank you for loving my boy," he said softly. "All I need is for you to promise me that you'll be here with me when he grows up and stops sleeping with twenty stuffed animals and starts calling me bro."
"I'll be here, but keep in mind, if he's anything like you, he'll have a beard and be able to bench-press three hundred pounds before he's twelve."
He roped an arm around my neck, pulling me in close. "Stop it," he groaned. "And I wasn't twelve."
"Close enough," I said. "But don't think you're getting out of the sex talk. That one's all on you."
"That's fine. I mean, I gaveyouthe sex talk. Seemed to work out well enough."
