The smoke from her lungs evaporates, and she holds it up to my mouth, and I take a drag.
We don’t speak.
We just watched the Empire State Building lit in blue, red, and white.
We smoke.
Cuddle.
“I love you,” says Amy, a long time after the cigarette died, and looks over her shoulder up into my eyes.
“I love you, too,” I say and kiss her.
The love I never wanted.
Here she is.
In my arms.
And right this moment, I know what I have to do.
“I’ll do him in,” I say. “For everything.”
She turns in my arms under the blanket.
“You will?”
“Yes.”
She rests her head on my chest.
“I’m so proud of you,” she says. “For choosing you.”
Her words hit me somewhere so deep that it causes tears to run down my cheeks.
“Please never stop being you,” I say.
She laughs and lifts her head off my chest.
“You mean the mess?”
Her laugh.
Her smile.
Her eyes.
“Messy is good,” I say. “Everything else would be boring.”
“I won’t,” she says. “Promise. I also promise to be by your side when you do it. Always.”
I smile and kiss her.
Those wonderful lips.
21
AMELIE
