by Holly Rayner
She turned the page again, her anticipation outweighing her fear. The next drawing was dated the day after their night in London. It was of her again, perched on their place underneath the bridge. It was just as she remembered it, with the night and the lights and the easy smile on her lips.
Somehow, his drawing brought those feelings back, but even more so. It was, in a way, clearer and crisper and deeper than she had remembered it on her own.
She flipped through the rest of the drawings quickly, seeing them just as she had imagined. Her laying against him in the piano bar. The snowball fight. A still from one of their stolen little lunches. Her asleep on the plane, when Salim had ditched his private jet in favor of flying first-class with the company—just so that he could get the pleasure of sitting next to her a mile above the earth, or so he had said.
And then there were no more pictures, and Ophelia found herself disappointed. They were out of their time together, and that had very much been Ophelia’s decision. But sitting with the book in her hands, it didn’t feel like nearly enough.
At last, her hand shaking, she turned her attention to the note. It was in the same neat handwriting that the dates had been written in throughout the sketchbook.
Ophelia,
You were right. It was always more than a bet. I lied to you and I lied to myself. There is no excuse for the way I’ve acted, but I wanted to show you proof that no woman has ever shaken my world the way you have in these few short weeks.
I was trying to hold on to who I was before you, but you make me want to be the man I always should have been. I will always be grateful for that, even if you are never willing to see me again.
If I am truly the luckiest man there is, and you are willing to reconsider your final words to me, I’ll be waiting for you in the Summer Garden.
Yours always,
Salim
Her feet moving automatically, Ophelia was out the door before she could talk herself out of it.
Chapter 28
Salim
She wasn’t coming. It had been too long. He’d caught a glimpse of her entering the hotel, quite by chance, just after he’d left it, so he knew she’d gotten the package. And she could have looked through the sketchbook and read the note twenty times over by now.
But still, Salim stood. He was beginning to lose the feeling in his feet, and was collecting snow on the shoulders of his coat, but still, he waited.
He didn’t have a set amount of time that he would wait, before he would accept that she wasn’t going to forgive him and she wasn’t going to show. He only knew that however long it might be, it wasn’t yet. He wasn’t ready to accept it yet.
“Finally, we’ve gone somewhere the weather is acting like it’s supposed to.”
Her voice came from behind him, and he nearly slipped in his hurry to turn to face her.
“Ophelia,” he said, breathless. “I can’t apologize eno—”
Before he could finish, her lips were on his.
Her kiss felt, as it always did, like the cool, pleasant winter days of his childhood. She tasted like his first taste of Swiss chocolate when he was new at school, and her body in his arms felt like his first night out in New York in his twenties.
When the kiss ended, he kept Ophelia close to himself.
“Oh, you’ll be apologizing for a long time,” she said, the huskiness in her voice melting him. “Just as soon as I figure out how.”
With his right hand, he found hers, and brought it to his lips. Gently, tenderly, with all the emotion he had wanted to the first time, he kissed it.
“Whatever the price, I’ll be happy to pay it. As long as it’s you I’m paying it to.”
Chapter 29
Salim
Three Months Later
Salim barely felt the plane as touch down. It was a luxury he owed in part to his excellent plane and expert pilot, but even more so to the woman curled up in the seat next to his, laying with her head against his chest and his arm around her.
As the plane came to a stop her eyes fluttered open.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” he said warmly. “We’re back in New York.”
She yawned and stretched, though in such a way to still keep his arm around her. She was so graceful, even on waking. How was she always so graceful? His mind flashed back to the time he’d walked in on her in her dressing room and wondered what she’d look like when she was just waking up. He couldn’t have imagined.
“We’re here already? But we only just took off.”
Salim chuckled.
“You slept all the way from LA. Anyone would think you’d just spent the last three months headlining a massive world tour or something.”
She returned his smile.
“And anyone would think the list of cities on that tour somehow kept growing.”
Salim leaned down and gave her a light kiss on the lips.
“Hardly my fault that I want to show you off.”
She returned his kiss on her lips with a quick surprise kiss of her own.
“Hardly my fault that I like letting you do it.”
They disembarked the plane and made for the car, Rahul driving them to Midtown. Everything about this was familiar. Everything was routine. Except that everything was elevated now. Each simple action, each insignificant piece of his daily life was just a little bit better. Or, in some cases, much, much better.
“Are you ready to show me your apartment?” Ophelia asked, as they stood in front of the door. “Sure there’s no vestiges of your bachelor life hanging around? You don’t need to run around and do a quick cleanup before it’s presentable for female company?”
Salim smiled.
“It feels like the world has changed since the last time I was here. But yes, I’m ready to show you our apartment. You’re hardly ‘female company,’ after all. You’re everything to me. And you live here, now.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Is that so?” she asked, flattered but taken aback.
He hadn’t planned to ask her to move in with him. He hadn’t thought about it at all. But now that she was standing at the threshold, it seemed more than the right thing to do.
Salim laughed.
“I think once I let you in, you won’t want to leave. It’s a nice place, you know. Just preparing you for that possibility.”
Ophelia was giggling as she stepped over the threshold, but silent once she was inside.
This was one of the things that he most treasured about his new life with Ophelia: getting to see her experience and appreciate new things for the first time. When she saw something she liked, it was written on her face, and her joy felt like his joy. He couldn’t wait to show her every piece in his collection, one by one. It would be like getting to live the best moments of the last ten years over again, only better.
“Do you like it?” he asked, when she’d had time to look around.
She shot him a wan expression, and then leaned into his open arms.
“Of course I like it. You chose it. I like everything you choose.”
He kissed her neck.
“Well, some of my choices are better than others…”
He kissed her neck a few more times, further and further down.
“And some of my choices are much, much better.”
She nestled in his arms for a moment, resting in his embrace and luxuriating in his love, regarding the room some more. And then, she spoke again, indicating a large, brown-paper-wrapped package, the shape of a painting.
“The living room is a bit cluttered, though…”
Gently, he nudged her towards the package.
“Oh, you noticed that, did you? I had it delivered earlier today. Just a little end-of-season present for you. Go on, open it.”
She did as bid, and again, Salim felt that the real present had been to himself, getting to see the expression on her face.
“An original Degas?” she asked, in awe, staring at the painting once the brown paper had been removed
.
“Oh, so you know art now?” he teased, and she rolled her eyes.
“I’m a career ballerina. I know the man who paints ballerinas,” she shot back. “And this…this is…”
He stepped forward, putting his arms around her again.
“This is perfect for the living room, I think. For our living room. Your love of dancing and my love of art.”
He felt her laugh softly in his arms.
“And now, your new love of dancing, and my new love of art. Love does tend to multiply, doesn’t it?”
He thought about that for a moment. She was right. For the lucky, in any case. And Salim was very, very glad in that moment to count himself among one of the lucky.
And he was even more glad when Ophelia reached down and took his arm, and led him away towards the hallway and the rest of the unexplored apartment.
“Which way is the bedroom?” she asked. “I happen to have an end-of-season present for you, too…”
Chapter 30
Ophelia
Everything felt different, but also the same. The bond she had already shared with Salim wasn’t really different; it was just deeper, more intense. She’d already felt for so long that she knew him, knew the feeling of being in his arms and of resting against his chest. But here in his apartment, now, resting against him in the afterglow for the first time, she was overwhelmed by how joyful and peaceful she felt.
It all seemed so foolish, now—her nervousness about how long she’d put off this experience. The angst over what people would or wouldn’t think of her when they found out. For all of the experiences that her friends and fellow dancers might say she’d missed out on, she was happy that this first time was something she had shared with Salim.
And she would be very happy, for the rest of her life, if this experience were something she shared with him, and him alone.
She loved Salim. She loved everything about him, the more she got to know him. She loved his quirks and his passions, but more than all, she loved his generosity.
From the outside, he seemed like he was obsessed with possessing and owning, amassing a collection of beautiful things. But knowing him as she did now, she’d gotten to see that his true joy was not in owning, but in sharing. And this carried over into every piece of his life and every aspect of his personality.
She loved his face when he was looking at or watching something he liked. She loved his intensity when he was sitting at the piano, learning, or when he was drawing. She loved being drawn by him. She loved life with him—all of it. Life on tour, and the promise of life after.
“Is this how it’s going to be every time we come home?” she murmured, barely audible. “We give each other the best gifts we can think of?”
She bounced up and down on Salim’s chest as he laughed.
“I hope so,” he said, in that quiet tone of voice that she most loved. “But the gifts aren’t over, yet.”
Ophelia moved aside slightly, as he searched around with his hands for his suit jacket, somewhere on the floor beside the bed. He came back up with a small box, and Ophelia caught her breath.
“Is this what I think it is?” she asked, her eyes wide.
Salim smiled.
“I really, really hope it is.”
He opened the box, revealing the delicately beautiful ring inside.
“You play princesses on the stage all the time,” he said. “How would you feel about being one for real?”
She kissed him, and she kissed him, and she kissed him—over and over again, as tears dashed down her cheeks.
“Is that a yes?” he asked, catching his breath.
“That’s a yes,” she whispered. “That is very much a yes.”
Epilogue
Ophelia
Christmas in New York had always been a special time, not that Ophelia had ever gotten to actually go out and experience it, what with how busy the season always was. She figured that, over the years, she’d learned every female role in the Nutcracker, but still she was always happy to perform it for the children. It was magical, getting to introduce them to dance in that special time of year.
But this year, nearly two years after meeting Salim, the role she took on for the holidays was truly a new one, and the most exciting one she’d yet accepted. It was the role of bride.
The wedding went off without a hitch. There were the usual wedding concerns—the blending of families, and who would and wouldn’t get along with whom. But nothing above or beyond the usual.
Salim’s family had been a mixed bag. Some of his siblings that she had met over the years she greatly liked, and some, she was less sold on. His parents were…well, they were what she expected from what Salim had told her about them. They were royals, and Ophelia reminded herself that that role carried a great deal more pressure that she’d ever been exposed to.
And besides, she was getting Salim. That was what mattered.
As for her family, they loved Salim almost as much as she did. The couple had spent enough time in the States in the lead-up to the wedding that her family had met him several times, so there were no surprises there. The only slight hiccup was near the beginning, when Ophelia’s mother kept questioning in a not-so-subtle way if this man was going to be a distraction to Ophelia’s career, and might derail all of the careful planning that she’d put into it.
But, as she began to see that the effect of Salim and Ophelia’s relationship on her career was very much a positive one, her reservations faded. And he was welcomed to the family in a way that Ophelia was delighted to see brought him joy.
They held the ceremony and the reception in the home theater of the Williamsburg Ballet. It wasn’t the most traditional of venues, but to Ophelia and Salim, it felt right. It was decorated to the nines, with vines of flowers cascading from the ceiling and tiny, sparkling lights shining in the darkness of the room all around them.
It was the most dramatic wedding Ophelia had ever been to, but that, in and of itself, seemed appropriate. For all the joy that her relationship had brought her—and, she felt certain, would continue to bring her—she could hardly deny that it had gotten off to a dramatic start.
One of the most stressful questions about the wedding had been whether or not to invite Nikolai. Salim had stressed, over and over, that they didn’t have to, but Ophelia had insisted. As much as he had hurt them, and as much as their early interactions had left a bad taste in Ophelia’s mouth regarding him, even she had to admit that over the last two years, he had changed.
They hadn’t had much contact—not because Ophelia was still angry at him, but because Salim was. However, from the information they’d gotten from mutual friends, it sounded like he had begun making some very different choices in his life. His ballet company, as well, was starting to make waves in a way it hadn’t in decades.
Besides, Ophelia had told Salim, Nikolai was one of his oldest friends. And she was taking on his whole life—his past, his present, and his future. Nikolai was a part of that, and he should be there. In the end, it was fine. Nikolai was on his best behavior, and all the unpleasantness was long enough ago that Ophelia found she didn’t mind him being there at all.
Besides, Nikolai wasn’t the only old school friend that was invited to the wedding, and not the only one that showed, either. Salim attempted to keep Ophelia up to date with putting names to faces and explaining who was who, but she was still taken by surprise at the reception when a beautiful woman came and took her by the arm, leading her away from everyone.
“So, it’s you then, isn’t it? she said. She felt like she was much older, but she must have only been Salim’s age. She was Spanish, and it felt to Ophelia that she was laying her accent on a bit thick for dramatic effect.
“It’s…me?” Ophelia asked, surprised.
The woman smiled.
“I mean that you’re the one that’s different. You were the one that was something new. When I saw Salim and Nikolai in Spain two years ago and they were all—how do you say it?�
��bent out of shape over something. It was you, wasn’t it?”
Ophelia felt her brows furrow.
“You’re Calista, aren’t you?”
The woman smiled.
“I am. So, he told you, then?”
“Who you are? He’s talked about you, yes.”
“No.” Calista shook her head. “I mean, he told you what he was all twisted into knots trying not to tell you.”
So far removed from the pain of it, so long ago, Ophelia found herself smiling at the memory. It had felt world-shattering at the time, but looking back, it seemed inevitable that they would get through it. They hadn’t known each other well, then. They hadn’t known the strength of their own feelings or what they would become.
Looking back, Ophelia did what she never could have imagined herself doing two years ago. She laughed.
“No, he didn’t tell me. Nikolai did.”
Calista smiled.
“Ah, of course he did. But you forgave him?”
“Nikolai?”
“No. Your husband.”
Ophelia looked at her with every ounce of the confusion she felt.
“Salim? Yes, I love him.”
Calista waved her hand.
“Yes, yes, you love him. And you forgave him?”
Ophelia offered her a gracious smile.
“Yes, I forgave him.”
Calista put her hand on Ophelia’s arm.
“Good. If you can do that, then your marriage will be better than any of my marriages; I can tell you that. Take care of Salimito. You do that, and he will take care of you. And if he doesn’t, you tell me.”
“I intend to,” Ophelia said. And then, after she realized how it sounded, “I mean, take care of him. Not tell you…”
