We laughed at the thought.
"Angelina . . ." I brushed the hair out of her eyes. "You have made me the happiest man in the world. I still don't know why you're here. But I want to make 'us' work. I don't know how things will go, but as long as we want to be together, we'll find a way."
"Is that a promise?"
"Yes," I kissed her passionately and wiped the last of our tears away. "And since we're not in bed, you can hold me to it."
Her lips went to my ear. She nibbled behind my jawbone.
All the hair on my neck stood straight up.
"Marc," she whispered softly. "Take me to your bed. Let's practise making those beautiful babies . . ."
* * *
We made love well into the night. I fell asleep spooned up against her, my exhausted cock buried inside her.
The sweet smell of her body and her perfume lingered in the air and on my pillows.
When morning came, we held each other, knowing that our time was almost up.
I savoured the feel of her breath on my chest. The gentle touch of her fingertips. The softness of her skin. The sensual brushing of her hair.
Neither of us said a word.
After another improvised breakfast in bed, we made love desperately one more time.
We took a shower together. While she was drying her hair in the bathroom, I slipped a note into her suitcase for her to find later.
Mi Angelita,
You can't know how much your visit has meant to me this weekend. I didn't know how lonely I really was until you showed me how much you love me.
I miss you already. I don't know where we go from here, but I do know I don't want to be without you in my life.
Love,
Marc
She came out of the bathroom and began packing her things. Very carefully, she unpinned the corsage from her red dress. After rifling through my closet, Angelina found a hanger and hung the dress over the hook on the back of my bedroom door.
"I want you to think of me first thing every morning when you wake up," she said.
"Are you going to think of me every morning, too?" I asked taking her in my arms.
"Oh, Marc," she said, melting into my embrace. "I've been doing that for years."
We held each other for a long time, not wanting to let go.
Finally, I pulled away. "You have to get on the road."
She smiled, a look of sadness flashing across her eyes. "I know."
Angelina gathered up the rest of her things and set the corsage on top of her duffel bag.
"Not going to leave that with the dress?" I asked.
"What? And leave the first flowers you ever gave me? I don't think so," she smiled teasingly. "You may be a good guy, Marc, but you're still a guy. If I left flowers with you, they'd just wilt away and you'd throw them out."
I snorted softly, pulled her close and swatted her playfully across the backside.
"Don't start something you're not going to finish," she warned.
My mouth went to hers and we shared a long passionate kiss.
"There's something I want you to have," I said, going over to a box on top of my dresser. I shuffled through some jewelry and found a small gold cross pendant hanging from a gold chain.
I pushed Angelina's hair out of the way and clasped it behind her neck.
"This was my grandmother's," I said. "It belonged to her mother and her mother's mother. Grandma didn't have any daughters or granddaughters to pass it along to, so she gave it to me and told me to give it to the next generation of Thompson girls. I know she'd want you to have it."
Angelina choked back tears.
I pulled her close to me.
"Marc," she whispered. "I—"
"I know," I said quietly, barely able to see through my own watered eyes. My feelings overwhelmed me. The words came easily, almost naturally. "I love you, too, Angelina."
We finally managed to get to the garage and I loaded her things into the car.
I didn't want to let her go, but I knew I had to. Each lingering touch was soft and warm.
With one final kiss, I closed her car door. She smiled at me, makeup running down her cheeks.
I opened the garage door and she backed out. Angelina waved as she pulled away.
In the cold February air, I watched from the driveway as her car disappeared down the street. I went back inside and found myself still shivering. It wasn't just the cold; I felt lonelier now than I ever had in my life.
I looked around the house and saw small traces of my lover, left behind for me. I found a magnet and put the Valentine's Day card Angelina had given me on the refrigerator. There was an empty frame in a closet, and I propped up the picture we had taken at the restaurant on top of my TV. Her perfume still hung in the air.
The house was suddenly quiet. Before, I enjoyed the solitude, the peace. Now my home—and my life—seemed barren, as if something were missing.
It was as if a part of me had driven off with Angelina.
* * *
I set the last of the boxes down. The place was a mess. But I couldn't dwaddle too long; I was due to pick Angelina up in a few minutes.
For the next four months we had seen precious little of each other. I had gone to visit her a few times. She came home twice, once to see just me and once to see her folks.
Sure enough, after her first visit, rumours began to swirl around school. The kids and other teachers said I had the "guess who just got some" look the following Monday. They tried to pump me for information, but I said nothing. A little part of me liked the intrigue of our tryst. I think a few people had an inkling of who had been in my home, but no one knew for sure.
Somehow, we had made it through the end of Angelina's spring semester, through prom and graduation for my kids, and it was summer time. She was taking some extra summer classes and trying to graduate in December. Then we were going to see where our relationship was headed. At least that was the plan as far as she knew.
I went to my car and drove to her apartment. Her roommate Molly answered the door with a smile. When I came to visit, we usually got a hotel room somewhere and disappeared from Friday afternoon until late Sunday night.
"Angelina's in the bathroom," Molly said. "Big plans this weekend?"
"Not really," I shrugged.
She gave me a sly grin, seeming to know that there was something I wasn't letting her in on.
Angelina came out of the bathroom and jumped into my arms. After a long kiss, I held her close to me. It had been about a month since we had last seen each other, although we talked just about every day. It was a good thing we were with the same cell phone company and had free mobile-to-mobile calling.
"I've missed you," she said.
I twirled her around in the living room and took in those deep brown eyes that I could never get enough of.
"How did I get so lucky?" I asked her for the millionth time.
"You, of all people, should know," she giggled. "Didn't I teach you anything in your class?"
"I guess not."
"You should listen to your own lessons more carefully, Mr. Thompson," she said with a laugh. "You taught me to believe in myself. That nothing was out of my reach. You gave me motivation. I wouldn't have gone to college if it weren't for you; I wouldn't have gotten the scholarship if you hadn't pushed me. You made me want it. So I went for it."
Her arms wrapped tighter around me.
"All those papers we wrote for you. All the extra work you made us do. You didn't want us to just pass a test. You wanted us to learn, and not just the facts. You wanted us to succeed at anything we put our minds to."
"Which you always did," I could only smile into my lover's eyes.
"That's right, Mr. Thompson," She kissed me gently, although I could feel the passion in her lips. "And now I want you. And you know that when I want something, I always get it."
"You sure do," I stared into the eyes of my lover. "I guess I had forgotten."
"Oh, get a room!" Moll
y rolled her eyes. She swatted me across the rear with her magazine. "Now get her out of here before I jump you."
We laughed. Angelina got a small duffel bag and we headed out to my car.
"Are you hungry?" I asked.
"Not really," she said. "Where are you going to take me?"
"Someplace special."
"I hope it's not that sushi place where the fish was still moving. I like sushi, but that was a little too freaky for me." She got in the car after I opened the door for her.
"No, we're not going there tonight," I said with a grin.
I got in and started driving.
My handed rested on her leg. She had on a thin blouse and a pair of shorts that showed off her shapely legs. Her hair was pulled back. Like the first time we had gone out all those months ago, all I could do was stare at her beauty. It made driving a little difficult.
"Where are we?" she asked after a while, not recognising the roads. Instead of heading downtown or to any of the usual places where we stayed, we were in a small friendly neighbourhood.
"You'll see."
I pulled into the driveway of a one-level brick home. It wasn't much, but it was in pretty good shape and only needed a little bit of work. I had closed on it the month before.
There was a soft breeze blowing through the trees as we got out of the car. I took her hand and she followed me dumbly. I led her to the door and fumbled for the keys.
"Marc . . . What are you doing—" she gaped. I think it was finally sinking in.
I wrapped my arms around her. "My love, I couldn't go another year living so far away from you, so I moved to be closer."
"You can't . . . You have a job . . . the school . . ." she stammered.
"I found a job here. I start working in the county school board office next month." I pushed the door open. There were boxes of stuff everywhere.
"What about the high school?" Tears started to roll down her cheeks.
"I've already taken care of that. I gave my notice back in April," I clutched her close to me. Truly, I hated leaving the high school and my students, but I knew that my relationship with Angelina was a gift from the Heavens, and it would be crazy for me to let her go, even if it did throw my personal life for a loop.
Sobs of joy wracked her body. "I can't believe you did this for me."
"I didn't do it for you, honey," I kissed her gently. "I did it for us."
She was trembling.
"Didn't I teach you anything?" I asked. "Don't you remember what I told you kids? I said it was the most important thing I could ever teach anyone. Life is like a game . . ."
"You can play, or you can watch," she completed the phrase I had drilled into them from the first day of class. "Life will pass you by if you let it."
"I still don't know what brought you back to me, my love," I said. "But I love you too much to watch you move back to the middle of nowhere just to be with me, and I'm sure as hell not going to let you pass me by. This was a chance to make 'us' work, so I went for it."
"Marc . . . I don't know what to say," her voice broke. I brushed the tears out of her eyes.
"Say you love me," I kissed her.
"I love you, Marc Thompson."
"I love you, too, Angelina. Now stop crying," I said with a grin. "I can't stand to see a pretty girl cry. Makes me horny."
Angelina threw her arms around me and laughed.
"Now let me show you around your new house," I whispered. Before she could respond, I threw her duffel bag through the doorway, picked her up and carried her over the threshold. "Welcome home."
THE END
* * *
A Love in War
* * *
"I hate this place."
"I hate that you're such a brat," Danielle said to her little brother.
"Why do we have to go? Ma-mère doesn't even speak English," he whined some more.
"She does, too." She reached over and smacked him just because she could. "You're just too stupid to understand her."
"Dani, don't antagonise your brother," her mom scolded from the front seat of the mini-van.
"They don't even have a Playstation!"
Good God, just shut up! Danielle thought to herself. Before she said anything else that might get her in trouble, she plugged her earbuds in and turned up the volume on her iPod to drown out her sibling's lamentations.
For her part, she loved visiting her grandprarents and great-grandmother. Ma-mère still lived in the same house where she had raised her family after the war (the second one), and Grandma and Grandpa lived a couple of blocks away. Danielle liked it because it was quiet. She liked perusing through her great-grandmother's voluminous library and listening to her stories of France and Germany and England and lands far away.
It also drove her brother bonkers, and that was just an added bonus.
The drive from Charlotte took almost all day when they finally pulled in to Ma-mère's driveway. Danielle thought she was beautiful. Still slender and always immaculately dressed, she was the envy of women two decades younger than her 88 years. She was standing on the porch along with Danielle's grandparents, Ma-mère's daughter and her husband. Her curly white hair glistened in the setting sun. She was fit and spry for her age, but still had to lean on her son-in-law's arm to walk down the steps to greet her grandson and great-grandchildren.
"You've gotten so big!" Danielle stood half a head taller than her great-grandmother, but never minded returning the loving hug she knew was always coming. Ma-mère's spoke perfect English, but she was never going to lose her melodic French accent. Marie's colloquial name literally translated as "my mother", which is what her children called her, and the subsequent two generations just kept using it, even though "Grand- mère" may have been more appropriate. "Come in!"
The seven of them went inside, her father and grandfather retrieving the family's bags. The adults were visiting and her brother was playing with his Nintendo DS when Danielle slipped away to her favourite room at her great-grandmother's house: the library.
Years ago, she had been given free run of the place, except for one glass-enclosed cabinet of antique leather-bound books. On the family's frequent visits, Danielle had read through some of the collection. She liked the history and travel books, and eschewed the romance and fiction novels.
"I see it didn't take you long to find you way here," Ma-mère called from the doorway, a wide smile on your face. Danielle blushed slightly. "Come sit with me, Dani. I have something to show you."
Too big to sit on her great-grandmother's lap, she settled for the next best spot: on the soft couch under a reading lamp. On the coffee table was a box of pictures, a photo album and two small, worn books.
"You have always been interested in my history books, Dani," Ma-mère reached for the photo album. The pictures were discoloured under the yellowed plastic page covers. "I want to show you some history of my own. Your mother tells me you're studying French in school? Good, I have something to help you with that."
She turned the first page and Danielle's eyes grew wide. One of the people in the first picture was clearly her great-grandmother. The other was older, with a full, white beard. They were standing in front of a small stone cottage.
"You were beautiful, Ma-mère," Dani whispered.
"This is me and my father outside our house in France, right before the war." There was a sad, wistful tone to her voice. "You are fifteen now, yes? That's how old I was in this picture."
There were several more of Ma-mère and her family.
"Who is that?" Dani pointed to a very handsome man in an army uniform.
"That is your great-grandfather." The corners of Ma-mère's mouth turned up into a sad smile. "This was in the spring of 1944, right before the Americans and the British came."
"Great-grandfather was a German?" Danielle blurted out. There was no mistaking the distinctive uniform of the Wehrmacht.
"Yes, he was," Ma-mère whispered, a flood of memories overtaking her. "That's why we had to
come to America. No one back home wanted us there."
"Why not?"
"For many reasons, Dani, many of which I still don't understand." For the first time that she could remember, Danielle saw her great-grandmother frown. There was a flash of anger and hurt in her eyes.
"Do Grandma and Grandpa know?"
"I told them a long time ago, but no one else in the family wanted to talk about it," Ma-mère sighed. "It's the one family secret everyone wanted to go away."
"You loved him." It wasn't really a question.
"Yes, I did. I still do." She flipped back to the end of the album to a family portrait. Ma-mère was seated in the middle along with four children, one of whom was her grandmother. A handsome man sat next to her, but he was not the man in the German army uniform. "After he died, I married again, and I loved this man, too. But not as much as I loved my Christof."
"What happened, Ma-mère?"
Marie didn't say another word. Instead, she handed her wide-eyed great-granddaughter her diary. She wiped a tear from her eyes, took a deep breath and left Danielle on the couch to read through the chapter of their family history that was shrouded in secrecy.
* * *
There was very little for the French to be happy about in the summer of 1943. It was the third year of the German occupation, and in all of the villages along the northern coast of France, they were preparing for an invasion by the Americans and the British. The puppet government in Vichy controlled the southern part of the country, but in Marie's village, a German Major was the prevailing authority.
Before the war, it had been a small farming village along the Normandy coast. But with a looming assault from across the English Channel, it was simply another gun battery post along the coast in Hitler's Festung Europa—Fortress Europe—which stretched along the coast from France to Denmark.
Marie never had any problems with the Germans. But then again, she was a pretty young woman who was only fifteen when they arrived to take over the town, and had just turned nineteen when she was pressed into the French Resistance.
For the most part, the Germans who came to the town left the French people alone, as long as they didn't cause trouble. It seemed as if they were trying to be friendly. They paid a fair wage for work and didn't try to humiliate or torture the locals. Of course, when the SS came in, tensions rose, but they were a small, sleepy town that most people just passed through on the way to somewhere else.
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