Tell Me Something (Contemporary Romance)
Page 38
These differences don't matter a jot to us. Initially some people worried that we were rushing into this relationship, but we noticed that the people we're closest to, and who knew us best, wholeheartedly gave their support. Mum, Alison, Thomas and Paolina practically insisted we should be together, arguing that we are made for one another. Not that anyone else's opinion was ever going to sway us either way. Chuck and I have done enough being apart to know that we want and need to be together.
We are a family. We are solid and realistic. The realism came quite quickly and naturally after a tricky pregnancy, a twenty-seven-hour labour and countless sleepless nights with a tiny baby. Sometimes it seems that we haven't had much room at all for endless tender declarations, hearts and flowers. Chuck did hang the glass heart from Verona above our bed, which was fabulously thoughtful, but most of his romantic gestures tend to be rooted in a heavy dose of practicality nowadays. He often runs me a deep bath and he occasionally lights candles too; he tries to let me snatch extra sleep by getting up with Lily whenever he can; he buys me fresh fruit from the market and tells me the nutritional value of a pear versus a pineapple or a banana. I distribute leaflets advertising the school as I push the pram around town, I mark school work if I see he has a mountain of it and would really prefer to just take off for an hour on his bike. We sometimes have minuscule domestics about whose turn it is to change Lily; but that's a dream come true for me.
We exist in this way, simply happy. It's not just that I don't have time to day-dream any more, it's more that I don't have the need. The here and now is enough.