Page 112 of Avenged

She nodded. “Are you kidding? She almost disowned me for you.”

“She’d never leave you,” I told her, and her smile lowered just a little. “She will. And she should. She has her own life to live. Just like I have mine. She was the one to point out what I already knew…that I was just scared.”

“Of me?” I asked, heart twisting slightly.

“Yes. You. Me. The whole thing. Giving in to something I can’t control,” she said, watching me. I ran my hand up her back. No bra. That had to have meant she wasn’t wearing one the day we’d said I do, either. That thought made my body tighten, my blood roar, and I wasn’t sure I could stop myself from kissing her again.

“Violet is pretty much a savant,” I said.

“I’m probably going to make heaps of mistakes. Maybe even ones worse than the one I made yesterday,” she said.

“I’m damn sure I’ll make my fair share. I don’t exactly have many role models in my life for what a good relationship looks like,” I told her, choking on the emotions of my words.

“You have your friends.”

“That I do.”

“You’re my sixth good thing,” she said, and when I looked puzzled, she explained. “Every time I get down, I try to do what Amy Harmon says she does and count her good things. I’ve always had five. I’ve had Vi and Mandy and Leena. I’ve had a roof over my head and a job to buy us food. I had my life. I was living—or at least I thought I was. But now. Now I have you.”

My heart hammered away more at my chest, exploding into a million pieces that all belonged to my resilient wife. To the person who’d kept going when life kept hammering her, even if it was in the shadows. She touched my cheek with her finger, stroking the stubble there.

She whispered, “You’re my sixth good thing. And I love you. Is that going to be enough?”

“Honey, that’s anything and everything I could ever hope for.”

Our lips met, and this time, my heart did escape. It went right through my lips and became hers. I’d promised to put her first, and I would, and I knew now that she chose to do the same. Neither of us were truly superheroes, but hopefully, our love would be enough to see us through anything the world chose to throw at us.

Jersey

Eighteen months later

HEAVEN

“Oh once in your life you find someone

Who will turn your world around

Bring you up when you're feelin' down.”

Performed by Bryan Adams

Written by Adams / Vallance

The fog hadn’t abated today, and it came with a bitter bite to it that made me shiver as I ran up the steps of our apartment on Treasure Island in March. The farmer’s market hadn’t been a complete bust. I’d gotten a new basil plant to add to my tiny collection sitting on the kitchen windowsill in the old building we lived in.

Truck would be home soon. He and his crew had had the early shift this weekend, and I was glad he’d be there before Vi showed up. She was bringing a friend, some girl she’d met in a joint research project UC Berkeley was doing with Stanford. When I’d asked if she needed a ride, she said her friend had a car, and they’d come together. Vi had her license now, but she didn’t have a vehicle. She didn’t really need one in Berkeley.

Young as she was, Violet seemed to have settled into college life with ease. I was pretty sure she never advertised she wasn’t the same age as the rest of the freshman that first year. Now, as a sophomore, and almost eighteen, I wasn’t sure it mattered. It was the first time since Vi was a little girl that she hadn’t stood out in some way from her peers. She wasn’t the girl who’d lost her mom to cancer. She wasn’t the girl whose dad had killed someone. She was just a girl excited about science and bugs. Which, let’s face it, was enough to make her stand out anyway, except in a group of science geeks.

I set the basil with the other herbs next to the dancing fairy pot that Truck had had Dawson buy for me the summer we’d first been together. It was always a reminder to me that he’d seen the beginning of us before I had. It was a reminder to me that he’d chosen me first with all my baggage and hang-ups.

I turned to the stove and started the water for the pasta before sitting down at the drafting table Truck had bought me shortly after we’d moved to the Bay Area. I’d been looking for work in the city, work I could use my psychology degree in, and he’d come home early one day and put the table together, leaving a note on it. A love letter, really. A letter that asked me to let him be the one to take care of me while I tried to make something of my art.

When he’d come into the apartment after I’d read the letter, I was conflicted as he’d known I would be. He just wrapped me in his arms, and looked down into my eyes, and had said, “It’s your future.”

I’d said, “I thought you were my future.” To which he’d agreed and proceeded to kiss me for so long we both almost forgot about the table.

When we’d come back around, he’d said, “You need to draw your superheroes, put them out in the world, and make others fall in love with them, just like I fell in love with you.”

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