“It does make me feel a little better, actually.” I don’t tell him that if I could, I’d swap the shopkeeper’s life for Felix’s. She was old whereas he’d only just begun.
He murmurs in my ear, “You need to rest, so we can go dancing on Friday.”
Maybe I won’t be up to it, but I’ll try. And we’ll probably fight over whether I’m strong enough to start my new job tomorrow. I’m not scared of arguing with Jesse, only being without him. So I’ll muster my strength for battles to come. When he sweeps me into his arms and carries me to the bedroom, the future strikes me like an Impressionist painting, all my tomorrows blurring in a haze of pink and gold, because for me, that’s heaven—Jesse Saldana’s arms.
And even with dark clouds rolling in, a storm on the horizon, there’s no place in the world I’d rather be.