So I think sullen, hurting thoughts up to God, which turn into sad, lonely thoughts as I get closer to my car at the edge of the block.
I’m never not going to love her, I think with sorrow. She’s the only one my heart will ever hold inside itself, for as long as I’m alive.
God finally sees fit to answer, and Kesha erupts noisily from my phone. I don’t recognize the number offhand, and my chest deflates so fast my ribs crack, which is stupid. Like I really thought Zenny was going to call me in the middle of her ceremony? What kind of sad idiot am I?
I answer, not bothering to muffle my mopeful tone. “Sean Bell.”
“Sean Bell,” a creaky voice says back. An old woman’s voice. A familiar voice. “I think you’d better slow down.”
“I—what?”
“Slow. Down,” the voice repeats as if I’m maybe not all that bright, which maybe I’m not, because I still don’t understand what she means until I turn around to face the monastery, and I’m very strangely certain now that this is the Reverend Mother talking to me, and why would she be talking to me—
A flash of white flutters out of the front door of the monastery and I freeze.
And then the flutters resolve into froth, and the froth resolves into a nun in a wedding dress, her hands balled up in the skirt and holding it up as she runs toward me.
She looks like something out of a movie—or a dream. The sun gleams along her skin and catches the silk in shimmering flashes, her hair bounces and spills around her neck and face, and the wind strokes her affectionately, making the dress billow behind her.
I am rooted to the spot, emptied out of everything, even hope, as she runs breathlessly up to me.
“That ought to do it,” comes the satisfied voice of the Reverend Mother through the phone, and I hear her hang up.
Wordlessly, I let my phone drop to my side and stare.
“Don’t lose your joy,” Zenny says, coming to a stop in front of me.
“What?” I ask dumbly.
“It’s what your mom said to me before she died.” Zenny takes a deep breath, stepping forward. “She said we made joy in one another, that she could tell just from the way you’d talked about me.”
“Zenny—”
She shakes her head—not at me, but at herself. “I even said it. I’m more myself when I’m with you. I got to the front of that aisle and I realized that I wasn’t more myself there, not like when I’m with you. I realized the walk down to the altar wasn’t going to be a walk of joy.” She looks up at me, her eyes meeting mine. “You give me joy, Sean. You give me the space to be strong and to be safe and loved and please say it isn’t too late, please say I’m not too late for us—”
But I’m already gathering her into my chest, I’m already kissing her. I take her by her upper arms and hold her apart from me after a moment, trembling. “You’re not taking your vows? Truly?”
She nods bashfully, a slow smile on those perfect lips, and I yank her back into me for more kisses. “Oh Zenny,” I breathe, my lips everywhere in gratitude—across the bridge of her nose and her jaw and her collarbone. “I’ll make you every vow in the world in exchange, I promise. I’ll be everything for you.”
“Everything is tempting,” she laughs under my kisses. “But I think Sean Bell is quite enough for one girl to handle all on his own.”
Epilogue
One Year Later
“Again?” I ask, amused.
“I’ll have you know,” Zenny says, crawling into my lap, “that it’s very common for a woman in my condition.”
My cock—sleepy from the two-round quickie just an hour ago—wakes the fuck up right away. Zenny’s wearing some kind of loose tank top thing that allows me to see right down her shirt and she’s in shorts so short that I can’t believe I let her out of the house, because I’m a jealous, possessive bastard like that.
(Okay, I do know why I let her out of the house. It’s because we were going to the same place together.)
“Everyone’s out of the office,” she purrs, her hands finding my tie and yanking at it. “We’re alone.”
“All of our one employees is gone, hmm?” I tease, but I let her pull me into a slow, deep kiss. Emmett only comes in two mornings a week to help us sort mail and work on filing—he’s working part-time to save up money for his new twin great-grandchildren. (And one time he brought them into the office, and I held one of the little lumps for three hours while the lump dozed and I made some phone calls. Don’t you dare tell anyone that.)
I run my hands up Zenny’s legs and grip the curve of her ass. “These shorts of yours are killing me,” I say against her lips. “Are you trying to murder your husband?”
“No,” Zenny says briskly, her hands dropping to my zipper and exposing me with hurried movements. “I need his dick too much for that.”
“That’s reassuring. Ah, fuck, baby, just like that. God, that’s good.”
She’s got my thickening length in her slender fingers, jacking me slowly and tauntingly. Outside my ground-floor office, I see the humdrum roll of a delivery truck to the tire repair warehouse next door. And okay, did I ever imagine myself working on the ground floor of a forgotten building under an overpass in an office carpeted in nubby gray-blue bullshit, and oh, it just happens to be next to the Kansas City franchise of Tires, Tires, Tires?
No. No, I did not imagine this. And I wouldn’t trade it for the fucking world.
Because I also didn’t imagine myself married, and now I’m married to the smartest, sweetest, bravest, and most beautiful woman I know. And because I also didn’t ever imagine myself a father, and yet here’s Zenny perched in my lap with a naughty glint in her eye and a swollen belly pushing at her tank top.
(I know, I know, she’s too young to be pregnant. But let’s be real—her being too young has never stopped me before.)
So I actually don’t mind that I’m now the owner of a new nonprofit in an office that’s as far away from glamorous as possible. I love it. I provide and source additional funding for charities across the Metro—charities like the shelter belonging to the Servants of the Good Shepherd—and what I do actually helps people.
Can you imagine?
Sean Bell, philanthropist?
But it’s no less likely than Sean Bell, husband.
Or Sean Bell, father.
And all of those things are blessedly, happily true.
As for Zenny—my sweet little wife is halfway through her Nurse-Midwifery degree. She’ll still anchor the shelter’s birth center when both she and it are ready, and I’m going to give her the best birth center known to man. I’m going to give her the best of everything, always, until the day I die. (Longer, if I can help it. That’s what good estate planning will do for you.)
Zenny divests herself of those tempting shorts and her tank top, and climbs back onto my lap, kissing my neck and rubbing against me, naked and soft and curved. Unable to take it any longer, I fist my hands in her hair and use my other hand to probe at her tight folds until the head of my sex is firmly lodged inside. She impales herself on me with no prompting, no coaching, simply seeking out the friction and the fullness and rocking herself to an orgasm, oblivious to me.