Day

During the week between my return home and when Emmy finally got back from Austin, I gave a lot of thought to what had happened. It was great to spend the weekend with Emmy and even though she had her show and we went to see the Prodigal Sons, we had spent pretty much the entire weekend together, and that was actually fairly special. It seemed that we just didn’t have as much time for each other as I’d like, and one more week without her helped drive it home.

I also thought about Stephanie. It had been good to see her, and the reaction I had to being so close was for sure physical, but even I could recognize that deep down inside I still felt something for her. It isn’t as if we broke up in anger, or because she cheated on me (or the other way around). There was no reason for me to stop loving her merely because we couldn't make it as girlfriends, and so I guess that I did still feel for her. I’d never actually stopped loving her, I realized.

But that’s O.K. We were just friends now and if I felt more for her than I did any of my other friends, well, there’s nothing wrong with that. Hopefully she would continue to be a part of my life.

That said, Emmy was my life now, and I needed to do what I could to make sure that continued to be the case. The time had come for me to do what needed to be done, so by the time Emmy emerged into the airport terminal in San Jose from her flight from Texas, I was ready.

After giving her a big hug and a kiss that showed I really meant it, I asked if she wanted to go out for dinner.

“I am a little bit hungry,” she agreed, so I took her to the French restaurant south of San Jose that we’d come to love. It was a little out of the way, but it was worth it. When I made the reservation I requested our favorite table, in the back patio overlooking the little creek running alongside the property.

Walking in, holding hands with my fiancee, I was ridiculously nervous but did my best to not show it at all. I was playing as if I was just happy to have her back after two and a half months of separation, and I think she bought it.

Dinner was excellent, as always. If I recall correctly I had the lamb with couscous and Emmy had some sort of salad, but dinner passed in a bit of a blur so I probably have the details wrong. What I do know is that when our waiter brought out the chocolate terrine dessert, he turned to Emmy and said “Mademoiselle, I believe this is for you,” handing her a small midnight blue velvet box.

Emmy’s eyes widened with surprise. “For me?” she asked, excitement in her voice.

“Open it,” I urged, trying not to let my voice tremble.

“What is it?” Emmy asked, her voice high.

“Just open it!” I urged, recalling that Christmas so long ago.

Slowly, she lifted open the lid of the little box, prolonging the suspense, but when she finally saw the wedding set inside she held her hand to her mouth to muffle her squeal of excitement.

“Emmy,” I asked, “will you marry me?”

“Oh, Leah,” she sighed, her face radiant with happiness. “Of course I will marry you. I could imagine no other person I would want in my life the way I want you. I will happily spend the rest of my life with you.”

Unfortunately, Emmy was too tired for anything more than snuggling and kissing before falling asleep, but I took a while to drift off. Sure, we’d already made plans for our lives together, and sure, we had more or less said we would get married when we went back to Fallbrook that first Thanksgiving break, but still, this felt momentous somehow. I had asked Emmy to be my wife, and she had said yes. No uncertain terms, not ‘someday’, no ‘when things settle down’. This was it. I’d asked, she said yes, and now it was simply a matter of planning and going through the ceremony. Eventually I did fall asleep, remembering my daydreams of us together way back when. Our life was nothing like what I thought it would be, but you know what they say- life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.

Neither of us wanted a big, elaborate wedding, so it was easy enough to make the arrangements. Of course, given that Emmy and I both wanted the actual marriage to happen as soon as possible, this was a good thing. A few family members, some friends, and of course, a few of the Strays made up our guest list. I think it amounted to less than fifty guests all told. The actual wedding was held at Emmy’s parent’s house in Fallbrook, in a big grassy area between the house and the orange groves on the north side. One of those big party tents had been set up, but all the catering and bar duties, as well as valet parking and so on were performed by the household staff. I think Marie-Anne would have been very deeply insulted if we’d even mentioned bringing in any other cook, much less a catering service, to the house.

Emmy never once mentioned any sort of Night Children marriage traditions, and neither did her parents. They all seemed perfectly happy with our standard American-style weddings, and this meant a lot of the usual. I didn’t get to see her gown before the ceremony, and she didn’t get to see mine, either. We spent the night apart, too- I actually stayed at the apartment with Mom and Tiff, and Emmy was out at the Lascaux mansion.

Of course, Tiffany got the honor of flower girl duty, but now that she was ten years old she took the responsibility quite seriously. On my side, after discussing it with Emmy, I’d asked Donny to be my best man, and of course he agreed.

“Are you kidding? I’ll be there even if I have to hitch-hike and steal a tux!” he’d said, and I believed him.

“Don’t worry about hitch-hiking,” I told him. “We’re chartering a jet.”

“Aw, damn!” he said, excited. “Yeah, baby!”

When it came time to fly down for the wedding, I went with the big group on the charter plane, since Emmy had gone the week before to help get things ready. It was the first time most of the people on board had ever been to Southern California and certainly most had never flown on a chartered plane, so there was quite the party atmosphere on board.

We settled into our seats and the plane taxied out, then took off a few minutes later. Once we were up in the air, Kerry waved me over and we sat on one of the couches in the back. “Girl, you showed me pictures of Emmy’s house, but you didn’t mention she had the money to charter a jet,” she said, as if I’d been holding information from her.

“Heck, this is just a rental,” I said, relaxing on the comfy leather couch. “Actually, the Lascaux family owns their own jet, but it’s only an eight-seater,” I said. “We chartered this because we had too many guests for the family plane.”

“That’s… ostentatious,” Kerry said, clearly trying to avoid making it into any sort of insult, but at the same time indicating that she thought was a ridiculous expense.

“Yeah, no kidding,” I said. “I never told anybody back in high school for just that reason. I mean, sure, Emmy’s family has tons of money, but there’s no reason to flaunt it.”

“Speaking of that,” Kerry said, lowering her voice. “I’ve seen the two of you together, so I know you two really do love each other. I mean, don’t get me wrong, but isn’t she, well, I don’t know how to say this…”

“Slumming?” I suggested.

“Well, yeah, I would have used something more politically correct than that, but I guess that’s what I was getting at.”

“Thanks for your high opinion of me,” I said, rolling my eyes, but I smiled to let her know I was just giving her a hard time. “Actually, it’s a whole lot more complicated than that. Emmy’s family is European nobility. I mean, really old money aristocrats. Really, really old money, and a whole lot of it. I am so way below her station it’s ridiculous, but she doesn’t care, and her parents’ only objection with me is that I can’t give Emmy kids. Otherwise they seem totally fine with it. In fact, they offered to pay my way through school, but I said no thanks.” No need to tell Kerry how that offer had caused Emmy and me so many problems, I thought. “I wanted to-”

Just then Donny came back the where we were sitting and barged in to our conversation. “Hey, Leah, we’re at cruising elevation now,” he announced.

“Yeah? So?” I asked, wondering what he was getting at.

“Well, now would be a good opportunity for us to join the mile high club,” he explained, waggling his eyebrows at me.

I rolled my eyes and Kerry snickered. “What about Sana? You should ask her, since she’s your, I don’t know… girlfriend?”

“Of course I did, but she told me to get lost, so now I’m asking you.”

“Donny, you know you’re barking up the wrong tree,” I answered.

“Well, Kerry? How about you and me?” he asked, looking at my old teammate hopefully, but only getting a laugh out of her. When he saw it was not going to get him anywhere, he sighed with a resigned look on his face. “Oh, well. I guess I’ll just have to join the mile high club all by myself.” He stood up and walked back to the head with one last pleading look in our direction.

When he was gone, Kerry and I busted up laughing. “I see why you like him so much,” Kerry said. “That boy has a sense of humor.”

“Yeah, he’s a great guy,” I agreed, just as Donny emerged from the head about thirty seconds after he went in. He looked at us and raised his arms in a victory salute, then pumped his arm and said, “Yeah, baby!” in his best Austin Powers voice, sending Kerry and me into another laughing fit. Donny couldn’t keep a straight face, and plopped down on the couch, laughing along with us.

The three of us talked for a while longer, then it was time to go back to our regular seats for the final descent into Carlsbad.

Emmy and I had discussed where to put everybody up for the weekend, and eventually came to the conclusion that Fallbrook was just too small and there really weren’t any places that would have been appropriate, so we settled on a resort hotel by the beach in Carlsbad. Sure, it was a forty-five minute drive out to the Lascaux house from there, but at least it was close to touristy stuff and within easy walking distance of plenty of shops and restaurants.

Donny had asked if it was at all close to Disneyland, and I had to admit that no, Disneyland was still and hour’s drive away. “How about the Zoo? It’s supposed to be awesome!”

“That’s only half an hour’s drive,” I assured him. “You and Sana can go on Saturday if you’d like.”

“What about the rehearsal?” he asked, and seeing the blank look on my face, he added “The wedding rehearsal. You know, I am the best man, right?”

“No rehearsal,” I told him. “We are going to just wing it.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, I guess that’s cool. I mean, really, what could go wrong?”

“Seriously, nothing will go wrong because we aren’t having some ridiculously over-the-top wedding,” I replied, shrugging. “No string quartet, no military jet flyover, nothing. Just a pastor performing the rites in Emmy’s back yard, that’s all.”

“You really need to learn how to do royal weddings better,” Donny grumbled, but Sana elbowed him for me so I didn’t have to.

After getting everybody settled in to the resort, I gratefully accepted a ride from Edouard back to Fallbrook. Relaxing in the back of that big BMW, I lost myself in thoughts of the wedding, so it took a moment to realize that Edouard had asked me something.

“I’m sorry, I missed that,” I confessed.

“Would you like to go to your mother’s apartment, or to the Lascaux estate, Miss Farmer?” he repeated.

“Well, to be honest, I’d love to go out to see Emmy right now, but if I don’t stop off and spend time with Mom and Tiffany they’ll be upset. So I guess my house, please.” Thinking about it for a moment, I added “And in forty-eight hours you’ll have to start calling me ‘Mrs Farmer’.”

“Of course,” he replied. “If it is not too familiar, may I ask why you are keeping your name?”

Amused by the assumption that I would take Emmy’s name and not the other way around, I said, “No, it’s fine. Emmy and I discussed it, and she’s famous as Emmy De Lascaux, so changing her name wouldn’t really work. Plus the whole ‘family line’ thing too, of course,” I added. “And for me, I have a ton of business under the name ‘Farmer’ and it would be awkward to try to change all that, as much as ‘Leah De Lascaux’ does sound great,” throwing that in to please his family pride. “So we decided that we’d keep our names, and when we have a daughter, she will take the Lascaux name.”

Of course, the discussion had been quite a bit more involved than that, with talk of hyphens, keeping De Lascaux as a stage name and so on, but ultimately we had decided that simplest was best.

I had a little sense of deja vu when Edouard pulled the car into the lot by my Mom’s apartment, remembering back to high school. I had a little bit of a chuckle to myself that it hadn’t even occurred to me to grab my own suitcase from the trunk, merely assuming that Edouard would get it for me. I guess I really had changed.

Tiffany was still in school and Mom was out, so I had the apartment to myself for a few hours. I settled in to my room, lying down on my little old bed, wondering how Emmy and I had ever both actually slept on the thing. It really wasn’t all that long ago, I mused, but it felt like a different life.We were kids, doing kid things, and now, just a few years later, we were adults and doing grown-up things. Like getting married. I wasn’t even old enough to drink without a fake I.D., and here I was, about to get married. There is no way I could have imagined this at the start of my senior year in high school.

The doorbell jarred me from my thoughts just then, so I got up and answered the door. It was that same BMW dealership salesman I’d gotten used to, handing me the key fob to yet another loaner sedan.

“Thank you, Mr Powell,” I said, taking the key. He seemed surprised I remembered him, so I added “I’ll be sure to tell Mr Lascaux thanks for this, and thanks for your help.” This seemed to perk him up, and it’s always good to keep people on your side, right? If telling his boss that he did a good job got him any sort of benefit, far be it from me to withhold that.

I’d gone back to my nap, and when Mom and Tiff got home I felt nice and refreshed. Sometimes even a little bit of sleep can make a world of difference, and this was one of those times.

Tiffany was in a serious phase, which Mom had said reminded her of me as a kid. Every time I came home it seemed as if she’d grown much taller and much older in just the span of a few months, and this time was no different.

“Hi, Leah,” Tiffany said, feigning disinterest. She wasn’t going to run up and hug me they way she used to do- no way. She was ten years old now! Practically grown up.

Mom wasn’t shy about giving me a hug, though, and I was glad for it. As sappy as it may sound, there really is no substitute for a mom’s love.

“Hey, how about I take you two out to dinner tonight?” I asked, thinking about that restaurant in Escondido.

“Well, normally I’d say yes, but I invited Mei Ling over for dinner tonight.”

“It’d be great to see her again,” I replied. “She could come with us, if that’s alright with her.”

“I guess we can ask,” Mom said, and I took that to be a yes. I called the restaurant and made reservations for four, explaining to Mom that if Mei Ling didn’t want to go out I could cancel.

As it turned out, she was happy to go out for dinner. “It’s a rare treat,” she said. We piled into the loaner car and headed south to dinner. I didn’t really dress up any more than usual this time, since Mei Ling was wearing fairly casual clothes and this is Southern California, after all.

Mei Ling was fascinated by the topic of upcoming wedding, and a bit worried she’d feel out of place since she didn’t know anybody that was going to be there other than the three of us at that table.

“Don’t worry,” Tiffany replied at that. “You’ll love Emmy. Everybody does.”

I didn’t have much to do on Saturday, so I hung out at the resort hotel with Michael, Jassie, Donny and Sana. Jassie was having a blast playing in the pool while the rest of us just watched. There were some other kids about her age playing and splashing around, and it was great to see her acting like the other early-teen kids, flirting, chasing, being chased- all the stuff normal kids do at that age. A few short years of living normally had totally transformed her from the small, frightened child she’d been when we dragged her and her father off the streets.

Michael, too, was better for it. He was healthy, well fed, and nicely turned out. He gave off the air of somebody who knew their place in the world, sort of an ‘upper management’ vibe. It had been a stroke of luck when he’d come into our lives, for Emmy and me as well as for him and his daughter. We relied on him quite a bit, and he’d never once said he couldn’t do what we asked, and never once failed in doing it. I had literally trusted him with my life, and had no regrets or misgivings.

Later, I drove out to the Lascaux mansion to see if there was anything I needed to do for the preparations. Emmy’s mom made it clear that she had everything under control, so Emmy and I retreated back up to her old room.

“One last time for premarital sex?” Emmy suggested, knowing the magic words to get me revved up. “You had me at ‘sex’.” I said, smothering her with kisses. I gently pushed her back until she fell backwards onto that big old bed of hers. I’d pulled off her shoes and socks and was just starting to unbutton her jeans when a knock on the door interrupted me.

“Who is it?” Emmy called out, despite my urgent whispers to ignore it.

“Princess, your friend Tom and his friend Robert are here,” Emmy mom called through the door. She hadn’t made any attempt to open the door, to my relief. “It would be good of you to come down to greet them.”

Buttoning up her pants, Emmy gave me a wry smile. “We will be right down,” she said. “I promise sex soon, Leah. Even if we have to disappear for a little bit.”

“If I said you had a really sexy body, would you hold it against me?” I asked.

Emmy gave me a puzzled look, then laughed when she understood the joke. “I promise I will hold my body against yours. I will hold it so close, parts might actually be inside you.”

We found Tom and Robert down in the basement, Tom showing his boyfriend the theater. He had selected the original Star Wars movie and we got there just as Darth Vader shows up for the first time.

“Hey, guys,” I said as we entered. “How was your flight?”

“Great!” said Tom, giving Emmy and then me a big hug. “I tell you though, it’s weird to be back in Fallbrook.” Turning to Emmy, he said “Thanks for letting us stay out here. I really didn’t want to risk accidentally bumping into my folks in town.”

“It is my pleasure, Tom. I am glad you two could come down for this,” Emmy replied.

“Are you kidding? This is a big deal! And anyway, you bought the tickets and the tuxedos, so how could we say no?”

Emmy and I just relaxed and hung out down in the theater with the two guys and chatted about Portland, Palo Alto, Fallbrook, whatever while the movie ran in the background. It was nice to catch up, and visit with old friends that we hadn’t seen in a while.

After the movie, we went up to the kitchen to see if there was any food, and Marie-Anne whipped us up some chicken with rice, which was just perfect.

“Who else is going to be here from our old group? Asked Tom between bites.

“Well, Mindy and you are really the only ones.” I answered.

“What about Courtney?” Tom asked.

“I haven't heard word from her since we graduated,” I said, surprised at how I felt a little stab of pain at the thought.

“Stephanie?” Tom asked.

“She’s still on tour with the Sons and couldn’t make it,” I answered. I was at least half convinced that she really could have gotten on a plane for this but chose not to. I would have been happy to have her there, but I could also understand that it would be awkward and maybe a bit painful, too. Still, I really did think of her as a friend and wished the baggage could be ignored for at least a weekend.

“Bummer,” Tom said, and I couldn’t agree more.

After getting the two guys settled in one of the guest rooms, Emmy said point blank “I am sorry we must leave you now. I promised Leah sex, and it is getting to be time.” Of course, the two broke out laughing as I turned beet red.

“Go get ‘em, Tiger!” Tom said, giving me a gentle punch on the shoulder.

“Rock her world,” Robert added, giving me a big ‘thumbs up’.

“I can’t believe you said that,” I complained as we headed back to Emmy’s room.

“It is true, is it not?” Emmy asked, laughing that musical laugh of hers.

We opted for some good tub time, Emmy lighting a candle and turning off the lights the way she had on that very first night we’d ever made love. To be honest, it really changed the dynamic. I’d been ready for some hot and sweaty sex before, but with the memories of that night years ago, it turned out to be a night for gentle caresses, slow kisses, and lots of sweet words of love.

True to Emmy’s word, parts of her did wind up inside me- her little nubbin in my mouth, her fingers deep inside my pussy, but most of all, I felt her deep in my heart. She had worked her way in there, and it was the best feeling imaginable.

Unfortunately, the water cooled off far too soon and we were wrinkled prunes anyway, so we toweled off, kissed some more, and then it was time for me to go home. Well, what used to be my home, anyway. Now my true home was with Emmy. Returning to the nest felt different nowadays.