“Don’t use all those condoms in one place!”
“Murphy better sleep in a hotel tonight, or he’ll never get any sleep from all the shouting next door!”
“Don’t knock up our mom!”
That last shout from our family makes everyone laugh in the crowd, including me and Laura. She tightens her arms around me, and I pull away from the stand with one last wave to them, the Just Married sign with condoms taped all over it the boys attached to my bike fluttering out behind us, the empty soda cans on strings clattering against the ground as we go.
A part of me is sad Laura and I didn’t meet sooner, wishing I actually had the capability to have kids of my own, so we could have had them together. But everything happened the way it was supposed to. And besides, marrying her gave me eight kids, two grandkids, and another one on the way. I don’t think I could love them any more than I already do, even if they were my own flesh and blood.
“What time do we have to leave tomorrow?” Laura asks in my ear as I slowly cruise through town.
“There’s no set time. We can take off whenever we want.”
Laura snuggles closer to me on the back of the bike with her thighs hugging mine, her body pressed against my back, and her chin resting on my shoulder, talking in my ear the entire way home about our trip.
She insisted we spend our honeymoon hand-delivering a few of the recent club orders I finished, and I have never been more excited to take off across the country than tomorrow with her. I’ve gotten her on the back of my bike as much as I could in the last few months, driving around the island and taking her over to the mainland on the ferry to go to dinner and to run errands, but I can’t wait to have her there for more than a half hour at a time. I used to enjoy being alone on my bike, with nothing but the wind in my face and my own thoughts quietly in my head. Now, I can’t even remember what it was like when I did that, and I couldn’t imagine being on this bike now without Laura wrapped around me and her voice in my ear. And I don’t even want to try.
“I love you, Mr. Campbell.”
Taking one hand off my bike, I rest it on top of Laura’s that’s pressed against my heart.
“I love you too, Mrs. Campbell,” I tell her, sighing contentedly when she kisses my cheek as I turn a corner, my heart thumping faster under her hand just like it always does when she tells me she loves me.
With this fling, Laura gave me a home, a life, a family, and a reason to get up every morning. She can adopt as many strays as she likes, continue to fill our lives with people and noise, and help whoever she wants…
As long as she always comes home at the end of the day to settle down with me.
“Care to move that hand resting on my stomach a little farther south?” I tease loudly over the sound of the engine and the wind rushing against our faces.
Laura laughs against my ear and then kisses the side of my neck.
“Why, yes—yes, I would.”
Her hand slides right down between my legs without hesitation. I immediately twist the throttle and move us faster toward our destination, so I can get my wife naked.
The End