She shakes her head at me.
I pause, this part really making me nervous. I’m springing this on her, and she can always say no, and that will be cool, but I just want her to have fucking everything. “She mentioned there’s open interim teaching positions there, from January to May, for their winter term. It’s a temporary job, usually filled by students, and that’s where you rock, baby—all those kids adore you. It’s mostly the off-season for me, so Gabriel and I can come with you after the playoffs in January.” I arch my brow and let the words hang for a moment as her mouth opens and shuts.
“What if I don’t get the job? What will we do with a house in Europe?”
I shrug. “Vacation home for us—rent it out, make a ton of money. I can’t play football forever, and as long as you’re with me, any country works. We can settle there someday or fly back and forth between homes. It’s a pretty place to write your next book.” I tangle my hands in her hair. “Where you go, I go.”
She blinks, tears shining in her eyes.
I kiss her softly. “Bring your mama and aunt. I’m sure the whole lot of them will want to come stay for a while. Jack and Elena and their girls, Topher and Quinn, Aiden, Myrtle and John, my dad—we’ll fill it up. We can hang around, check out the city, and if you don’t want the job—I know they’ll hire you in a snap—then we’ll do the regular tour, and I’ll sneak you into the room with your particle accelerator.”
“You are crazy,” she breathes, and I smile at the stars in her eyes.
“Nah, just in love with the smartest, most beautiful girl in the world.”
She laughs. “I’m deliriously happy. I don’t need a villa”—her eyes linger on the pic—“or CERN.”
“Baby, I’d give you the whole world if I could. What’s a house in Europe?”
Several moments pass as we stare at each other, and I smile knowingly. “Level-five gaze. I know what that means,” I say and ease her shirt up and off her head. “Somebody wants my body.”
Five minutes later, she’s undressed, I’m naked, and we’re rolling around in the room off to the side, a place with a big plush bed she had put in here for stolen moments like this. I’m staring down at her under me, her hands pinned above her head as I slide inside her and kiss her. She whispers that she’ll take the villa and that she’ll think about the job. I laugh and promise her that I’ll always be with her, no matter where she is, that she’ll always have my love, my soul, my everything.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Carroll, Sean. The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself. New York: Penguin Random House, 2017.
Greene, Brian. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003.