Stories From The 6 Train

“So, you're cleared?” I ask, clapping my hands.

Lucien shrugs. “Well, they say I got an additional one year for inciting a prison riot,” he says. “But they’ve said that it’s started retroactively from the date of the riot.

“But Lucien,” I say trying to figure out what’s happening. “That's….”

Lucien nods. “That’s right. Even that sentence ends today.”

The enormity of what is happening takes a minute to dawn. Lucien helps me along.

“You did it, Kerri!” He says, grabbing me by the waist. “You looked at my case and found the problems with it and you sent it in to the lawyer. I would be absolutely fucking nowhere without you.”

I blush to myself. I knew he couldn't have committed those crimes that he had been accused of and I remember myself thinking how amazing this man had been to me at the time. I think how amazing he really turned out to be. Like nothing I could have ever expected in any man.

And sure, I’m also happy and satisfied that the man I had held as mine had stayed this long and been this wonderful.

All this time, we stayed in Mexico because we could never go back home.

But now, with his sentence basically over and the state awarding him money for wrongful imprisonment, Lucien Stone has many options open to him.

I have become attached to the life we've built for ourselves. The bar on the beach. The sunsets over the Pacific Ocean. Moonlight strolls along the water as the tide rose. Sex on the beach every evening.

Was I ready to let this go?

“I don’t want to leave either, babe,” Lucien says, and I look up at him. I realize that he’s been staring at me.

“What?” I ask.

He smiles at me. “Just because I’m not running from the law doesn’t mean that we have to leave paradise, Kerri,” he says as he looks over at the room that Miranda sleeps in. “We have a life here. Friends. Purpose.”

I draw myself closer to my lover. We hadn’t gotten married because we were technically illegal immigrants in Mexico, with fake papers. But we could even get married now. I smile, thinking to myself that at a time like this, the first thing that was going through my head was marriage.

The two grandmothers finish their margaritas and wave at us, blowing kisses at Lucien as they leave the bar. The sun has set and dusk is now turning to night slowly.

“I don’t want to leave here,” I tell Lucien, raising my head to look up at him. “I love it here.”

He nods.

“I’m with you,” he says. “That’s all that matters.”

“And you’re free too,” I say with a twinkle in my eye. “You’ve been free down here.”

Lucien looks at me for a long moment and then he smiles.

“I may not have been in jail for a year, Kerri,” he says with a smirk. “But I can tell you that I haven’t been free since the day I fucking met you.”

Smartass.

I pull him close to me as we kiss. My hand descends down to his crotch for me to start squeezing his giant organ that's begun bulging in his pants.

There’s no rush to decide anything. The world is our oyster.

And for the first time, we’re free to do anything we like with it.

It’s an amazing feeling. Being free as a bird.

And making sure that you’re trapped with your soulmate.

Hey, it could be a lot worse.