“I love you, too, Ethan. But you don’t want to bath before bed?” I ask. I realize he’s told me something incredibly emotional and here I am going, hey, we are super filthy right now. And I realize that I don’t care about being filthy. “Or not. Tomorrow,” I say with a yawn.
“Yeah, we’ve got all the time in the world to get clean tomorrow. Tonight, let’s savor our dirty selves, together.”
Ethan rubs my ass and turns me around, pulling me against him for a passionate kiss. He keeps his arms around me and pulls the blanket from under me. Ethan stops kissing me and puts the blanket around me, and then crawls under it with me. Pulling me in his arms, Ethan kisses my neck softly for what seems like an eternity.
“Have you ever written fiction?” I ask him.
It comes from nowhere, sure, but it also doesn’t.
This man is my great love. I have everything I want now, and it makes me think about how the enduring love stories have made such big deal to me my whole life.
“I haven’t actually. Though I will be writing our vows. Teacher/student is a taboo relationship, but I can’t use ‘She Walks In Beauty’ since our crowd is bound to laugh at us for picking a poem that a brother wrote for his sister. That’s even more forbidden than us,” Ethan says with a laugh.
“I think I want to try my hand at fiction. Romance novels. You’ve inspired me with our great love,” I tell him. “You see, I always think about you in terms of being this great Romantic hero. Except none of the tragedy, never again I hope. I think I’d like you to have the lowercase romantic hero instead…meaning you’ll survive and we get to live happily ever after,” I say, leaning back to kiss him.
“I am your great love? Only two English majors would have that full contextual understanding of all the wondrous things you’ve said to me. I can say without a doubt that my soul is made of yours, that you are my enduring great love,” Ethan says.
The emotion in his voice has my eyes watering. I pull him tight, grind my ass against his cock — oh that man cannot be hard! No, false alarm, his cock is just huge. I mean, we were both yawing.
“You need to know, though, Ethan, that despite the bad things you think about yourself, they aren’t true. You’re a good man. You’re not a devil, you’re not crazy. I think we’re both melodramatic. But we can be happy, forever, I just know it. Our troubles are fading faster and as long as we have each other, we’re set for life,” I tell Ethan. I mean every word.
Ethan is quiet at first. “We are most certainly melodramatic. That’s why we study ancient works of a combination of usually just 26 letters. And why we care so much about fictional characters. But I care more about you then anything in my life. Than even myself. And I love me, I do…” Ethan laughs. “But you’re right, I’ve left myself weigh down my own opinion of myself. In loving you, and having your love in return, I know now that I can be happy, I can be good. With you, I’m everything.” Ethan says these words.
I know we have an age gap romance. I know that we are supposed to be different levels of maturity. That he’ll always be much older than me. And we have a startling co-dependency. But together, we are still perfect. He and I are everything we need to be to each other.
And like any great romance heroine, I don’t give a fuck about the problems. I don’t give a fuck that we’r not perfect.
Together, we are perfect. “You’re my world,” I say, pulling Ethan’s hands around to hold me.
“And you’re mine,” Ethan says, squeezing me so tight for a second, I can’t breathe.
All this time with Ethan, and I’m tired, spent, satisfied.
And I’m thinking about great loves. I fall asleep dreaming up characters, and creating conflicts for them that I’ll write in my first romance novel.
Because do you know how a romance novel ends and the great loves finally get to be together?
When everything that keeps them apart isn’t strong enough to keep doing so. My brain can dream up new characters, because it doesn’t need to try and solve the problems between Ethan and me anymore.
We’re living happily ever after.
Emmaline
Three Months Later
My mother is trying, she really is. I see the smile she offers me, and then Ethan, and I’m grateful and smile back. It's been three months since Ethan versus my mother went off on full tilt. Now I live with Ethan, we’ve decided to stay engaged until I’ve graduated, and Ethan and my mother are even forming a tentative revival of their friendship.
I close my hand over Ethan's on one side of me, and my mother’s on the other. These are two of the most important people in my life and I’m so happy that they can be friends again.
My father clears his throat, but when I look up, I don’t see the look of disapproval that I might. Instead, he raises a glass.
“To Emmaline and Ethan,” he says, and I’m shocked.
“Dad?” I whisper, so shocked at this illicit approval.
“Emmaline, you’ve always been such a smart, precious girl,” my father says. “You were always complicated, intense, emotional, all of these things in incredible ways. It's part of what drives you and what makes you an amazing woman. There’s nothing you set your sights on that you don’t get,” he continues.
I think I’m going to cry, and I’m smiling so much. Ethan and my mom are both squeezing my hands back.