Dating During Lockdown - Love Under Lockdown

“Hi,” I said, sitting down on the grass six feet from him, Polly on my lap.

“Hey, jellybean.”

“Jelly-beens?” Polly asked.

“Not now, baby.”

“Here you go,” Leif said, taking a twist-tied bag of jellybeans from the side-pocket of his jeans.

“What do you say, baby?”

“Tank you?”

“Exactly.”

I started biting the beans in two, giving her half at a time, trying to limit her sugar intake and spare her baby teeth a reckoning.

“How are you feeling?” Leif asked tactfully.

“Wonderful,” I guessed, happiness trumping better judgement.

“Good. I got a bit of news today.”

“What’s that?” I asked, barely preventing myself from calling him ‘sir.’ That was a special name I wanted to reserve for the bedroom.

“Enough people have recovered that the lockdown is over.”

I was too struck to speak or even move. The sheer weight of potential and release of restriction crashed down on me. Leif came over to us, getting closer than he ever had before, dropping down on his knees.

Pecking Polly on the forehead, which made her giggle, he lovingly cradled my cheek in his warm, surprisingly soft hand and kissed me tenderly. I responded in kind, our tongues moving softly around each other, a rogue tear of joy rolling softly down my cheek.

“Mama happy?”

“Yes, baby, very happy.”

“Good, because I want you to come live with me,” Leif said.

I was once again stunned into silence, unable to find the correct words to express my abounding happiness. In the end I found just one, one that seemed to say everything.

“Yes.”

I was still in a daze when we got home. Leif had gone back to his place to finish getting things ready, and I still had to pack. It hurt to separate after finally getting to be close, but it was in preparation for starting our life together, so I took it on the chin. Little did I know there was about to be a harder punch coming.

“Fuck me gently with a chainsaw!” Meegan announced, breezing through the front door five hours early. Unlucky. I had hoped to be packed and gone by the time she got off work.

“What happened?” I asked, coming out of the bedroom.

“The fuckers told me to go home! Like I’m the first one who ever took a nap in the janitor’s closet.”

“You don’t say,” I said, going back to get the last of the suitcases.

Meegan had somehow missed the stack of luggage behind the door she had practically kicked in.

“I have to take three days off!”

“I can’t imagine,” I said, going to get the last suitcase from the now-empty room.

“Wait a minute, what’s all this?”

Finally, the marrow of the matter. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this. I braced myself for impact.

“Leif asked me to move in with him.”

“What?”

“We – Polly and I – are moving in with Leif.”

“Loser Guy? You said you were done with him!” Meegan protested.

“No, you said I was done with him. I said nothing was really happening. Things change.”

It took a moment for Meegan to process this new input of data. I could almost hear the old-fashioned modem noises coming from her ears.

“What’s he going to do? Pick you up on his bike? That’s going to take a lot of trips, isn’t it? I wonder if he lives in a walkup,” Meegan continued to tease, even as she followed me out with Polly.

“I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter,” I said, staying strong.

As if on cue, a sleek, beautiful sports car that looked like it had been carved out of black onyx pulled up, the engine purring quietly with an electric hum. It made Knight Rider look like a Model T.

Leif got out of the driver’s seat, wearing a tailored, black Ralph Lauren suit with a silk shirt, his sparkling blue eyes covered by Alexander McQueen shades.

“That a Tesla?” Meegan sputtered, no doubt looking for an angle.

“Fuck no. I designed this car myself. Needs to be charged twice a year and can reach ninety on the straight-away.”

“But she said you had a bike.”

“I prefer the bike,” I told her. “But I also have this. I have lots of toys. I’m a billionaire.”

The look of shock on her face was priceless, and matched only by the look of surprised happiness on Brigid’s.

Chapter Eight

Brigid

The deceptively large trunk space was more than enough to fit all our stuff. Polly – from her built-in car seat – and I waved to a stunned Meegan through the frosted blue windows as Leif pulled away from the curb.

“Weeee!” Polly declared gleefully from the back.

“I think she approves,” I said.

I wasn’t really sure how to react myself. We sat mostly in silence as he drove us a long ways out from the city. Eventually, of course, we reached our destination.

The gates served as a clue. Eleven feet high and flanked by guardian berserkers, or at least stone carvings of such, set into the top of the stone wall on either side.