Part 41: link


    Guinevere is standing at the wardrobe, staring, wrapped in a towel. Unlike Arthur, she was not content to live from a suitcase and had placed her things there. She contemplates the black satin negligee she had bought as a surprise for Arthur. Sighing, she tucks it back into its hiding place. That would be too cruel. I’ll wear it tomorrow night.
    As she reaches for the familiar t-shirt, she spies the corner of something rectangular, crammed flat against the back, having partially slid down between the shelf and the cabinet. What’s this?
    “I don’t think that wardrobe leads to Narnia, if that’s what you’re staring at,” Arthur approaches behind her, wearing navy blue võ sĩ quyền anh briefs.
    “Arthur, is that a literary joke,” she smiles over her shoulder at him, “or did bạn only see the movies?”
    “Hey, I read the books!” he protests. “Well, some of them. At school. Because it was an assignment,” he finishes sheepishly.
    Gwen laughs and Arthur notices what she’s holding in her hand. “What’s that?”
    She holds it up for both of them to see. “It appears to be a bức ảnh of your parents.”
    “Where did bạn find that?” he looks closer, always hungry for glimpses of his mother.
    “It was jammed in the back of this wardrobe,” she hands it to him and pulls the áo sơ mi on over her head, then pulls the towel down underneath it. Distracted bởi this new find, Arthur carries it over and sits with it on the bed.
    “This is before they were married. Look, she’s wearing the ring,” he points.
    Gwen sits beside him and looks at it. “She was so beautiful. And her personality comes through in this picture, too. bạn can see that she was a wonderful person.”
    “Look at my father. How he’s looking at her. I’ve never seen him look like that before,” Arthur whispers.
    “That’s exactly how bạn look at me, Arthur,” she tells him, kissing his cheek.
    He smiles. “I guess I do have a few of his traits after all, then.”
    “The best ones, I’m sure. Your father was hard on you, bạn say, but I think bạn may be a little hard on him as well.”
    “Probably.” He sighs. “It can’t have been easy for him. I mean, I cannot even think about if…” he trails off, not even able to say the words. He swallows hard.
    Gwen slides her arm around his waist, resting her head on his shoulder. “You are as beautiful as your mother, bạn know. Inside and out.”
    “You don’t know how much I wish that I could have known her. Even for a little while. I hope that she would be proud of me.”
    “She is. And she’s watching over you. I’m sure of it. Both our mothers are up there,” she looks up, “keeping their watchful eyes on us. Making sure we behave. Keeping us safe. Who knows, maybe they are keeping one another company?”
    Arthur says nothing, contemplating her words. She smiles at him after a một phút and nonchalantly wipes a tear from his cheek.
    “I’ll go get the ngọn lửa, chữa cháy started,” she says, kissing his shoulder and leaving him there with the photo.
    “Okay. Wait, what?” Her words didn’t register right away and he looks at her.
    “I. Am going. To light. The fire,” she exaggeratedly repeats.
    This forces a laugh from Arthur, who turns to watch her, thinking it will be top-notch entertainment.
    Guinevere finds some kindling and some newspaper, and she constructs an expert pyramid of wood over the twisted paper. She lights the newspaper in a few places, and waits patiently.
    The wood takes, and Arthur is both disappointed and impressed. Gwen puts some of the larger pieces of wood on, closes the fireplace doors, and turns back to Arthur.
    “You were expecting a different result?” she asks, noting his expression.
    “Maybe. I’m just… surprised. bạn do that better than I do.”
    “Arthur, you’re a fireman!”
    “Yes, I extinguish fires, I don’t start them.”
    “What about your training fires? bạn know, the buildings slated for demo and whatnot?”
    “We usually use some sort of accelerant to start those.”
    “So bạn cheat: bạn douse the place in petrol, fling in a match and call it a day?” She plunks down beside him on the bed.
    “Pretty much, yeah. So. Explain yourself.”
    “No, my father used to take us camping a lot when we were kids. I always seemed to have a knack for getting the campfire going.” She shrugs.
    “You slept in a tent and everything?”
    “Oh, God, no, we had a caravan. Father’s a bit of a princess that way,” she laughs, and looks back at the bức ảnh still gripped in Arthur’s hand.
    He looks down at it as well, and says, “So what should we do with this?”
    “We get it beautifully framed and give it to your father as a gift.”
    “But it’s creased, and this corner is damaged.”
    “Love, that can be restored. We just have to take it to the right place.”
    “The color is still good at least. I suppose because it was inside that dark wardrobe for years.”
    “Yes. It’ll make a wonderful giáng sinh gift. Unless his birthday is before then.”
    “It’s tiếp theo month.”
    “Perfect.” She gently takes the bức ảnh and slides it carefully into a side pocket on her suitcase.
    He scoots under the covers, holding the blanket up for her to slide in beside him.
    “What’s with the underwear?” she says.
    “Didn’t bring anything resembling pajamas,” he grins at her.
    “That’s awfully presumptive of you,” she says.
    “Well, tiếp theo time I’ll make sure to allow for head injuries.” He kisses her nose. “Speaking of, did bạn take anything?”
    “Shoot.” She starts to get up. He gently pushes her back down.
    “I’ll get it.”
    Gwen sits up, unpins her hair, and twists it into a braid while she waits. More comfortable this way. She reaches back to feel the bump on her head and thinks it’s gotten a little smaller, though it’s still quite tender.
    Arthur returns with a cup of water in one hand and Tylenol in the other. She takes them and hands the cup back to him. “Thank you.”
    He stops and puts a few thêm pieces of wood on the ngọn lửa, chữa cháy and switches off most of the lights before he climbs back in bed. He gathers her to him, and they lay facing each other, close together, watching each other in the dim light.
    “Tell me about your mother,” Arthur says simply.
    “I don’t remember much.”
    “Tell me what bạn remember,” he prods, stroking her cheek.
    “She was kind. Fair. I remember that she would go to great lengths to treat Elliot and me fairly and equally. He’s two years younger and a boy—was a boy—so it wasn’t always easy, I’m sure. I remember piles of gifts under the cây at Christmastime. My father later told me that Mum would think she was done shopping and then see one thêm thing that she had to get for one of us. So then that meant she had to find something for the other to even it out again.” She smiles at the memory. Arthur takes her hands in his, holding them between their two bodies.
    “I loved her hair. It was so soft, like yours. Mine is thêm coarse, thanks to my father, and I was always jealous of hers. She’d let me brush it sometimes. Being little, I’d usually make a great bloody mess of it, but she would still let me.”
    “I tình yêu your hair,” Arthur says, releasing one of her hands to twirl an errant curl around his finger.
    “Most people want what they don’t have. I always wanted to have sleek, wavy hair, like Morgana’s. She always envied my curls. Human nature.”
    She continues. “I get my tình yêu of cooking from her. She’d let me help in small ways, as much as I could. I’d drag a stepstool into the phòng bếp, nhà bếp from a hall closet and cá rô, hòn đảo tiếp theo to her. I could scramble an egg and cook mỳ ống, mì ống bởi the time I was five.”
    “I can barely do that now,” Arthur says.
    Gwen laughs at him. “We’ll work on that. Mind you, I wasn’t allowed to crack an egg until a few years later. She let me try once while I was helping her make a quiche. I was a little overenthusiastic about it and the entire egg ended up on the floor.”
    “At least bạn didn’t get shell everywhere. That’s the problem I always have,” he laughs.
    “Why does that not surprise me?” She twines her fingers with his, and sticks her cold toes between his calves. He doesn’t even jump. In fact, he smiles when he feels her cool touch on his legs.
    “What else?” he asks, freeing one hand to stroke it along the side of her neck.
    “She was very smart.”
    “What did she do?”
    “I’m not entirely sure, exactly; some kind of engineer. My father đã đưa ý kiến that he was initially attracted to her brain.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes. And I don’t believe him for a second.”
    Arthur laughs, remembering the picture he saw. “Your mother was beautiful, too. It must have been very difficult to watch her…”
    “…die?” Gwen finishes. He nods. “It was, but Dad shielded us from a lot of it. I was only eight, remember? Old enough to understand, but too young to be able to fully be exposed to all the details. Elliot and I spent a lot of time at our grandparents’ house towards the end.”
    Arthur leans phía trước, chuyển tiếp and kisses her, slowly and softly, lingering over her lips. “I tình yêu bạn so much,” he whispers.
    “I tình yêu you, too Arthur,” she whispers back, eyes closed.
    “Why?” Arthur asks, and Gwen slowly opens her eyes. His are twinkling at her.
    “Oh, so it’s like that, is it?” she asks, smiling. She snuggles into the cozy world they’ve created in the center of the large bed, a world where there is only the two of them and nothing else matters.
    “I spilled my guts. Now it’s your turn,” he says, kissing her again as motivation, his tongue teasing her lips briefly, willing them to part for him. She does, but only briefly.
    “I can’t tell bạn if bạn keep kissing me,” she tells him as he continues to Kiss her.
    She leans back, pulling her face away from his, and holds his cheeks between her hands.
    “I tình yêu bạn because from the moment bạn smiled at me on that dance floor, I could no longer remember my life before bạn were in it and was no longer able to picture my life without bạn in it. I tình yêu your creative mind. I tình yêu your charismatic personality; the way bạn draw people to bạn and they cannot help but like you. I tình yêu bạn because bạn make me feel like the most beautiful, most cherished person in the entire world. I tình yêu how your eyes get all crinkly when bạn smile at me.” She kisses him once, and touches the corner of one eye gently with her fingertips.
    “I tình yêu bạn because bạn aren’t afraid to be vulnerable with me. I tình yêu bạn because underneath your tough-guy exterior, you’re a soft, caring person with a beautiful heart. I tình yêu bạn because you’d rather help people than push their money around. I tình yêu bạn because bạn make me laugh thêm often and harder than anyone else ever has. I tình yêu bạn because bạn make my dull life interesting. I tình yêu your hands.” She takes his hands in hers, looking at how large they are in comparison to her own. She lifts them to her lips and kisses his knuckles.
    “I tình yêu this tooth,” she says, poking his crooked front tooth with her finger when he opens his mouth to laugh. She continues, running her fingertips along his brow, brushing against his hair. “I tình yêu that bạn are yourself with me and that I can be myself with you, completely honest and without fear. At the risk of freaking bạn out, I tình yêu bạn because I know bạn will be a wonderful father.” She peeks at him and relaxes when she sees a smile creep over his face, almost against his will. “I tình yêu bạn because I am not complete without you. I tình yêu bạn because bạn aren’t perfect, but you’re perfect for me.”
    He looks across at her, his eyes aflame with a tình yêu she can actually see. “Guinevere…” he sighs, his voice thick and rough with emotion.
    “Oh yes, I forgot that one, didn't I? I tình yêu that all bạn have to do is say my name and I turn into a puddle of hot goo,” she whispers.
    He smiles at her and leans over to Kiss her, his hand on the side of her neck, thumb gently stroking the line of her jaw. “You tình yêu my hands?” he asks, breaking the kiss.
 Gwen laughs and takes one of his hands between hers.
    “Yes. bạn have remarkably beautiful hands for a man. Especially considering your line of work.” She massages the sturdy muscles of his hand for a moment, contemplating it. “Not to mention,” she kisses the tip of his index finger, “how they feel,” she kisses his middle finger, “when bạn touch me.” The ring finger, then the pinky.
    He closes his eyes as she turns his hand and kisses his palm, the touch of her lips on the sensitive flesh there sending a line of ngọn lửa, chữa cháy through his body. Arthur swallows, squeezing his eyes together.
    “You aren't making this very easy for me, bạn know,” he tells her, eyes smoldering. “You have no idea how much I want bạn right now.” His voice is low, quiet.
    She releases his hand, saying, “Sorry. But bạn did ask.” She thinks a moment before saying, “I promise I’ll make it up to bạn tomorrow,” with a sly smile, remembering the negligee she set aside earlier.
    His eyes open wide, intrigued at her tone. “Oh, really?” He asks, raising his eyebrows.
    She leans over again, her hands now on his chest, and she kisses him ardently but briefly. “Yes,” she says simply.
    His lips find hers again and he pulls her close, his hands bunching the material of her áo sơ mi in his fists. Gwen sighs against him as her lips part beneath his, their tongues melding, seeking one another out. Arthur’s hands flatten back out and caress her back as he leans further into her, rolling her onto her back. Guinevere squeaks again as the tender spot on her head presses into the pillow.
    Arthur pulls away gently, his breathing ragged. “Sorry,” he says, rolling them back to where they were. He raises his hand to her head and touches it very gently, concern in his eyes.
    “No, I’m sorry,” she says, closing her eyes again. I hope it feels better tomorrow.
    “Come here,” he says, laying on his back and pulling her to lie against him, her head on his shoulder. “This okay? For your head, I mean?”
    “Yes,” she says, cuddling into him and placing her hand on his chest. “The ngọn lửa, chữa cháy is dying.”
    “Let it. I don’t want to get up, and neither do you,” he says, brushing a few stray curls back away from her face. She chuckles, closing her eyes.
    “Go to sleep, love,” he tells her, reaching to turn off the last remaining light. He kisses her forehead before closing his own eyes.

Part 43: link