She looked at him like he had two heads. “Bite your tongue. I don’t even have a regular man yet. I’m not cut out to be a single mother.”
“You take your time, honey,” I told her. “You’re still young and beautiful. Have fun.”
“Hey,” Jace said, pretending to be insulted. “Are you saying being married to me isn’t any fun?”
I got up and went over to where he was sitting. I sat down on his lap and kissed him. We forgot Carla was there as we kissed passionately. I could feel him growing hard underneath me.
Carla cleared her throat and said, “Um… I think I’ll just be going.”
We laughed and apologized. “Sorry, we just get carried away,” I told her.
She snorted and said, “Newlyweds,” but she was grinning. “I really have to go. See ya, Jace.”
“See ya, Carla.”
I got up and walked her out. I gave her a hug before she left and promised I’d call to let her know how the new job goes. I’d just finished two years of nursing school and I got a job at the University Hospital. I was really excited about starting.
Jace had been so helpful and supportive while I was in school. I couldn’t wait to start making money and contributing to our lives. He said that part doesn’t matter, and I believe he means it. But it will make me feel better. He works so hard. I want to be an equal partner.
After she left, Jace showered while I put away the wedding pictures. We went out to dinner. Now that we’re living in Boston, we eat out once a week on Fridays. The rest of the week, we take turns cooking and on Sundays after church, we have dinner with his brothers.
We started going to a new church. It’s still Catholic, but no one there knows our history and it’s more comfortable for us there. We’re both still very devout, practicing Catholics. What has happened in the past is between us and God, but we both still feel strongly that we did the right thing and God is on our side.
Tonight, we went to a place near the Harbor called Legal Sea Foods. It’s one of our favorite places to eat when we’re in the mood for shellfish. The manager knows Jace from a job his company did for him last year, so he always starts us out with a huge shrimp cocktail.
We sit upstairs when we’re in the mood for quiet elegance, but tonight I wanted the two-pound lobster, so we had to sit downstairs for that. It’s a lot louder downstairs because that’s where the bar is at and a lot of college kids hang out there.
While we were eating, Jace looked over at the bar crowd and said, “Do you ever feel like you’re missing out?”
Confused, I said, “On what?”
“You’re about the same age as those kids at the bar. They’re just having a great time without a care in the world. You just finished school and you have a house and a husband to take care of. Do you ever wish you could go back and do it the way they’re doing it?”
I glanced over at the kids. I thought about high school and even if you factored out my horrible father, you couldn’t pay me to go back. It was fraught with constant anxiety over what to wear and who was talking about who and what boys were going to want if I went out with them.
Being a child of sexual abuse could have sent me over to the promiscuous edge, but instead, it sent me in the other direction. I never accepted dates because of my fear that the guy would want sex. I was a senior before I had my first real relationship. He was the one who ran when he tried to get me in bed and I told him about my dad.
I looked back at Jace and thought about how when you change one thing in your life, it often alters the course of it, and I said,
“No, not even a little bit. Mostly because had I done things differently, I would not have me
t you. Look at me now!” I giggled.
He smiled. “Yeah, look at you now. Happy looks so good on you. It’s hard to imagine the different courses our lives would have taken if we’d never met.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Do you think you would still be a priest if we’d never met?”
He nodded and popped a piece of lobster in his mouth. “Yeah, I think so,” he said, after he swallowed. “It wasn’t terrible. I was never really content with it, but until I met you, I really thought it was where I was supposed to be.”
“Are you ever sorry you gave it up?”
“Not even a little bit,” he said, copying my words with a grin. “I love you, Daphne. I love our life, and I think God and I are okay these days.”
“Good. Me, too.”