Promises Pt. 08

"For most of my adult life," she says, "I haven't gotten as much physical contact as I think my soul needs. I hope you don't mind that I'm all over you while we're together. I especially like having someone up against me at night."

"I like the sound of that."

Again, I marvel at just how compatible Anna and I are. I cup her firm, full breast in my hand, just like on our last night in Mexico. "Is this okay?"

"Uh, yeah, I actually like that, as long as you don't go stroking my nipple or anything. What I worry about is that our being in close contact like this might drive you crazy with desire to do things that I'm not going to do."

I think about that for a moment. "I see what you're saying, but it's different for me. I love the feel of your body, but knowing that you don't desire me sexually is enough for me to dismiss my own sexual feelings. At this point I'd as soon make love with the washing machine as I would with you."

Anna reaches behind her and feels my flaccid member. "Damn, I think I almost believe you."

It's close enough to the truth, though if Anna suddenly decided that men were her thing after all, I could get it up for her very quickly. The same probably couldn't be said of the Kenmore.

It's still relatively early, so we put the time to good use, talking more about our ideas for what a marriage might look like for us. Again, I'm amazed at how two people can be of one mind on so many things.

"Are you still thinking of moving south?" she asks.

"Yeah, I've actually been working on that." I tell her about what I did during my layover in Miami. "I still have to show up at IWSS for another six weeks, but after that, I don't want to live in a place where it snows, ever again."

"Hmm, I could definitely live with that."

* * * * *

In the morning, I shower first, then cook up a larger-than-usual portion of one of my favorite breakfasts, diced asparagus scrambled with eggs. A little oregano, dill, rosemary, dried chives, basil, marjoram and sea salt, and it's filling the kitchen with a very nice aroma. Anna walks in with her hair up in a towel, (the only fabric on either of us at the moment) and goes straight to the stove.

"It smells a whole lot better than it looks," she observes.

I walk up behind and wrap my arms around her, placing my hand low on her belly. It's way too soon to feel her pregnancy, much less the kick of our child, but I'm already imagining. Anna places her hand on mine as if this is the most normal thing in the world.

"I realize that it doesn't look terribly appetizing," I say, referring to my cooking, "but it's actually quite tasty. And it's good for you, especially since you're eating for two." She still looks a little doubtful. "I can fix you something else if you'd like. I think I've got oatmeal."

"No, I'm going to give it a try. And hey, you've got coffee."

I pour her a cup, remembering that she takes it black, like I do. "Here you go."

"Thanks. And yes."

"Huh?"

"Yes."

"Yes what?"

"Yes, as in yes, I'll marry you."

I take her coffee back from her, sitting it on the counter, then wrap her in my arms and give her a big kiss. On the cheek. She squeezes me tight and returns my kiss.

"So when do you want to do this?" I ask.

"Well, the more time there is between our marriage and the arrival of our baby, the better it will be as far as my folks are concerned."

"Then let's catch the next flight to Vegas," I say.

"Whoa, that may be a bit too soon."

"Why? Are you wanting a big wedding?"

She considers that for a moment. "No, and a lot of my friends wouldn't come anyway, since I'm marrying a man."

"You want your parents there?"

"No. My mom wouldn't be in the least happy that I was getting married to someone I'd known for so short a time. I suppose it would be a lot easier just to present it as a done deal. Maybe we can tell my folks that we were in Vegas, got drunk and just did it on impulse?"

"Works for me. Shall I log on and book us a couple of seats?"

"It's Friday. Don't you have to be at IWSS?"

"What, and work on my wedding day?" Anna giggles. "Actually, my contract only specifies that I have to be there for a certain total number of days. Skipping work today would just add a day to the end of my contract."

Anna has one more objection. "Since you're a rich guy now, I think you'd be smart to have me sign a prenuptial."

"Not necessary," I say. "I trust you implicitly." And frankly, I consider the largess that I've gotten from IWSS to be found money. If half of it went to a woman willing to bring my child into the world, I'd be just fine with that.

"I know you trust me. My willingness to sign a prenup is simply a demonstration of why you're right to."

I immediately see her logic. "Okay then, let's get busy."

"After breakfast," Anna says. "It really does smell good."

* * * * *

Anna insists on doing the dishes while I call Bob, who hooks us up with an attorney he knows who does domestic law. I grease the skids with money, and by eleven we've signed our prenup. We're winging our way to Sin City by two.

* * * * *

Iowa doesn't look like I was expecting, but then again, it's barely May. There won't be tall corn here for months.

"Now just try to relax and act natural," Anna says as we roll up her parent's long gravel driveway in our rental SUV, but it's not necessary. I'm quite at ease with the prospect of meeting my new bride's parents. Logically, we're adults in our late twenties and there's very little that her folks could say about our sudden nuptials that would bother me. It's Anna who's as nervous as a June Bug in a chicken coop.

Out of habit, my hand goes to stroke my beard. For the dozenth time since this morning, I'm surprised to find it missing. It had been totally my decision that as a married man, I didn't need to project the tough guy image that the beard had given me. I'd shaved it off the day before, just before the wedding, so that it wouldn't be in the photos, but it still feels weird. Anna, though, says she really likes the way I look without it, and she definitely appreciates my smoother cheeks when she kisses me there.

Mick and Sandy come out the front door as we pull up. To my eye, they are at least as nervous as Anna, and it doesn't help when I step out of the truck. Mick is quite tall himself, an inch or two taller than his daughter, but he clearly didn't expect to meet someone my size.

I quickly walk around to the passenger side and hand Anna out, something both of us have discovered we like to do, and we meet her parents at the bottom of the stairs. I try my best to project enough calm and friendly for the four of us. It seems to work as I shake Mick's calloused hand.

"It's good to meet you, sir," I say. "Anna has told me a lot about you folks." Most of it on the flight from Las Vegas to Des Moines and the ninety-minute drive from the airport.

"We'll be looking forward to finding out more about you," he says. Mick Jacobson strikes me as a man of few words, but I can tell that the words he does say should be heeded. I lean way down to accept a hug from Sandy, who can't be much over five feet two.

"It was such a surprise getting Anna's call last night," she says, almost managing to hide her reproach. "We didn't even know she was dating anyone."

"I've found that your daughter is full of surprises, Mrs. Jacobson," I say with a smile.

"Oh, please call me Sandy," she says. I do notice that she hasn't suggested I call her Mom. "Come on in. Supper's almost ready."

Jacob and Ethan are waiting for us as I duck through the doorway. They're a head shorter than their mother and obviously awed at the idea that their big sister has actually gotten married, or that their brother-in-law is a giant, or both. They can barely manage a "hi" when I shake their hands. Later, during dinner, they are positively amazed when they hear that I was born in Russia. I give them a quick lesson in how to say hello (Zdravstvuj) and goodbye (Do svidaniya).

Sandy does the reputation of Midwest farm wives proud, putting out an amazing spread. I decide that if I ate like that every day, I'd weigh four-hundred pounds.

The conversation around the table is lively and I find out more than I'd ever known about life on a farm. Mick quizzes me about my inventions. Even the boys get involved, each trying to convince me that theirs was the 4-H calf that was robbed of the grand prize at the state fair.

After dinner, the boys are sent out to do their evening chores while the rest of us retire to the living room. Anna and I take the couch and I put an easy arm around her shoulders, but the next words that come out of her mother's mouth are most emphatically not conducive to any sort of casual atmosphere.

"Anna," she says, "we've got some serious concerns about this marriage."

My new wife is taking a sip of coffee and nearly does a spit take. "Uh... in what way?" she sputters.

"Well, Peter seems like a very nice man, the kind that we would always have hoped to see you with, but..."

"But what, Mom?"

"But he's, well... a man."

Mick is obviously mortified that his wife has come out and said that, and Anna is turning bright red. I'm quite enjoying this interchange, but studiously keep a neutral expression on my face.

"You knew?" Anna stammers.

"Well of course we knew. Probably from about the time you turned fourteen. We hoped and prayed that it was a phase, but we've come to accept that it's just the way God made our daughter."

"Then why didn't you say anything?" Anna asks.

"We didn't feel it was our place," Sandy says. "We were waiting for you to 'come out.'"

"Wow, and I've worked so hard for half of my life to keep it a secret," Anna says, as much to herself as anything.

"The question I have," Mick says, looking me in the eye, "is why you're marrying my daughter."

The thing that Anna had tried to impress upon me the most was to not let her parents know that we'd "jumped the gun." I figure though, that with Anna's sexual orientation finally out in the open, it's time for the truth. Maybe I could bullshit Mick, maybe not, but I see no reason to try. "She's carrying our child," I explain.

"What?" Sandy exclaims, leaping to her feet in apparent excitement and looking at Anna. "You are?"

The rest of us get to our feet as Anna struggles for how to respond to that. Fortunately, she comes to the same conclusion. "Our baby's due in mid-to-late November," she says to her mother. Sandy squeals and wraps her in a big hug.

The news that he's going to be a grandfather doesn't seem to affect Mick in the same way. "How exactly did that happen?" he asks me pointedly.

I know this isn't a birds-and-bees question. It's more of a "did you take advantage of my beloved daughter when she was falling down drunk or did you guys use a turkey baster?" kind of question.

"Sir, your daughter is, uh, welcoming to me under certain very limited circumstances. This pregnancy was a result of our not using common sense during one of those."

Our words have caught the women's attention.

"So, do you like women?" he asks.

"I'm straight," I answer, "but I'm thrilled to be married to Anna. I'm certain that we'll make wonderful life partners, even though she's not sexually attracted to me."

"But you find her attractive?"

"Of course I do. Your daughter is a beautiful and desirable woman."

"Then just how will you be able to handle staying married to her if you can't do anything about that."

Mick has cut right to the heart of the matter. "Well, sir," I say, the 'sir' coming very naturally, "that would normally be a big issue, but I'm, uh, different from most people."

"Different?" Sandy says. "In what way?"

"Well, I guess the easiest way to describe me would be to say that I'm a very high-functioning autistic, though technically it's not actually autism in my case. What it means is that my emotions and desires are almost completely dictated by my intellect. I can choose how my attraction to Anna affects me."

They blink a few times at that little chunk of left field news. "So, is this going to be a sexless marriage?" Sandy asks, evidently more concerned with how infrequently we're going to do the deed than the fact that her daughter is gay or that she's become pregnant outside of wedlock to Mister Spock.

"We're, uh, quite physically affectionate," Anna says, "but no, we won't be having sex."

Sandy purses her lips. "I wish you luck with that," she says. "Your father and I have made love at least three times a week ever since we turned eighteen. It's a huge part of how we manage to stay close to each other."

Anna's eyes get big. "But you guys got married when you were nineteen."

Sandy smiles. "You're not the only one who's been keeping secrets."

Mick gives his daughter a serious look. "But don't you dare tell your brothers any of this stuff."

* * * * *

The rest of our visit is relatively uneventful, and the next afternoon we're back at the airport in Des Moines. I'm flying back to Minneapolis so I can be at IWSS in the morning, but Anna is flying home to Charleston to pack up, then move to my loft.

I've told her that it would be okay if she wanted to keep her apartment until we move to our new southern home. That way she would only have to move her stuff once. But Anna is indeed taking our marriage seriously. I take note of that and decide to do the same.

I, of course, offer to hire a commercial mover for her. We can certainly afford it, but Anna's way too practical for that. She doesn't own furniture, just smaller possessions. She says it should only take her three days, but I'm already so used to having her near me that I'm not sure I'll survive alone that long.

* * * * *

While she's away, I remove the spiral stairs I'd installed for Destinee, then move some machines around so that there's room for two vehicles in my shop. The last thing I need now is to get busted for breaking zoning laws.

On Thursday, Anna arrives back at the condo with a large U-Haul trailer behind her Outback. She's closed out all her business in Charleston, paid to break her lease, and gotten everything she owns to Minnesota in good order, all by herself. I don't know why I'm even surprised. That's just Anna being Anna.

* * * * *

The next weekend, we both fly down to Miami. During my layover there, on the way back from Mexico, I'd talked to several real estate agents and chosen one based on her knowledge of high-end local properties. She'd called me on Thursday to tell me that the very specialized kind of place I was looking for had just come onto the market.

She shows us around a massive, one-level, seven-bedroom home, sitting on an eighty-acre orange grove outside of Homestead. Previously owned by a player with the Miami Heat, it was custom built from the ground up for a very tall person.

Every doorway is at least eight feet tall, the ceilings, even in the bedrooms, are at least ten, and the kitchen counters are six inches taller than standard, which makes them about perfect for Anna and a lot more comfortable for me. I don't have to duck while going through a doorway even once, and I finally feel comfortable in a home for the first time since I was thirteen and only six foot three.

The previous owner had specified an attached five-car garage, plus an additional detached eight-car behemoth around back. He'd used the bigger one for his collection of Lamborghinis and Ferraris, but it's climate controlled and perfect for my machine shop. Above said shop is a three-bedroom "mother-in-law" apartment, overlooking the outdoor pool. The pool has an underwater passage that allows swimmers to travel to the indoor pool.

One feature we really like is the ten-foot-tall stucco privacy wall which runs all the way around the two-acre residential portion of the property, clear up to the road, where it meets the eight-foot-tall security gates. The player had valued his privacy, and it should make our continuing nudist tendencies more comfortable.

"Oh my God, we can't really buy this place, can we?" Anna asks when we finish the tour. Neither of us has ever been in a house this amazing, much less considered purchasing one.

"We can if you like it," I say.

"But it's so expensive."

"Yeah, it's a lot of money, but it would cost us a lot less than the guy spent for the land and construction. On top of that, the market is depressed at the moment, so when it eventually recovers, we could easily sell for a multi-million-dollar profit if we wanted. The seller's been traded and is planning to move in a few weeks, so he's very motivated. I'm sure we could get a screamer deal. It's a beautiful home, but it's an even better investment."

"What about the orchard? Will we be running it?"

"Well, at the moment it's leased to the next-door neighbor. He handles it along with his own, larger orchard. If you were interested in getting back into agriculture, we could decline to renew the annual lease. You could hire a crew and go into business."

I can see the wheels turning. There's a good chance she'll eventually want to do just that.

"It's a lot of bedrooms for just two people..." I can see the desire in her eyes, but she's practical, and as my wife and partner, she feels the need to do her due diligence. I love her for stuff like that.

"Anna, the idea is that we'll be filling some of those bedrooms. We have room to grow a family, as well as oranges. The only real question is if you want this house?"

"Well, yes!"

"Then we're buying it." Anna throws herself into my arms and I get a big kiss on the cheek.

We have the agent submit a lowball bid that I almost feel guilty about, but the seller accepts. "Screamer deal" is an understatement. We set the closing date for the weekend after I finish my IWSS contract.

Life seems good.

* * * * *

"Peter," she sobs, "I'm at my doctor's office. He's sending me to the hospital. You've got to meet me there right away."

"Anna, what's wrong?" I ask, though I'm terrified that I already know. Anna had been uncharacteristically nervous about this appointment, though she had turned down my offer to take the morning off to go with her.

"It's the baby. Something's wrong."

"I'll be there in twenty minutes."

The hospital is six miles from IWSS, but it might have been on another planet for all the good I can do. When I arrive, they are already prepping Anna for a D&C to remove the corpse of our child. I rush to her and she clings to me, crying on my shoulder. Unbidden, I feel the tears that never appeared at the death of my own mother run down my cheek.

"Oh Anna," I say, "I'm so, so sorry."

"I am too, Peter," she sobs quietly. "I wanted to give you a child."

"I just need you to be well. We'll have other children."

She draws a sharp breath. "But you only married me because I was carrying your child. Why would you stay? With me?"

Her question is perfectly logical, but it still catches me by surprise. Leave her? I'm having a hard time imagining that. Over the last six weeks, Anna has become the closest friend I've ever had. What I've grown to feel for this woman is very much like, well...

"Because I love you, Anna. At our wedding I read the vow that said I would be with you until death did us part, but I knew it was a marriage of convenience. Now, though, I've come to realize that I never want to be without you. I love you more than I would ever have believed I could. I'll be your husband forever if you'll still have me."