Reflections from the Snow Ch. 03

Beth let the tissue drop to the floor. Her eyes were dry now.

"Kiss me, Robbie."

I gathered her into my arms and hugged her to me tightly. Then I took her face in my hands and looked her in the eye.

"I love you, Beth."

When our lips met, a flood of feelings and memories washed over me. The taste of her mouth, the smell of her hair, the gentle cushion of her lips-these sensations transported me back twenty years to our first kiss in the bracing cold of a moonlit Reno night. My pulse raged and sparks seemed to dance over my skin. I could imagine no moment but now, no desire but to bond with this beautiful person holding me.

"Then love me, Robbie, and let me love you. Like we were meant to do!"

She began unbuttoning my shirt and soon our garments were strewn along the couch and floor. I pressed her breasts to my chest while my hands explored her body-not the firm young body I had experienced as a callow youth, but every inch of it desirable and aching to merge with mine.

Once we had really heated up, Beth pushed me away from her slightly, which caused me immediate alarm.

"What is it, Beth?" I asked anxiously.

"You know, back when we were eighteen, a couch to make out on seemed a luxury. But now that we're all grown up and all, don't you think we can find something better?"

I laughed in relief, leapt off the couch and scooped her up in my arms. She shrieked and kicked her legs in the air. Then she wrapped her arms around my neck and whispered huskily in my ear, "Robbie, you he-man!"

I deposited her at the foot of her bed and pulled back the covers. She leapt in and I dived in after her. Our bodies entwined, my hands fondled and explored her breasts, still sensual and alluring twenty years later. As I caressed her neck and shoulders, however, I felt a noticeable scar on her upper right chest, just below her shoulder.

Sensing the hesitation in my ardor, Beth spoke.

"You feel the scar?"

"I thought the only surgery you had was abdominal. Sally said you only had chemo for . . . for your other cancer."

"That's partly true," she answered. "You're feeling the scar from my port."

"Port?"

"When you do chemo, they put in a port. It's like a permanent IV connection that's just under the skin. When they're reasonably sure they won't need it again, they remove it, but it leaves a scar."

Beth shivered and I could feel, rather than see, a cloud come over her face.

"I'm afraid you ended up with a pretty used model," she said.

I kissed her tenderly.

"The model I ended up with is the most wonderful woman I can conceive of and I count myself the luckiest man alive because of it."

Beth kissed me, also with great tenderness, and pulled me close. Our bodies fit like two puzzle pieces. Perhaps there were still a few misshapen edges left from trying to fit where we didn't belong, but I could already feel our souls melting in to fill the gaps.

Beth hugged me close, then whispered, almost inaudibly, into my ear, "Take me, lover."

And I did.

Epilogue

We had a July wedding. We managed to keep the ceremony itself small and simple, but the reception got out of hand quickly. We didn't let it bother us, though. Nothing much did.

We risked an outdoor venue for the reception and were rewarded with one of those breathtakingly beautiful New England summer days with just a few puffy clouds floating across an impossibly blue sky, and just when you thought it was a getting a bit too warm, a cool, salty, tangy breeze would waft in from the east.

The grounds were open and grassy with trees irregularly dotting the landscape. Charlie (who else?) had found the place. He came to congratulate us with his new girlfriend-no, fiance- in tow. She, Kathy, was a pediatric nurse from the hospital, a friend of Beth's. She and Charlie were now inseparable.

After they had offered us their congratulations, I pulled Charlie aside. Gesturing at the fairytale scenery around us, I said, "Charlie, I'm losing count of how many I owe you. I'm afraid that some years from now, you're going to walk into my house and demand my firstborn for payment."

We chuckled, but he replied, "Rob, you don't need to worry about that. Your debt is washed clean and I think I'm now the one in the red." He glanced over at Kathy and Beth, who were talking and laughing with champagne glasses in their hands.

"Let's just call it even, what do you say?" I suggested. We gave each other a brief man hug, and Charlie went to retrieve his new love.

We had a traditional multi-tiered wedding cake, but Beth had secretly made arrangements for a groom's cake. It was a large, chocolate sheet cake, but decorated to look like a track, with light brown frosting in an oval around the perimeter for the track and green frosting for the infield. There was even a high-jump and a long-jump in there!

I was exclaiming over the clever decoration when who walks up but Maureen and Paul! How Beth tracked them down I will never know. I don't think it involved bartenders, though. Maureen and Paul lived in Salt Lake City and had three beautiful children. Paul was as talkative as ever, but Maureen made up for his reticence.

And speaking of bartenders, we invited Mel, who, to my surprise, actually made an appearance. He didn't stay long since he didn't really know anyone there, but we welcomed his brief presence. I didn't know it at the time, of course, but I found out later that he brought us a present: a case of Johnny Walker Black! I didn't have much need of the stuff anymore, but I could probably find uses for it eventually. Come to think of it, I had probably drunk about that much in my years of frequenting his bar, so, in a way, I'd already paid for it.

When nurse Sally greeted us, she gave Beth about the longest public hug I've ever witnessed. Sally gave me a brief hug, also. It was the first overt display of affection she had ever shown me, apart from the dark days when I was visiting Beth in the hospital. After releasing me from her iron grip she looked at the two of us, then winked at me. "I liked him from the moment I first saw him," she asserted. When she had walked out of earshot, Beth and I gave each other a silent well-what-do-you-know look with raised eyebrows and the corners of our mouths downturned, then broke out in uncontrollable laughter for a good five minutes.

Perhaps my favorite moment of the afternoon was when Amy, an old sorority sister Beth hadn't seen in years, appeared. The two of them squealed and stamped their feet, then hugged and jumped up and down. She looked like a schoolgirl again. It seemed to me at that moment that the weight of the world had finally released its burden from her shoulders and she was free to inhabit the lightness and joy that was her true nature.

Beth brought Amy over to introduce us.

"Ames, I'd like you to meet my husband, Robert Stearns."

She said it with such pride and formality; such a contrast to her girlish antics just seconds ago.

Turning to me, she said, "This is my dearest friend from college, Amy."

"Well, any friend of Beth's is a friend of mine," I said, extending my hand.

"So pleased to meet you, Robert," she said, pumping my hand.

"Please," I replied. "It's 'Robbie' to my friends."