Picture at the Park

We both ate in bath towels, Amanda was dressed when I finished my shower.

"You need to get dressed; we need to get back to the apartment so I can do you in our bed."

Now that sounded like an invite. Amanda gave Toni a run down on the evening while I drove and was still talking to her when we got back to the apartment. I pulled her cell out of her hands and closed the door of the apartment, Toni rang back while I burrowed between Amanda's legs. She didn't feel inclined to talk to her right at that moment.

*******

I've always hated the term 'afterglow'. Let's face it, two sweaty and sticky bodies are welded to each other while one or preferably both of us are having a gentle time of wandering hands, and that's called 'afterglow'. Calm before the storm of activity perhaps.

My hand had just finished that experiment that all men have of wanting to see how long we can make our partners nipple. Amanda stopped my hand and held it, while she made herself more comfortable in our bed, my apartment was as quiet as I was as she spoke.

"I told Toni that I had started to have feelings for you."

Her look gave me a moment to prepare myself.

"Toni chewed me out for a good ten minutes before she would even look at me."

Her head snuggled deeper into my neck. "Then I asked her for her help."

"At one stage I was thinking about tying her to a chair so she would at least talk to me, without using words that a lady shouldn't use to anyone but a sailor." Amanda let out a slow sigh. "She told me that she had placed me with the safest person she knew. And that now I have to go and do this to her."

Amanda giggled as her memories played themselves back to her.

"We spoke on and off for days and I told her I was teasing you rotten but you were too much of a gentleman to do anything about it."

"In desperation we came up with last night."

I held her hand as it came to rest on her hip. "Toni was right, I wouldn't ever have touched you at the apartment."

My hand came away from her hip and rested on her breast, her arm moved to trap it in its present location. With her head resting where it was she only had to whisper for me to hear her clearly and she chose to confess something that gave me pause.

"My whole world came crashing down that day. I hated you, for showing me what the one man in my life I thought I could trust with my heart, was so coldly doing to me and my life's work."

She went on to explain herself in more detail, how vulnerable she felt when Andy came into the room with a shoebox full of things, that to her, were intimate moments and the respect everyone in that room had towards her when he handed over the shoebox. The growing friendship with Toni and Mac which culminated in last evening, the steam seemed to run out of her now, her words lengthened and started to slur until her breathing gave her away.

I was still lying beside her awake an hour later, Amanda was right, she came to my apartment as a guest and that made her untouchable. Last night had changed that, last night brought a new word into our lives, relationship. She had been as honest as she could be with her intentions and expected me to be the same.

*******

Amanda Browning no longer gave off that 'don't come near me' vibe. We celebrated a full year in my apartment before I got on one knee and asked her to marry me, with Toni and Mac as my witnesses, thank goodness I did it at the apartment because she followed me down onto the apartment floor kissing me and saying yes over and over again.

Toni left us alone for a moment, before Toni was Toni. "Girl, have you no shame. Get his ass into the bedroom before you jump his bones."

Amanda was still lying on top of me when she turned to her friend and said. "That's for later girlfriend, right now I'm settling for sucking his face off to let him know that I said yes to marrying him."

Toni put out her hand and Amanda grasped it, using it to help stand up again, still leaving me on the floor of course.

"Oh I think you made that clear when you screamed like a girl and threw yourself at him. The only saving grace was that he provided you with a soft landing."

They both walked off talking wedding plans, when another hand appeared and helped me up. Mac smiled and then congratulated me.

It was Otis Winters who gave her away three months later, I'm told her folks took an instant dislike to her boyfriend and believed I was no better.

Since I had never met either of them I was curious for all of five minutes how they came to that conclusion. Then decided it was their loss, not mine. I still sketch Amanda when I can and she keeps all the safe ones in frames around the apartment. Two years to the day after my company and I dismantled her life, she gave me a box wrapped in a pink bow, inside the box was a white plastic stick with a blue line across it.

Underneath the stick sat a card, with the words 'eight weeks and counting'.

I love my wife with everything I own and am. No camera has ever come into our bedroom because I don't ever want to see her in as much pain as she was when all this started. She's told me not to be silly and she trusts me. I know she does, but we have come to an agreement, she keeps 'those' drawings in a safe place.