Gift # 3 of 42

[happier-bunny.livejournal.com]

TO:  sfscarlet
FROM:  Predec2
TITLE:  "My Heart Goes With You"
GIFT REQUEST:  Fanfic



Climbing out of the taxi, I hastily pushed more than enough bills into the cabbie’s hand to take care of my fare as I hefted my carryon bag and art portfolio onto my shoulder. As the car slowly pulled away, I couldn’t help smiling eagerly as I stood there for a moment and stared at the familiar mansion that had become the unlikely home and studio for Brian and me ten years ago.

When I had left for New York City and said goodbye to Brian, I had left with both a sense of excitement as well as hopeful anticipation, but also with a heavy heart at having to be apart from the man I loved so deeply. At the time I wasn’t sure if Brian really would make the effort to keep our relationship alive; deep down I was so afraid that he and I would slowly slip away from each other and he would once more close his heart back up to the prospect of loving and being loved.

But he had surprised me; I had given him the name and address of Daphne’s friend I would be staying with, and as soon as I had arrived there, my new roommate had greeted me with a smile on her face as she let me into the apartment and led me over to her small dinette table to show me the huge basket of outrageously fattening foods that had been delivered to me. Brian had somehow managed to include every conceivable type of food that I loved, including two pints of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream packed in dry ice, Cap’n Crunch cereal and even some of Debbie’s incredible lemon bars from the diner. With shaking hands I had taken the small white card out of its envelope and had promptly blushed as I read the message that he had had enough balls to ask the gourmet food company to include with the goodies: Don’t worry – I’ll fuck all the calories out of you soon. Later, B.

We had managed to keep our relationship alive and very much interactive during the ensuing two years we lived apart by visiting each other a few times a month, every month, and engaging in some intense webcam sex over our laptops when we couldn’t. It wasn’t the best solution to our longing for each other – my heart seemed to physically ache when I couldn’t be with him – but it certainly made for some mind-blowing reunions when we DID meet again.

Now as I stood there and looked down at the gleaming gold wedding band on my left hand, those lonely times faded quickly into the background. After two years of our long-distance relationship, I had built up enough of a clientele and had such a wonderfully supportive manager that I felt comfortable returning to my hometown to continue my career. Brian had met me at the airport that day, renting an SUV of all things to hold all the shit I had managed to accumulate in New York City and couldn’t bear to part with. The moment I had seen him I had rushed up to his open arms and molded my body tightly to his as my face lit up into the biggest smile I had ever worn. As I had pulled back to gaze into his eyes, I could see the love and happiness shining back at me and my heart finally felt fully mended again as our lips came together for a passionate kiss, not caring who noticed us because at that moment we were the only two people on Earth.

Brian had amazed me later that day when, instead of taking me back to the loft, he had turned onto the Pennsylvania turnpike and driven southeast into West Virginia to the home he had once told me he had purchased ‘for his prince.’ As we had entered the home, I could hear a fire crackling once more in the library’s fireplace as he took my hand and led me further inside, stopping to kiss me once more in the hallway before he placed his hand around my waist and pulled me gently toward the formal dining room where a romantic, candlelight dinner awaited us. Two men wearing black tuxedos and white gloves had stood nearby to serve us our dinner which was lying on a warming tray nearby, but Brian had pressed a bill into each hand with a polite thanks but no thanks in dismissal as the two men quietly left through the front door, leaving us alone.

The shock over being presented with such an overtly romantic expression of Brian’s love for me had paled, however, as Brian had led me upstairs later to the far corner bedroom that he had somehow managed to convert into the studio of my dreams. He had turned, then, and retrieved the familiar black box with our wedding rings out of his pocket and proceeded to slip the smaller ring onto my finger, telling me he wanted to follow through on our previous plans to get married.

It had taken me all of about five seconds to answer him with a resounding yes as he had lowered me to the leather couch positioned in a far corner of the room and had made love to me for hours on end, affirming his love and commitment to me.

Now, as I gazed down at the same ring ten years later, my heart swelled with love for this man even now; if anything it had grown even deeper over the years. When I had spoken to Brian yesterday morning, I had informed him I wouldn’t be home for a few more days, wanting to surprise him with my return. I had been gone for almost two weeks now, called unexpectedly to Paris to engage in some damage control for a major client of the art gallery where my work was prominently displayed. I knew Jacque Martinique well, having met him several times when he had come to the States on business and had dropped into the gallery looking for artwork to purchase for furnishing his New York satellite office of the import company he owned. Mr. Martinique had become so enthralled with my work and had subsequently purchased several pieces of mine to my delight. When he had recently decided to have a portrait painted of his only daughter that he spoils terribly, he had called my manager, insisting I was the only artist that could properly do his daughter’s beauty justice on canvas, as he called it. I had been flattered when I had received the call to go, but knew I would miss Brian terribly. It had given me the chance to finalize another, even more important project that I had been working on for my husband, though, while I was gone, giving me some privacy and secrecy that I needed, and I smiled as I patted the portfolio containing the finished work under my arm, hoping Brian would love it as much as I did.

I turned my key in the lock and softly opened the front door, closing it quietly behind me. The interior of the house was uncannily silent except for the soft meow I heard coming from the parlor room to my immediate right. I smiled as our cat, Angelo, came rushing up to me and began to rub against my legs. I placed my portfolio and suitcase down long enough to scoop Angelo up into my arms and rub his soft fur against my cheek as he purred in delight and softly mewed at me.

Angelo had been yet another surprise from Brian shortly after we married; actually, Brian had stated the orange, white and black tabby was more of a gift for Gus, who made a habit of coming down each summer to visit with us. He claimed he had purchased Angelo from the local cat rescue place so his son would have a companion to play with when he was at Britin; the nearest home to ours was located over a mile away and we didn’t even know what sort of family lived there. Of course, I didn’t dare point out that the other nine months of the year Angelo would still be a resident with us, or Brian would know I was on to him like I normally was. He had even grown somewhat tolerant of “Gus’s pussy,” as he not so fondly called him, even going so far as to buy him treats on occasion at the small grocery in town. He always handed me the bag to actually dispense the treats, mind you, not wanting Angelo to get the wrong idea that he actually liked him.

I stroked the cat’s fur a few more times before gently placing him back down. Leaving the suitcase where it lay for now, I once more picked up the portfolio and crept down the hallway, having a good idea where my husband would be – in his home office where he normally hung out when I wasn’t home. Sure enough, I poked my head in the doorway and there he was, his face staring down at his laptop, no doubt studying some advertising campaign for Kinnetik. I always chided Brian that he spent way too much time working at home when I wasn’t there to loosen him up…In more ways than one, I thought with a smirk. Even with his multi-millions now, and Cynthia and Ted to help run his business – and quite handily, too – he still worked way too much when I wasn’t around to force him to relax by riding the horses, playing a few competitive rounds of tennis, or racing him back and forth in the pool, the winner getting to fuck the daylights out of the other later.

I silently observed him for a few seconds, his bronze, handsome face softly reflected by the nearby banker’s lamp sitting on the corner of the massive, oak desk, one of the pieces of furniture that we had kept after moving in. Somehow Brian’s sleek, modern brass and glass desk that he had used at the loft seemed decidedly out of place in this majestic, masculine environment.

Even after all these years, my heart still skipped a beat whenever I looked at him and thought about how lucky I was; this time was no exception as he raised his head just then to acknowledge my presence with a look of both surprise and delight on his face and I couldn’t help smiling lovingly back at him. He was naturally quite a bit older now than when we had first met, but he was still the most handsome, glorious-looking man I had ever seen. His hair had remained thick and full with not a hint of gray, mainly due to his insistence in getting his hair colored on a regular basis. His body was still quite trim and lean, the result of the home gym we had installed several years ago in the now-finished basement downstairs. The only noticeable difference in my gorgeous husband was a pair of rimless glasses that he now had to use to read fine print; an accessory that I thought made him seem even more sexy in an intellectual sort of way.

Downstairs next to the facility room was a spare bedroom for Gus, who enjoyed having his own private space when he came down to visit us each summer from Toronto. That was all about to change, however, for as hard as it was to believe, the child that I had been instrumental in naming when he was first born was about to leave for college. Soon he would be coming back down for one more, late-summer visit before we drove him on to Carnegie Mellon where he would be following in his father’s formidable footsteps there while he studied to obtain his degree in civil and environmental engineering. Brian relished kidding his son about becoming a tree-hugger, but secretly he was proud as hell that Gus would be obtaining his undergraduate degree at his former alma mater. Gus had always kidded him that he had developed his interest in civil engineering because he and his father had always played with trains together when he was growing up; his love of the environment, though, was directly attributable to his moms, however. They both were passionately involved in all sorts of recycling and special interest groups in Toronto and their concern for the environment had rubbed off on Gus. Of course, the fact that his son would also be living close by made both him and Brian thrilled, because it meant the child – no, he was more of a man now – that they loved dearly would be a lot closer on a permanent basis, at least for the next few years. To top it off, Gus had made such incredible grades in school up north and had been so involved with various extracurricular and volunteer activities in junior high and high school he had been offered a full scholarship to the Carnegie Institute of Technology, a division of the school.
cv
“Hey, Stranger,” I whispered to my husband as he pushed his leather chair back from his desk and stood up. He took his glasses off and squinted his eyes to refocus them as he placed his specs on top of the leather desk pad, walking around the desk to meet me halfway in the middle of the room.

“Hey, yourself,” he replied as I placed my portfolio down and propped it against one of the overstuffed, matching leather chairs, just in time to be swept up into a pair of strong, lean arms that I knew intimately by now. I grunted slightly as he gave me an almost bone-crushing hug, causing me to have to stand on tiptoes to wrap my arms around his neck as he nuzzled my cheek.

He pulled back just enough to whisper in my ear, “This is a nice surprise. I’m glad I told that trick to go home early now.”

I snorted as we pulled back enough to gaze into each other’s eyes and he curled his lips under boyishly, knowing I didn’t believe that for a second. “Yeah, lucky for him or I might have ripped his balls off,” I told him as he grinned back at me.

Our mouths met for a passionate kiss as we angled our heads to deepen it, our tongues dueling around inside as we became reacquainted with each other. I sighed into his mouth as we finally pulled back, content to be in his arms again. “I was able to come home early,” I told him as Brian peered into my eyes with that intense look that always made me warm inside. “I wanted to make sure I got home before Gus arrived.”

“I’m glad you did,” Brian whispered to me as he leaned down to nuzzle my neck, nipping the lower part of my earlobe right where he knew it always made me crazy. I held onto his strong upper arms as his lips lightly trailed across my cheek to settle once more on my lips as we kissed once more, a little more briefly this time, before pulling apart again. “Get everything taken care of?” he asked me.

I nodded. Yes…That and then some. “Yeah – the client was very happy with the finished product.”

Brian smiled at me. “Not surprised,” he told me warmly as he broke off his embrace to take my hand. “He’d be a fool not to, and I always thought he was a very smart man.” I grinned in appreciation as he added, “I think this might be a good time for me to wrap up my work for the day, Sunshine. How about pouring us a couple of Beams?”

I nodded as he walked over to shut down his laptop, wandering over to the wet bar he had had installed as part of Britin’s remodeling several years ago. Taking the crystal decanter from its brass-and-glass, oval-shaped tray, I poured two glasses of scotch and met Brian over at the couch, both of us sitting down thigh-to-thigh as we took a swig of our liquor. I didn’t dare comment on the fact that we had somehow become a predictable, steady couple over the years; not that I would ever call our marriage boring, but it had diffused over time into a comfortable, contented relationship by now to the point where we not only tended to complete each other sentences, but inherently knew what each of us needed – whether it was space, comfort, companionable silence, privacy, or support. Oddly enough, neither of us dreaded being labeled ‘predictable’ as a result; it merely revealed, instead, how deeply we loved each other and how well we knew each other by now. That didn’t mean that I still couldn’t surprise Brian from time to time, though.

“Any idea when Gus will be arriving?” I asked him as he took another quick drink of his Beam.

Brian nodded as he finished off his drink and set it down on the side table. “He called a few hours ago and said he’d be here by the end of the week, so I’m glad you got home early.” He placed his hand on my thigh and gave it a squeeze.

I smiled as I finished off my own drink and placed it on the opposite table. I leaned back against the coolness of the dark leather, relieved to be home. “Good,” I told him. “It’ll be great to see him before he heads off to school.” I sighed, still in disbelief over where all the time had gone; but they had been good times, so very good. “I can’t believe he’s old enough to go college; has it really been eighteen fucking years since we met?”

Brian smiled as he took his arm and placed it around my shoulders to pull me close against him. “It’s been the longest eighteen years of my life,” he stated solemnly as I promptly smacked him on the leg. “I mean because of Gus – of course.”

I rolled my eyes as I turned my head enough to stare into his. “Yeah – of course,” I deadpanned. I stayed against his side for a few moments, not wanting to leave his familiar warmth before I pulled away from him and stood up, not wanting to withhold my surprise any longer; I was far too eager to show it to him and get his reaction.

“Where are you going?” he asked me in surprise, thinking we were just getting started. After all, we hadn’t seen each other – or touched – in almost two weeks; two weeks without making love and/or fucking our brains out. We had been separated numerous times before – either for Brian’s business or my art – but that just made both of us normally go at it like two horny rabbits as soon as we saw each other again. No doubt Brian was thinking this time would be no different, but first I had to show him my gift to him.

“I have a little something for you,” I told him mysteriously with a soft smile as I walked over to the portfolio I had left propped up against one of the side chairs.

“Well, bring your ‘not-so-little-something’ back over here and I’ll give YOU something, too,” Brian promised with a sexy drawl. I grinned as I proceeded to ignore him, at least long enough to retrieve my portfolio and carry it back over to his side. Sitting down once more next to him, I placed the portfolio flat-side down on the other side of me on the couch and unzipped the pouch to slide my finished product out, feeling Brian’s eyes boring into mine.
“Here,” I told him softly as I presented him with a maroon-colored, leather-bound, slim, 11” X 14” album.

“What’s this?” he asked me as he took it from my hands and noticed the flowing, elegantly scripted gold lettering on the front that read: My Heart Goes With You. Underneath the script was a small, square-shaped photo insert with a plastic sleeve holding the very first photo that had been taken of Brian with an infant Gus in the early morning hours of his birth, around the same time that he had asked me to help name him. The photo had always been a favorite of mine, and I had sneaked it out of its frame in Brian’s office one day, long enough to have it scanned on our home printer so I could use it as the front-cover photo for my project. I watched as Brian’s face broke into a tender smile of recognition as he stared at the picture of him cradling his newborn son.

“Open it up,” I urged him as he looked over at me questioningly. He nodded as he opened the front cover and noticed a small lock of dark hair in a tiny plastic zippered bag, the kind you normally receive with replacement buttons for clothing. It was the perfect size to fit in some of the fine baby hair that Lindsay had lovingly kept all these years and had been willing to part with for my special project. I had asked her for some of it the last time we had visited Gus up in Toronto several months ago, thinking it would be a perfect addition to my gift. On the facing side was a page carefully cut from Gus’s favorite book from when he was a child, The Little Engine That Could.

Brian smiled as he looked at the pages, his fingers lightly tracing the paper. “Gus held onto that book like Linus’s security blanket,” he murmured as I nodded. “And I had forgotten how much darker his hair was when he was first born; he was kind of the opposite of most babies who are born with blond hair and then it gets darker.” He turned to look at me. “How did you get these?”

“I asked Lindsay if I could have them the last time we went up to visit. She was generous enough to share with me when I told her what it was for.” He nodded at me as I urged him, “Take a look at the rest.”

He nodded, appearing eager now to see what else I had placed in the book. The next page held one of Gus’s tiny, round bibs – he was one of the messiest babies I had ever seen. Every time he came into the diner to eat with the girls or with Brian, he invariably wound up with either drool or food residue around his mouth and on all over his clothes if he didn’t have a bib with him. It got to the point where a doting Debbie actually stashed bibs behind the counter just so her messy ‘grandson’ would have a ready supply whenever he came to visit.

Brian laughed softly at the bib I had chosen – it was a terry cloth, light blue bib with the words Dinner’s On Me. At least I had had it cleaned before placing it on the page. “Boy, is THAT appropriate,” he commented dryly as I grinned at him. “You couldn’t have chosen a better one to accurately represent him. That was my Sonny Boy all right! He’s still a bit of a slob, too, now that I think about it.”

“Now, he’s not all that bad,” I chided him as Brian curled his lips under. “At least not when he’s eating something other than pizza, anyway.” Gus typically ordered pizza with extra sauce on it, complaining that it was always too dry otherwise; of course, the end result was that the extra sauce normally would up on him instead of staying on the pizza, but that was part of the fun. Each time, his father insisted on putting a plastic bib on him that he magically retrieved from the kitchen drawer. It was a running joke among the three of us each time Gus came to visit and we ordered pizza, and to Gus’s credit he obligingly went along with it, allowing Brian to tie the flimsy, plastic bib around his neck as we all waited for the delivery guy to arrive at the house.

I grasped Brian’s lower arm as he turned to the next page, which showed a photo of Gus lying on his stomach at the girls’ old house, both father and son fast asleep on the couch. He frowned. “When was this taken?” he asked. “I never remember seeing this one.” He held up his hand. “Don’t tell me – Lindsay strikes again.”

I nodded. “She let me look through her photo albums the last time we visited and told me to take what I needed to make copies.”

Brian raised one side of his mouth wryly. “You told me you were upstairs painting, you sneaky little twat,” he chided me as I shrugged innocently. I grinned back at him as he turned his attention back to the album. The next page held a piece of Gus’s favorite blanket as a child – a Thomas the Train design. Gus and Brian had spent innumerable hours playing with his son’s trains on the floor at the Munchers’ house. I would have been hard pressed to decide which one enjoyed it more, though, as I watched them – Brian or Gus. Gus always squealed in excitement whenever his father showed up with an addition to his train set, because that meant they would be getting down and dirty on the floor with his favorite toy. You could also tell that Gus was totally psyched and ecstatic about seeing his father again, but so was Brian. The look on Brian’s face as he lay on his side, his head propped up with his elbow as he watched his son play with the trains was priceless and conveyed his deep love for his son. I had lost count of the number of times I had sat nearby on the girls’ couch, sketching the tender scene nearby. I had retrieved one of the sketches I had done to place it on the opposite page across from the blanket, somehow feeling it needed to be there.

“That is one of my favorite sketches, Justin,” Brian softly told me as his fingers lightly traced over the charcoal, carefully avoiding smudging any of the design. “You always have made the most amazing candid sketches,” he complimented me as I felt my face flush with pleasure.

“Thanks,” I told him sincerely as I reached over and kissed him briefly on the cheek. He smiled in response as he slowly, almost reverently turned to the next page. It held one of Gus’s first daycare paintings he had done with finger paints. It was on blue construction paper, no doubt chosen to represent the sky because Gus had painted white, puffy clouds at the top. At the bottom were two people that resembled more stick figures than anything else, but underneath it were clearly scribbled the words “Dad” with a backwards “D” and “Justn” with the “I” missing, but who cared?.

I swallowed the tears that threatened to well up in me; that was the first time I ever noticed Gus thinking of me and Brian as a sort of couple, as if we belonged together, and even now it made me feel all mushy and sentimental inside. The other page held one of Gus’s first kindergarten report cards, showing all “Above Averages” in his subjects, including color and number identification and social skills.

“He always was such a smart little fucker,” Brian murmured proudly as he stared at it. He slowly turned to the next page and I saw his fingers shake a little as memories washed over him. It was a photo Lindsay had taken of Gus dressed up in his ring bearer outfit for our wedding rehearsal dinner – that first time when we had eventually called off our wedding. Of course, Gus had ultimately wound up being our ring bearer at our second wedding, but I knew this photo would stir up mixed emotions in Brian. His son looked so handsome all dressed up in his mini Armani suit that day, and Brian had labored extensively in training Gus in what he thought was proper ring bearer etiquette. It had been so difficult for Brian, then, having to tell his son that the two of us weren’t going to be married after all – Gus’s disappointment had been almost palpable as he had curled his lip downward in sadness and he had asked if we didn’t love each other anymore.

My heart had almost broken at that question, but at the time Brian and I both knew it wasn’t the right time. We also knew that we both loved each other deeply, though, and somehow we had managed to make our love grow even stronger after that, despite our temporary separation. And when Gus had eventually been able to carry our rings down the aisle at our outside, springtime wedding in the backyard of Britin a few years later, I could see the joy on both Gus as well as Brian’s face. We had looked at each other then, both of us no doubt thinking the same thing: It’s about time…We did it; we fucking did it…

Brian smiled as he looked at the photo on the facing page – this one showing Gus older, still holding the same ring bearer pillow as we really did get married that day.

I smiled at the recollection as Brian stared down at it. “He certainly takes after his father, doesn’t he?” I commented softly. “Both gorgeously handsome.” Partly to Brian’s chagrin, Gus had wound up being more like me than him when it came to worrying about ‘fashion,’ though. He was more comfortable in a worn-out pair of old jeans and a faded, long-sleeved tee-shirt than designer clothes. Every time Brian had purchased him something outrageously expensive as a gift, his son had promptly returned it to the store where it had been purchased and had gone to a less expensive store, buying fourfold the number of clothing items that his father had managed to obtain with one shirt or one pair of designer jeans. It drove Brian crazy, but he had eventually given up; now he merely gave Gus a gift certificate to the huge-sized mall located near his home in Toronto so his son could go to whatever store he wanted. He did take after Brian in one respect, though, when it came to clothes; no matter how inexpensive the clothes might be, they always fit his lean, tall body perfectly and made him stand out in the crowd among his peers. Gus had definitely been gifted with Brian’s genes in the looks department; he had young women practically hanging all over him wherever he went now.

I heard Brian snort at my comment. “Yeah – what a shame he prefers your clothing taste to mine, though. That was the last Armani suit I managed to get him in – even at our second wedding he insisted on wearing some fucking off-brand.”

I chuckled softly. “You’ll never forget that, will you? You need to let it go, Brian,” I teased him melodramatically as Brian rolled his eyes in reaction. “Take a look at the rest,” I urged him as he nodded congenially.

Brian turned to the next page and smiled, noticing Gus dancing with Debbie at our wedding reception. The differences in their heights made it look slightly comical, but it was still one of my favorite photos. Debbie looked so ecstatic in that photo – I wasn’t sure if it was because she was delighted at being in her grandson’s company, or, more likely, thrilled that I had finally managed to persuade Brian to marry me. Actually, I hadn’t had to do much persuading – by then, Brian had decided to my surprise, and maybe to his, that he rather liked the idea of everyone knowing that he belonged to me and I belonged to him. I never quite figured out how that came to be, or why he had changed his mind, but I didn’t question it. I was just too damned happy to think about it philosophically, and Brian had never given me any reason to doubt his sincerity about wanting to do it since then.

“We sure threw one hell of a party that day, didn’t we, Sunshine?” he said as I rested my head against his shoulder and nodded in agreement. “I’ve got to hand it to Emmy Lou; he really knows how to do it up right.” We sat silently for several seconds, staring down at the photo as we both revisited that glorious day once more before Brian slowly turned to the next set of pages and laughed. On one page was a photo of him and Gus when they had visited the zoo up in Toronto. Just like when he and Michael had placed themselves onto the bodies of cardboard cut-out superheroes several years before, he and Gus had poked their heads through a couple of cut-out seals and I had taken a couple of quick photos of it for posterity’s sake. I had then used them to make a sketch of it to go into the book, only this time I had placed them on the front lawn of Britin.

“I wondered where those photos had gone,” Brian commented. “Somehow I knew they would show back up to torment me one day; you’ve got the memory of a fucking elephant. Why am I not surprised, though? You always did like to sketch me, but it’s normally when I’m sleeping and I don’t have any clothes on.”

I blushed, even though it was true. Even to this day, whenever the light was just so and splayed out on Brian’s magnificent body as he lay on our king-sized bed upstairs, my hands itched to grab the nearest sketch book and start drawing him in full repose. He always was – and always will be – the most gorgeous specimen of man I had ever had the privilege of discovering. Of course, no one else ever had the opportunity of posing for me in this manner – and they never would. After you had seen the best, all the others merely fell away as inferior copies. “I can’t help it if I have the sexiest husband on the planet,” I told him sensibly.

“Well, you’ve got a point there,” he agreed as I snorted softly at his smugness, my hand still resting on his muscled thigh. “I must have had way too much cotton candy that day; I do look a little bloated in this photo.”

I giggled as he slowly turned the page to reveal the next part: a sketch of Gus, Lindsay and Mel in their new home up north. Gus was sitting in between them, his taller height as a teenager readily apparent as he towered over both of them, his long arms slung around both their shoulders as they all beamed at me. I had asked for them to pose for me on one of our recent visits, convincing them to sit still long enough for me to make some preliminary sketches. I was glad I had, because I felt it was perfect for Brian’s album now.

“That’s a nice portrait of them, Justin,” he murmured graciously, for once not making any disparaging remark about Mel. Actually, he and Mel had finally come to a somewhat civil arrangement around each other; at times, you could almost even call it cordial. At least they never fought raucously like they did before, even though they continued to have disagreements from time to time about how to raise Gus. Both of them, though, never disagreed on one thing – their mutual, deep love for their son.

On the other side of the page was one of Gus’s graduation announcements from high school, a ceremony that both Brian and I had attended as we sat with the rest of Gus’s family (the Munchers, my mother, Debbie and Carl) and I had taken photo after photo, both before and after the ceremony. As salutatorian, Gus had been called on to make a speech – one of those typical, inspiring ‘we’re on our way and we make our own successes’ type of speeches – but his voice had been clear, strong and authoritative as he had spoken, and I could see the pride shining all over Brian’s face as he had made it. At the end, the loudest clapping of all had come from my husband as we had all stood up and applauded him enthusiastically.

Now, that boy that I had named as an infant was now about to embark on one of his most important rites of passage – college. I wasn’t sure which one was more nervous about it – Gus or his father. I hoped that this gift I had made for Brian, though, would help ease his anxiety and reassure him that no matter where Gus went, he would always carry a piece of his heart with him. That would never change – of that I was certain.

“The last couple of pages I left blank so I could put some pictures of the two of you together at his party here before he leaves,” I explained to him softly as Brian slowly closed the book and held it silently on his lap and stared straight ahead, seemingly lost in thought. I raised my head so I could look at him better, worried that I had made a mistake in making the book and thinking that it dredged up some regrets or bad memories in him, although I know that Gus means the world to him and I know that Brian could never imagine his son not being in his life now. “Brian?” I whispered a little anxiously. “You all right? I hope I wasn’t overstepping my bounds with the book. I just thought…”

I never got to finish my sentence because Brian turned then and with a shake of his head and gently placed his fingers against my lips to silence me. I saw tears glistening unexpectedly in his eyes as he said, “No, Justin. My God – this is…this is so special. Just when I think you can’t do anything more to surprise or amaze me – you do this.”

My own eyes welled with tears as he continued, “I don’t really know what I did to deserve you.” I opened my mouth to protest but he shook his head again, wrapping his hand around my neck to stare into my eyes. “Let me finish, twat,” he gently reprimanded me with a soft smile. “You always do have to have the last word, don’t you?” I had to grin at that comment as he said, “I just want you to know that whatever happened that night to bring us together – whatever bit of fate conspired to do it – I will forever be grateful for it, because I…” I watched as Brian took a deep breath, still finding it hard even now to really bare his heart, even to me, even though I knew already how much he loved me.

My pulse began to pick up speed because I knew what was coming, and God, I loved to hear it, even now. I will always love to hear it from this man.

“Because I fucking love you so much, Justin Taylor-Kinney,” he breathed out with a hitched whisper. “So, so much.”

I couldn’t help the beaming smile that lit up my face and the few tears that trickled down my cheeks as Brian shook his head in amusement before he softly used his thumbs to wipe them away. Our upper bodies molded together for a firm embrace as we kissed deeply, the cherished book gently falling out of Brian’s lap and landing on the floor at our feet with a soft thud as we proceeded to make some new memories of our own.