Crown Vic to a Parallel World

52

Home?

“Welcome home.” Shawn said as he put the key in the lock of the apartment door.  He twisted the key, but it wouldn’t twist.  He struggled with the lock, but the door wouldn’t open.  Shawn shifted my small travel bag from his right hand to his left and checked the key.  He muttered something I didn’t catch and flipped the keys on his ring.  I guessed that he’d been trying to unlock the new first-floor place with the key to his old fourth-floor apartment.  He jammed the new key into the lock, twisted it, and shoved the door open like he was mad at it.

The door swung wide, and Shawn hesitated.  I guessed that he wanted me to walk in ahead of him.  I lifted my foot to take a step, but Shawn shot forward, blundering into the apartment ahead of me.  He darted into the entryway and did a rapid about-face. “Welcome home.” He said again.

I stepped through the door and let my eyes roam the studio apartment.  Everything about it was a carbon copy of Shawn’s fourth-floor place.  Well…not a perfect carbon copy.  There were a few nuances that were different.  Instead of a balcony off the back, there was a patio.  That much was visible through the glass door in the back wall.  The furniture was slightly different, with a more rounded style than the rigid cubes and rectangles that had made up the fourth-floor furniture.  Everything else, even down to the square of medium-green hard surface flooring that I stood on in the entryway, was the same as the fourth-floor place.

Shawn had tried to engage me when he was having the apartment remodeled, but I didn’t think I had an opinion that mattered, so we wound up picking all the same colors and styles that he’d had before.  As I took in my new surroundings, I wondered if I was getting used to Solum color schemes.  The first time I’d been inside Shawn’s apartment, the coppery orange paint with the canary yellow accent wall over blue carpet seemed jarring.  Now it seemed tasteful, maybe even a little restrained.

The apartment door banged shut.  The noise drew my attention away from my visual tour of Shawn’s new place.  I jerked my head around to see Shawn with his back pressed to the door.  He groped with his right hand until he felt the knob, used the knob to lead his hand to the lock, and clicked the bolt into place with his thumb and index finger.  “Welcome home.” He said again.

“Thanks.” I muttered.  I wasn’t sure what else I should say.  Shawn and I had a staring contest as I tried to figure out why he was nervous.  During the whole ride from the hospital, Shawn felt simmering nervousness.  I’d noticed it when we were checking out of the medical center, and it had gotten worse as we’d gotten closer to Shawn’s building.  I’d wondered what was behind it but hadn’t been able to glean anything from Shawn’s body language or his conversation.

In point of fact, he hadn’t spoken that much.  I wondered why.  Shawn wasn’t afraid of silence.  If he didn’t have anything to say, he wouldn’t say anything.  I’d gotten used to our being together for long periods without speaking.  While I was in the hospital, sometimes when he visited me, we’d go hours without a word between us.  I found it restful.  If he didn’t speak, I didn’t feel any pressure to keep up conversation.  It was nice just having him with me.  We didn’t need to constantly entertain each other.

Shawn’s silence during the drive from the hospital seemed different, though.  Usually when we spent time together in silence, his emotions were content or neutral.  If either of us was nervous, or feeling anxious, we’d talk it out.  ‘Why not now?’ I wondered.  Something was bothering Shawn, something that he didn’t want to talk about.  I wondered what it was.  I wondered if it had something to do with me.

“Welcome home.” Shawn said again and pushed himself off the closed door.  He hurried passed me.  His legs carried him across the room with long, purposeful strides.  He went directly to the closet, dropped my travel bag inside, then came back to stand in front of me.  “Welcome home.” He said again.

I rubbed my face with both hands.  Shawn’s nervousness was making me nervous and the fourth, or maybe the fifth, ‘welcome home’ had been more than enough to set me on edge.  I dropped my hands to stare at him some more.  I felt a ton of pressure in the room but didn’t understand it.  I wanted to scream like the relief valve on an over-pressurized steam boiler, but I didn’t.  Shawn didn’t like yelling and I didn’t have a good enough excuse to yell.  I drew a breath and blew it out so I could calm myself before I spoke. “Yes, Shawn, you said that.  I even thanked you for the sentiment.”

“You did.” He agreed.

“Yes, I did.”

“Yes, you did.”

Shawn stared at me some more.  His manner was making me very uncomfortable.  I rubbed my face again to break eye contact with him and swore quietly into my palms. “Jesus Christ." Having blasphemed and finding that it didn’t make me feel any better, I dropped my hands to my sides again.

Something about the face rub, or the fact that I’d broken eye contact with Shawn, seemed to get him moving.  “Do you want anything?” He blurted with sudden urgency, then he asked me a string of rapid-fire questions that made me feel a little like I was talking to his Uncle Ars. “Do you want to sit, or are you hungry, thirsty maybe?  Would you like tea…or coffee, maybe a snack.  Do you want to sit, or lay down?  Are you tired?”

“SHAWN!” I barked and raised my hand to stop his talking.  I used the hand that I’d raised to rub the back of my neck.  ‘What the absolute fuck is going on with him?’ I wondered as he stared at me some more.  I sucked another breath in and blew it out. “Shawn…Shawn…” I trailed off because I didn’t know what to say.

Shawn leapt into the silence. “Are you OK?” He stepped into my personal space and reached to put his hand on my forehead. “Let me check.  Do you feel well?” He felt my face like he was worried I had a fever.  He monologued indignantly about my condition. “I told Calidi I didn’t think you should be home already.  It’s too soon.  You need more treatment…therapy…should be under supervision.”

I stepped back and flailed my arms to get some space between him and me.  I stopped when my back flattened against the closed door. “SHAWN!” I barked again. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Going on?” He asked and tried to pretend he didn’t understand what I was talking about.  Shawn’s nervousness spiked up to full anxiety.  He closed his left hand in a fist in front of him and wrapped his right hand over it, squeezing the knuckles white as he did it.  I recognized his posture of stress.  That stance would have told me that he was upset about something even if I couldn’t feel it directly.  I was getting worried.  Shawn increased my worry by lying to me. “Nothing’s going on.  I just want to make sure you’re ready to be home, that’s all.  Welcome home.”

I dropped my face in my palms again and rubbed it savagely.  I was starting to feel like Shawn was the one that needed medical attention instead of me.  I needed a minute to collect myself and I obviously wasn’t going to get it while I was standing in the entryway with Shawn. “I have to pee.” I announced and dropped my hands again.

“Do you want me to show you where it is…the bathroom I mean?” Shawn asked like I was a visiting child.

I gritted my teeth at his question.  All kinds of smart-assed responses flashed in my mind, but I didn’t utter any of them.  I didn’t want to make whatever was wrong with him worse, and I didn’t want to prolong the already too-long conversation that was getting both of us nowhere.  I tried to keep my response innocuous instead of frustrated. “No, Shawn.  I can find it on my own.”

I moved around him and crossed the apartment to the bathroom.  I went through the main room that held the octagonal shower stall and shut myself into the little inner room that held the toilet and sink.  All four walls of the little room were mirrored, but they had some kind of technology that kept the mirrors from mirroring each other.  I was glad for that.  I never liked the infinitely repeating image of two mirrors facing each other.  It gave me the creeps.

I didn’t really have to pee, but I figured I may as well try to go while I was in there.  I unfastened my pants and fished my cock out of my briefs.  As I squeezed out the little bit of urine that I had to expel, I admired my new view of ‘junior.’  It was a very strange experience to be able to see the little guy without having to crane my head around a big gut.  I finished peeing and put junior away.  I turned to wash my hands and look at myself in the mirror.

The image that looked back at me still didn’t make any sense.  I knew that the lean man in the mirror was me, but it was so bizarre to see myself without the puffy fat face and the big sagging belly.  I lifted my shirt to see the defined abs and prominent ribs on my hairless torso.  That was new as well.  During my recovery, when my muscle tone first started coming back, Shawn brought up the subject of my body hair.  “What about it?” I’d asked.

Shawn explained that he wasn’t a big fan of hairy men and asked if I liked being hairy or if I was open to a change.  I’d never really thought about it either way.  As I was already planning to model my body into something that Shawn would like, I figured it would be just as well to go all the way.  I assumed that I was setting myself up for an intensive grooming regimen, but Shawn announced that he could take care of it for me.  With just a touch and the application of a small amount of his physical empathic power, he suppressed the growth of all the hair on my body with the exception of my pits and my crotch.  Everywhere else I was as smooth as a newborn.

It was a weird sensation even still, to feel my clothes slide against my skin with nothing rustling in between, but I liked it.  I thought that I’d get Shawn to add some back later, maybe a treasure trail or something.  In the meantime, I liked being able to see the muscle gains that I was making with no obstructions.

I looked better than I ever had in my whole life, though I was still much too thin.  “I’m glad that I can be what he wants me to be.” I said to my reflection. “I still don’t really understand why he wants to be with me, but as long as he does, I want to be what he wants.”

I smoothed my shirt down and stared at myself some more while I thought about the conversation I’d had with Shawn in the entryway. “What the fuck is going on with him anyway?  He must have welcomed me home like six times.  Home…home…” I trailed off and let my mind work on that word.  ‘Home.’ My brain thought. ‘This apartment is my home now.  My home is his home.  My home is his home.  His home is my home.  Does that make it ‘our’ home, or do I live with him?  Can this really be my home?’

“Can this really be my home?” I asked myself aloud. “I suppose it can, as long as he still wants me here.  But…but does that make sense?”

‘Does that make sense?’ I asked myself mentally.  I wondered about that.

“What do I even do now?” I asked my reflection.  I shook my head.  I had no idea what to do.  The rest of my life stretched before me in one long question mark. “What if he decides he doesn’t want me anymore?  What if he already has decided he doesn’t want me anymore?”

I thought about that possibility.  It was a possibility that seemed to fit the situation.  In fact, it tied Shawn’s nervousness up into a neat little package that I could understand.  Shawn had said he loved me at the hospital.  He and I had even made plans for a liaison that evening, but his feelings had been getting more and more unsettled the closer we got to his apartment.  When I looked at his feelings through the lens of his not wanting me, suddenly everything that had happened since he’d checked me out of the medical center made sense.

I tried to reason it out and came up with a line of logic that ran like this. ‘Before the mission, Shawn had wanted to be protected and I made him feel safe.  While I was recovering, he’d felt sorry for me.  Now that I’m almost well, Shawn doesn’t know what to do with me.’

I was like a dog left by its owner to live with relatives, unwanted but not easily gotten rid of.  In many ways, homeless but with a place to stay.  I dropped my face in my hands and let it rest there.  I didn’t rub it.  It was already sore from all the face rubs in the entryway.

“Maybe I can get him to send me home…to Earth.” I said to my palms.  A terrible thought struck me like a blow from a hammer.  I probably didn’t have a home on Earth either.  I’d been on Solum for almost eight months.  That meant I hadn’t been on Earth to maintain my life for almost eight months.

It followed that I’d been evicted from my rented rowhome and all my belongings had either been sold or tossed out.  It also followed that my family, likely my brother Joe…Mary wouldn’t give a fuck.  Joe would have reported me missing and frozen all my assets.  I hadn’t been gone long enough to be declared dead, but…but if I showed up after being away for the better part of a year, that would raise all kinds of questions that I couldn’t answer.

“Oh, fuck me.” I said to my palms.  I was tempted to wallow in self-pity.  I was tempted to cry ‘poor me,’ but then I remembered that, on Solum, I was rich.  Shawn had shown me that the first payment from Ars had been deposited on my ID card.  I could push the little thumb spot and see all those millions of credits sitting there with my name on them.

“OK,” I encouraged myself, “this isn’t so bad.  I’ve got a big pile of money and no responsibilities.  If Shawn doesn’t want me, I’ll…something.  If Shawn doesn’t want me…” the melancholy of that thought gripped me like an icy fist around my heart, “that would be awful.” I sobbed.

In my mind I heard Fidum telling me that he hoped Shawn and I would have a long life together.  “I don’t know, my friend.” I sighed at the man’s memory. “I just don’t fucking know.”

“CHURCH!” Shawn called through the door. “Are you alright?  You’ve been in there a long time.”

“Fine!” I cried out in a voice that broke with sadness.  I cleared my throat and said it again, more manfully the second time. “Out in a minute.” I added.

I felt Shawn retreat from the door and move through the apartment toward the living area.  I looked in the mirror and rubbed my red eyes.  The tears hadn’t started falling, but I still looked like I’d been crying.  I splashed cold water on my face to chill the red away and dried myself with a hand towel.

I clapped my hands once in the mirror and rubbed them together. “Alright…alright, you can do this.” I told my image that didn’t really believe me. “Everything will be fine.  Just go out there and confront him and see where you stand.”

I braced up and opened the door.

*          *          *          *

“Come sit with me.” Shawn called from the far end of the couch as I entered the main room of the apartment.

I weighed my options as I moved into the living area.  I wanted to sit with Shawn, to put my arm around him, to feel his body against mine.  I wanted to let his heat and his natural scent calm my overwrought nerves, but I couldn’t.  I couldn’t let myself get used to that.  I knew that I wasn’t going to get to keep him, or at least I assumed it, so I didn’t want to torture myself any more than I had to.  I had to get used to living my life on my own again.  I had to get used to being alone.

I perched on the opposite end of the couch and sat facing the dead wall screen.  I didn’t want to think about having to leave Shawn, but at the same time, I needed to think about something that wasn’t staying with him.  I also had to get my affairs in order.  If Shawn didn’t want me, and his nervousness told me that he didn’t, I needed to figure out my next steps.  My mind started making plans.

‘I’ll need to rent a place.  I wonder how that’s done here.  Do I need credit?  How can I get credit if I don’t have any records?  I wonder if I’m even a person here.  I have my ID, but I wonder how far Ars went when he created me.  Maybe I already have credit.  I’ll have to ask Ars.  He’ll know what to do.  Maybe he’ll even have a job for me.  I mean, I don’t need one, but I have to do something.  I can’t just sit around for the rest of my life.’

“Church.” Shawn jerked me out of my thoughts by calling my name.

“Yeah.”

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Is it hot in here?” He asked and looked along the six feet of sofa that separated us. “I mean, are you hot?  I thought you’d want to sit with me.  We haven’t been able to be together much while you were recovering, so I thought…” Shawn shrugged and let the rest of his sentence drift.

“I didn’t want to crowd you.” I answered with a half-truth.

“Crowd me?” He asked.  Shawn’s nervousness shot up to anxiety again.  It was a sour, festering emotion.  It felt like a dirty garbage can left in the sun on a sticky hot day.

I was struggling with my own emotions over losing him, and if that wasn’t enough, Shawn’s negative emotions were filling my psyche with an even deeper ugliness.  I reacted by getting angry. “Yeah…I didn’t want to crowd you!” I snapped. “Maybe I’m doing that anyway.  Maybe I’m crowding you!”

Confusion invaded Shawn’s anxiety and added a bitter aftertaste to the rotting feeling of his sour emotions. “How could you be crowding me?  You’re all the way over there.”

‘Is he fucking kidding?’ I thought.  “Are you fucking kidding?” I demanded.  When Shawn didn’t answer me right away, my anger spiked to rage.  I decided to act and launched myself out of my seat.  The sudden leap from sitting to standing overloaded my still-fragile systems.  All the blood drained from my head and its absence made me dizzy.  I had to grip the arm of the couch to stay on my feet.

An instant later, I felt Shawn’s arms around me.  He’d rushed to support me, to keep me from falling.  I pushed him away and stumbled toward the door. “I’ll just go.” I said as I weaved my unsteady way across the room.

“GO WHERE?” He pleaded.

“THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!” I shouted.

I didn’t make it very far.  My head was still spinning from my quick rise off the couch and my upper body had been trying to outrun my legs as I made for the door.  My legs couldn’t catch up and surrendered the losing battle.  They stumbled and I sprawled across the carpeted floor like rag doll dropped from a child’s arms.

Shawn appeared next to me a second later.  He rolled me over and knelt near my head so he could check the damage.  I wasn’t hurt, except for my pride. ‘Can’t even make a fucking exit without fucking it up.’ I scolded myself.

I let Shawn check me over.  It didn’t make sense to continue to fight him, especially as I’d already defeated myself.  I watched the purposeful look on his face as he examined me with light touches from his perfect hands. ‘My God, he’s beautiful.’ I thought. ‘I love him.  I don’t think I can live without him, but I think I’ll have to.’

Shawn finished his examination and brought his frozen eyes to gaze into mine. “It looks like you stood up too fast and lost your balance.  You don’t have the musculature for quick movements yet.  When a healthy person moves quickly, their muscles contract to push blood to the brain.  You don’t have enough muscle to do that yet, so you have to be careful.”

“Does that mean I can get up now?” I asked.

“That depends.”

“On?”

“On where you’re planning to go if I let you up.”

“I don’t have anywhere to go.” I replied honestly.  It took me a second to realize how sad that sounded.

Shawn pressed his lips together in a look of disapproval.  He rocked back to sit on his heels and looked down into my face.  He seemed to make a decision and set about arranging the way I was laying.  He took my right arm, that was at my side, and he bent it so my upper arm stuck straight out from my shoulder, then he angled my forearm to be parallel with the rest of me.

When he had me the way he wanted me, he pressed his hands into the carpet and leaned on his arms so he could get his legs out from under his body.  He stretched himself out and laid next to me.  The work he’d done to my right arm was to give himself a place to lay and a pillow, what was left of my wasted bicep, for his head to rest on.  Shawn settled next to me and snuggled into my body.  He even drew my right arm into his side and laced his fingers into mine.

“That’s better.” He breathed as he relaxed into me. “Let’s talk.  Something is wrong and I want to know what it is.  If this relationship is going to work, we can’t have secrets.  That means no hidden feelings.  I want you to tell me what’s got you upset enough to walk out on me.”

I saw an opportunity in what Shawn was preaching.  He called for openness and honesty in all things. ‘OK,’ I thought, ‘you first.’

“That’s fair,” I said, “you start.  You’ve been on edge since we left the hospital.  Why?”

Shawn’s anxiety returned with a vengeance.  It smothered me afresh with the nauseating, hot-garbage feeling.  He hemmed and hawed.  It was clear that he didn’t want to answer me.  I moved my arm out from under him, giving him time to release it and lower his head to the carpet without banging it, and I rolled to face him.  I propped myself on my elbow and used two fingers on Shawn’s chin to manually turn his head so he would face me.  “Shawn, just tell me.  Even if it’s something terrible, I’d rather have it out in the open than have to keep worrying.  Please.”

Shawn hemmed and hawed some more, but he knew that he couldn’t refuse to answer.  He’d set the parameters for the discussion.  He, more than anyone, had to abide by them.  “I didn’t want to have this conversation like this.” He half-muttered as he avoided meeting my eyes.

My mind spiraled into wild speculation of what he didn’t want to talk about.  I immediately jumped to the conclusion that he was trying to figure out how to break up with me.  I wanted to shout at him to ‘JUST SAY IT,’ but I kept my mouth shut to wait him out.  He finally made the decision to speak.

“Do you like your last name?” Shawn asked me.

“My what?  My name?” I was stunned at the question he’d opened with. “What are you talking about?”

“Incolumitas,” Shawn pressed me, “the name my uncle chose for you.  Do you like it?”

“I don’t see what that had to do with…”

“Church!” Shawn insisted. “Please…please just answer the question.”

I gave in.  For some reason, the topic of my name was very important to Shawn, so I decided to discuss it even though it made no sense to me.  “I guess I don’t care for it.  It’s hard to say and it’s too long.  I spent my whole life with only three syllables to worry about, Church Philips.  Now I have like seventeen.  I’d rather have a shorter name.”

Shawn took a deep breath and blew it out through pursed lips.  He took another and met my eyes with his. “What would you think if I asked you to take mine?”

“Your what?” I asked.

“My name.”

I didn’t get what he was trying to say.  He kept asking me about my name and his name.  I didn’t really fucking care.  He could call me ‘fucking asshole’ if he’d let me stay with him.  I didn’t see why it mattered.  ‘His name, my name…what the fuck is he getting at?’ I wondered. ‘He just asked me to take his name.  I’d be Church Summas.’ The dim bulb that lives in my head flickered and lit with bright understanding. ‘OH MY GOD!’ My brain shouted at me. ‘I’d be CHURCH SUMMAS!’

I took my own deep breath and blew it out.  I needed to stay calm.  I’d spent the last several minutes under the assumption that Shawn had been gearing up to tell me that he didn’t want me around anymore and now…now I thought he was telling me he wanted me permanently.  I needed to be careful.  The next few seconds…the next few seconds were critical. “Shawn…Shawn, what exactly are you asking me?”

A wave of sour anxiety flared inside him and washed over us both.  Shawn seemed to go through a physical effort to locate some courage.  Once he found it, he looked me hard in the eye.  He met my eyes like what he was about to say would be a direct challenge.  I held my breath and waited for it.

“Church.” He said and stopped.

“Church.” He said again and stopped again.

“Church…I want…I’d like…will you…will you marry me?” He blurted finally.

“YES!” I shouted in his face and burst into tears. “YES!  GOD…MY GOD YES!” Pure joy, absolute bliss swelled in my chest.  It flooded my body and cascaded out of me in a jumble of hysterical emotion.  I wept with relief and celebration.  I laughed with overwhelming happiness.  I covered Shawn’s face with sloppy wet kisses of love and lust.  I didn’t know whether to scream or cry or dance or all of them.  The only thing I seemed capable of, was uncontrolled weeping.  I cried like a crazy person and Shawn soothed me with soft words and gentle strokes of his hand over my head.

When I finally cried myself out, Shawn kissed me and told me that I’d made him very happy.  He also said that he was sorry that he couldn’t follow through with his original plans for that night.

“Why?” I asked as he held my head against his chest.

“I had a romantic evening planned, cuddling on the couch, a nice dinner, watching the sunset from the balcony…patio, then I was going to get you in bed and ask you there.  If you said ‘yes…’”

“When,” I corrected him, “when I said ‘yes.’”

“When.” He agreed with a grin in his voice. “When you said yes, I planned to make love to you any way that you wanted me to.”

“We can still do those things.” I suggested.

“Maybe,” Shawn hedged his answer, “but first, you have to tell me what was in your mind that made you think that walking out of here was a good idea.”

I felt silly.  After Shawn had just asked me to marry him, the suspicions of abandonment that I’d been ready to act on just moments ago, seemed ludicrous and embarrassing.  I thought about asking Shawn to drop the question, but I was supposed to be embarking on a relationship with him, one built on honesty and trust.  I had to tell him what had been in my mind.  It was the right thing to do…the necessary thing to do.  I wasn’t happy about it, though.

“Oh fuck,” I huffed, “I thought you were trying to figure out how to get rid of me, so I was going to walk out before you had a chance.”

Shawn reacted with more grace than I might have in his place.  “OK,” he said evenly, “walk me through your thinking.  I want to make sure I know what happened, so it doesn’t happen again.”

With my head on his chest, and his heartbeat in my ear, I walked Shawn through all the self-loathing that had conspired to take his unsettled mood and forment it into the doomsday scenario of him pushing me out of his life.  He listened attentively and even asked a question or two so he could understand my thought process.  When I got to the end of the story, where I leapt off the couch to walk out, I tried to sum it up.  “I’m pretty fucking broken, Shawn.  Like, real fucking broken.  It’s not going to be easy to be married to me.”

“Well, I’m sorry that my nervousness put those things in your head.  I was nervous because I was worried about asking you to marry me.”

“Why?”

“In case you didn’t want to, in case you said no.”

I laughed at that, but Shawn didn’t.  He explained. “I was worried that…because…because you still hate yourself…I was worried that would come between us, like it almost did tonight.  I was worried you’d turn me down because you didn’t think you deserved me.”

I was tempted to tell Shawn that I didn’t deserve him and that I didn’t know why he wanted me.  I was tempted to tell him that he was a dream come true, and for guys like me, dreams didn’t come true.  I was tempted to tell him that he was a gift from God, but that I didn’t believe in God.  I didn’t tell him any of those things.  Instead, I told him that he wasn’t wrong to have been worried, that my self-loathing was a real thing, almost a tangible thing, and something I’d have to work on.

“About the other thing,” Shawn went on when I’d finished talking, “I don’t think being married is supposed to be easy.  I think we’re supposed to challenge each other.”

“Well, I’m a fucking challenge.”

“Hey,” Shawn tapped the crown of my head so I would turn to face him, “try, Church…try to believe that I want you as much as you want me.  I want you to try to believe that I couldn’t live without you any more than you could live without me.  Try to believe that if you would have walked out of my life tonight, I would have been every bit as devastated as you.  I want you to remember that we have nothing but time.  So, you’re a work in progress.  So what?  I am too.  We have all this time now, time that we earned, that you earned for us.  We have time for us, to work on us, to live for us.”

“That sounds wonderful.”

“It is wonderful.  It will be wonderful.  It will be hard sometimes to, but that’s the way life works.”

I grinned at him. “You’re very wise for twenty-one years old.” I teased.

“Twenty-two,” he corrected, “I had a birthday while you were in the hospital.”

“Yeah, I feel like I had one to.”

Shawn chuckled at my sarcasm.  That in itself was a breakthrough of sorts.  For Shawn to laugh at sarcasm, that meant he was starting to understand sarcasm.  He planted a little kiss on the end of my nose. “I love you, you silly ass.”

“I love you to.” I said and had a flash of inspiration.  I followed my love with more teasing. “And I can’t wait to be Misses Shawn Summas.”

My joke earned me the ringing laugh that melted my heart every time I heard it.

Shawn got up, and he helped me up, and we had the evening that he’d planned, almost exactly as he’d originally planned it.  We finished by making love for the first time since the mission.  Shawn didn’t ‘ravage me savagely’ like he’d promised in the tent out on the nameless plains, but he let me know physically that he loved me.  I assumed there would be plenty of time, once I’d built my body up more, for him to ravage me, and for me to ravage him back.

In the warm afterglow of our lovemaking, as I held the man who wanted to be my husband, and basked in the heat of his body, and the snuggly embrace of his love, I admitted to him what he already knew. “I love you, Shawn Summas, more than you can know.”

“I love you, Church Summas, at least as much as you love me.”

I closed my eyes to sleep and discovered something.  In that moment, in the dark with my love, I was at home, I was at peace, and it was wonderful.  My future was still a question mark, but it was a question mark with a heart underneath it, instead of just a dot.  Shawn was more, so much more than I thought I deserved, but I was ecstatically happy to have him.

 

THE END

of the beginning

 

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Epilogue

THANK YOU!!  THANK YOU, YOU WONDERFUL READER!!  If you’re still here, and you must be, because you’re reading this, THANK YOU!  It means SO MUCH that you stayed with me through this long journey.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I hope you enjoyed the story and its conclusion.  I hope it was as fun for you to read as it was for me to write.  I also hope you’re not bored with the world of Solum and the characters of Church and Shawn.  I hope those things because there’s another book coming!  Yup, a sequel.  It’s all written but needs a formatting edit.  I’ll be posting it as quickly as I can, but not as quickly as this story.  Look for about a chapter a week.  The title of the new work is, ‘From Whence I Came.’

‘From Whence I Came’ is the story of Church and Shawn and their return to Earth.  It will explore questions like: ‘How will Church’s family deal with his homecoming?  Will they be glad to see him, or will they reject him for being gone?  How will Church handle the demons of his past?  How will Shawn deal with his husband’s emotional baggage?’  You’ll have to read to find out.

I will tell you that ‘From Whence I Came’ is NOT an adventure story.  It’s more of a ‘slice of life’ kind of a story.  It is more introspective than this story.  It deals even more with people and their thoughts and feelings.  I tell you that, dear reader because I don’t think that information will deter you.  I hope you’ll like the new story.  I think you will.

As for this story, I’d love to have your thoughts now that it’s finished.  Did you enjoy the tale?  What were your favorite parts?  What were your least favorite?  Is there anything you wish we spent more time on?  Is there anything you wish we spent less time on?  I’d love to hear from you.

To all those readers out there who wrote in or commented, thank you!  You made the writing and editing and posting that much more gratifying.  To those of you who read but didn’t write, thanks for reading.

Thank you again,

Sam ‘Church Philips’ Stefanik