ACTIVE PUSHED HIMSELF up on his hands and looked down the length of Grace Palmer’s body, the hills and hollows, to where they were still joined in the middle, her ankles locked behind his knees. “Baby? You there?”
She opened heavy-lidded eyes, now limpid and silver. “No, I’m in heaven.” She closed them again. “I guess it’s true what they say. There’s nothing like the real thing.”
“No argument here.” He rolled off and stretched alongside her on the narrow little cot in Leroy’s sheefish camp. “That boffo splibo still going?”
She groped around on the cooler beside the cot and came up with the boffo. “Nope, it’s out. Why?”
“I was thinking I might give it a try. Walk on the wild side a little in honor of…this. Today. The first time I was ever inside you in the biblical sense.”
She propped herself on an elbow. “You? Smoke a boffo?”
“I’m thinking it might speed up my recovery.”
She handed him a lighter off the cooler.
He lit the boffo and inhaled cautiously, not having smoked marijuana since college.
She took a hit and laid it on the cooler. “Again? Already?”
“Soon. But I have a question first.”
“Ask me anything.”
“Wanna get married?”
“Seriously?”
“Of course seriously. A, we love each other to pieces. B, this, here today, makes me think you’ve, how do I put this, finally exorcised your demons enough to give informed consent. C, if we’re gonna propagate the species, we don’t wanna wait too long to start. And, D, if Helen Mercer does come after us again, we can invoke spousal privilege.”
She chuckled. “Not the most romantic proposal a girl ever had, I suppose, but, then, it wouldn’t be you if it was. So, A, hell, yes, and B, fuck Helen Mercer.”