Free Crazy Love You by Lisa Unger Page B

wrapping me up in her arms, cuddling in bed, snuggling when we watched television. I’d never experienced this with anyone before, not even with my mother, as far as I could remember, who was always affectionate enough before Ella came. It was very easy to get used to. I’d taken to hugging my pillow when we slept apart.
    â€œThis is really nice,” I said.
    Julia, who was coming in with wineglasses, stopped in the doorway and smiled at me, then quickly turned around and left to give us privacy.
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    Before we left that weekend, I found a quiet moment and asked Binky if I could marry Megan. I hadn’t really planned to do it this the first weekend, but I was a little swept away by Binky and Julia’s domestic bliss. The whole asking-for-permission thing seemed like a silly and antiquated tradition, but I knew that’s how Megan would want it. Binky was surprised, but polite enough not to be an asshole about it.
    â€œYou haven’t known each other that long, have you?” he asked. We sat on the porch in two heavy Adirondack chairs looking out at the Atlantic. The ocean beat against the shore, a churning mass of gray and green and white. The sky was an ominous gunmetal gray and a flock of gulls were screaming, diving into the surf and coming up with thin silver fish writhing in their mouths.
    â€œDid you know Julia very long before you knew you loved her?” I asked. “Like knew you would love her forever?”
    â€œAbout five minutes, actually,” he said. His gaze stayed on the sea for a moment, then rested on me. “And her dad told me to fuck off when I asked for her hand. He didn’t want her marrying a writer. He wanted her to have some stability.”
    I had to laugh. I couldn’t imagine anyone more stable than Binky—he was the dad you always wanted, loving and present, kind and wise. We should all be so stable.
    â€œBut it’s not just about those first five minutes,” he went on.
    â€œIs this where you tell me that marriage is about hard work and commitment?” I was trying to keep the moment light, and I felt like we already had a pretty good rapport. But his face was serious, though not unkind.
    â€œNo,” he said. “This is where I tell you that life can be hard, really hard. And you know a thing or two about that, I guess. Megan told me some about your history.”
    I kept quiet. Normally, I didn’t like it when rich old men tried to tell me something about life. Because those dinosaurs never seemed to know as much as they thought they did. But Binky was different. He moved in the country-club set, but he was born and raised in Detroit. His dad worked on the line at Chrysler for thirty-five years. His parents struggled to make ends meet, and he got beat up on the playground, and he paid his own way through school. So I took a sip of the beer he’d given me and shut the fuck up for once in my life.
    â€œBut I don’t mean the big stuff—tragedy and money problems,” he said. “I mean the day-to-day, the workaday world, marriage and paying bills and parenthood. It can wear you down, if you let it. And that love, that passion that brought you together? The shine rubs off a little. Never forget those first five minutes, when you thought how much you loved each other was the only thing that mattered. Because in truth it is the only thing that matters. That love is what gets you through all the other stuff.”
    â€œThat’s good advice,” I said. But it didn’t mean anything to me, not then. I look back on who I was in that moment—a punk, stupid and arrogant. I am ashamed of that guy in ratty jeans and scuffed-up Vans, a Death or Glory T-shirt. Even my tattoos, which I really loved, only seemed to prove what a child I was. I had the Batman symbol inked on my left pectoral, and Dark Phoenix down my right arm. Dark Phoenix, her form, her raw power—she ate a