You Make It Easy

Closeted Romantic.

Maya~

Christian unlocks my front door with his key. I'm not sure when he got that back but he has it and I'm not going to take it away from him now.

He locks the door for me. "Wait a minute. I have one more thing."

"More?" I ask.

"One thing."

He takes me back to my room. I take my heels off since my feet are killing me. This is why I only own one pair of heels and why I never wear them.

He goes over to his nightstand and digs before sitting on my bed. "Come here."

I stand in front of him. He holds out a rectangular teal box from Tiffany & Co. "What did you do?"

"Open it."

I take it from him and open it. I take the ribbon off. I take the cover off. He takes both from me. There's a plastic covering. I move that to see a gold chain and pendant. The pendant itself has an indented C in the middle.

"I've only seen you wear gold so I hope that's right. Otherwise, I can take it back and get you silver or whatever you want."

"No, gold is perfect. Why did you do this?"

"I know this is going to be hard and I want this to work. You know I live in California and whenever the season ends, I'm headed back there. I want you to have a reminder of me if you have a bad day or if you need a pick-me-up. It's also a reminder that I'm always a phone call away. I know you see some gory shit at work and if you need to talk, I'm here."

I hug him. "Thank you."

He kisses me, "You're welcome."

"There's one more thing in there."

He holds the necklace as I lift up the padding. His apartment key is taped on the box, "In case you get sick of sleeping here or if you want to use the pool because it is heated."

"Or if I just miss you that much and I need a reminder?"

"Exactly."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Can you put it on?"

"Yeah."

I turn around and move my hair. He clasps the necklace around my neck. I look at the pendant and smile. He kisses my shoulder as he pulled me into him.

"We're together?" I ask.

"Unless you have any contradictions."

"None."

He kisses my cheek before I turn to kiss him. I think we both feel such a huge weight has been lifted off of our chests. "This was incredible, thank you."

He kisses me again, "You're welcome. You deserve it."

"You good?" Christian asks as his hand runs down my back.

"Yeah," I say out of breath.

He kisses my temple, "Been a while?"

He holds his arm around me, "January."

I lay on his chest, "Really?"

"Yeah."

I've had no reason to sleep with someone else. I doubt my mind would let me. I'm surprised this happened so fast. We've always felt comfortable with each other. There was never a need to use protection or question who each other is sleeping with.

My heart drops into my stomach. Protection. We didn't- I'm not- Oh, god. "Oh, god," I say quietly, not expecting him to hear me.

"What?"