Page 58 of Third Time's the Charm

“And no clear answer?” He watched me like a hawk.

“No.”

He nodded. “I like that answer, actually. It’s real.”

We clinked glasses and settled into the bed. Our conversation for the next couple of hours morphed from the house to hockey to archaeology. We got a little drunk and ate all the food, and when the sun rose, our bodies were melded together as one.

Which was why I totally didn’t see it coming.

Jack wrapped his big frame around me again. The fluffy blanket tucked all around. The temperature and humidity dropped that little bit as night traded with day. Jack whispered in my ear.

“Let’s get married.”

I watched as the sky changed. Light broke on the horizon.

He nuzzled me with his nose. “I love you. I don’t ever want to be with anyone else. I want to grow old with you. I want you to call me on all my shit forever. I love you, Berlin.”

And I loved him. This was easy. “Let’s do it.”

“Yeah?” He spun me beneath him. “For real?”

I stared up at his beautiful, hopeful eyes. “For real. For really real, even. Yes, Jack. Let’s finish what we started.”

Epilogue

Christmas Eve

Calusa Key

One Year Later...

How it’s going

Jack

We got married on Mistletoe Key surrounded by our family and a few friends on the same day we got married the first time. We’re weird like that.

May we always be weird.

And a month after that we found out we would soon be a family of three.

“Look at you,” Erik shook his head, mojito in hand, “you’re proud as a peacock. You’d think knocking up your wife was an olympic event and you just gold medaled.”

He was absolutely right. I was ridiculously proud and excited to be a father in the new year. “Speaking of olympics...I’ve been asked to consult.” My work transforming the Pythons was getting a lot of attention.

“You’re just flying now, aren’t you?”

I looked across the large kitchen of Chris Kaine’s house and found my wife laughing with Zoe and London. “It’s amazing what you can do when you know what’s important.” It felt like dominoes at this point. One great thing led to another, and then another, and then another. “And what about you? I hear the Mantas are about to go through some changes.”

After several successful years of cutting edge baseball, some players were retiring, others traded away, and the team manager decided this was his last season.

He stretched and shook his head. “I’m feeling less like Papa Bear and more likeGrandpaBear these days. I’m the old man on the roster. But I think they’ll keep me around while we rebuild.”

Baseball players knew they had short careers and planned for that. “Are you still thinking of transitioning into coaching at some point?”

He glanced at Zoe and then back at me. “I don’t know. I think I’m just going to let things happen for now. Zoe’s career is on fire and I don’t want to get in the way of that. Plus...there might be opportunities in the front office that are just as interesting.”

“Well if you end up in coaching, you know who to call for advice.”

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