Page 84 of That Weekend in Paris
“Take all the time you need. I’ll be here.”
Klein
“One word
frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.”
?Sophocles
Fourteen months later
I’M SO NERVOUS, I can barely think.
Noelle and I walk among the early French paintings in my favorite section of the Louvre. I carry her with my right arm, answering her baby-talk questions with full answers because I mostly understand what she’s asking when she points and babbles. I kiss her soft forehead, and she reaches a palm for my chin, grabbing and giggling.
“Okay, naughty Noelle,” I tease, and she wriggles to my left arm, still laughing. The sound never fails to melt my heart.
I glance at my watch. She isn’t late yet, so I don’t know why I’m nearly sweating with nerves. I try to distract myself with more tutorials for Noelle, telling her who painted the enormous framed painting in front of us.
I feel her walk into the room before I ever turn around. I just know that she’s there. Praying I’m right, I force myself to look, my heart thudding and thumping with all the elegance of a thirteen-year-old at his first dance. “Hey,” I say, my eyes drinking her in.
“Hey,” she says, shy as I’ve never heard her before.
I walk over to stand in front of her. “This is Noelle.”
“Hi, Noelle,” Dillon says, reaching out a hand to offer Noelle a finger to shake. Noelle does so with her chubby hand, and Dillon visibly melts.
We look at each other then, our eyes meeting, holding. I don’t bother to hide how happy I am to see her, and if I’m right, she’s just as happy to see me. “Thank you for coming,” I say.
“Thank you for asking me.”
“I wasn’t sure you would.”
“I wasn’t sure I should. But here I am.”
Suddenly, my plan feels clunky and not well-thought-out. What if I’m wrong? What if. . .I’m not going to let myself back out now. I reach for her hand, tug her gently across the room to the painting titled,Trussing Hay.
She looks at it and smiles. “I’ve thought of this painting so many times.”
“So have I,” I say. “And of our conversation about what it takes to create something lasting.”
She looks up at me, nods, quiet, as if she knows I have something more to say. Noelle patty-cakes my cheek. I tickle her belly and say, “I’m pretty sure whatever art I’ve created isn’t going to endure as long as what these artists created has. But there are two things in my life that I know will last. My love for this little girl. And my love for you, Dillon.”
The surprise on her face is instant. Her voice breaks across my name. “Klein.”
“Will you marry me, Dillon? Be our family?”
The tears slide down her face now, and I lean in to kiss her softly, with everything I feel for her completely evident. Noelle smooths a hand across Dillon’s hair and coos.
Dillon is outright crying now, and she slips her arms around my neck, hugging Noelle and me both at the same time. “Yes,” she says near my ear. “Yes, yes, yes.”
We kiss again, but this time there’s nothing tentative about it. It’s hello, I’ve missed you, I want you, I need you. I feel complete, this circle of three we make, as if I will never need another thing to make me happy.
I pull back in a bit. “You have any opposition to getting married in Paris?”
“No opposition,” she says, kissing me again. “No opposition at all.”
