"Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey."
Carrie squints to adjust to the afternoon sunshine parading into her apartment. Seconds later, the initial blinding brightness fades and everything slowly comes into vision; her desk, her Mac, Aiden's armchair, the stacks and stacks of fashion magazines... and Big, his usual smirk painted on his face. "Huh? You made eggs?" Carrie asks groggily, looking around disoriented.
"Eggs? Nah. Cheese and bread? Oh yeah." Big replies in his familiar seductive tone that could make anything from cheese and bread to a box of paperclips sound sexy. He holds up a pan of very orange melted cheese and a plate of torn up bread.
"Cheese and bread? What am I, eleven?" Carrie replies dryly. She'd felt like she'd just woke up from a four year-long coma, which could've been possible as she had no idea what day or time it was, plus the fact she felt like she'd about aged four or five years after the experiences she'd had to endure.
"It was the only thing salvageable from that room you call a kitchen back there," Big states with a smile. He was relieved to hear her joke, especially since the couple of seconds she managed to open her eyes yesterday she could barely muster a sentence.
"Wow, you stepped in unexplored territory. What's it like in there?" she jokes, sitting herself up slowly. She felt better but still fragile, like the sleep she had helped put some pieces of her soul into place, but cracks were still visible; deep cracks showing glimpses of the hell concealed inside. She didn't know how long it would take for them to mend fully, to disappear, or whether they even would at all. Maybe she would have to wear some for the rest of her life.
"Oh, it's a lot of fun," he responds, dipping a piece of bread into the cheese and heading it for Carrie's mouth, which she opens accordingly and bites playfully, almost nipping his finger. He snatches his hand back and reacts humorously, "ouch." "So, how is it?" he asks her after a couple of seconds has passed.
"Disgusting," Carrie replies satirically, grimacing with her mouth full.
"Don't you remember?" Big chuckles.
"Don't I remember what?"
"Oh, come on. Second time we were going out? My kitchen? You fed me this just like I am to you now."
"So, what is this, some kind of full circle thing?"
"No, I'm just getting you back," he replies with a mischievous grin.
"Oh really?" Carrie raises one eyebrow suggestively, then dives her fingers into the pot of cheese and wipes it over his mouth. He laughs and flicks some at her face. She pushes him away affectionately and he pulls her down from the bed to the floor with him, the pot of cheese splattering all over them and their surroundings. "Oh great, now I have food poisoning and a ruined carpet," she adds and they laugh together on the tattered carpet, much they like did a couple of months earlier on the floor of a Parisian Hotel, just before Big told her she "the one".
A few minutes later they're still on the floor, Carrie resting on Big's chest, their shared laughter now died down. They both stare at the ceiling in silence, observing the faint cracks she'd looked at by herself yesterday, listening to each others steady breathing, and for that moment Carrie couldn't believe it; she was with Big. They were together.
Here she was, wearing underwear and a Roberto Cavalli Limited Edition halter-neck top she hadn't took off for 2 nights, her hair undone, her face bare with a few extra wrinkles and covered in melted cheese. She was exposed, unmasked, but she didn't care. Her and Big had come a long way from her farting in his bed and avoiding contact with him out of embarrassment. A very long way. They really were war buddies.
Samantha's second time at cancer began very soon after Carrie and Big's third time at a relationship, and this was the first time Carrie felt she was with him. Just him. Her mind not at hospital meetings or chemo sessions or contemplating Samantha's fate, because that was all over. Over in the worst possible way, but still very much over. Samantha still plagued her mind but not in the same way; there was just a deep-rooted numbness/sadness that remained, a pain she wouldn't know how to deal with if it weren't for the man she was nestled into, her Mr. Big.
"I love you," Big suddenly breaks the silence and Carrie's thoughts, turning to her as if he was reading her mind. "I just want you to know that." Carrie looks at him, smiling weakly. She always thought there was something different each time they got together; round two, their affair, their friendship afterwards, but this time, round three, there really was. She didn't know whether it was Samantha or Big's realization at the end of last year, but something was different. There was no game anymore; no chase. They were concrete, she could feel it in his firm grip of her hand. This, she thinks to herself, was the moment she had been waiting for for six years.