Only Two Options

Chapter Nine

I wake up and momentarily I don't know where I am. Then I feel as though an old friend just died as I remember what happened at the airport with Bryce. I realize that I am in Chuck's bedroom and I remember not wanting to be alone last night. I asked if I could stay with him. I don't know if he wanted me to or not and that hurt me as well.

I think back to yesterday, Chuck was silent on the plane while I cried. He held me trying to comfort me when it was me that betrayed him. Well, maybe I didn't betray him but I sure thought about it.

I look over for him and see that he's gone. I listen and don't hear him either. Just when I start to get up, the door opens and in he comes with a breakfast try.

"I was wondering if you'd be up or not," he said with a smile on his face.

"You made me breakfast?"

"A promise is a promise," he said and then quickly looked at me. "I didn't mean anything by that Sarah. I just mean that we made a deal and I intend to keep my part of the bargain."

"Yeah but we don't know who's won yet," I said smiling at him so he knows I'm Ok.

"Doesn't matter, If you win, I make breakfast for you for a year. If I win, I make breakfast for you for the rest of our lives. The way I look at it. I owe you a breakfast today."

He sits the tray down over my lap and I grab his shirt and pull him to me kissing him as though it were our last kiss. I've never loved him more than I do this second. When I release him he stands and looks at me and then at the food he's prepared.

"You better dig in, I don't want your eggs to get cold," he said.

"The food can wait. What can't wait is my heart. I need to tell you I'm sorry. I'm sorry for even considering Bryce's offer. You need to know that I would have never gone through with it. It may have taken me five minutes of five hours…but I know now that I could never leave you," I say while my eyes beseech him to believe me.

"Sarah, there's nothing to forgive. Let's just forget about it. You're here and that's all that matters."

"No Chuck, that's not all that matters. You would never have done that to me. There's nothing in this world that would entice you away from me. I know that. I want you to know that too…about me. I want to be able to prove that I'm that way with you. If you give me another chance and with time I promise that I will prove it." By now the tears have begun their journey down my cheek. I ignore them as I implore Chuck to say that he will give me another chance to prove to him that nothing is more important to me than him.

"Sarah, let's just start today as though nothing in our past has ever happened. A new day and a clean slate, what do you say?"

I just smile through the tears and nod my head fearing my voice will fail if I try to speak.

"You know what I want to do today? I say thinking of something I can do for him. "I want to look for an apartment."

"That's a great idea. How are we going to afford it?"

"The CIA will help," I say. "It's part of our cover." I see his face seems a little disappointed when I mention the CIA involvement. "What?" I say.

"Nothing."

"Come on. Tell me what's wrong."

"It's just that I wish we could do this without the CIA."

I look at my food. Sort of playing with the eggs while I think, I take my first bite. "You know Chuck, for now, we need the CIA. That may not always be the case. But let's take advantage of their generosity while we can."

"No, I know. I'm just saying…that some day when it's just you and me without the CIA, then I going to know for sure that you're here because of me. Until then, as much as I hate it, I will always have that nagging doubt."

I see he is trying to be completely honest with me. I see that he wants us to reach a new level of communication. With everything that I have inside me, I don't allow myself to be hurt by his statement. Instead, I accept it for what it is. The absolute truth. With everything that I've done since I've known Chuck including yesterday, he has no reason to trust me with every inch of his soul…yet he does. Still he complains about that nagging little voice that whispers in his ear that I'm here only because it's my job.

I grab his hand and pull him down on the bed. Looking deeply into his eyes, I say. "Chuck, I promise you this. I promise that I will never leave you. I will never take another assignment. I will never seduce another man and I will never, ever take your love for granted." I watch his smile grow until he is grinning from ear to ear.

"Sarah, I'm the luckiest guy in the world. Now eat your breakfast, we've got a big day today. I'll contact a real estate agent. We've got some apartments to look at," he says getting up from the bed and going back to the living area.

X-X

"I think you'll like this one quite a bit Miss Walker," Grace Deming said as she opened the door to a two bedroom apartment only ten blocks from Ellie's.

"This is nice Sarah. Look at that kitchen…I'll bet we could cook up a storm in there."

I give him the look. I know he's giving me the business about my cooking ability…or lack thereof. "I'm not the one who will be getting up at 6:00AM every morning," I say to him.

He gave me a quick smile that said touché.

We go back to the bedrooms. Their very large. "Sarah, I can put all my gear in here," he said enthusiastically.

"Chuck, we need to talk about that," I say not realizing we have come to a major crossroads in our real lives as a couple living together.

"What do you mean?" he says.

"I just think that all of the computer stuff would be better in the second bedroom."

"Why would I want to go to another room when I'm on the computer," he said with a hint of annoyance in his voice.

"Well it's just that I don't want our bedroom junked up with all of your computer stuff."

"Junked up?"

"I don't mean junk. It's just that it doesn't look that neat. I want our new apartment to look nice," I say trying to explain what I mean. I move to stand right in front of him with my hands on his chest. "I don't mean to say your stuff is junk sweetie."

"OK," he says calming down. "Let's talk about this when we get back to my place."

We look at four apartments all in all and we agree that we liked the second one best. That's the one that is closest to Ellie's place.

We paid the two months up front along with a security deposit and had availability the next day. We were excited. We rushed to Ellie's apartment hoping that she was there. Disappointment sat in as we saw their parking spaces were empty. Chuck pulled out his phone and dialed his sister.

"Hey Ellie, you at work? That's what I thought. Are you home tomorrow evening? Good, Sarah and I have some big news. No, not that big." He turns to me. "She wants us to do the double wedding," he said shaking his head.

I stop listening to their conversation. That is something I could do that would prove how much I love him…marry him. Marry him alongside his sister. There's only one problem with that idea. I will be reassigned and Chuck will be living in a bunker. But nonetheless…

"OK Ellie, We'll see you tomorrow night," he said hanging up the phone.

We sat in the Nerd Herder and looked at each other. I see the love in his eyes. I grab his hand. "What do you want to do now?" I ask.

"We've gotta start packing, one of us has got to get our stuff together. You wanna go first?"

"Oh yeah, I want to go first. There's no way I'm going have you lay claim to the apartment with your stuff first," I say laughing. "Take me home. No…take me to the hotel so I get moved onto our home." We smile and kiss briefly before he roars away in the Nerd Mobile. All the way to my hotel we laugh, the wind blows my hair around my face with the windows down and the radio blaring some song I don't even know.

I couldn't help but to think…life is good.

X-X

My clothes are packed along with most of my essentials like makeup and my CIA gear. Chuck and I are sitting on the little sofa watching TV. We ordered pizza, no olives, and we are just enjoying being together.

"You know what we need to get tomorrow is a washer and dryer. I am so going to love doing my laundry without someone watching me." I say.

"Sarah, how are we going to afford a new washer and dryer?"

I look at him and realize that although we love each other, he practically knows nothing about my private life here in LA. "Chuck, I make a pretty good living working for the government. While I'm on assignment, my pay just goes into my bank account. Everything here is on an expense account."

"So you have the money to just go out and buy a washer and dryer?"

"And anything else we need." I see the look on his face. He's having a hard time thinking of himself as the under achiever in our relationship. I change the subject to something that has been bothering me since I first thought about it.

"Chuck, you know one day I want to get married." I look at his face to ascertain his reception to my question. So far so good. "We've never talked about some things that most couples in our situation would have talked about a long time ago." I take a deep breath. "How do you feel about children?" I ask.

His head snaps around to look at me. The intensity of his expression, I've never seen before.

"You mean do I want kids after we're married?" he asks.

"Yeah, and do you want a lot of kids or just one. I'm just wondering what you think about the whole subject."

"Sarah, I love kids. I've never thought about having any of my own. I have thought about Ellie having kids so I can be the great uncle who plays with them every time he comes over."

I see that he will make a great dad. I've thought about having a family. Not that often but I lot more since I met Chuck.

"I think I would like to have a family too. I don't know how many but I know one day I want us to have a family." The look in his eyes, if I could capture that and save it to look at when I'm feeling down…I don't think I would ever be unhappy again.

"There's one problem with that, though," I say waiting for him to lock eyes with me before continuing. "I'll need to have surgery before I can have children. You know to undo what was done when I joined the agency."

"What kind of surgery did you have?" he asked suddenly concerned.

"Nothing serious Chuck. I just can't get pregnant right now. You know, it's a job requirement."

"If you say so. Are you sure it's reversible?"

"Completely, it's probably done on an outpatient basis now."

I watch as he looks at his hands in his lap. I know it's his turn to ask a serious question.

"Sarah…are you religious in any way?" he said staring at me intently.

"I don't go to church if that's what you mean but I do believe that there is something out there. Something in charge, in some kind of way. You know what I mean?" I look at him hoping that he treats me gently as I open myself up to him.

"I know exactly what you mean, Sarah. I feel the same way. Sometimes I just know that there's something or someone or you know something watching out for us, making sure that everything works out ok." We looked at each other tenderly. In some ways the sharing of our souls in this manner is more intimate than making love.

"Do you want a church wedding?" he asked simply.

"Frankly Chuck, I don't care what kind of wedding we have as long as I'm Sandy Bartowski when it's over with."

"Yeah, I'm going to have to get used to that. Sandy Bartowski, I like the ring of that," he said with a smile. I guess your cove name will continue to be Sarah Walker, right?"

"Yeah, but we both know who I really am," I say hoping he is not too disappointed that I will keep my cover name.

"Here's a question for you," I say. "Do you always want to stay here in LA? What if a great job came along… say in Oakland or Cleveland? Are you open to moving?"

"I've never thought about leaving Ellie. But I can tell you this…if you have to leave I'm going with you," he said and reached down to kiss me. I grab the back of his neck and kiss him harder than he originally intended. After about five seconds, I feel him respond to me. "Hang on tiger," I say. "Plenty of time for that later." He gives me another peck on the lips before lifting himself off of me.

"Sarah, speaking of job opportunities, what are we going to do with you're job. How are we going to deal with the CIA and us?"

"Not sure yet. Give me a little more time to think about it, OK?"

"I've got one for you…what about going back to school? All you need is one semester. Ever think about transferring your credits here and finishing at night?"

"Yeah, I've thought about it, but not seriously. It's time to think about a lot of things more seriously now," he said.

The evening drew to a close and we started to get tired. We decided to stay here for the night and I got up to get ready for bed. As I was standing in front of the mirror over the sink, I felt that awful feeling that all women feel and knew that it was time for my period. I go to get a tampon and see that I am out. Oh well, I think. It's time for Chuck to cross one more hurdle of being in a close relationship with a woman.

"Chuck, could you come here," I yell through the bathroom door. When I hear him on the other side I open it just a hair. "Could you do something for me?" I ask.

"Anything, you know that," he said.

"Good, would you go to the grocery store and get me a box of tampons?"

Oh, if I had a camera. If I could have captured the look on that man's face. Welcome to the club, Chuck, I think.

I laugh as I think of him in the grocery store shopping for feminine products.