Love Like That

Bering and Wells - "I want to be improbably beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings." - Mary Oliver - I just kind of want fantasy to be real life, just for a day.

Day 28 - Ferris Wheels

"You mean that in all this time you've never been on a ferris wheel?"

You shake your head no, immediately regretting not having lied.

"How have you managed to avoid it?"

You shrug, peering up at the giant metal contraption with trepidation. You understand the physics behind it; the triangular supports, the constant movement, the angles that allow it to spin without crumpling to earth under the force of gravity. But still, you've never trusted them, not when the first one premiered at the 1893 Chicago World Fair, and not today. But she is tugging you forward with bright green eyes and childlike enthusiasm akin to that of your children when they were still young enough to believe in the magic of fairytales. You have never been able to resist her when she gets likes this -positively glowing with excitement - and you are not about to start now.

You let her pull you into line, and then up the steps onto the platform. You sit beside her in the small seat and allow the man working the machine to snap the bar into place across your laps. She's practically bouncing in her spot, as, with a loud cranking and groaning of gears and accompanied by the upbeat tin music of a carnival, the wheel begins to turn. It moves slowly, inching you up, up above the heads of the crowd milling about, above the food stands and the other rides, until you're 100 meters away from the ground and 300 feet closer to the sky. You've been in airplanes of course, plenty of times, and the skyscrapers lining today's city skylines, and so it is not the height that has caused your pulse to suddenly begin pounding in your ears; it's more the fact that you can name at least fourteen ways the mechanics of this machine could suddenly fail, sending you and the woman you love pitching towards your deaths. You force yourself to take a deep breath, and ignore the tiny voice in your head that lists the lack of safety features. You are adventurous. You take risks every damn day; it's your job. You've looked down the barrel of a gun more times than you can count. You're a mother for God's sakes. Nothing is more terrifying than that. The wheel shudders to a halt, leaving you and Myka at the pinnacle of its rotation. You open your eyes and peer bravely around you.

She holds your hand in hers, and you can feel her eyes on you, waiting for your reaction. "It's not often I see the great HG Wells at a loss for words," she teases after a moment. "Bit speechless there, darling?"

You are. But when you turn to look at her to ask if she's seeing what you're seeing, the town of Ithaca, New York spread out before you, streets running haphazardly this way and that, the people looking tiny on the sidewalks, rushing to and fro like ants, your words get lost somewhere between your brain and the air. It's better than flying, is what you mean to say. Or maybe you wanted to tell her, It's wonderful. Thank you. But you take in her flushed cheeks, her flyaway brown curls that have less than one hundred but more than five strands of gray in them these days, her eyes, shining the color of sunlight through a maple leaf, and, "I'm always speechless when you're nearby," is what comes out instead.

She groans, "And a charmer, too."

But, you're suddenly serious because things get crazy quickly in the lives you lead. Secret agents working in a Warehouse of endless wonder that doesn't exist except in the most classified of documents. Mothers raising two teenage children who like to argue and argue some more and who are more logical and intelligent than they should be at 16 and 14. You're on the road more nights than not, traveling across the globe in search of dangerous and fantastical artifacts that are more likely to turn you crazy or kill you than not. And you're afraid that you don't tell her enough, afraid that you forget, in the hectic of the everyday, to remind her how stunning she is. How she still manages to take your breath away when you're least expecting it. How when she smiles at you in that way she does - the first buds of the crocus in spring, a perfectly worded sentence that rises off the page and comes to rest within your heart, the lights of home shining in the darkness - your lungs stop working properly and your soul, the one you weren't sure you believed in for more than a century, takes flight. You're afraid that you forget to tell her these things because when she holds your hand, words suddenly seem inadequate and silence is the easier route. But sitting at the top of a Ferris Wheel is as good a time as any to attempt to make up for the times when you said nothing.

"Do you remember the first time we met?"

"Yes," she says, squinting at you.

"And the second?"

"Also a memorable occasion." She wants to ask where you're going with this, but she holds her tongue.

"And that night you got back from a two-week trip to Finland at three in the morning and you crawled into bed and woke me up with your icy cold feet."

She nods, laughing, "You were extremely annoyed, I believe. Threatened to kick me out of bed."

"But then you wrapped your arm around my waist and you told me to stop being so ridiculous and you kissed me back to sleep."

"Yes," softly, fondly.

"And remember the year you tried to make Claudia banana bread for her birthday except it came out burned and tasting of charcoal?"

She hits your arm gently, "You said it was fine."

"I lied," you admit easily, shrugging your shoulders.

"That was the night Claudia and Pete saw the ring," her hand goes unconsciously to her chest as she says it, touching the place where a thin silver band on its delicate chain rests against her skin.

You nod. "The time Cora asked you to teach her how to paint, and you said you didn't know how, and the two of you ended up splattering her wall with an hundred different colors. And when I asked you what it was later that night, you grinned at me, blue paint on your nose, and simply said, "It's love, darling. Like this -" and then you kissed me?"

"Like this," and she kisses you again, tasting like humor and happiness.

"Or five minutes ago when you practically dragged me onto this horrible ride, like a child with a new pony," but you kiss her this time to let her know that you're teasing.

She blushes none-the-less. You love her. You love her as the bird knows south from north in the autumn, north from south in the spring: implicitly. But you do not know how to tell her this, how to explain that even now, years later, you can remember the ache that was missing her when you spent those years apart, meeting only here and there, fleeting and insubstantial without her by your side. You are at a loss for words, because there are no words in the english language, in any language, to explain that she is both your north and south, your compass and your map, your home and your heart.

"I think -" And she looks at you, reads you, reads the lines across your skin and the words you cannot decipher on your own, and her eyes crinkle at the corners as she smiles softly at you, and suddenly, you know. You know how to tell her. "I think I'll love you forever, Myka Bering." Forever has always seemed such a daunting thing, even for one such as yourself. You, with your more than unhealthy obsession with time and a mind that looks for any way to get more of the blasted thing. But, here, above the world and alone with the woman you love, forever suddenly seems a wondrous promise, no matter how long or short it may turn out to be.

"I know," she answers, and it's not what you were expecting.

"Do you?"

"Of course." She says it as though it is the most obvious thing in the world. "Sometimes it's scary, how much you love me."

"Is it?" You are suddenly worried.

"Mhmm. You can be so fierce." She runs a hand lovingly down your cheek, and you lean into her touch automatically. "Remember the first time we met?"

You smile.

"And the second time? And all of the times you've let me put my cold feet against yours to warm them. How you ate that horrible banana bread and lied and told me it was good? Remember the time you laughed at that speck of blue paint on my face for weeks when it wouldn't wash off, but each morning, you'd kiss me and say, "It's just a little extra love, darling.""

"Yes. Yes to all of the above," you are grinning like a fool now. "Sometimes it's scary how much you love me," you repeat her words back to her, and she is so beautiful. So. So. Beautiful.

"I'll love you forever," and the promise slides so easily from her lips that you aren't sure she's even spoken aloud.

"Will we always be this happy?" you ask the foolish question as the ferris wheel jolts back into motion, taking you down, back towards solid ground.

But she does not give you a foolish answer. "No," she says simply. "But we will always be in love." And you cannot argue with logic like that. With love like that.