So one chapter and an epilogue left! Thanks so much for all the love, and I'm glad you're liking the Expat wrap up here!

I've been blogging up a storm lately, and I'd love it if you checked it out: seastarr08(Dot)wordpress(dot)com. I posted a recipe for Rapture Pie earlier. It was orgasmic.

Sookie

I leaned my back against Eric's chest as we both lay back in the chaise I'd bought for the backyard the week before for tanning. We hadn't said much for a bit, but that was okay. We both had a lot to think about.

But at least we were doing it in the same county. On the same chair even.

I smiled to myself as I felt his fingers gently tug at my hair, pulling it into an imperfect French braid. He was a pro at Ce's hair now, but it had taken some time. Hair braiding didn't come naturally to him, even though he'd once had hair as long as his daughter's.

We both flinched, pulled out of our silence by Pam's ringtone on his phone. The song was unfamiliar.

"What's that ring?" I turned around and asked, as he went to answer.

"Egg raid on Mojo. Beastie Boys. Inside joke." He smiled with a shrug and answered. "Hey. Yea, we're here. Come by whenever. Yea, it's fine, we're just in the back. The front door is open. Yea, we're wearing clothes. Don't be weird." He hung up. "They'll be here in twenty minutes or so."

"Do we just tell them that we're having some Mom and Dad time? Are we going to confuse them?"

He nodded. "Probably. But probably no worse than we've already confused them. I think Max gets it more than we think, and Ce, well, she's going to be a bit of a spoiled brat no matter what we do." I glared at him as he chuckled. "What? She's related to Pam."

I shook my head. "And to me. More me, than Pam."

He kissed my forehead, and I closed my eyes. "Then she'll be fine. She won't remember any of it in a couple of months, just like she's forgotten about me being in Paris. It's not like we screamed and fought in front of her and called each other names."

I nodded. We had been very mature about everything, and that was something small to be proud of. "Here's hoping."

"We can explain it to her. She seemed to have the time out concept down."

I cocked my head at him, as I swung my leg over his so we were facing one another. "She asked when you were getting out of time out?"

He shook his head. "She asked when you were getting out of time out."

"So she knew the deal then." I shook my head back, grinning as he reached out and gently cupped my face, running his thumbs over my cheekbones. "She's too smart for her own good."

"They know that we love them, more than anything, and that's really the most important part, as far as I'm concerned." He shrugged. "What can we do besides that? We're going to make mistakes, probably far worse ones than this."

"That's a fair point." I sighed. "My Mom once left my brother in a mall. We had to pick him up at the police station, and he turned out okay."

"Um, I've met your brother, and that's a cautionary tale at best." He wrapped his long arms around me and pulled me to his chest. "We've got years to make this up to them. But eventually, it's just going to be you and I."

"We always said we'd make sure we were good." I wrinkled up my nose. "I think we assumed because we were sleeping together, we were okay."

"There are actually statistics that show that couples have sex more when one is cheat..." He stopped himself. "I didn't mean anything by that. It was in a paper I read in a journal last week." The stammer in his voice was evident, and out of character, but kind of cute.

I let him squirm for a minute, before squeezing him back, and burying my face in his chest. "That's interesting."

"Yea, it is. And I guess that's the thing about statistics. They don't apply to everyone..."

"I don't think we should have sex like we did last week," I interjected. " I think it was a bad idea, and I think if we hadn't spent the last four months trying to recoup all the sex we didn't have when you were here, we might have actually talked, and not ended up in this mess."

He raised his eyebrows at me. "Okay."

And then I just put it out there. "I wouldn't cheat on you. If I ever felt like I wanted to, I'd always have enough respect for us to talk about it with you, because it would probably be indicative of bigger problems."

"Yea, it would be. And I plan to ensure that we never have to have that conversation."

The kids took a week with Pam better than expected, and I couldn't help but notice Max give Eric a high five on his way out, with Ce following behind him, beaming. I shot him a look once they were out the door. "What was that about?"

He watched Pam pull out, and closed the front door. "The kids know we're happy. They're smart. They know we're working it out."

I looked up at him, his face exuding confidence. In us. I felt bad being the one that said what needed to be said. "What if we don't work it out? We haven't really worked out anything yet."

"That's not really an option. At least not for me."

"So you're going to just push and push until we're fine?"

He shook his head. "No. Unless that's what I have to do to make sure you understand how seriously I take our relationship. It's the most important one I'll ever have with anyone."

"That's a lot of pressure, you know."

He nodded. "It is. But it always has been."

"For me too. God, if I failed at this again, after all this, I'd think there was something really wrong with me." I felt my eyes well up. I'd been really hard on myself over the last month, wondering what it was about me that made the most important men in my life either think I was a pushover, or so fragile that they couldn't lay it all out there for fear of hurting me.

Eric nodded to the couch and we sat down, one of us on each end, a whole cushion between us. I wasn't sure we'd ever sat so far apart. "I need to not let you get away with recoiling like you do. I think I thought it was a Bill-specific reaction, but you don't enjoy confrontation. I should have taken that into account."

"But I don't want you to tiptoe around me because you're afraid of me pulling, well..." I wiped my eyes. "A me. And doing this."

"Maybe we both just need to adjust a bit. Meet in the middle. I don't know. All I know is that I don't want to do what we just did again. Ever. So the way I see it, we just need to work around that."

Planning a dinner out was a good call on his part, because it meant we had to get on with things instead of sit there all night and chew on our what ifs. Instead, I showered and we both changed into our casual finery, me in a maxi-dress and a cardigan I'd bought a couple of weeks before, and he into a pair of dark jeans and a white button down that I loved him in.

"New dress?" he remarked, as he held the car door open for me.

"Yep."

"It's nice." He lowered his eyes, and took it all in. "Good stubble dress."

I snorted and smacked his arm. "My legs are very smooth. I found a waxer down here, I'll have you know."

"I don't care about any of that, you know." He shook his head. "But I never did. I don't know any men that really do."

Dinner was nice, with both of us more subdued around each other than we had ever been. We'd always been very comfortable around each other, and we still were, as we picked away at our dinner, but this was kind of a new version of us, a stripped down, humbled model. I remembered that early tension, we used to have, and when I thought about it, I really had no desire to go back to that. I liked the certainty we'd developed over time, the stability. Even if it had been wobbly lately.

Maybe we were like one of those silly inflatable punching bags with the weights in the bottom that never really toppled, just came close from time to time, but always managed to right itself. It was our natural reaction.

Eric

We were careful with one another on Monday and on Tuesday morning, very early, had a bit of a brawly setback on when things got a little raw after a rehash of my decision to go to Paris. I kind of understood why she didn't make more of a fuss about me going, since she didn't want to appear too needy and insecure, but we made a decision right there that we needed to shift our priorities a bit, when it came to work and family, and that were finally at a position in our lives that we could afford to do it if it was ever a necessity. We owned our house, and most of the Hamptons house. We had a basement we could rent out and make more off of than Cat was paying if we needed the income. There were freelance things we could both do to make ends meet.

Neither of us needed to do things we didn't want to do. At least not big, life altering things. We were damn lucky in that. We'd never had to fight about money, or career fulfillment. There were other things, but they were nice to take off the table.

It had taken numerous people pointing it out to me, but taking the semester in Paris, no matter how bullied I'd felt was not the right thing to do. If I'd taken the same path I did when I got back and covered things administratively, I was important enough that I could have gotten out of it. Mind you, I might have had to teach a night class for a semester or two, and it might have taken me an extra year to become Chair, but when it came down to it, those were the kinds of everyday challenges that Sookie and I were pros at working through, because we could work through them together. Working a night class would have simply meant I would have been home during the day more and would have picked the kids up for school and not put them to bed a couple of times a week. We would have griped and groaned and complained about it, but we would have adjusted, and done it together. I had tenure; it wasn't like Appius could have realistically fucked with me that much.

But when my hand was forced, I'd really been unable to see the forest for the trees. And I shouldn't have counted on Sookie to point it out for me. She didn't know the inner workings of my profession anymore than I knew the inner workings of hers.

I smiled over at her, typing away furiously at her laptop as she cleared out her inbox. I'd promised to leave her alone from nine to one each day so she could get the work she needed to do finished, since she wasn't on vacation. I wasn't really either, but it was the last week of classes and my TAs could just as easily hand out the finals as I could. I was still checking email and responding to student snivelling about grades and missed finals.

She cocked her head at me and closed her laptop. "Why did Bones want me to ask you how your leg was?"

Because he'd hit me with an egg on Saturday night and left a huge bruise on my thigh. Asshole. "Who knows. Maybe it's some British thing."

"Bullshit." She raised an eyebrow. "Maybe I don't want to know."

"Probably not." I closed the biography of J.D Salinger that I'd picked up a few weeks earlier. "Done for the day?"

She nodded. "Yea. What do you want to do?"

"Beach?"

"Sure." She wandered into the bedroom and came out a minute later in a towel, a telltale halter peeking out the top. "I'll make some lunch to take."

We ate and then fell asleep, the warm sun and the cool air off the ocean providing the perfect temperature for napping. A person would wander by now and then, but because it was still early in the season and early in the week, the beach was all but deserted. When I woke up, some time later, we were nose to nose and the wind had picked up a bit, blowing sand onto the large navy and white beach blanket that we'd spent many a summer on.

"Sook," I whispered, running my hand over the side of her face. "We're getting crispy, and I don't think we want to spend our later years looking like Louis Vuitton. We should go in."

She opened her eyes, a smile playing across her face like it always did when she woke up. I always thought she was loveliest in the morning, breaking away from some dream that I hoped I was a part of.

"Kiss me," was her reply, as she draped a hand over my hip and pulled us closer together.

"Mmm," was mine, as I pressed my lips against hers, sliding a hand around her back. She was so warm. And relaxed. We'd been sleeping together, in bed anyway, for the past couple of nights, but when I'd brush up against her, she'd be tense, and I knew what she was thinking, because as much as my libido was fighting it, I agreed. Reverting to familiarity of sex with her and I would have been an easy fix to regain the intimacy that we'd lost, but it would have been a band-aid solution.

I tugged the blanket over us, and kissed her hard, as she draped a leg over mine.

After twenty minutes or so of our sunglasses banging together and seabirds coming a little too close to our discarded lunch, she pulled away. "We can't do this."

I tried not to look disappointed. "Oh, right. Of course."

She shook her head. "No, I just mean out here. I'm not getting shit on by a bird, or peeped at by some old eccentric Hamptonite." She stood up and pulled her towel around her. "I wanted you to understand about Paris on your own, and I think you do."

I nodded, gathering up our things, very awake at the prospect of having non-awkward sex with my wife. "I'll probably never have the opportunity to reject something like that again, but I promise if it comes up I will."

"Or we'll figure out a way to go together." She linked her arm with mine, as we walked across the street and up the driveway.

If I had to compare our reunion to any sex we'd had in the past, it was certainly the first time, in Maine, on that snowy day in December that came to mind. It was quiet, sweet, incredibly satisfying, and new, but somehow familiar.

But still completely us.

I worshipped every inch of her and really, it was one of the most 'in the moment' experiences I'd ever had. I didn't think about how close we'd come to fucking things up, or how we could have been spending our time if we weren't where we were, physically and emotionally.

We lay there, one of her legs between mine, and her head on my chest. "I egged Sam's house. That's where the bruise came from. Bones' hit me with an egg. It hurt, but at the time I was so drunk..."

"I don't know if I want you two being friends if you're going to pull stuff like that," She said, wrinkling up her nose. "You're in your mid forties. He's almost forty too. I feel like you two, I don't know. You're probably too much together."

"It felt really good though," I said, unable to control the grin from breaking out on my face. "Fucking Sam and his bullshit."

"Yea, I can see how that would have felt good. You're lucky you didn't give him another heart attack though." She tugged at a couple of pieces of my chest hair, which caused me to writhe in pain.

"Ouch."

She patted my chest. "I'm sure a heart attack hurts a hell of a lot more than that."

"Question. How does Sam afford his house?"

"He invented extreme couponing. He was doing it before it was fashionable," She giggled. "His uncle invented the Pocket Fisherman or something stupid like that. How stupid is that door knocker?"

"Really stupid."

"He's selling real estate now. Go figure." She smiled. "I saw a billboard with his ugly mug on it in Queens on the way out here last week."

"Next time we egg his house, I'll invite you along. You should see Pam run in four inch heels. It's really amazing."

She tapped my nose. "There will be no next time, Eric Northman. And Pam went too?" She rolled her eyes. "Honestly. And you're going to tell our kids what they can and can't do?"

"Yes, because I'm not going to tell them about that, probably ever."

She tapped my chest. "But they will know that you had a baby with someone else when you were very young. You should want them to know who you are. You're fun."

"Ce didn't think I was fun when I had to spank her a couple of weeks ago for hitting Lil. I felt really bad about not talking that over with you first."

Sookie's eyes went wide. "I had to spank her too! She coloured the entire kitchen wall with black marker while I was in the shower. That's why I had to paint."

I shook my head, and then started laughing. "I guess we know why she was so happy when she saw us together. We don't spank her when we're together."

"I never wanted to spank her. I think it hurt me more than her. I felt like shit for days."

"Me too. Her, with those eyes that look just like yours, and that damn lip wobble she does."

"She learned that from Pam." Sookie smiled mischievously.

"Oh, no. Don't you blame that on Pam. That's all you. We never discussed spanking. It was odd to make that decision on my own."

She raised her eyebrows. "Welcome to the four months you were in Paris. Not fun, single parenting, is it?"

"Touche, Lover," I patted her head. "Want to watch some Jeopardy? We're still tied, right?" I winked at her, as we both rolled off the bed.

She snorted, as she pulled her robe on. "If by tied, you mean I'm up like forty grand, then sure."

I tugged a pair of sweatshorts on, and we resumed our position on the couch, her back pressed up against my chest, and a ratty afghan from her Gran's house in Louisiana pulled over us. I hadn't seen the afghan since Max was a baby.

"Do you think we should see a therapist?" I asked, when it became clear there was no chance in hell I was going to win.

"I don't want to see a therapist," Sookie sighed. "I don't think a therapist is going to be able to tell us anything we don't already know deep down. I know I need to dig my heels in and talk about my problems, and you know that your ego is huge and sometimes takes control of your brain. I know that you think I'm fragile, and sometimes hold things in that you shouldn't because you're afraid of hurting me, because I kind of freeze up when I'm wounded."

I exhaled a sigh of relief. "I would have, if you'd seen the value in it, but I think we're both self-aware when we take a step back and think about it. I think we just really need to work on being a team, like we always have been. We're a really great team."

"Maybe we just need some sort of code that we can insert into the conversation when things start to feel a bit off. Like a relationship safe word that indicates that we need to have a talk, and then we can force ourselves to do what needs to be done, before it blows up."

That was actually kind of smart. "Final Jeopardy?"

She turned her head and looked up at me, before rolling onto her back. "Sure. That works."

"I love you Sook." I kissed her forehead. "You know if you'd Final Jeoparady'd me in Paris, I would have been on the first flight back."

"I think you needed to do that. I don't know why, but I think you did. Maybe to remind yourself that you still had it, whatever it was that made you you before we came along? That's something I struggle with from time to time, remembering who I am without you and the kids, and for me, it's work. It's work for you too. We were always about work. It's hard to shift your priorities, especially when you like what you do."

I exhaled loudly. She'd hit the nail on the head there. "That might have been it. It's different, huh? I mean, we've had kids for a lot of years now, but there's still that hark back to doing the things you need to do."

She nodded. "I know. Remember, I took a promotion I didn't really need at the same time you went. I could have said no, given the line about family and time, but I didn't even think about doing that."

"We're a lot of years away from retirement," I said, thoughtfully. "I guess we're going to have to just be more aware of the ramifications of our careers on our home lives."

"It's ironic, in a way, since we met through work, that work would cause so many problems in our relationship down the road, since it's been the cause of so much success in both our lives in so many ways." She gave a little shrug. "Well, we've had lots of time to think about this now, and how to be better, for us and for the kids. Do you think we can actually do it?"

I didn't have to think about it. This was too important to have any doubts about. "Yes. I think if anyone can do it, it's us, and I'm actually excited to try, for us to try. I think we've both taken a lot for granted for a long time now."

"Me too." She rolled back on her side and pulled my arm around her. "Now, I believe I have a Jeopardy game to win."

The first night we were home with the kids, we ordered pizza and all sat in the living room, and performed our carefully rehearsed 'sometimes even Mom and Dad make mistakes' speech. The kids listened intently, and when we asked if they had any questions at the end, we got some unexpected ones.

"Can I put Max on time out?" Ce asked, glaring at her brother. "He wouldn't play Barbies with me."

Sookie shook her head. "Nope. Only Mom and Dad can assign time outs."

Ce wrinkled up her nose. "Did you spank each other?"

Sookie practically spit out her wine. We'd both opted for a glass of liquid courage for this chat. "What?"

"Well you spanked me when I was bad. You were bad. Did you spank..."

"No," I said, cutting her off, unexpectedly flustered. "No."

"Are you going to live here now, Mom?" Max asked, smiling at our stammering.

She nodded. "Yes. We will return to our regularly scheduled family program."

"Good. Dad makes lousy spaghetti. And he reads stories too fast."

"Thanks, Max," I said, shooting him a look. "I did the best I could."

"You're better at homework than Mom. Don't feel bad." He said, reaching for another slice of pizza. "You both have things you're good at."

Sookie nodded. "We do. Just like you too."

"Ce is good at being a brat. She ruined Aunt Pam's rug with a bottle of nail polish," Max said smugly.

Ce's lip began wobbling, and she gave her brother a look that would have intimidated anyone. "You weren't supposed to tell. You promised. Pammy said we didn't have to tell them."

Sookie and I exchanged a look. "Ce, if Pam said it was fine, it's fine."

I looked around at my little family, interacting and back to normalcy, and I realized something I'd known all along.

My life was pretty damn close to perfect.