I make a toast: "To Jonathan, for leaving for college a couple weeks early so we could celebrate our thirtieth anniversary on time."

She laughs and clinks her glass, but she shakes her head. "To think that he suspected all these years."

"Well, he told me that Sam used to write to him in California about how I always seemed to take my weekends off when you had an August business trip. And she told him at some point how our 'first kiss' stories sounded suspiciously alike."

"To Sam," she toasts and we clink.

"Yes, and to Hank for getting that job as a therapeutic puppeteer at the children's hospital, so they could afford to move out of Mona's apartment and she could move back in."

We clink again.

"To Mother."

"To my wonderful, crazy, interfering, irritating, but lovable mother-in-law."

"Yes, to her."

We clink.

"To our finally, if temporarily, empty nest."

My jaw drops. "Angela, you're not—?"

"No, Tony, I'm still on the Pill. And we agreed that if we are going to have a child together, we should wait another year or two to see if that's what we want to do with the rest of middle age."

I shake my head. "I don't know. I mean, in a way, it's kind of nice to be done with all that. And on the other hand, we would've made beautiful babies together."

"Yes, we would," she says softly.

I notice the change in verb tense. I want kids with her, but she's 43, so there's not a lot of time left. And I love that we can finally have time together. "I wish that we hadn't wasted so much of the past thirty years."

She shakes her head. "Don't think of it as wasted. We wouldn't be who we are if we hadn't has those experiences. And I wouldn't want you to have never met Marie, to never have had Samantha."

"Yeah, even though Michael's a jerk, I'm glad you knew him, or we wouldn't have Jonathan."

She smiles. "Is it funny that I already miss Jonathan? Even though he's usually not around in August."

"No, I miss him, too. Because he won't be back till Christmas. Oh, is that what you meant by the temporarily empty nest?"

"Yes. Sorry to get your hopes up. Or frighten you as the case may be."

"Yeah, well."

"To Michael and Marie?"

"Yeah, why not?"

We clink.

I hesitate and then I say, "To Anthony and Ingrid?"

She clinks. "To Anthony and Ingrid. May they have as wonderful a thirtieth anniversary as we are."

I grin at her. I'm so glad I came back to her. Yeah, we missed our twenty-ninth and a few other anniversaries along the way. But we've been married almost a year now, and there have been other celebrations. Hell, every day with Angela is a celebration.

I'll admit I wasn't sure about coming back to her, especially after she, or Ingrid anyway, stood me up at the motel. But I realized later, I'd never actually invited her. Not that she necessarily would've gone if I had invited her, but I couldn't expect her to be a mind-reader. I guess my pride got in the way.

And we'd been doing that pull-close-push-away dance for so long, it was hard to break the habit. Insecurities on both sides, miscommunication, bad timing, you name it. In some ways, it's a wonder we ever connected at all.

I got a teaching award and realized that she was the person I most wanted to show it to, because I still loved her so much. And because she was the person who most encouraged me to become a teacher, with all the little steps leading up to it, even before I thought about going to college, like when she was my campaign manager for the PTA. So I took the next flight I could, with my tux and with my award. I wanted to show up on her doorstep looking like a success, and lay that at her feet like a knight presenting the dragon's head to the princess.

And I knew she wouldn't turn me away. She would at least be proud of me as a friend. But I didn't want just her friendship.

I took a risk, the biggest risk I've ever taken, and said that we'd both been wrong. We were wrong to try to live apart, to give up on us. She said she didn't want me to resent anything, and I said all I resented was not being with her.

Yeah, I had a great job at Wells. But now I have a good job at Ridgemont and I love being able to come home to her. Our home, the house I kept all these years.

Yeah, I still do some of the housework. She pitches in, and Jonathan took on some of it, and even Mona contributed a little. Now that it'll just be the two of us, it should be manageable.

We eat some more of the dinner I made, with her help. (Well, she did the salad. Beautifully though.) We drink a little more wine, but not too much, because we want to remember as much as we can of this anniversary.

And then we put the dishes in the washer, kiss in the kitchen a little, and then return to the living room. I dim the lights a little more, put on some romantic music, and change from color to black & white. (Don't ask how, trade secret.)

I take her in my arms and we slow dance like we've got all the time in the world. Yes, there's a part of my mind that's waiting for us to be interrupted, as we so often have been, but that's no reason not to enjoy this moment.

And then when we've had enough dancing, I shut off all the lights and the music, restore the living room to color. Then I take her hand and we go upstairs together, to our bedroom.

I light the fire and she puts on the radio, an instrumental station this time, so the only words will be ours. We take off our shoes and sit on the edge of the bed, toasting our toes by the fire, although it's an August night and we won't need much warming up anyway. But it is very romantic.

We kiss, softly and tenderly at first. "I love you, Angela," I murmur.

"I love you, Tony."

I stroke her soft, delicate skin, amazed that she only gets more beautiful with age. "You are my summer rose."

She laughs. "Your what?"

I feel a little embarrassed. "My summer rose."

"That's beautiful, Tony."

"Hey, you bring out the poet in me."

She smiles. "I know."

She's wearing that little black dress she wore when we tried to have an intimate dinner for two, after we declared our love to each other but not yet to the family. I caress her bare shoulders and put my other hand on her bare knee.

She strips off my dinner jacket. She grabs my tie, bringing my head closer for a deeper kiss. Then we start necking, with of course her nuzzling me a lot, and me kissing her delicate ears a lot.

The first few months after we got married, we tended to do everything more quickly. Yes, there was foreplay, but we'd been waiting so long to be with each other without restrictions, that we grabbed every opportunity we had, especially if Mona and Jonathan were both out of the house.

It does feel strange to be so leisurely about this. Not that there isn't still passion, but it's relaxed passion.

The fire in the fireplace goes out but we really don't need it. She undoes the buttons on my shirt and then I unzip her dress. She's wearing a black strapless bra, one I haven't seen before.

"For our anniversary?"

"Yes."

"Best gift you've given me so far."

She laughs and then shakes her hair loose from its upsweep. Sometimes I like to undo it, but there's something to be said for her transforming herself like that. She is still beautiful, classy Angela, but she's got Ingrid's wildness and playfulness.

She lays back on the bed and I kiss her, from forehead down to stomach, spending most of that time on the pink rosebuds that are her nipples. She caresses my stomach and chest, then peels the shirt off me.

"Your turn," she says, so I lay back and she kisses me from forehead to stomach. "I love your love trail," she murmurs. And then she undoes my belt and takes down my zipper. I wait to see if she'll keep kissing further down, but you never know with her. She will never stop surprising me.

By the time of our honeymoon (Fort Lauderdale, since we never did get to go there alone, and it was off-season), I hadn't been with anyone else for almost two years, and it was even longer in her case, much longer if you don't count Anthony. And I'd been tested. So we didn't pack any condoms and I got a whole week of being really inside her. (Yeah, I wanted two weeks, but she couldn't get away from her business that long. Plus I was due to start at Ridgemont as soon as I could.)

I still haven't got over being inside her. And there are other ways that barriers are gone. Yeah, it was hot when we were sneaking around, lying to everyone, including ourselves. But I like this better.

She lowers my slacks and my shorts, but then she kisses back up and climbs on me, so that our centers meet and she slides down and I slide up and in.

There's no longer that shock of first penetration, as there was for Anthony and Ingrid at the Hidden Hollow Motel seven years ago. But it does still amaze us, that our bodies can do this. Yeah, they've done it before, including with other people, but it's still pretty incredible, you know? Because it was amazing that I found someone I connected to in so many ways, and even when we tried to separate out sex, it was still amazing.

But with it? Oh, damn, it is so good! I don't even have words for how good it is.

She moves up and down and all around on me, and I lift my head and kiss her pretty tits. "Can't get enough of you!" she gasps when she comes again. Then she falls off me and onto the bed.

"Good, 'cause I've got lots more to give," I say. Then I mount her and she gasps again as I tease her where she is most sensitive, especially right now.

And she wraps her legs tight around me, and we cup each other's tushes and we love Love LOVE each other! Slow, fast, deep, shallow! In circles and straight in and out, again and again!

I want to last all night but she nuzzles my neck and suddenly I'm melting into her. That's the best part. But second best is knowing that we weren't interrupted and that we don't have to worry about what this will mean tomorrow. Or years from now.