My life is a goddamn romance novel — the kind that makes the post-menopausal flush, and teenage girls across the globe flutter with anticipation. Nick is a sweetheart — he has charm. I think that’s just about the highest complement anyone could have: oh, him? That guy’s charming. It’s better than handsome — anyone can be handsome. And anyone can be funny. But charming? Oh, that’s the real panty-dropper. The real fuck-me-gently precursor. (This man of mine is smart, wonderful, a complete catch (!) and better than all that, he’s all mine.)
It’s just me, my man, and a well-loved, spine-bent Jane Austen novel between the sheets. It’s so hot, it’s borderline pornographic, the way his cutesy little accent peeks through the o’s and draws out the r’s. They say you can take the boy out of the Midwest, but you can’t take the Midwest out of the boy, and I, for one, fucking adore it.
He challenges me. If you’ve been reading along, you know that it’s not exactly an easy task — I’ve fucked drummers, played with college boys, twirled my hair and kicked my heels over corporate hasbros, but never quite like this.
I’m going to marry this man.
He holds me close, and mumbles his way through Pride and Prejudice without so much as a hesitation — this is the man. The fabled One that stalks every young girl’s unconscious mind. This is the man of my dreams, and I’m doing everything to keep him tangible. He might fall out of my grip if I stray too far from our bed.
He’s looking at me, and I just want to cry. (With happiness, might I just add. The hot wings and the blowjobs aside, I’ve made myself the girl of his dreams, too. The up-for-anything, tie-my-hair-back, swallow-don’t-spit wild card that keeps him right on his toes and supports him through the ins-and-outs of New York life. I’m the coolest fucking woman in his life.)
“If you keep reading to me, I’m going to have to have sex with you, Nick Dunne.”
I’m not sure I’ve ever been in love before. There’s nothing quite like a grown man saying in love to make women melt and other men cringe, but damn it, I am feeling sentimental. Because of that, It is easy to roll over, to pin her underneath my weight, I think she’ll even giggle, especially when I prop my elbow on the bed beside her head and lift my head and shoulders at the most ridiculous, painful fucking angle to find my place back on the page.
“Please, Amy. Be serious. I’m trying to educate us both. Where was I --- oh, here.” The hand that is still trapped under her makes itself known, pressing my fingers into the notches of her spine trying to find some ticklish little area to assail, to make her jerk closer to me. I want to hold her, so, so tight. “I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine,” I pause, I purse my lips approvingly, as if Austen needed my approval, or would have wanted it, either way. “Man, that’s good.” I look down at her, then back at the book. “We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.”
I pause there, and when I look down at her again, I’m grinning. This girl in my arms, she is fun, she is smart, she is so fucking quick witted, and to top it off, out - of - this - world sexy. Fuck the cliche, I’ll just say it : She’s not like other girls.
So obviously, I have to know what she’s thinking.
“Interesting opinion . . . Do you hold with that, Amy Elliott? Would you still want to keep seeing me, if I was an asshole?”