“Yes. Yes!” I shook my head over and over. “This wasn’t what I expected.”
“I know.” He lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed it. “Do you like the ring?”
“It’s phenomenal.”
“It’s Carter with an ‘I’ in the middle.” He winked.
It took me a few.
Oh!
Cartier.
We embraced each other for several minutes.
“I love you so much, Carter.”
“I love you, too, Mrs. Clynes.” He grinned. “Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Yes. Anything.”
“Will you still love me when I’m sixty-four?”
“That’s an odd age. Why did you pick that?”
He winked. “Beatles song, babe. When I’m Sixty-Four.”
”I should have known. Don’t ever change, you crazy man.” Puling him into a kiss, I spoke over his lips, “I love you so much! I can’t wait to marry you Down Under.”
We kissed for several minutes. The people around us seemed to be oblivious to our life-changing moment.
Carter broke the kiss. “You know…speaking of down under…I’d love to go there right now. I suddenly have to use the bathroom. Wanna come with?”
“After all this time, how are we only just now about to join the mile-high club together? You’re a pilot, and I was a stewardess for Christ’s sake!”
Carter beamed. “Never too late to start.”
“COME ON, PICK IT UP! You don’t want me to win the race, do you?” I looked back at my son, who trailed behind me. We were both wearing matching helmets as we scooted along the empty road. I was on my Segway, while he rode a traditional child’s scooter.
Days like these, I never regretted retiring from the airline. I couldn’t imagine missing out on these precious moments with Brucey.
Today, I took him to visit the old neighborhood at Silver Shores. We’d moved to a bigger house about two miles away when he was a year old but still came back to visit the residents all the time.
I pointed to my old condo. “We took you home to that house right there when you were a baby.”
“That was where I was made?”
Unsure as to how to answer that, I said, “Technically, you were made in Australia, but you were born here.”
“Australia?”
“Yes.”
“I’m like a Koala bear?”
“I guess so.” I chuckled.
Kendall had found out she was pregnant with Brucey shortly after we returned from our private Australian wedding. We’d gotten married under a sunset just outside the Sydney Opera House.