Catherine stood on the balcony, staring down at the street.  The trees lining the Avenue were mostly bare now that winter was being felt in the overnights, and she could see that traffic on this Sunday morning was heavy.  Sidewalk traffic was even busier.  She should be out there, running on the crowded Park paths with other joggers, around nannies with carriages, dodging couples out for a leisurely stroll. She’d be chased by the occasional dog at this hour because they were allowed off-leash until 9am, but she’d never been threatened and her four-legged companions usually lost interest before long, preferring the company of other canines romping freely.

I might miss this, she thought, if ever I were to move Below.  A world without windows …

But I could look into his eyes in every moment and know my whole world there …

Turning from the view, she stepped into the apartment and went to the kitchen to brew a cup of coffee.

It was hours later that she crumpled a page of inadequate notes, tossed it at the waste basket, missed, shrugged, then shoved all the folders back into her bag.

I need to be with him.

He’d felt her deciding, knew her approach and was there, at the foot of the old ladder, to lift her down the final steps and into his arms.

“Catherine,” was all he said as she pressed herself tightly against him.

“I was trying to work.”

“I know.  So was I.”

She leaned away, just a little.

“What have I taken you from?”

“Nothing important.  Reviewing the next few lessons for Tuesday’s classes.”

“That’s important.”

“No, only you are, Catherine.”  He spoke close to her ear, where the scar from two years past still showed.

His avowal made her smile, and she hugged him harder.

“Shall I take you to the Mirror Pool?”

“Maybe in a minute.  Or an hour.  This … is too sweet to surrender.”  She could feel the chuckle vibrating within him and grinned.  “You believe that I love you?”

“Yes,” he whispered, as she had done.  “Do you know how much I love you?”

It took a moment before she replied.  “I think … I do.  But will I ever know that, Vincent?  How could I ever know it?”

He’d drawn away to see her face and promise, “I shall have to spend my life loving you with all of myself, all my heart and soul, so that you will know.  That day.”

She studied him.

He permitted it as he might not have done … once.

Satisfied with all she’d found in his amazing face, she smiled and said, “Let’s go the Falls.”

“Yes.”

They walked through the torch-lit tunnels, hand in hand.  Silent.  It was enough to be together.

He spread his cloak on the flat stone where they always sat. She leaned against his side and his arm came around her shoulders.

“I like it here.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I like it everywhere … you are, Vincent.”

She felt the lightest kiss on her hair.

“Do you think …” she sat straighter to see his eyes, “… is there any way we could … be … “

He knew the question she’d, half, put to him, and he glanced away to spare himself the wanting he would see in her expression.

She waited for him to turn back.  To say he’d found that … place … for them.  Knowing he wouldn’t.  Because he hadn’t.  He believed there was no place.

Tears slipped down her cheeks, and she reached for his chin, turning his face to make him see them.  See her.  See that they had to do … something … or soon …

“Catherine,” he sighed, coaxing her closer, her head on his chest where she could hear the love he bore her as it thundered within him.  Where he did not have to see her tears.  “I have no answer … for us.”

She cried a while, quietly, as he held her.  When she moved away, he let her go.

“Why?” she asked, her back to him.  “Why must we continue this way?  Apart. Bereft. Vincent, in the next second … the next instant we could … be ended.”  She hesitated, then continued, “The emptiness of this present …”

He said nothing and she got to her feet.

“Catherine?”

It was her turn to be uncommunicative.

He rose and approached.  With a hand on her arm, he turned her toward him.

“What would you have me …”

“What do I ask of you?  Do you truly want to know, Vincent?”

“Yes,” he said, meaning it … and dreading what she would say.

“I need you to let loose every lesser truth you still hold, all that tells you we can’t be together or shouldn’t be together.  I ask you to acknowledge the greatest truth … our love. That’s what I would have you do.”

“Lesser truths?”

“Those you’ve always told yourself … the dangers, improprieties and impracticalities …   Know them for what they have become, Vincent … faded memories of how you once felt, in the beginning, when you found me.  When fear was strong and dominant … because you knew you loved me.”

“I remember … the terror … hearing you say you loved me.”

She nodded, aware of how difficult that event must have been for him.

“Fear, doubt … an illusion, Vincent, without substance.”  She sighed the next thought, “But for the pain they cause us.”

He lowered his gaze to the tunnel floor and heard her say, “Only our love is real and, in its honesty, lies our present as well as our future.”

“You want to …”

She held her breath.  Reached for his hands.

He looked up.  At her.

“Catherine, your wish is for a life … with me?”

“More than anything.”

He winced.

“Vincent, I don’t mean to press you.  None of this must happen … today.  Just join with me in the sure hope … the … probability.”

“Probability.  Not simply … possibility?”

“We are so far beyond possibility.  We are … oned … but refusing to live it.  Denying it when it will not be denied, except at the loss of … everything.”

“You, Catherine, are everything.”  He declared it. “I know that, and I know why it is true.  I promise never to say, ‘If only things had been different, we might have …’  No, our love is as it is.  Neither of us wants it to be any different.  We … both … need …”

“One day,” she was finishing his thought, “to know it … in that way we have dreamed.”  She sought to assure him, “It doesn’t have to be now, Vincent.  I am willing to journey with you until …”

“You always seek to ease my way.”

She shook her head, “Vincent, I’m sure I cause you more … angst … than anyone ever has.”

“No, you inspire me to … live this life I’ve been given.  I’m so grateful to you, my love.”

“Then I think you should kiss me, to prove you mean it.”

He let go of her hands to gather her impossibly close, but she held back a moment, grinned, and suggested, “Unless you know of a better …”

“Catherine.” He was smiling too.

“I know.  Not today.”

_____________

9/12/24
happy 60^th, my Love