Swear on This Life: A Novel

We live in that little cottage to this day. We write and we kiss and we do other stuff too. There are no TVs in our house. Jase taught me how to look out at the ocean and imagine whatever I wanted to.

About three months after I moved in, he said, “Do you want to live here with me forever?”

“At least nine months out of the year.”

“What will we do for the other three?”

“You can still do math, doofus. I’m impressed.”

We were sitting in chairs, watching the sun go down. “Your hair is flying everywhere, Medusa. If I touch it, will it bite me?”

“You never had abs. I still can’t believe you wrote that.”

He chuckled. “It’s fiction, baby. What’s on your mind? Why can’t we travel more?”

“We can travel during the summers, but during the school year, we’ll have to be home.”

“I thought you were giving up teaching,” he said.

“It’s not for me.”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead in a classroom, you know that.” He was laughing. He already knew. Jase always had foresight, and we weren’t characters in anyone’s book.

“Not for you either,” I said.

He leaned in, kissed me, and then put his hand on my belly.

He already knew.