She wasn’t startled, not at all. She just looked at me solemnly, almost eye to eye, as it all came tumbling out.
‘I love you more than I have words to say,’ I blurted breathlessly. ‘I can’t conceive of a world without you, and I sure wouldn’t want to live in it. Please, please marry me and be with me until it’s time to place the lid on my coffin.’
My declaration made, I waited, aware of the heavy thump of my heart. She gazed at me for an unmeasured time, inscrutable, offering me nothing in her expression. Until, finally …
‘Since you put it that way …’ she said, with her deep, raunchy chuckle. ‘Okay.’
As I looked at her, a lock of her hair fell across her forehead, over one eye. And at last she smiled, and kissed me. ‘I hoped that’s how it would be,’ she said, ‘but I couldn’t be sure.’
‘How could you not?’ I rebuked her, as I drew her to me in a rustle of silk, and as the first rays of morning sun shone on us both. ‘I’m Oz, and I haven’t changed either.’