So there it was—the vehicle of my second engagement, which seemed comically similar to the first. However, my response to it was much different, as was my longing. I was excited for the host of many first times yet to be had. There was no trepidation or hesitation. No anxiety or fear—just… peace. Only peace.

            I already knew my answer before he ever asked the question.

* * *

            I watched as the waves crashed rhythmically against the rocks outside our terrace window. The view from this house, much like the things in the house, never got old even though it is a scene I have witnessed for the past five years’ worth of mornings from this very spot. Many things had changed since we bought this place. Many good and lasting memories made. 

            I felt a subtle tightening over my shoulders, followed by the words: “Come to bed, love.”

            I recognize the author without turning around. I know this voice anywhere. It's become as familiar as my own. “Doesn’t it remind you of Monterey?” I ask, curling my fingers around his as they cup my silk-clad shoulder.

            “Yes. A thousand times, yes,” he yawned. “You always say that, you know.”

            “It’s because I’ll always cherish it…”

            He kissed my temple, a soft delicate kiss. “There are things in the present you can cherish, not just the past.”

            “Kibum, you bought me this house so I could always be reminded of our honeymoon, right?”

            “I did.”

            “Then why are you surprised that I would want to remember it every morning? I want to remember it every morning for the rest of my life…”

            “Not surprised,” he gently corrected. “Just a proponent of savoring the future. The now.”

            “You are my now, future, and past,” I say quietly through a pensive smile.

            Here, he laughed, and I could tell that his following words would be mischievous: “Then you should cherish it all the more…”

            I understand this secret language. My eyes narrow, but I can’t help but melt into his embrace as his arms fold around me.

            “You know what I cherished most about that time?”

            “Yes,” I answer shrewdly.

            “Well? Are you inspired? You wouldn’t think I’d buy you a house for memories alone, right? Unless… those memories can be put to good use.”

            He began kissing my neck then, and I’m amazed at how coy I turn once I feel the light tingle against my skin, even still.

            “Bummie… you’re tickling me~”

            “So?” he kissed me some more. “Come to bed…”

            “But it’s so pretty here…”

            Key started to kiss more earnestly now. “It’ll be pretty anywhere you are. Come on.”

            I allow him to lead me by the hand back into our room to the bed where we’d spent every night together, side by side. He slipped me from my robe, and I his boxers; the warmness of our bodies touching never failed to seduce me; never failed to cause my skin to prickle and my breathing, to accelerate.

            “Kiss me,” I say breathily as I feel the weight of his body on mine. He is thin and beautiful, but there is a masculine heaviness about him that I find ally intriguing. “Kiss me the way you did that day…”

            “What day?” Key asked, only half-listening now that his excitement was awakened. “Our wedding?”

            “No. The day you proposed to me…”

            He managed a laugh here, which took me by surprise. I can’t help laugh along with him. “Oh, that…” he said.

            “ ‘Oh that’? What is that supposed to mean? It was one of the best days of my life, you know… aside from the day you woke up.”

            “Mine was definitely the day you said you weren’t marrying Jong,” he laughed all the more.

            “That’s mean,” I teased, slapping his shoulder in play.

            “What? Can’t I be honest?”

            “Don’t talk about him here—not when we’re like this.”

            He threw me a cocky grin. “What? Never bothered you before.”

            I didn’t know what he meant exactly, but was afraid to press it. Knowing him, he’d press it for me—which he did when he added: “Or don’t you remember what you told me when we were dating—about how you got off to the idea of us being gay together?”

            I hit him again. He was enjoying this entirely too much, and even as my husband, Key still had the uncanny ability to embarrass me.

            “Ah! Don’t even bring that up, please!” I cried, which only made him laugh all the more. 

            He makes one the thousands of faces he has in his arsenal of animated expressions. “No no, I think it’s only fair, since you wrote me off as a gay man, that I’d have some leniency here. If you’re embarrassed, it’s only because you deserve to be.”

            “There’s nothing wrong with being a gay man.”

            “You nerd. Didn’t you even stop to think that maybe I was into you?”

            I folded my lips. “You know I didn’t because I couldn’t hurt him. It was much easier to believe you weren’t into girls at all.”

            “That dino probably told you that I was because he was afraid I’d come snatch you away…” Key said, and as he did, began to slide his index finger down the trail of my sternum.

            “Well? Didn’t you?”

            He began to kiss my bare skin with renewed intensity. “I didn’t steal anything that didn’t want to be stolen…”

            “Kibum…” I whisper.

            “Hm…?”

            “I love you…”

            “I know…”

            “You always say that…”

            “Because I’ve always known…”

            I was determined to win this round. “You still haven’t kissed me, you realize…”

            “I realize…”

            “Don’t you want to?”

            “I do.”

            “Well…? Stop being such a diva and give me what I want.”

            This excites him. “Oh? You bossing me around, Messy?”

            “Yes.”

            “I like a woman who knows what she wants.”

            “I know,” I say, throwing his words back at him. He tries to ease my legs apart, but I resist him.

            “Oh… feeling assertive, are we?” he coos.

            I smirk. “If you want it, you’re going to have to play by my rules.”

            “All this for one simple kiss?”

            “I already told you—it’s not simple to me.”

            “You’re so nostalgic today. What’s gotten in that dreamy head of yours?”

            I didn’t want to say. I didn’t want to bring up his birthday next month—that we were nearing our thirties. That I wanted a child. That, though his body had healed, it would one day begin to break down again… that I sensed, with explicable and haunting clarity, that our youth would end one day, leaving us only with the volume of our memories. I wanted to remember. I wanted to reenact the things we could never live again as a first moment…

            “Kim Kibum, if you don’t kiss me right now, I won’t talk to you for a week,” I pout. I want so desperately to feel the touch of his lips against mine the way I did in that hospital room.

            He must have sensed my tonal shift. Must have read my heart behind the fictitious threat. Key came to me then, silently and sweetly, his body inseparably close. No matter how many times we've been this way, he still fills my senses: the way he feels, the way he smells, the way he sounds—everything about him enraptures me. I close my eyes, submitting myself to this prince of a man I’d vowed to love forever, and all at once am caught up in a rush of feeling and longing, the pleasurable waves submerging us in a sea of reincarnated first times.

~ * ~

Oh my, just one more chapter remains, and I have already written it. It's probably different that what you're expecting, and you may not like it, so I apologize in advance. I feel I have a responsiblity to follow the muse where it leads me above fear of public reaction, so that is exactly what I did. I hope, in the end, that you have been entertained and perhaps moved by this little tale. I am proud of it, and am thankful that so many more people have read, subbed, and commented on it than I ever expected to. 

Kamsamnida~ UM