21
The autumn night pressed against the outside of the car as we drove home, and I kept my eyes on Poppy’s profile, which was lit by the lights on the dash and silhouetted against the velvet night outside.
What had happened in the club…it had been dirty and cathartic and galvanizing, although I couldn’t articulate to myself exactly why. The answer hovered just out of reach, shimmered beyond a veil that I could only graze with the fingertips of my thoughts, and as we passed out of the city and into the countryside, I stopped trying and just let myself take in the majesty that was my Esther, my queen.
I wanted her to be my bride.
I wanted her to be my bride.
The thought came with the clarity of cold steel, certain and true and no longer something I felt in the moment of s*x and God, but
