Cusps

[For John and Carol]

Gwen padded back through the bedroom door and it struck me once more what a graceful, attractive woman my wife was.

"It's okay," she told me. "The baby's asleep. --What are you looking at?"

"You," I told her. "Your breasts. Your posture, which gives you those lovely clean lines. Your neck -- oh, I love your neck. Your lips. Your other lips. That mad tangle of pubic hair. All the parts that make you up."

"Huh-uh," she said, and stood just out of reach. "You missed the jelly-belly from childbirth. And what do you propose to do with all of those parts?"

I bent to her; she stepped back. I said, "Make mad passionate love to them, wench."

"Oh, sweetie. I'd love to make love tonight--"

It was in her voice. I said for her, "But--?"

"But," she said, "I really don't feel like it tonight. I've been up and busy with the baby and I'm so tired..."

"Um," I said. "That's okay."

She got into the bed on her side. I didn't move to cuddle her. "We'll make love soon, I promise."

"Okay," I told her. I turned out the light and we lay there in the dark.

She shifted herself over and reached for my cock. It was still hard, though my erection was fading. "Oh, my," she said. I didn't move or respond, and she let go of me. Finally she said, "It hasn't been that long, has it?"

I sighed. "Six months or nine and a half months, depending on whether you count the one time we had sex when the baby was six weeks old. Before that it was in the seventh month."

"Oh," Gwen said, and was quiet again for a while. "I just don't feel like it," she said.

"That's okay," I told her again. Again there was uneasy silence, and somewhere during that, I fell asleep, maybe for a long time, maybe not. I woke to the sound and shudders of Gwen sobbing beside me, and managed in my fogged and crusty state to place a hand on her shoulder and I croaked, "Hey. Hey, what's wrong?"

"Oh, Rob, I'm sorry." Her voice stuck on the vowels. "I didn't mean to way-ay-ake you." I held her close to me and eventually her crying subsided. "I hate not wanting to have sex, but I just don't. My breasts are these feeding stations and they just aren't sexy at all and I'm so tired and I keep thinking you might-- might--" she was sobbing again; finally she managed to squeeze out, "leave me."

"Hey," I repeated, and calmed her again. "I'm here for you. I won't go away."

"I just keep feeling you get so horny and I don't do anything for you and you might have an--" Her voice was starting to hitch again so I interrupted.

"An affair? Sweetie, we left 'to be faithful' in the marriage vow and I intend to abide by it."

She snuggled up against me, hot tears spilling onto my chest. "You promise?"

"I do," I told her solemnly.

"None of those women from your past would interest you?" Gwen had never asked much about my romantic life previous to meeting her, though I'd asked about hers. She knew I'd had just over a dozen lovers, and I knew she'd had three, including me.

"No," I told her, and then, because I was still sleepy and because it was the truth, I said, "well, only one."

"Tell me about her," Gwen said in a small sleepy voice, so I did.

* * *

Her name was Merle, and at first I had to fuck her with my eyes closed. Not that she was ugly, quite the opposite. She was striking to look at, raven-wing hair and pale blue eyes that held the noon sky trapped in a clean strong face. Even lying beneath me, wisps of that ebony hair sweat-plastered to her clean strong face, I knew I could look at her and lose myself, lose the urgent rhythm of my fat cock in her slick wet pussy. Instead I buried my face in the hollow of her neck, sucking and biting her earlobe and her sturdy neck, and inhaling her wild scent.

The truth is, she intimidated the hell out of me. In one sentence, Merle knew what she wanted.

"Your cock," Merle murmured. "I love the feel of your cock sliding into me. It's so big." She pressed her hips up against me, trying to capture my entire hard cock within her. I pulled away again and teased her with the head, popping the mushroom head in and out of her with short eager thrusts. "Oh, Jesusssss--" she said, and the final syllable fell apart into a long sibilant sigh as she came again, her splendid body tightening against mine and then falling slack for a moment before she was ready to go on. "Fill me," she urged. "Fill my pussy with your big fat cock."

I adjusted position, pulling her knees up around my shoulders and bracing myself for fast hard strokes. I fixed my gaze on her breasts, which sagged slightly over her ribs, the broad brown areolae soft again after her orgasm. I fucked her hard, filling her with the full length of my cock on every stroke, slapping my balls against her ass, grunting with the effort. Her breasts bounced as she thrust against me.

"Touch my clit," she whispered. "I love the way you touch my clit." I tweaked one nipple (and was rewarded by a slight change in texture, a nubbly stiffening) and traced a path down to her tidy arrowhead of pubic hair. Her clit was as sturdy and patrician as her face, a hard marble of excitement, and I played it with my index finger. She was wet, always wetter than any other woman I had ever known, and every stroke and glissade made her gasp and tauten, until finally I had reduced her vocabulary to a single obscenity, over and over:

"Fuck," she whispered and gasped and moaned. "Fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, ohhhhh fuck fuck fuck..." as I continued to slide my hard cock deeply into her oiled grip.

I changed positions again, putting her legs back down: this time I wanted to fuck her slowly. I wanted to come inside her. For me with Merle, that meant moving so I wasn't fucking her as much as I was rubbing the top of my cock along the ceiling of her pussy. "I'm going to come in you," I told her. I sensed her nod in the jostle of her breasts and the movement of her hips and the slow bounce of the bed.

Her pussy held me, caressed me as I slowly pushed my entire cock into her and slowly pulled it out. Merle gasped once as the head came out and again as it slid in, and she wrapped her arms around my back and her nails dug into my skin, hurting me but that was nothing compared to the delightful grasp of cunt on cock, the slippery velvet tingling that moved along my shaft, to the corona and glans and back again. I kept my deliberate, slow pace as the pressure built within me until I couldn't stand it any more and I groaned, "I'm commmming."

She moaned "Unnnh" as I frantically shoved the full length of my cock into her, grinding my pubis against her clit. My cock jerked and throbbed with orgasm, and I filled her with my come.

* * *

I stopped then. My cock was very hard, and I thought that Gwen had fallen asleep. With luck, I thought, I could manage a quiet jerk-off without waking her. As I shifted to roll her away, she reached up and held my hard-on loosely in her hand, the way the baby holds the rattle while she sleeps, and Gwen murmured, "Tell me more."

* * *

Merle wasn't the first woman I fucked, or made love to, or slept with, but she was the first I did all three with. I met her in a grocery store: I was wandering through the aisles, buying whatever looked interesting, when I glanced at her as she passed by me. She was, as I said, striking. I made a show of having bought the wrong thing (silly of me; they were Chinese mushrooms, and you can't really mistake them for anything else) and backed up to get another look.

Sometimes you see a face and your mind fills in all the details you don't quite catch so you get an idealized impression that's quite different from the reality. Other times the woman is striking but only from one angle. But Merle really was that striking to look at from every angle, and I was dumbfounded.

I followed her for three aisles before I worked up the courage to use the oldest conversation-starter in the world. I said "Hello."

It was a bumpy conversational start and I got the impression that she was amused by me, but I kept talking to her. About anything that came to mind -- except sex, at least overtly. I remember asking her what the "virgin" meant in "virgin olive oil." She knew, and she told me. And she invited me to her place for dinner because she lived alone, she said, and if no one came over for dinner, she'd eat out of cans.

Four hours later we were fucking, and I've already told you about that. I'd never had sex like that before. (My fault, mostly, as it turned out.) Merle had standards, and I had to live up to them, in the bedroom as well as elsewhere. But this is about how we made love, and that came later.

Some relationships which start in bed never move out of it, but Merle and I had good prospects. We talked, before and after sex, and we talked about almost everything. Mostly we talked about sex, of course: what we liked and what we didn't like -- I learned a great deal about what Merle liked and didn't like; for instance, Merle could deep-throat a man, but she didn't particularly enjoy it. I discovered some things about what I didn't like, as opposed to what I thought I didn't like. And we talked about our other partners. She was quite circumspect about names -- it was always, "Well, I once knew a guy--" or once, "A girlfriend and I--"

So one night after sex, she began telling me about this guy, her first lover and her first real love. And about this nightgown she had, a red flannel nightgown from her grandmother, whom she adored. This guy had a problem: he was vicious. He was not only vicious in big ways -- he hit her a couple of times, but he always said it would be the last time, she always believed him, and it always was, for a while -- but he was also vicious in small ways. He left the seat up, because it really pissed her off. He lost things, but always her things. I always pictured him saying, "Your virginity? Geez, I don't know what happened to it. It was around here someplace." And smirking.

And one night, this guy wanted sex, and she didn't. It was cold, she was dressed for bed, he'd come in half-drunk, dropped his pants to reveal his hard-on and announced his need. They argued about it, and finally she agreed to a quickie.

Merle laughed ruefully at this point and called herself an idiot in those days. But I think that each of us has someone who gets under our skins, who reaches places in us that no-one else does, and for whom we do the unthinkable. This guy was like that for Merle, and Merle was like that for me.

Well, the quickie wasn't coming quick enough for him, and he tore the nightgown off her. He didn't quite tear it in two, but it was unwearable. Merle let him finish -- she laughed ruefully again and said it didn't take long -- and after he rolled off her and rolled into a deep drunk sleep, she packed and she left. She said she didn't even clean his come from her until she arrived at a friend's place, because she wanted the discomfort to remind her of how stupid she had been. She showed me the two pieces of the nightgown, because she meant to do something with them, maybe make them into throw pillows or something, but she couldn't bear to destroy the nightgown any further.

The next morning, she was off to work early and I was left behind to fix my own breakfast in her place. I explored a bit and found what I needed, and I stitched together the nightgown as best I could. I wasn't too pleased with the results because I can't sew, and my stitches were big and sloppy but I kept remembering what Chesterton said, that a thing worth doing was worth doing poorly.

By the time I was done, I was certain that this was absolutely the wrong thing to do, and that she was going to hate me forever for desecrating the nightgown but I didn't have time to undo it before I went off to class myself. After class, I went straight back to her place, maybe to sneak the nightgown out and unfix it.

But she'd had a shitty day at work and she wasn't feeling well and she just said to me, "No fucking tonight," and I said, "Fine." And she looked at me as though she expected me to take off immediately once I knew we weren't going to boink and she was surprised I hadn't left a hole in the air as I left. She stood like a fighter stands, when he's facing the last of a line of opponents.

I had nothing to lose by confessing at that point. So I took her to her dresser and I lifted out the nightgown and put it in her arms and I left.

I hadn't gotten to the stairs when she called hoarsely to me. Her cheeks were wet with tears and those blue eyes red-rimmed. She held out her arms and we held each other for a warm fragrant time. And then she kissed me, and it was like no kiss I'd had from her before. It was the difference between a photograph and the real person. This was the real Merle, and her kisses were tender and sweet and hot. I kissed away her tears from her jaw and her cheeks and the corners of her eyes. She kissed my cheeks, my mouth and my throat.

Merle opened my shirt and began to kiss her way down my chest: hollow of neck, collarbone, nipples and ribs (I giggled; I was even more ticklish back then) and then down to my belt-line. She pulled me into her apartment and into her bedroom. The dampness of her kisses cooled on my skin and my nipples hardened.

She rimmed my belly button with her tongue while she undid my pants and pushed my underpants to the floor. My thickening cock touched her blouse's collar. She knelt in front of me and gently grasped my cock behind the head and guided it into her mouth. Her mouth was liquid fire. Her tongue swirled and tickled me. I closed my eyes, because Merle was very good at this. Then, holding the cheeks of my ass in her hands, she began to bob up and down the length of my cock. I felt her relax the muscles of her throat as my cock grew and hardened. I had never had a woman take all of me down her throat before. This was, I understood, a gift.

It felt...nice. I didn't find it to be the ultimate sexual experience: I was worried about her, about hurting her, and that detracted from it, but I was very flattered and turned on that she had decided to give it to me.

After a few minutes of this, she pulled her head back from my cock, a clear string of saliva still connecting us, and she smiled shyly at me. I pulled her up beside me and kissed her. "Thank you," I whispered. This thing between us was still delicate and sacred, and required quiet. I stepped free of my clothes and began to undress her.

I unbuttoned her blouse and eased it off her shoulders, onto the floor. Her black skirt followed, along with her pantyhose. She stood before me in her lingerie, and I admired her for a moment. Striking, I said before, and she was. "You're beautiful," I told her, and I meant it.

She smiled. It gave her a dimple in her left cheek. "Thank you."

I kissed her again, and we fell onto the bed, giggling again, and kissing some more. Her tongue flicked over my tongue, my teeth, the tip of my nose, the inside of my ear, the roughness of my chin. I wanted my cock inside her, but I also wanted this to go on forever, and I was afraid that once I was inside her, I would come immediately.

We struggled for a moment to get her demicup bra off, and then it was on the floor. Merle liked a lot of attention to her breasts: I kissed and sucked her big brown nipples until they stood to pebbly erection. With my mouth open wide, I sucked one in so my tongue could lave the entire thing; then I bit delicately on the nipple. I cupped the other breast in my hand, pressing and stroking it with my thumb. I scraped the undersides of her breasts gently with my stubbled cheek. I stroked one breast with the back of my hand while I scratched the other lightly with my fingernails. Every once in a while, she gasped and thrust her hips into the air. I could smell her excitement, sweet and musky.

I kissed my way past her ribs and belly button and between the horns of her hips. Her panties were transparently damp, betraying her raven pubic hair and swollen inner lips. I pressed my open mouth against her mound, tasting her through the cloth, trying to eat her whole. She pressed herself against my face. I sat up to peel off her panties.

Once they were off, she scooted down the bed so my hard cock rested between her lips. I rubbed the length of my cock along her lips, teasing her, caressing her big hard clit with the head of my cock. Then I ran my cockhead around the entrance to her vagina. I tried teasing her by holding my cock right at the entrance, only a quarter-inch of it penetrating her, but she moved and captured my cock. She felt so good that I pushed and suddenly I was buried deep within her.

I held motionless for a moment, afraid I'd come, and then I slowly withdrew. She whimpered. When only my cockhead was left within her, I had to decide if I wanted to come: and it took almost all my willpower to pull out entirely. I kept moving down the bed until my knees were on the floor and my mouth was on her pussy.

I cleaned her with little cat-licks: gentle tongue caresses from the outside in. I slowly moved from her vagina to her clitoris, tasting every inch. I sucked her marble-hard clit into my mouth and diddled it with my tongue. I slipped a finger into her, then a second, then a third, and I massaged the inside of her pussy as I played with her lips and clit. She tasted as delightful as she smelled.

Finally I pulled my head away and gently stroked every slick fold of her flesh. Merle moaned as I rubbed her mons, circling her clit with my middle and forefinger and listened to her respond. Her throaty moans excited me. I held one finger just above her, and the rhythmic undulations of her hips brushed her clitoris against my finger. She began to pump her hips, seeking my finger. I moved it away and clambered up the bed to lay beside her.

"Now," she said to me. There was no worry about condoms or foam: we had settled the disease and birth control issues some time earlier. I positioned myself over her body, and she guided my hard thick cock into her. Her warm wet pussy gripped me tightly, and I gasped.

"I'm glad you like it," she murmured.

"I do," I told her. "I do."

We were familiar enough with each other by then that there was no need to talk: a shift of weight or a tiny gasp said as much as we needed. We settled into a comfortable rhythm, filling her pussy again and again with the length of my cock. And we kissed. I tasted myself on her, she tasted herself on me, our scents and flavours mingled like our bodies. If our fucking had been a dash for orgasm, this was a leisurely stroll.

I broke free and raised myself up once, to admire this goddess beneath me. She moved her hand to where we were joined and said softly, "Thank you."

"My pleasure," I told her.

"It's mutual," she said.

Eventually our need grew, and my thrusts grew stronger and faster. Her hips twitched against mine and our bellies slapped together as I drove my cock in and out of her. We held hands, twining our fingers together as we both sought release. She came first, with a long drawn-out sigh, pulling my hands down against the bed and pressing her feet against the sheets. Shortly after that, I grunted and then moaned as I poured my orgasm into her until I was empty and I saw her face surrounded by stars. Then I sank down and nestled against her.

And in that moment of silence afterwards, Merle whispered, "I love you."

I said, "I love you too."

* * *

Gwen's eyes were still closed, and she was breathing evenly and deeply, as though she were asleep. But her hand was moving slowly up and down my hard cock, almost absent-mindedly. She knew she could hold me at this level for a long, long time, and she knew how, with only a minor variation, she could make me come in a minute. I wiggled my hips, trying to convince her to give me that release, but she said, "Tell me more. Tell me about when you slept together."

I didn't want to, but I did.

* * *

We stand at the doorways to new lives every day, and sometimes we go in, and sometimes we don't. I don't know what you'd call them: epiphanies, or cusps, perhaps. You have to be ready or ripe when you reach one of those cusps, or you won't enter. Both Merle and I had been at one of those cusps the day I mended the nightshirt, and we crossed that doorway together.

But togetherness is tough work, and there's a new cusp every day, and finally I was -- metaphorically -- alone in the house. The signs were small ones, and if I'd been good enough at reading those signs of ripeness as I was at reading the signs of departure, I might have gone with her. That's the best explanation I can find for the fact that after six months, we had a very decent conversation, and a lot of tears.

"It's not you," she said. "It's me."

"No," I told her, "it's me." We cried a bit.

"I'll always love you, you know," she said. "But I'm not in love with you."

"But I am in love with you," I told her.

"It won't work," she told me.

"Why not?"

"Because of me," she told me. "It's not you, it's me."

And finally, after we'd gone around that a few more times, she asked me if we could still be friends, and because I was young I said yes.

And she took me up on it. We had lunch every week. She told me her problems over salad and entree. I told her about my life, making it up over dessert.

My heart ached when I saw her, though I was trying to be friends, and I tried hard to be sympathetic to her problems, even though I desperately wanted her to leave the thirty-two-year-old advertising account executive who suffered from premature ejaculation. I once told her that if she needed someone to finish her off, I would come over. I was young, and she had the grace to laugh. Perhaps she didn't realize how thoroughly I meant it.

The lunch dates became monthly and then bimonthly and then it was a year since she'd left me. I took stock and realized that I'd been insane in a clinical sense and started dating other people: drab boring people as it turned out. Then it was a year and a half since she'd left me, and I realized I'd been insane six months ago but I was far better now.

I rediscovered simple pleasures: laying in the sun, Baroque music, massages (giving and receiving), punishing exercise and bubble baths. I was in the tub one summer's night, soaking after my nightly regimen, when someone let him or herself into my apartment. About a dozen people had keys. I wrapped myself in a big terrycloth robe and padded out to the living room to see which of the dozen it was.

Merle was standing there, soaking wet and dripping rain onto my welcome mat. "Hi," she said sadly. "Mind if I come in?" Still striking. Still beautiful. My heart filled my throat.

Over her? I suddenly realized that I wasn't over her at all. "Please do," I told her. I draped her coat over the living room radiator to dry. She started to shiver, and I called myself stupid, and busied myself: I got her a towel and some of my clean clothes and put her in the bedroom to change while I made tea.

She came out in my stiff new blue jeans, rolled at the ankles, a singlet and green flannel shirt that lent her eyes the colour of the sea. I almost couldn't breathe, she was so lovely.

She handed me her wet clothes. My apartment had no washer, no dryer, so we arranged them on radiators and lampshades to dry: blouse, skirt, hose, bra, panties. The place looked like a Gypsy encampment when we were done.

Wrapped in my comforter, she curled up in the corner of the big naugahyde couch with her tea. I perched at the other end, ready to fetch anything she might need. Ready to be of service.

She looked at me and sighed. "Don't worry," she said. "I'm not here for long. I won't disturb your life." She was true to her word: the next morning she was gone. I like to think it wasn't because of what I did. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

"That's okay," I told her. "You can disturb my life any time. What happened?"

"Men," she said. "Me. They're a bad combination, Rob."

"I thought it was pretty good."

She smiled in an exhausted way. "You were sweet. No, this was David." David was the advertising executive.

"He didn't...hit you, did he?"

"What? No, nothing like that. Rob, why will someone who has been avoiding marriage, avoiding commitment, suddenly decide that nothing else will do?"

My heart swelled in my throat: "Cusps," I said to her. "He, uh, he proposed?"

"Oh no, you sweet turkey. I proposed to him."

My heart sank then, like the Titanic, though the band played on: "And he turned you down?"

She nodded. "Just as well. I think life with him would be hell. But still -- all of a sudden, I want to be married." She laughed. "A hell of a thing. And who I marry doesn't seem to matter so much."

"Well," I said, as lightly as I could, "I'm still available, though I would have to check my calendar."

She laughed and that was the moment I knew I would never have her for my own. Though she said it didn't matter who she married, she would not think of marrying me. Halfway through the laugh the tears started coming, and I went to her and cradled her in my arms. I stroked her hair for a long, long time as she cried. "I'm sorry," she finally managed to say, "but I'm so tired..."

I picked her up though my aching muscles protested, and put her on the futon. She gave me a little help in undressing her and I yearned for her as I peeled her clothes off to reveal the woman I had dreamed of for the past two years. I covered her with the comforter; before I could leave, she touched my sleeve and said, "Please stay."

I hastily stripped down and lay beside-behind her, spoon fashion, her cool still-damp buttocks pressing into my pelvis. My erection fit neatly between the cheeks of her ass, poking me in the stomach. My right arm pillowed my head and my left arm curled loosely over her and my hand rested between her breasts. I was too conscious of her to sleep: I dozed now and then.

After one of those brief naps, I discovered my hard cock nestled between the lips of her pussy, warm and wet. Moving my hand slightly, I felt her nipple harden under my fingertips. Her hips made a nearly-imperceptible movement. Perhaps I imagined it, but I took it as an invitation.

I began to move my hips, sliding my hard cock back and forth along her lips. The quality of her breathing changed, became a little shallower, a little faster. I traced a path from her nipples down her belly to her hot hard clit, and I began to stroke her, occasionally touching the heavy head of my cock.

I don't know how long I kept up this torture; the sweet urgency built in my hips, my balls, my cock. With every slide back, my cock rested at her entrance. I pressed slightly but did not enter her. It would take a little -- very little! -- help from my hand, but I didn't do it. I'm not sure why.

After some more time, Merle moaned softly. She reached down and adjusted the angle and the head of my cock popped into her. "Ooooh," she sighed. I started to push my cock in farther with each stroke, fondling her as I did so. Not just her clit; all of her, careful to make it good for her, holding myself back. She responded in the old familiar ways, and her body tightened and she sighed as she always sighed when she came. She rolled onto her stomach, the signal that she was done.

I was still not near coming, and it seemed to me that she didn't care if I came, she had never cared if I loved her. I began to fuck her angrily, with full harsh strokes, in and out, her thighs gripping the length of my cock. My hips slapped against her asscheeks as I pushed my hard cock into her, again and again.

I didn't care if she liked it, I didn't care what she wanted or what she thought of me; I would never have her, and there was a kind of freedom in that. The feel of Merle beneath me, prone and warm and helpless, delighted me in my anger. I reached up and held her wrists down against the futon. She gasped, but did not struggle. If she had, I might have really tried to hold her wrists, really tried to restrain her, but she didn't and I didn't.

Instead I thrust my heavy cock into her, thrilling to the feel of her captive body beneath mine. I don't know how long I fucked her like that, careless of her needs or wants, slapping her ass with my hips, driving my cock in her cunt. Somewhere in that I let go of her arms, concentrating on the sweet grip of her pussy, the rubbing of her thighs against my cock. She lay still beneath me, moaning in time with my thrusts. As my come rose in me, I barked with pleasure, and then I came. My cock throbbed inside her several times, and then I lay quietly on her.

I lay quietly on her, feeling our heartbeats slow down and the slight pull of sweat-sticky skin each time we breathed. After my cock softened and fell out of her, dollops of my come oozed out and tickled down the limp length of my cock. I shivered, and pulled away from her. Finally I slept peacefully.

I was sure it was over between us, that I could look at her as just another woman I had known once, and it was almost like that the next morning. But at the door, as she was leaving, she kissed me goodbye like this: her mouth opened and her tongue caressed mine. When she was done, she whispered, "Thanks for last night."

And that was another cusp.

* * *

As I spoke, Gwen changed her grip on my cock and I squeezed my eyes shut as I came, shooting semen onto my chest and belly. A third pulse ran over her fingers and into my pubic hair. Before I opened my eyes, Gwen sucked my cock clean as it softened in her mouth. Finally she let it fall from between her lips, where it lolled on my thigh.

Gwen clambered up my body and licked the come off my chest. She kissed me with surprising force, sharing my come with me. The astringent aftertaste of it caught in my throat. "You'd have an affair with her?" Gwen asked me, her voice throaty.

I couldn't back out of it now, and besides, it was true. I nodded.

Gail's eyes were fierce. "If you do, I want you to know--" I could feel the damp heat of her crotch pressing against my belly. "--I want to watch."

On the cusp, at the doorway, I took a deep breath and stepped in with my wife. "You will," I told her. "You will."