More Than That - Chapter 14: Beginnings and Ends (Gwen/Luis)
 by Jamie Witter
 
 
 

Chapter 14: Beginnings and Ends

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
-- Gilda Radner

One week, Gwen poked her head into the director’s office at the Youth Center. It was around ten o’clock and just as she had suspected, Luis was sitting at his desk in the same position he had found her in a week ago. After taking a minute to enjoy the simple pleasure of just watching him, she stepped into the office and closed the door behind her. He looked up at the click of the door and his lips curved. “Hey Gwen.”

“What would you say to dinner?” Gwen asked leaning against the door and raising an eyebrow. “I have a picnic basket with our names written on it outside.”

Throwing his pen down on the desk, he closed the file in front of him and smiled. “I’d say it was a welcome distraction. A very appealing one too.”

“Now Mr. Director,” Gwen teased as he closed the distance between them and pulled her close. “Dinner is an essential meal. It’s more than merely a distraction.”

Grinning, he leaned in closer. “You’re right. You’re the distraction.”

He cut off her retort with his lips. As he lifted her off the ground, she melted into the kiss – like she always did and she knew that if he kept kissing her like that she would forget about the picnic that she had set up for the two of them in the Youth Center’s gym. Realizing that that was exactly his intention, she pushed away from him, smiling wickedly at the expression of desperation on his face. “Food first. Distraction later.”

“You’re no fun,” Luis whined as she hauled him into the gym. His tantrum was short-lived when he saw what she had done to the gym. The lights were off, candles were scattered around the large room and a small red-checkered cloth was spread out with a wicker basket placed on the side. The smell of Italian food filled his senses and he turned to her in amazement. “You did this?”

“Well all for the cooking,” Gwen admitted, her smile bright. “I’ve always dreamed of doing this one day. Well not in a gymnasium but my options were limited because of our secret…but this more…FUN, wouldn’t you say Officer?”

Luis grinned and raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, I take back that ‘no fun’ comment.” He grabbed her by the waist and kissed her lingeringly. “You’re tons of fun.”

Gwen pulled away, trying to get rid of the daze in her head and body. “I’ll be a lot more fun if you let me eat. I am starving. Had a light lunch today.”

Luis frowned as they say down on the cloth. “Gwen, you have to eat.”

Gwen was touched by his concern and resisted the urge to place a hand on his cheek. Instead, she busied herself with setting plates for them. “I didn’t have a good lunch because I was in a rush. I do it all the time, I survive.”

“Just promise me you won’t exert yourself to an extreme,” Luis said as he helped her with the food. “I do not want you to end up in the hospital again. Promise?”

This time, she reached out and touched his cheek with her fingertips. Her gaze locked with his in the candlelight, flecks of gold sparkled in his amber irises and it made her heart race. “I promise.”

“Good.”

They relaxed and began their meal by touching light-hearted topics about their day, the whether and how Rebecca was dealing with the upcoming divorce proceedings. Gwen bit into a piece of garlic bread, chewed swallowed and then laughed wryly. “That woman is going to fight Daddy for all he’s worth. But there isn’t much she can do. She was the one that cheated, after all.”

“I wish I was there to see the look on her face when Jonathan announced it to her,” Luis laughed. “No offense Gwen but that woman is a…”

“Slut?” Gwen supplied with a chuckle. When Luis nodded she shook her head. “I don’t know why I let her get to me before. Jacob said it had to do with her being the only one on my side. For a while, it seemed like she was the only one who understood why I wanted to be with Ethan. It turns out that even I didn’t know why I wanted to be with Ethan.”

“Do you know why now?” Luis asked taking a sip of his apple cider.

She looked at him, realizing how easy it was to talk to him. She knew she could tell him and he would listen. Really listen. Like Ethan had when they were younger. With than, she could talk about anything and everything. And she felt like she could talk with Luis like that. What shocked her most was that she knew that he would understand her – someone who he couldn’t relate to in many ways. “Because marrying Ethan was a dream come true. It was all I wanted. Being the next Mrs. Crane was the icing on the cake but it was being married that excited me. Having children, a husband, a great career…the perfect life.”

“Nobody has a perfect life.” Luis added.

“Unfortunately I realized that after the damage had been done,” Gwen answered with a wistful sigh. She dropped her gaze and fingered with the stem of the champagne flute in her hand. “And I realized that Ethan wasn’t part of the dream. I was so in love with who I thought he was that I didn’t even realize that he wasn’t even that anymore. My Ethan, the one I fell in love with, wouldn’t have had the place in is heart for another woman.”

She didn’t even know that a tear had slipped through her eyes and spilled on her cheeks until Luis’s hand gently brushed away the wetness. Her gaze lifted to connect with his again. “It still hurts, doesn’t it?”

“I miss him,” she replied with a little sniffle. “Or maybe I miss being loved the way he loved me once. I’ve always dreamed of it. I only wish it would come true – for real this time.”

Some thing flickered in Luis’s eyes but was gone as quickly as it came and before Gwen could decipher it. His hand remained on her cheek and he laughed a little. “You sound so much like Theresa.”

She knew by the look in his eyes that he had blurted it out but oddly she wasn’t insulted by it. She nodded slowly, smiling lopsided. “Do I? Well that’s irony for you, isn’t it? I used to think I was more of a practical woman.”

“I think you’re an interesting mix of practicality and romance,” Luis stated, tucking her hair behind her ear. “A practical woman wouldn’t have been able to set this picnic up without having a romantic bone in her body.”

“Well I should let you know that my intentions weren’t altogether pure when I set up this little rendezvous,” Gwen grinned wolfishly and trailed and hand up his thigh. She got the satisfaction of hearing him groan and then she leaned forward and placed a teasing kiss on his lips. After she pulled away, she lifted up a plate of lemon pie and looked at him innocently. “Dessert?”

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

“Hank and I…wow, Hank and I have been buddies for as long as I can remember,” Luis said as he forked the pie on his plate. “Our parents knew each other since they were teenagers. We’re as different as day and night but we depend on each other. He’s more of my brother than best friend. Wouldn’t trade him for the world.”

“Wow,” Gwen said wiping her mouth with a napkin. “I don’t know a lot of men who have such a strong friendship but I guess when you grow up in small town with someone your entire life that’s inevitable.”

“Hank and I have been through a lot,” Luis agreed, a pensive expression taking over his features. “The simple stuff like getting out of trouble and first kisses to the complicated stuff like when Papa disappeared and Mr. B died. He was there when Mama told me that Papa was missing and I was there when we heard of the shoot-out at the wharf that killed Hank’s dad.”

“So how does Beth fit into all of this?”

Luis felt his lips curve. “Elisabeth Wallace. Now there is a woman whose bad side you do not want to get on. Hank and I met her in first grade. The two of them immediately got into a grudge match and I was the mediator.”

“Protector by nature,” Gwen said with a smile of her own.

“Stick in the mud according to them,” Luis laughed. “I guess it was always Hank and Beth, Beth and Hank. I mean, somewhere along the line for a long time it became Beth and Luis but Hank was always there. It’s funny; he kept Beth and me together even when he wasn’t in Harmony. She missed him like crazy.”

“That didn’t bother you? Having your girlfriend miss Hank so much?” Gwen asked, taking a sip of her cider.

“After Hank left Beth and I were so on again off again I just never had to or wanted to deal with her being in love with him. Looking back I realize that what she needed her entire life was him. We were all just stupid for not seeing it before. Not a good excuse but the only one I can come up with.” Luis explained with a chuckle. “All this time Beth was with the wrong friend.”

“Are you saying that you were never in love with Beth?”

“No,” Luis answered. He had never really thought of it before. “I fell in love with Beth. She was my first kiss, my first time…we’ve had so many good times together. But we weren’t meant to be. Papa disappeared and I pushed her as far away from me and my whirlwind life.”

“To protect her?”

“That’s all I ever wanted for her,” Luis admitted. “To be happy. I thought that if I married her then I’d end up leaving her like I believed Papa left. And I could never do that to her. I used to think I did the wrong thing by letting her go. But I see how she is with Hank now and I don’t regret it for a minute.”

“It sounds like you loved her deeply.”

“Yes, I did. It’s like you and Ethan, you thought that it was what you wanted but love changes sometimes. Am I making any sense?”

“Yes,” she answered with a grin. “I know what you mean. Sometimes, you don’t get your perfect ending. Not all people believe in fairytales.”

“So wise,” Luis teased as she started to put the pie away. He helped her with the food and plastic plates. Once everything was tidied, he grabbed her hands. Surprised, she turned to him questioningly. Forgetting all he was going to say when their gazes locked, he simply let go of one of her hands and trailed his fingers through her hair. “This was nice. Different.”

“You mean from our usual must-get-into-bed routine?” Gwen teased and made him laugh. “Yeah, I’d say this is quite a change of pace. So does this mean that we’re not going to go to bed tonight then?”

Deciding to play along, Luis looked thoughtful. “Wouldn’t want to ruin our pace.”

“True,” Gwen replied equally thoughtful. “Are you sure you can survive without sex for a night?”

He raised an eyebrow challengingly. “Longer than you can.”

“You cannot!” she stated indignantly.

“Can too.” His response was even.

On impulse, she grabbed his wrists in her hand and scrunched her face. “You’re so going down for that one, Lopez Fitzgerald.”

“Are you kidding me?” He laughed as she tried to hold him in a vice-like grip. Easily letting freeing his wrists from her hand, her circled his hand around her arm and lifted it. “With these puny things?”

“They’re not puny!”

“Wanna bet?”

“Okay,” she conceded. “I’m out of shape.”

An idea struck Luis and fifteen minutes later, he had her out of her dress and into sweats, boxing gloves on her hands and a helmet on her head. Grinning at the picture she painted, he held the punching bag for her as she took a whack. The bag barely moved. “That was pathetic. Try again. And this time out your whole body into it. Swing your hips to give you momentum.”

“Okay,” she nodded and lunged for the bag. The bad trembled. Barely. Luis laughed as she pouted. “What am I doing wrong?”

“Your stance is wrong,” Luis said as he came to stand behind her. He lifted her arms and then ran a hand down her thighs to separate her legs properly. When she shuddered lightly at his touch, he grinned and then lazily brought his hands over her spine and then over her arms, leaving goose bumps. Leaning closer, he whispered huskily in her ear. “See, I got you thinking of sex first.”

When she turned to him to say something, he cut her off by bringing his mouth to hers. Her glove-clad hands came around his neck as she yielded to the kiss and returned it.

Suddenly amid the pounding of his heart and his racing blood, he heard someone clear their throat loudly and a familiar voice accompanied it. “Am I interrupting something?

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