stop the need to get my hands and mouth all over her.
After all these years, we’ve still got that flutter.
Fletcher
Tiny orange and pink slivers of light dance over the horizon, and even though my hand is cold, it doesn’t hinder the stroke of the brush.
My paint mimics the tune of the rising sun, washing over the canvas as the sun spreads its light over the blanket of snow laid out before me. I’ve been waiting for days to come up here, on the rooftop balcony, to paint. And when Ryan gave me this new palette and some brushes for Christmas yesterday, I knew it was time.
I’m just playing around, doing a little freehand with no real intention of creating something spectacular. It just feels good to stretch my artistic muscles after taking some time off these last couple of days.
It’s wonderful spending this much time with my family, but I forget how chaotic it can be. Ryan and I are still traveling the globe for her work and spend months of the year in different countries while she runs her nonprofit. Jett, our son, comes with us and is homeschooled, because we believe the education he’s getting by seeing the world and experiencing different cultures is invaluable. As it is, he speaks French and Spanish, along with our native English.
When we first had him, Mom tried to convince us to settle somewhere, leaning heavily on coming back to Fawn Hill. But we just weren’t the type to live in a small town. Ryan never had roots and didn’t necessarily want them, even though she’s a married woman with a family. Her wanderlust spirit is one of the things I love most about her.
And while I will always love my hometown and the people closest to me there, there are also demons I don’t want to have to see every day. We try to make it home a few times a year for extended periods of time, but living abroad is where we thrive.
That being said, I miss my family. I feel it in my bones, our deep connections, especially when we’re all together on a holiday like this. I feel the ghost of Dad, maybe more than my brothers, since they got more time with him. Well, I guess Forrest, my twin, didn’t. But I was always the black sheep, the one who needed more attention than the other three.
Until his death, my dad tried to give me that. And after, my brothers picked up the slack. They, and our mom, helped me through getting sober in a way I wouldn’t have survived if it wasn’t for them. That alone ties us intricately together in a way most families are not.
As I paint, I think about how much I’ll miss them, but how much I can’t wait to get to our next destination. Ryan, Jett, and I are spending three months in Puerto Rico, where my wife will be teaching underprivileged girls basic coding and computer skills.
There is a noise from the stairs that led up here, and when I pull my eyes away from the canvas, I see Ryan walking toward me.
My woman looks like an angel, wrapped in a furry white blanket that contrasts the jet-black hair spilling over her shoulders. I can only see her bare feet, face, and hair, but my God, does she take my breath away.
Without a word, she comes to me, scooting me back and climbing onto my lap. Her legs straddle me, and she opens the blanket, swallowing me inside the cozy fabric as well.
“Mmm.” I sigh, molding my lips to the warm skin of her neck.
“Good morning,” she whispers, her lips finding the sensitive skin of my earlobe.
“Jett sleeping okay?” I ask, my hands finding her bare back under the blanket and the layer of her shirt.
“Uh-huh. That kid could sleep through an earthquake, world war, or anything of the like,” Ryan jokes.
We tease about his ability to fall deeply into sleep anywhere, but that’s because of the beginning of his life. He’s our miracle baby, our one and only. Ryan’s pregnancy was fraught with problems from the start, and she ended up delivering our son a month early. He was only three pounds when the nurses placed him in my arms for the five seconds my wife and I were allowed to hold him before they rushed him to the NICU. I had to follow him, but not before I heard the nurses and doctors say that Ryan had just