Diplomacy

held Jack tighter in his arms. “It felt like the right thing to do at the time. I didn’t want you to give up everything you ever worked for and then resent me afterwards.”
    “I wouldn’t have,” Jack answered, calmer now. “I would have gladly given everything up for you. I just wasn’t very good at telling you that then, I suppose.” He slowly kissed Lucas again. They were cozy now, both on their sides and facing each other, snuggled up together under the blankets, simply enjoying the closeness of their relaxed and naked bodies.
    “We have to stay awake, so we’re not too late to pick AnnElise up from Liz’s,” Lucas lazily told Jack in between kisses, but it was no use.
    It was already dark when they arrived at Liz’s house. Luckily she thought it was all very funny, making both of them feel incredibly self-conscious and she didn’t skip a single opportunity to tease them about it mercilessly.

    180 | Z a h r a O w e n s

Chapter Twenty-Three
    EARLY on in their renewed relationship, the decisions they had to make were easy. Lucas and AnnElise moved into Jack’s apartment, because it was bigger, located in a better part of the city and closer to where they both now worked. More importantly, it didn’t require paying any rent, though at some point Lucas remarked that what they had to pay in monthly expenses to maintain the elevators, their percentage of the building and the doorman, felt like rent to him!
    Jack enrolled in the graduate program at Cornell just as he had said he would when he came back to New York, and even though he promised Lucas he wouldn’t rush things, he did drive the four hours over to Ithaca a few times every month and spent countless hours behind his desk at home doing research and writing papers.
    AnnElise was growing up happy, and Jack realized he really enjoyed being a dad. He blushed profusely, but was infinitely proud when AnnElise dragged him back into the U.N. day care center so she could introduce him as ‘her other dad’ to one of the new girls working there.
    Most of their colleagues knew about their living arrangements and, to Jack’s surprise in particular, it was usually met with everything from total indifference to the occasional ‘well, good for you’. It was still strange to Jack to be matter-of-fact about Lucas, never sure if he should call him his boyfriend, lover, significant other or just partner, but whatever he called him, he was not hiding him anymore. In that respect, Liz was a great help, doing her very best to treat them no differently from the straight couples in her circle of friends.

    D i p l o m a c y | 181

    Jack and Lucas’s friends were an eclectic bunch of expatriates from a variety of countries, so by the time she was four, AnnElise was speaking French, Spanish and Italian with their children as if she had never heard anything else, and that was just the way her two dads liked it.

    “REMEMBER when you asked me to marry you?” Lucas had just put aside the press release he had been drafting all evening and was snuggled up to Jack who was reading ‘Libération’, one of the many foreign newspapers they subscribed to.
    “I remember,” Jack answered, narrowing his eyes as he fondly thought back to that night.
    “Well, I accepted, right?” Lucas continued.
    “Yes, you did,” Jack said hesitantly and a little unsure of where exactly Lucas was taking this.
    “Do you still feel the same?” Lucas asked, more seriously.
    “Are you asking me if I still want to marry you?” Lucas nodded.
    “Honey, my feelings haven’t changed; you know I still love you, probably even more now than when I asked you.” Jack put his hand on Lucas’s neck.
    “But?” Lucas cut in.
    “But what?” Jack could see the disappointment in his lover’s face.
    “Luke, we don’t need a piece of paper. Besides, here in the States it’s not even valid.”
    “I know that,” Lucas answered quietly, pulling away and creating some distance between him and Jack.
    “Lucas, what’s wrong? Why do I have to prove my love for you all of a sudden?” Jack put his newspaper down and turned in Lucas’s direction.
    “It’s not about that. What if something happened to me? What if I had some kind of accident? I would want you to make decisions for me, and I would want you to take care of AnnElise.”
    “That’s why I’m her legal guardian, and you had it written into your living will that I can make those decisions for you if you are no longer able to