Pairing: CJ/Marco

Rating: Mature

Disclaimer: If I made money for the stuff I write about CJ and Toby, I wouldn’t need to work a real job. But, since CJ, Toby, Josh, Andrea, Donna, and all the other West Wing characters belong to Warner Brothers, I can only take them out to play. But my real question is, when the West Wing ends, do I get to keep them for good?

Author’s Note: This story takes place within the Dark History universe. You don’t need to have read it to understand it, but it helps. And yes, there is a Wisteria Lane in Dayton.

Spoilers: “The Long Goodbye”

Remembrance

“Well, there was a bit more too it than that.”

The Ramones played in her mind as she ducked her head, looking at him sideways, her blue eyes shining. He smiled at her, and tossed the cigarette into the gutter, and knew that until that very moment she’d forgotten everything – the kisses, the pain, the detentions, the love. He knew until she held her hand out to him, those years of high school were as far from her mind as Dayton from Washington. He knew that as their hands touched, the physical jolted the buried emotion, and that if she let it, the memories would dwell with her every day. So, instead, she had done what he had done, buried the past and walked away. The time he’d done could have destroyed her career, but if he’d married her, would he have done the time? Would she have become press secretary? Was it wrong to tell her that he’d never seen even one of her briefings?

“Um, hey, you’re CJ, right? CJ Cregg? You’re Mr. Cregg’s daughter.”

It was a dream awakening within her, the rain washed away the fog of the past, a past she both clung to and tried to forget. She’d never been more embarrassed in her life. She stood there, looking into the eyes of the man she’d lost her virginity to, and she hadn’t recognized him, at least not at first. The eyes were the same, but he’d filled out and she’d never known his hair was really dark blonde. Were they really that old? Had they really changed that much? Had she? She was a politician; she was supposed to be able to remember names and faces. But she couldn’t remember him. Or she hadn’t, not at first. But he remembered her.

“There’s more to me than that, Marco.”

Their hands touched and she was jolted back twenty years. A trembling fifteen year old, jazzed from the power of the club show she’d just been packed in to, egged on by how sweet Marco’s lips tasted, dressed in ratty jeans and a tattered t-shirt. Her t-shirt hit the floor; his hands moved the zipper on her jeans. They’d both been entranced by her body’s reaction to the way he touched her, he’d spent an hour exploring the different folds he found, and pumping his fingers inside of her body. She’d heard most girls didn’t come their first time. She came, and came, and came. His breath hot on her skin as he slid, awkwardly at first, into her body. His eyes filled with guilt when she’d screamed out in pain as he broke through her hymen. He’d kissed her when he came, and when he pulled out, he held her close – hoping he hadn’t hurt her. It was his first time too.

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him, hating him for connecting her with her father. He just grinned at her and passed her the joint in his hands.

“Don’t worry. Even the cops are smoking the stuff.” This wasn’t the CJ he knew from school. Black, ripped t-shirt, shredded jeans, black armbands and black lipstick. Her t-shirt, what was left, spoke out about the evils of Vietnam. Through the tatters he could see she wasn’t wearing a bra. “How’d you get down here anyway?”

Experienced lips took the joint and she met his eyes as she took a long drag off the burning paper. Pretending to be tough, or was it that at school, she pretended to be good? She flipped her hair, feeling different, and it wasn’t the drugs in her system. “My friend borrowed her father’s car.” Suddenly she was fifteen again. She could have told him she’d stolen her brother’s … it would be a better story.

One last drag and then he tossed the used roll of paper sideways. A step closer to her, then another, the lights were dimming in the over crowded club. “You like the Ramones?” He put his hand on her hip.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” She crossed her arms again. She let him keep his hand on her hip.

A tentative step toward her; the humidity from the rain pressed her hair against her head and he wondered when she’d had it straightened. Or had it always been a perm in high school? He’d never known. The locks were short now, perfectly highlighted – blonde and brown. But in the haze of the florescent lights of the airport terminal, he saw the shades of red reflected, picked up by the exit signs. Looking around – his heart raced faster than that night in that club – he wondered if he touched her again, would secret service agents come flying out of the woodwork. He had heard she’d been stalked last year – the French loved CJ, the tabloids were full of her – and suddenly he thought about Todd Harris and beating the other guy up in the alley behind the club and taking CJ back to her car (did she still have the mustang?) and telling her it would be okay. “At the risk of being anything,” was it anything? Was she dating someone? He’d heard her talking to a voice mail as he approached. Was he wrong to feel the chemistry? “Hey... listen... at the risk of being... anything... you wouldn't want to go to this thing together, would you?”

Her eyes shone – was it fear?

“I mean, we could get a vodka first, which helps with the fear, and a cracker, which helps with the bad food.” It had been easier when they were fifteen and he’d passed her a joint in a dimly lit club.

She agreed. And his heart raced as he helped her into the car and for a minute he envisioned sneaking in through her bedroom window for old times sake, stuffing his t-shirt under the door and trying to be quiet while they made love. He wondered if her father ever really knew the truth.

He kissed her. She tasted of beer and pop rocks (beer and pop rocks?) and marijuana and sweat. Inside, the club still surged with exhausted punk kids, all pushing the stage, demanding yet another encore. Marco just pushed CJ up against the wall of the alley and kissed her, feeling far older than his fifteen years. When they broke for air, he wondered if she’d ignore him in the halls tomorrow. Would she just hide in her locker and stare at her books and roll her eyes as he walked past? He put his hand on her waist again. He asked if he could drive her home.

Marco cut the lights of his brother’s Pontiac when they turned onto Wisteria Lane. The car clattered as it crept forward and he cut the engine two houses down from CJ’s. Three streets over, dogs (probably his) barked. CJ rolled down the window and stared at him.

Even in the impossible darkness of a suburban street, he could see the color of her eyes and the fear reflected back at him. In that club, on stolen time, they’d let down the barriers around their school personas. She would shun him tomorrow in the halls, but when no one was looking, she’d leave a note in his locker. He could tell all of that from her eyes. He kissed her again, scared she would reject him.

CJ moaned into the kiss and didn’t push away when his hand found it’s way into her brother’s tattered shirt. She thought it was sweet that his fingers would stroke her stomach, and it was clear he wanted to touch more, but he wouldn’t without permission. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure if she was ready to give it to him, but if he’d tried at the club she’d have let him.

He moved against her, and she was on her back, under him across the bench seat of his brother’s stolen Pontiac. He didn’t touch her, but their hips fit together perfectly and if he’d tried anything, she would have let him. But he didn’t, he just kissed her, the hairspray in his mohawk started to give out and the tendrils of his blue hair tickled her face. They both laughed and his hand inched higher and stroked the underside of her breast. Again, their hips moved, but he pulled back. “I shouldn’t … I should let you go.”

Her hips moved again, this time pushing her up from her place under his body. They both could see his own reaction to her and, being brave, CJ reached over and cupped the growing erection through his jeans. Marco just looked at her, begging her silently to leave, so that he could go home and take care of his fantasies of her in the shower – like he did every night.

Even in the dark, they could tell the other one was blushing. “Tomorrow’s my early period,” she whispered, “and there’s always a good twenty minutes in between that and the start of regular period. Meet me somewhere?”

“You’ll be seen with me?” The blushing stopped as she removed her hand.

“Where?”

Instead of her eyes, he focused on her fingers as they rested on the door handle. “I’ve got baseball practice first thing … I can be early?”

“Behind the bleachers?”

“You want to be seen with me?”

“You’re a baseball playing punk rocker, of course I don’t.” He could hear her laughing. “You want to be seen with me?”

“You’re the prettiest, smartest, saddest girl in all of Dayton.” His hand caught hers. “Of course I do.”

She was gone.

The interruption of the glare of the sun against the bleachers caught his attention and Marco looked over his shoulder as he swung the bat. Silently, she climbed the stairs, her backpack slung over her shoulder. Always the same place, up in the top corner, she’d do her chemistry or her history homework and smoke the cigarettes she’d stolen from her brother’s dresser drawer. Half the guys didn’t even know who she was, the other half thought it was the smart girl looking for a place to hang out. The smart girls always did shit like this. No one knew they were together.

It was the black jeans today. He hadn’t seen her after her zero period, but had heard Mrs. Lewis had yelled at her about something. Today was the day they didn’t have lunch together, and she’d been called out of History class before he could say anything to her. Black jeans, the tight ones with the rips in the knees. Her shirt was conservative enough – one of her father’s dress shirts he figured. Was it the black lace bra she’d showed him the other night when he’d finally worked up the courage to pull her t-shirt over her head, or the white cotton one he loved to run his fingers over?

She stared down at him as her backpack fell from her shoulder. Without looking over her shoulder, she’d known he watched her climb the bleachers, and normally that would have made her feel sexy. Today it made her feel trashy. Lisa Jenkins had walked into the bathroom during lunch to find her and Libby finishing off cigarettes and trying to figure out if Libby should get a pregnancy test done. Only three points behind CJ in the race for class brainiac, Lisa had immediately raced to the guidance office and ratted the best friends out. Only CJ’s father being in the position he was in had cleared her from detention. It helped to be the smartest girl in the school and not even be sixteen yet. She’d spun the story easily, but by the time she made it back to class, Marco had slipped out. She felt trashy, she couldn’t help it. He was sixteen now, the car he kept stealing from his brother was now his. He could drive her home after school and it was easy to tell people she was late because she was at the library. No one believed she was dating Marco Arlens.

Were they dating? Or were they necking in his car and sneaking away to the bigger cities to see the Misfits and the Ramones? Last weekend he’d pulled her shirt over her head and sucked at her nipples through the lace of her bra, the same bra she wore today under her father’s dress shirt. Before curling up in the position where she could watch the practice but be unnoticed by the team members, she lit a cigarette in defiance of the rules and unbuttoned the blouse down to her cleavage. She knew Marco was watching.

Miles separated her from Toby Zeigler and still his force called to her and, selfishly, she wondered if she called his home number would he be alone and be willing to tell her sweet nothings and make her feel sexy and maybe even talk dirty to her. Would he save her from the hell she was about to step in to? The rain started to taper off – she wouldn’t need the umbrella. And her father would greet her at the door, like he had so many other times. Would he remember when he was? Would he tell her that she needed to call because it was after midnight and would she be too scared to tell him where she’d really been? Would she again be sixteen and wondering how to cover up the smell of sex and pot and booze or would he know her for the woman she was? Would it be Molly at the door – daring to take the place of her mother – staring at her with accusing eyes and telling her that she’d made her father worry? Would they fight?

1420 Wisteria Lane. They were on Far Hills now, inching ever closer. She didn’t want to do this. She wanted her mother there, to be the one to greet her at the door. She wanted to feel guilty for keeping her up and then redeem herself by making hot tea for both of them. Her mother would want to hear the stories of the White House and she would ask if CJ had met anyone and she would let her only daughter lament over Andi’s pregnancy. But instead, it would be Molly – the woman who perhaps loved her father but who had never been able to stand his children. Molly wouldn’t care to hear about Toby or Andi or the White House. She’d stand and glare and tell her father that they were all up too late. The silent cab was on Oakwood now, passing Shafor Park, and turning onto Shafor Boulevard.

On brand new ten speeds, she and Marco had raced up the Boulevard. Her blue one was faster than his black one.

Wisteria Lane. They turned right. Marco’s ride had been a hotel shuttle, his mother must have moved. She wondered if the owners at 1510 Harman Boulevard had three dogs, one of them three legged and blind.

She paid the silent cabbie, and knew the man recognized her. She gave up on the umbrella, and walked through the gate and toward the ancient wooden stairs. The light switched on.

Her father emerged.

The best things about older brothers were the treasures left behind. The tree houses, the make shift ladders, the tricks of the trade learned to walk silently across the roof. She taught Marco the same tricks, always leaving her bedroom window open at night.

Her mother lay dying in the next room; her father retreated into his own world. Priests came and went, and one tried to talk to the girl who hovered in the doorways. She did not talk back, but escaped out the front door and into the mustang her brother left behind. Her sixteenth birthday was still weeks away, she could drive the car better than anyone else, and Marco knew the sound of the engine long before she ever pulled up in front of his house.

“The Ramones are downtown again tonight, want to go?” He leaned the seat back and lit a joint, letting her take the first hit. He’d cut his last period again; her study hall was always excused. CJ sighed and looked at him before taking the joint back and taking a long hit. She always waited for the cops to bust them for being up here at the lookout (if you could really call it that) during the day, but they were only interested in the kids at night. Marco reached over and unbuttoned her blouse as she thought, weighing how ready she was for tomorrow’s test against a night in a hot club, pressed up against her boyfriend. Days this warm, this late in October, were rare and she’d worn this miniskirt and crop top just for him.

“I have a chemistry test tomorrow. So do you.”

“I’ll ace it.”

“How do you do that without studying?”

“How do you know I’m not studying?” He grinned and leaned up, exhaling the smoke into her mouth. She breathed in, capturing it, and then slowly let it out again. He stroked her nipples through the lace of her bra.

“Because I know you.” She squirmed and felt that familiar rush flow through her body. The blouse slid off her shoulders and her bra followed suit. Marco breathed smoke over her body while he nipped at her breasts. The mustang’s bucket seats didn’t allow for what they both wanted and it was still too light and they could get caught if they went any further. CJ retrieved her blouse and rolled another joint. Marco smiled. “I’ll be at your house at eight.”

“What will you tell your father?”

“He’ll never know.” CJ shrugged.

She wondered if, the next morning, her friends could tell something different. Libby knew, but Libby knew everything. Her legs ached, and her hips hurt, but she didn’t mind. She was fifteen and she wasn’t a virgin anymore. She was sleeping with the rebel of the school. No one knew. No one. Except Libby. But Libby knew everything.

“Todd Harris asked me to prom.” She lit a cigarette and stared hard at her boyfriend.

“You want me to ask you?”

“I want you to give me a good excuse to not go.”

“I don’t need to give you excuses for anything, CJ.” He tugged at her newly permed hair. “Go or don’t go.”

“You won’t be jealous if I go with Todd? We’ve been dating for almost a year and you won’t be jealous?”

“You want me to play possessive boyfriend? Where’s that feminist streak of yours?” He lit his own cigarette and reached for his guitar.

“I don’t know what I want.”

“You want to out ourselves to the whole fucking school? You’re the valedictorian, you skipped god knows how many grades in elementary school and you’ve already got colleges beating down your door – you’re like the youngest merit scholar ever – and I’m going to be lucky to graduate. And we’re still years away from it. We’re sixteen and you’re playing sexual politics?”

“Then I will go with Todd.”

“He’s a jackass.”

“So are you.”

“But I’m a jackass who loves you.” He threw his cigarette into the coffee can by the garage door and stared hard at her. “Yeah, CJ, I love you and if you can’t handle that then you can go to the fucking prom with Todd-fucking-Harris.”

She stared at him, wanting to tell him she loved him. “You love me?”

“Since third grade when you colored your pigtails with your pink magic marker.” He needed her to tell him she loved him. He wanted to sneak upstairs and make love to her. But he knew it couldn’t happen because her father had loved her mother, but now he was dating that woman from the junior high school while CJ was still placing roses at her mother’s brand new headstone. CJ didn’t believe in love, she’d told him. So he wasn’t surprised when she kissed him, hard, and then hopped on her bike and rode home as fast as she could.

He wasn’t surprised when she went to the prom with Todd Harris.

Tal Cregg hadn’t changed much in the years since graduation. The hair was greyer, the skin more wrinkled, but he was the same gruff man who had thrown him out of Algebra. He quaked a few minutes in his boots, staring at him, and then, staring at CJ as she came down the stairs.

It hadn’t been so long that he couldn’t tell she was upset over something. In the background he could hear a press briefing and he watched CJ’s eyes turn to the TV. So that was the man who had stolen her heart. Daring to endear himself to CJ’s father, he looked at the watch, realizing quickly just how far gone the once brilliant man’s mind was. Tal Cregg had touched so many students, including him, fixing this watch was the least he could do. A part of him wondered if he turned back the hands of the watch, would time reverse as well. Would CJ still climb into that mustang and drive off toward California and never look back?

Their eyes met across the dark club and he knew she was there with Todd Harris. Todd flirted with a cheerleader, CJ moved closer to the stage. He sang to her, the ballad he’d written prom night, and at the end of it, while people clapped and no one paid attention, he knelt down and kissed her.

Toby. The guy’s name was Toby. He’d learned to be observant and the display screen of CJ’s cell phone revealed everything to him. He watched the emotions pass over her face, and she looked back up at the crowd of their old classmates and then back to him and then to the still ringing phone.

“I don’t think I can handle this right now.” Their eyes met and he was sixteen again, holding her close against the old oak tree while mourners inside paid tribute to her mother. They’d climbed to the old tree house and wrapped in a blanket and she’d cried and blamed herself for being a bad daughter. He started the car and drove. It wasn’t a tree house, but it was the closest thing.

He wondered if Todd Harris knew that CJ really came here to listen to them play. But he also didn’t think Todd cared. The burly football star liked to brag that his girlfriend was a star player for the girls’ basketball team. He didn’t care to know that CJ had started playing only to relieve the tension after her mother’s death. Marco knew. And he wrote songs for her and came to every game and it was his turn to climb, almost unnoticed, to the corner of the bleachers and watch practice. He didn’t do his homework, he wrote songs and watched the cheerleaders. He waited outside after practice and CJ would go home with him, not with Todd. Basketball season came and went, despite CJ’s own recognition the team didn’t make it past the semi-finals, and Todd stopped bragging.

“Ditch calc and come home with me. My mom’s out of town.” He looked into her eyes, missing her more than even the stolen kisses after the Mollusks’ shows could convey. The end of school was only a few months away – she was going to Berkeley he’d heard. He wondered if it was too late to follow her; he’d applied last week and waited to hear back. They wouldn’t accept him, but he needed to try.

She slipped her fingers into his and followed him, not knowing that Todd watched as she climbed into Marco’s brother’s Pontiac.

“We’re playing downtown tonight, do you want to come? I can get you in.” He drove away from the school, past Wisteria Lane, and toward his own tumble down house. She didn’t answer him until they were on his bed and he had her blouse off and was working on her bra. Of course she’d go down tonight. She was sorry. She’d break up with Todd. She wanted him to forgive her. Marco told her there wasn’t a need and he forgot to pull back long enough to cover himself with a condom.

Todd didn’t care that CJ was taller than him, he was still stronger and he threw his unfaithful girlfriend against the wall of the club. No one noticed, and of those that did, few cared. She deserved it, they figured. A punk looking girl outside a club – whatever she got, she was asking for it.

“You’ve been making a fool of me!” He slapped her across the face. “I saw you cut school with him today.” She didn’t fight back, she was too terrified. She didn’t need to. Marco threw the larger guy against the wall and punched him in the face. He dislocated his finger; Todd broke his nose.

CJ snuck him into her father’s house but it was unnecessary, he was out late again with what’s her name from the junior high. Marco noticed the wedding pictures were gone now, and so were most of the pictures of CJ’s mother.

“He’s going to get married to her.” CJ bandaged his broken hand carefully.

“Are you okay with that?”

“Do you have anything with you?”

“Some Quaaludes.” He kissed her when she finished with his hand. CJ led him back to her bedroom, opened the window, and locked the door. With difficulty, he put the vinyl on the turntable while CJ lit the incense. By the time she joined him on the bed, dressed only in a pair of boxer shorts, he was hard and she was willing to do whatever he asked. He dropped the pills into her mouth while she freed him from his own boxers. He loved it when she went down on him, she swallowed and he’d heard most girls didn’t do that. His good hand directed the movement of her head and she nibbled at him in time to the music. His orgasm exploded, seeming stronger because of the drugs, and he took his own turn with her, tasting her. She always tasted faintly like pineapple.

The first kiss was hesitant, as it always seemed to be. But his hand found that place on her hip and she pressed against him. She’d learned a lot in the intervening years, including knowledge of her own, natural, god-given prowess in bed. She took control and he let her, willingly, amazed at how much had changed; yet still remained the same.

She tugged at his shirt buttons. In this moment, she remembered the laughter, skipping out on detention and the first time he’d ever dared her to skip out on one of her father’s classes. She’d chickened out; he’d ended up with detention. She waited for him afterward and they had sex behind the bleachers in defiance of Todd Harris. That night he showed her how to drop acid; she slept through school the next day. Later that week he snuck through her bedroom window with a brand new album and the vinyl scratched and popped on her turntable. They listened to the music and smoked pot out the window and he asked if she loved him.

They didn’t speak at first; he dropped to his knees after her dress hit the floor (somewhere next to his shirt and jacket and belt) and he tugged her pantyhose from her body. They left the lights off, the illumination from the hotel walkway was more than enough, and even in this light he could see the scars on her stomach and legs. He pulled back and looked at her, images of Todd Harris flashing in his mind. Someone had succeeded where the football player had failed. In the dim light, as always, he could see the exact color of her eyes. “What happened?” He whispered, his voice choking with emotion. The scars were faded, well cared for – they had to be ages old, but he knew every inch of her skin and could tell what was new. These, as old as they were, were new to him. “CJ?”

“Not now.” How could she tell him about Naji and the humiliation she’d endured? It was decades ago, buried deep inside her mind, he didn’t need to know. She could tell he’d already figured it out. She didn’t want to say it out loud. “I was in college,” she supplied. He ripped his eyes away from hers and kissed the scar that ran from her belly button to the top of her pubic hair. His tongue dipped between her folds and her rape at the hands of another was forgotten.

She still tasted faintly like pineapple.

He watched her walk around the room, looking for discarded clothes and felt a surge, emotion that told him it had been a mistake to not follow her to Berkeley. They laughed as she tossed a discarded condom into the wastebasket, “I’m on the pill now.” She said as he snapped her bra back into place. “It doesn’t matter, chances are that I can’t get pregnant anyway.”

The words cut at him and he knew that diagnosis was a result of the cuts on her body. The wounds went deeper than the human body’s three layers of skin. Instinct told him it was only her sheer force of will that had her alive today. “How do you know I’m not dying of something?”

“Are you dying of something?”

“Clean as a whistle.”

“There you have it.” She pulled the black dress over her head and looked back at him. “Stock tips?”

“My crimes are no worse than any you and your political friends commit on a daily basis.”

She chuckled and he could tell she agreed with him. He started to button his shirt but she stopped him and did it herself. “I’ll come back here with you tonight.” He heard the unspoken words: she couldn’t go home. Not right now.

“We can recapture our youth?”

“Haven’t we already?”

“Todd Harris is gay.”

They both laughed.

He looked at her, at her white knuckles, and refrained from saying anything. Three months to graduation, she was only seventeen, she couldn’t get this done – if she really was pregnant – without her father’s permission. He blamed himself; he should have remembered to use a condom. She blamed herself, wondering why she hadn’t asked to get those birth control pills. There were clinics that would give them to teenagers without their parents knowing. They were driving to one now. He had offered to pay for the gas – they didn’t know what they’d do if she was pregnant. They couldn’t afford an abortion, even if the clinic would give one to a minor.

“Libby says that if I get a bunch of pills and take them all at once that my body will abort.”

“Won’t you get sick?”

“It’s better than being pregnant.” She regretted snapping at him, but kept her eyes on the road. The drive to Cincinnati was less than an hour; they could be home by dinner. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Marco light a cigarette for each of them and their hands touched when he passed the burning tobacco to her. They smiled, nervously, he knew she was scared.

He was eighteen now; he checked them into the roadside dive while she drove to the nearest drug store and asked for a pregnancy test. He sat with her on the bathtub lip and when it came up positive, they both cried. He drove to the Planned Parenthood and she didn’t speak to him while they waited for the official test to come back. They cried again when the nurse told them it was negative and gave them a fresh box of condoms.

“Where to?”

“There’s a drug store over on the right, let’s get some junk food.” CJ looked over at him; he was driving, she was still crying with relief. “They might even have some cool colored hair dye for you.”

“Think they’ll have black lipstick?” He smiled and wondered how two years had gone by. In three months she’d be in California and he’d be here in Cincinnati. She’d never remember him. He wondered if, in twenty years, he’d remember her. In this moment, it was impossible to think he could forget her laugh or her smile or the way her lips wrapped around the butt of a cigarette.

CJ climbed up and out of the car, not bothering to open the door. They linked hands and walked into the drug store. She found pink hair dye for him; he found black lipstick for her. He held her hand and whispered that he loved her.

She whispered it back.

She pressed two things into his hand: her business card and her father’s watch. “Take care of it. Send it back to me.” Molly and Tal stood a ways off, having said goodbye. They were used to CJ’s unpredictability.

“You’re okay?” He looked at the impatient ticket agent and then back to CJ. Her phone kept paging her, more updates – she’d spent the whole ride to the airport talking to people he could only assume were press – and that man, Toby, who had stolen her heart.

“It’s my job, Marco. It’s my life.” Leaning forward, her lips again touched his cheek. “Life is only what’s ahead of us.”

He pocketed the watch and then looked at her card. The official White House information on the front, her personal information on the back. She trusted him to not reveal it; he slid it into his shirt pocket. “Can I call you for other reasons?”

“Please.” She touched his arm.

He pressed a piece of paper into her hand. “Call me when you’re in Paris.” They smiled at each other and the moment was broken as her phone beeped again. From the corner of his eye, Marco saw a man who had to be an FBI agent approach where they stood. CJ’s escort, he realized, to the plane. She smiled and stepped back, shouldering her bags. The ticket counter waited.

“CJ!” He called after her. She turned. “Do you still have the mustang?”

She smiled, and remembered.

~fin~