Chapter 12

Still Charley’s turn:

At first, I couldn’t figure out what woke me on Tuesday. Lying there quietly, though, it happened again. Claire’s stomach was growling! I laughed, which woke her up, too. As I was telling her about it, my stomach decided to get in on the action. I was starving!

Our first shower together was interesting. I had the advantage when washing her body, since I didn’t need to bend over to do most of it. She had the advantage when washing my hair, though, since she didn’t have to reach way up there. It was a pity that we didn’t have time to do some soapy exploring, but she needed to go to school, and I was working. Besides which, that would have delayed eating! After getting dressed, we headed for the kitchen to make a huge breakfast, only to find that Elise had beaten us there.

“I started as soon as I heard the shower,” she said. “Knowing that you two’ve been waiting, I figured you’d be starving this morning.” Claire blushed, and I felt my own face heating up. Elise grinned at us and said, “Good for you two! Go on, have a seat. Bacon, pancakes and scrambled eggs coming right up.”

“I still don’t know what you see in Chuck, but you’re a gem,” I said. “Let me grab some coffee, and I’ll have a seat. Coffee, sweetie?”

“Yes, please! Love, do we have anything going on after you get off today?”

“I don’t know of anything that needs to be done right away. I’ll go down to the courthouse later today or tomorrow to get some copies of our marriage certificate to use for name changes, then we can start the process of officially changing our names. The only other thing I was thinking of was taking our rings in to get them soldered together.”

“Can we wait on that until later?” she asked. “It’s just that I checked the weather report yesterday, and a front’s supposed to be coming in, starting this morning. Rain, wind, high surf — I think it would be awesome to watch it pound the shore from up on the rip rap out by the lighthouse as the daylight fails.”

“You’re a goof, you know that, right? By the time we got home, we’d be soaked and freezing.”

She just smiled sweetly at me and said, “I’m counting on it.”

Elise cracked up as she was bringing our pancakes. “Oh, Charley, you got a live one.”

The combined aroma of bacon, coffee and pancakes had Chuck and Charlotte following their noses to the kitchen shortly before we finished eating. After giving Elise a kiss, Chuck gave Claire and I each hugs before digging in himself.

Charlotte was adorable, still in her PJs. She came over and hugged me before saying, “G’mornin’, Auntie Charlotte!” She then went to Claire and said, “G’mornin’, Auntie Claire! Thank you for letting me help yesterday.”

Claire’s smile when she heard ‘Auntie Claire’ was blinding. “Good morning to you, too, little Charlotte,” she said. “I’m so happy you were here for our wedding. Thank you for your help!” Then she wrapped her new niece up in a hug that lifted her off the ground.

After breakfast, Claire gave Chuck and his family hugs, knowing they were leaving well before she got home, then headed out just as the rain started. I’d offered to drive her to school, but she pointed out that it was only a ten-minute walk, so there was no reason to get the car out. She wore good rain gear, so it wasn’t like she wasn’t prepared, and it wasn’t like she was the only person walking to school, either.

“You got lucky with her, Charley,” Elise said as we cleaned up the kitchen. “I hope we get to see her, and you, more often in the future.”

“How about December? The company Christmas party’s being held in Huntington Beach this year, and Steve invited Claire to convince me to go. She got permission Friday to miss a couple of days of class as long as she’s willing to discuss what she learns with her robotics class. We’ll fly down Wednesday evening. She’ll to go into the office with me Thursday and Friday to see what I do and how the team operates, then the party’s Friday night. We plan to fly back on Sunday, so we could all get together Saturday easily enough.”

We made tentative plans to meet up and spend the day seeing the sights, as long as it wasn’t too nasty. If it was nasty we’d find something to do indoors. Then they got ready to go, giving themselves plenty of time to get to the airport and through security.

Once they were gone, I went to my office and start up my work computer. The first thing I did after getting set up was send a meeting invite to my team and Steve. By then it was mid-morning, so it only took a few minutes before everyone who was in the office joined me.

“Good morning, all.” I said cheerily. Then I added a wedding picture to the chat. “I thought I’d ruin productivity this morning by letting you all know the reason I was off yesterday: I got married!”

Steve piped up first thing and said, “Yes, Claire is young. Charley assured me there’s a reason for them getting married now, and they’ll let us know more when they get here for the Christmas party, so let’s try to not get too deeply into that until then.”

“She’s also tall!” Sandra said. “She must be eight or nine inches taller than you.”

“Ten inches, she’s 5’11”. It’s ... interesting,” I said, grinning.

“Wait, I get to see you dance with her?” Jeff said. “Oh, that’ll be a treat. Is she still in school?”

“She’s a senior in high school but, as Steve said, there were good reasons for us to get married while she’s still in school.”

“No problem. What’s she studying?”

“She’s taking AP English and Chemistry, as well as second year French. She also has a class that I wish they’d had when I was in school — robotics. Her current goal is software engineering, but we’ll see if that survives after living with one for a while.”

Jodie looked thoughtful and said, “Only four classes? That seems like a light load for a senior.”

“It is, but she tested out of everything else just after she turned fifteen. Mostly, she’s taking those classes in order to officially be a student, so she can get her diploma. Her recreation growing up was going to the library, and she didn’t just read the fiction. She’s scary smart, but oh, so cute!”

I wondered if my comment about her age would go unnoticed. Nope! Everyone’s face registered shock.

Mary was the first to find her voice. “Did you say fifteen?”

“Yes, fifteen. Before anyone has an aneurysm, remember what Steve said and take another look at the picture. See the judge there, the one who performed the ceremony? She’s the one who decided, again, for reasons I’d rather not get into over a remote connection, that moving our wedding day up by a couple of years was the best option available for Claire.”

Eric was smiling, so I asked him why.

“Normally, I’d say the judge signed off on it because Claire’s pregnant,” he said. “Now, we all know you’re a miracle worker, but I think that one’s beyond even you.” It took a minute to restore order after that quip. When people had calmed down, he continued, “I’m guessing someone is trying to get control of her for some reason and the judge felt it wasn’t in her best interests. She probably couldn’t be emancipated under normal circumstances, but it happened automatically when she got married. Now, no one can control her.”

I nodded and said, “Something very similar to that, yes. In Washington, the emancipation isn’t automatic, but the judge took care of that as well. By the way, everyone; note that I fell in love with her and proposed back in July, before I thought there was any chance of us getting married for more than two years.”

Amir brought it back to her schooling when he asked, “Robotics? How are they programming them?”

“Actually, it’s robotics and general machine control, so it makes some sense that they’re using blocks,” I said, not surprised to see the others wince. “She’s a little frustrated with the interface given all the other programming she’s done, but she puts up with it. She knows it’s viable for things like this, but I doubt that’s where she wants to go in the future.

“Speaking of the future, Claire’s been doing a lot of programming since the summer, partly just learning things like Java and Swift, but a lot of it’s been focused on what she’ll need to know to get a CompSci degree. Given where she was with it this summer, I’m very impressed!

“Now that you all know about her, I’d appreciate it if you could take a look at what she’s done, and let me know how you think she’s doing. I’ll get you the GitHub info you need later today. Just when you have a chance, this isn’t paying work, after all, unlike the stuff we’ve been putting off to have this meeting.”

When Claire got home, she told me the announcement we’d tailored, working with Miss Green, had gone down well:

Yesterday Claire Lewis, a member of our senior class, got married. Please join us all in congratulating the new Mrs. Claire Lewis-Black and her wife, Mrs. Charlotte Lewis-Black.

She also said that her French teacher had used our marriage to discuss the differences between ‘Madame’ and ‘Mademoiselle’, showing that she now fell in a bit of a gray area. Technically, she should be addressed as Madame Lewis-Black, since she was married. But at fifteen she was still young enough that many people wouldn’t be comfortable with that, so she might expect to hear Mademoiselle as well. The teacher, however, was scrupulous about using Madame.

The wind and waves were every bit as awesome as Claire’d expected. By the time we got home, we were just as wet and cold as I’d expected. We decided to warm up in the shower, unconstrained by hunger or time. That was so much fun I forgot all about the cold, so that was one in the plus column for my wife.

The following Saturday we finally got a chance to sleep in ... well, we stayed in bed. No additional sleeping took place. I was loving the feel of my wife’s — damn, it feels good to think of her that way! — arm across me as we spooned together. It felt even better when her finger began tracing around my breast. If I’d been a cat, I’d have purred, but I made do with a contented sigh.