DWP Short Fic: Slipping through my fingers
School bag in hands, she leaves home in the early morning
Waving Goodbye, with an absent minded smile…
Miranda Priestly had always known this day would come.
She’d feared it, as much as she’d hoped it.
She watched with glassy eyes her little girl stand in a beautiful white dress before the altar holding the hands of her soon to be husband. Caroline was a beautiful bride, aged 23 now, with nothing but love in her eyes for Travis, a good man with well manners and hopefully a good husband and father.
For better, for worse… Miranda had experienced all. Married unhappy three times before and now still married more happily she could ever imagine, she watched her slightly grown up daughter gave her promise to love and care for her man and the young man to love and care for her daughter. And Miranda will make sure that this promise will be kept.
She never was very emotional in public, that’s why the press loved to call her the “snow queen”, but not today. She felt her left hand lightly squeezed and smiled at the love of her life at her side. She let the tears fall freely.
Miranda still can’t believe her daughter chose this special date for her marriage. She was so proud, so moved, so unbelievable full of love, she felt like her heart could explode any seconds.
It was a beautiful and perfect ceremony like it has to be for a Priestly family member.
The celebration was a spot on. A few meters away from the party pavilion, Miranda watched her daughter dancing with her freshly husband, with a glass of champagne in her hand.
She sighed deeply, looking down on her wedding ring and smiled.
Miranda suddenly gasped and had almost let fallen her glass, when two well known arms were around her waist and a warm body was pressed into hers.
“Mhmm…. There you are.” A husky voice behind her said and giggled.
“Really Andrea, you just can’t get rid of that habit of sneaking behind and attacking me, don’t you?” Miranda said in a playful annoyed voice and gasped again, when Andrea placed a wet kiss on her slender neck.
“No, can’t help it.” Andrea grinned and placed another kiss and her hands began to wander.
Miranda closed her eyes and couldn’t avoid the soft moan escaping her mouth, when Andrea’s right hand vanished under her dress and was dangerously near to her centre.
“Please darling, this is really not the time….” she growled.
“I know… I’m just ‘warming’ you up for later.” Andrea husked and kissed her on a sensitive spot behind Miranda’s ear. The older woman shuddered.
Andrea giggled again and put her hands back to rest on Miranda’s waist. Miranda sighed in release. Her face was still a bit flushed.
Together they watched Caroline still dancing in her wedding dress, especially designed by Miranda’s dear friend Vera Wang.
“God, she is so beautiful.” Andrea said astonished.
Miranda smiled. “Yes, my beautiful princess.” she said lovingly.
The music stopped and Caroline left the dance floor to talk to her sister. Cassidy tried everything to look understated to not steal any of her identical twin sister’s attention.
“You’re doing very well, I must say. That calms me… I hope I’ll be that way too, when I have to face that day….” Andrea said, watching Caroline hugging and fooling around with an eight years old brown haired girl in cute a baby blue dress and a six year old blonde boy in a fancy white smoking.
“They’re growing so fast…”
“Yes, they do. You can’t avoid it…” Miranda said quietly. “You can try to protect them; as good as you can, but….” Suddenly, she felt tears falling down.
“I just hope…. I just wish her the happiness I’m having now… Without three divorces…”
Andy reacts fast and gave her wife a hanky. “I know honey. I’m sure she is happy…
Oh, do you want to hear something cute? When our little Ryan saw his big sister first this morning, he just said that he should marry Caroline instead of Travis.” Andy chuckled.
“Yes, but who wouldn’t?” Miranda let out a soft laugh while wiping her tears away.
“I loved your speech at the banquet. I still have tears in my eyes while thinking about it.” Andrea was now in need to have a hanky herself.
“Thank you. I loved yours too. About the girls…. The way you spoke about them….” Miranda turned around, put away her glass, lifted her hands and laid them on both sides of Andy’s face. When looking at Andy’s face Miranda just lost all of her words and kissed her. Gently at first, then deeper with passion. She can’t believe she was married to this wonderful creature for ten years since exactly this date. Both were so moved when Caroline stand before them and wished to marry at the same date Miranda and Andy had married.
These ten years had its ups and downs, fears, doubts, but never without love or happiness; not a single day. They welcomed first Elisabeth and shortly after Ryan into their new family. But all of it would not have happened if two little cheeky redheads had made it happen to get Andy back into Miranda’s life.
When they finally pulled away, both were heavily panting.
Miranda carefully traced a finger over Andy’s cheeks. She sighed and just buried her face in Andy’s chest and the younger woman closed her arms around her wife. They just stood there for several minutes, without any words, enjoying their embrace.
Miranda was always in control, but with Andrea at her side, she quickly learned to set her feelings free, no longer hiding or to be ashamed of them.
“We should get back. The children will wonder where we are. Ryan wants to dance with you.” Andrea finally said and smiled at the imagine Miranda dancing with their little son on the dance floor.
“I never told you that….” Miranda began after a while to speak.
Andy looked confused. “Told me what, my sweet?”
Miranda pulled back and stepped away. “When I got pregnant with the girls I…. panicked. I was almost forty, extremely successful and busy… I never thought I would have children and so… I didn’t do it, but I thought about it… Abortion…. I was not far away from it. I never told anyone this, but… I don’t know.”
She looked down the pavilion again. Andrea came behind and hugged her again. “You didn’t do it.” she said.
“No, I couldn’t. I just knew I would do the greatest mistake of my life, if I did and I was right…. I wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t be here. I’m sixty-three now and I never thought this could be my future. When you… left me in Paris, when I got divorced from Stephen I thought, that was it.”
Andrea growled lightly. She didn’t like it when Miranda began to think or speak about what happened in Paris so many years ago. It was time to change the subject quickly.
“Well, honestly you look more thirty-six to me. Dear lord, you’re the pure sex on legs, lady! That’s why I still can’t get my hands off of you.” Andrea grinned, placing possessively a hand on Miranda’s breast.
Miranda chuckled. “You are really insatiable.”
“Because of you, yes.” Andy said and placed a kiss on her cheek.
Both women watched Caroline talking with her friends and siblings again.
“She’s slipping through my fingers. Both are. I still remember the day they were born. So tiny, so weak. Four weeks early. But the day their little hands and fingers grabbed mine…. I swore I would do everything for them.”
“Icluding the unpublished Harry Potter manuscript” Andy added and Miranda smiled again.
“Yes, even that. But that didn’t stop time.” Miranda said sadly.
“You don’t loose her, Miranda. She’ll go her way, but will never be away from you. Cassidy’s still here, Elisabeth and Ryan, too. And I’m here. Ten years ago, I vowed to you never leaving you. Not again, I mean.”
Andy carefully pulled Miranda around to look her deep in the gazing blue orbs. “And I would do it again. Anytime.”
Andrea grabbed her hands, holding them, looking down to their identical simple wedding rings. Both remembered the day ten years ago, as if it just had happened today.
“I know, my darling.” Miranda said, looked Andrea in her warm brown eyes, lifted her face and brought their lips together for a tender kiss.
“Happy tenth anniversary, my love.” She said when they pulled back.
Andrea beamed. “Yes, happy tenth anniversary. With many more to come.” She added.
Miranda took a deep breath and took Andy’s hand into hers again. She picked up her glass of Champagne. “Okay, let’s go.”
“What about presents?” Andy asked a bit disappointed.
Miranda smirked. “I have a very special ‘present’ for you when we’re finally alone.”
Then she gave Andrea “the Look” which made her mouth water immediately.
Oh goody!
So together they made their way back to the party.
The celebration was full of love, happiness, friendship and so many possibilities for the future that time, even when she was slipping through everyone’s fingers, didn’t matter this day.
*~*~* Fin *~*~*