20 minutes later, I heard the jingle of keys, and the front door open. It was Jane. "Tom" said Jane, a sheepish grin on her face "You're looking at a retired woman."
My mouth dropped open. "I was always under the impression that I was going to be the kept boy, not you the kept girl." Jane just laughed. I carried the newly retired woman to the bedroom, where she shed her flight attendant's uniform, and we made love until noon. As we lay there, me tracing lines around her chest, her laughing and tickling me, we talked about what this meant for us. I was going to keep flying, provided Pan Am still approved of our relationship status. Jane gave me a 'calm down, dear' look when I mentioned it, and I calmed down. I flicked one of her nipples. When she recovered, she tackled me and we fell off the bed. Part of me didn't want to keep flying, but we I figured we needed the money.
Jane would shortly after get a part-time job working at a clothing store in our town. Jane, as I had said, was great at fashion. Jane was great at everything she did. She loved the job, and it gave her something to do when I was out of town.
Between February and October, the wedding planning took over Jane's life. We had a caterer, band, church, reception hall, cake...I lost track eventually. At one point, I just started to get a glazed-over look in my eyes when the topic of wedding planning came up. The next time Jane mentioned doing wedding planning together, I came down from the office to where she was doing the planning in the dining room, and Jane was completely naked. "I figured that this would be the only way to get you to pay attention to wedding planning" she was grinning. It was one of Jane's few poor decisions, because no matter how much she said no to sex until we had made progress, I couldn't pay attention to anything except her body. Jane finally, laughing, got up and sat in my lap. "Okay, this didn't work, but please, please try to concentrate on the planning." We went up to bed, and ended up finding out that we did great at wedding planning in the bedroom, post sex.
Finally, the weekend of the wedding, and everyone was in town. I had chosen my son Josh to be my best man, and he had taken some time from school to be there. Rory and Ray made up the rest of the groom's side. Sarah would be in the bridal party, but Jane's matron of honor was Shawna, her best friend from college who I only met that weekend. She let me in on a lot of great 'Jane in college' stories, but the most shocking of them were that she held a 4.0 GPA at graduation (I was a mediocre student myself), and that she had been what passed for an all-Canadian selection for women's' rugby her final year at McGill. Jane just blushed at the entire proceedings. As we left the rehearsal dinner, Jane heading to the bridal suite at a hotel, Shawna clued me in on something. "She hasn't looked this happy in years, Tom" Shawna said, continuing "I wish she had met you instead of Robert all those years ago." I found out that Jane had met him shortly after graduation, and he had steered her into doing something that was more appropriate for the wife of a high-powered lawyer, instead of doctor. Jane had been pre-med, and was planning on becoming an orthopedic surgeon...before Robert. My heart sank.
The rehearsal dinner flew by. My parents came in for the event, having only met Jane a few weeks before the wedding when they came up from Florida. They were happy for the both of us, even if my mom seemed worried about me. Her parents, who I had grown to know fairly well, beamed with happiness. I could sense that her dad wanted to thank me. Jane was mostly a spitting image of her mother, and if it was any indication, aging would be kind to Jane. Jane's brother Peter had arrived as well, and he was a bit of a shock; intelligence ran in the family, himself being an engineer at a design firm in Toronto. He arrived with his husband, something that Jane hadn't given me a heads up about, who just so happened to be a Colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force. I hit it off with both of them, and his husband, Jerome, had even spent an exchange tour recently flying the Growler with an Australian squadron.
The wedding day was the next day. Pictures were held separately, so that I couldn't see Jane. My daughter looked amazing in her bridesmaid's dress (I was secretly dreading the day she'd be in the white dress). We spent a good two hours getting every conceivable angle and shot, and I was ushered off so Jane could make her appearance. Eventually, it was time for the ceremony, and I stood up there, waiting, watching the procession of bridesmaids. Shawna was full on ugly crying, but the smile on her face at least made me realize it was happiness. Then 'Here Comes the Bride' played, and time stopped. Her dad stood there, holding her arm. Next to him, there was Jane, soon to be my wife. She was radiant, to the point that the lights in the church could have been off, and we still would have been too illuminated. Jane had her hair done up, mixed in with her little veil. She again had just the perfect amount of makeup, easily the least of any of the bridesmaids, but as always perfectly applied. Her dress was pure white, strapless...and wow. It didn't expose anything but a tiny sliver of cleavage, and didn't expose the full curvature of her bosom, but it was more revealing of her curves than anything I had really seen her wear in front of a large group. The walk up the aisle seemed to take forever, and after her dad gave her away, she stood in front of me. Jane was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Her eyes were brighter than I had ever seen them, but developing a small sheen of glassiness that indicated that she was tearing up a bit. She smiled huge, her perfect teeth showing. I barely heard the preacher, and as we said our vows, I couldn't believe that this was the woman I'd spend the rest of my life with. I paid as little attention to the ceremony as I could, focusing on Jane. Eventually, the preacher said that I could kiss the bride, and we kissed.
Everything from there was a standard wedding. The pictures after, the drive over to the reception, the dinner, the cake, and then we went our separate ways to mingle. Many of my former squadron mates were there, as were lot of Jane's rugby teammates from college. I had spent about half an hour talking, when I looked up. I could see Jane across the room, still glowing brightly, smiling, holding her glass of wine. I loved every minute of this. The first dance was magical; I barely heard the song, we just spent the whole time smiling, looking into each other's eyes.
Josh caught the garter. Sarah caught the bouquet. I suspected foul play, but Jane, smile taking up her entire face, just sort of shrugged. Eventually, the party wound down, and Jane and I found ourselves sitting on a bench in a little garden in the back of the reception building. "Tom, I don't want this to ever end" said Jane.
"For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health " I joked, but she just lay her head on my shoulder.
"I was talking about tonight, but yeah." I could feel her love for me, sitting next to me on the bench. I'd find out later that Sarah had managed to get a picture from behind us that moment, and it would be the picture we had on our living room wall of our wedding.
The squadron mates had painted my car into the various colors of the squadrons I had been in (Jerome painting an RCAF logo), and Jane and I were off for the hotel, then the next morning for our flight to Athens. Jane had begun removing her veil and headpiece, and was organizing her things for going up to our room. We walked in to the four-star hotel I'd booked, and the staff took our luggage up to our room. Jane and I checked in at the desk, then rode the elevator up to our room, making out like teenagers when we had alone time. I picked her up and carried her into the room. We kissed, for a long time, before Jane pulled away and walked into the bathroom, looking at me over her shoulder as she entered and then closed the door.
I began getting out of my tuxedo, and waiting. I didn't have to wait long. The bathroom door opened, and there stood Jane. She was wearing bridal lingerie; white high heel sandals, white stockings, white garter belt holding them up, a white, lacy thong, and on top, a tight white lingerie piece that, instead of hiding her bust, supported and accentuated it. She looked like something out of a movie, the ideal of how a wedding night would be.
