3

Every time he left the city, he was reminded how much he was beginning to loathe living there. There was a lot to be said for living in the heart of everything, of being minutes from every possible form of entertainment and business imaginable, but the stone and the brick and the dust and the exhaust fumes, after ten years, were starting to get to him.

Here, by contrast, everything was beautiful. It was mid-afternoon on a hillside in the country, looking west-ish over a a field of barley, and the sun was lowering and the air was warm, and everything was bathed in a wonderful golden light, and everything was simply beautiful. Never mind that there was a highway twenty feet behind them.

Also, he was nervous, because he thought this was pretty much the perfect time for it.

He looked over at her, her eyes closed and lying back on the grass, hands behind her head, and thought to himself that she really was very pretty. Maybe even beautiful. In the warmth, she had taken off her cardigan, and her top showed a touch of her stomach, and he wanted very much to hold her. But […]

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