"We haven't officially ended the arrangement."

"But we are getting married."

"Yes. We are. Therefore, I think we should officially end our Friends Without Benefits arrangement and replace it with a new Friends With Benefits arrangement."

"A Friends With Benefits arrangement?"

"Yes."

"Hmm . . ." I eyeballed him. "What kind of benefits?"

"All benefits. A full, from A to Z, benefits arrangement. In sickness and in health. Nothing held back." As though to emphasize his point he kissed my chest.

"So . . . you'll let me borrow your T-shirts?"

"Yeah, sure."

"And you'll make me more mixtapes about us?"

He lifted a single brow; eye-twinkle-twinkle-little-star alert. "You finally caught on to that, did you? You wicked creature . . ."

I couldn't suppress my grin, but continued as though he hadn't spoken. "And I'll knit you scarves."

"Okay. I like scarves. Can you make me one with Space Invaders?"

"Of course. I'm a really good knitter."

"I know."

"And you'll learn how to crochet?"

He nodded once. "I'm already learning."

"And how to knit?"

"Don't push it."

"Apple fritters?"

He wagged his eyebrows; his eyes dancing beneath. "Definitely."

"And we'll take trips together, and visit your family-"

"We'll visit your family."

I rolled my lips between my teeth, paused. Before I could respond I had to gather a deep breath. "Yeah . . ."

"We'll visit your dad and go to his wedding."

I nodded, cleared my throat. "Yes. We'll go to his wedding and we'll be happy for him, for them." And I meant it.

"And we'll be happy."

I tightened my arms around his neck. "Always."

"Well . . ." He lifted his chin, his mouth curved into a devastating, charismatic, sex on an Italian stick smile. "Almost always."

Epilogue.

Part 1: Meet seventeen year-old Nico Soft skin. Shaking hands. Hot breath.

She swallowed. I felt the movement of her throat under my mouth. She was nervous. So was I. My hands were also shaking. Shit. This was crazy.

But, just because it was crazy didn't mean I was going to stop. Stopping hadn't even crossed my mind. What did cross my mind? More.

My insanity was fueled by fifteen years of wanting to touch her and six years of watching someone else do it. I was seventeen, but jealousy and envy burned long and cut deep.

I knew I wanted to be with her since before I knew how to eat with a fork. The wanting to touch her part started when I was four and she was three. Obviously it wasn't sexual, that came later accompanied by the resentment of rejection. It was about being close to her, kissing her big cheeks, petting her soft skin, sharing her warmth. My earliest memory was thinking that I wanted her to stay with me always. My mother liked to remind me that I used to ask if we could keep her.

My present reality-her naked, yielding breast beneath my hand, her hips straddling mine, her underwear and my jeans separating us-was its own kind of torture. She didn't respond like the other girls. She wasn't waiting for me to undress her.

She was tearing at my clothes, pressing her breast into my palm, and rocking against me. I wasn't waiting for her. She was waiting for me.

This was crazy.

I should have questioned it. I should have stopped her. But when the girl of your dreams climbs in your bedroom window and starts taking off her clothes, thinking has very little to do with what happens next.

I only knew I wanted her. I wanted her loyalty, I wanted her acceptance, I wanted her admiration; I wanted all the things she gave to others without thought, but had withheld from me for years.

She reached between us and beneath my pants, lifting on her knees and slipping her hand inside my boxers. The sheets rustled. She stroked. I shuddered. I was already painfully hard and I wondered if she knew the difference. Probably not. Her blue eyes, nave and unsure, were assessing. She stroked again.

"Stop-don't." I grabbed her wrist to still her exploration, gritted my teeth. "What are you doing?"

"Am I doing it wrong?" She whispered; her eyes were narrowed, as though she were calculating a solution to a problem.

"No." I breathed out. Definitely not.

"Good." She licked her lips and I was mute.

I didn't respond. I didn't have a chance. Her mouth crashed to mine-all slippery lips, teeth, and tongue. It was untutored, sloppy, insistent. I withdrew her fingers from my pants and placed them on my shoulder. My hands lifted to the hot, tortuously silken skin of her back and brought her completely against me, her naked chest meeting mine. I groaned.

I was aching.

I was in pain.

She rocked her hips against me again-a jerky, instinctual, unpracticed movement-and I couldn't breathe. She broke the kiss, roughly tugged off my pants and shorts, discarded the last of her clothes, then pulled me on top of her. The bed squeaked.

I came to her willingly. Her legs were open. I wanted to feel her everywhere. My hands were greedy as they stroked, touched, grabbed every inch I'd been denied. Her eyes were fixed on mine.

"Let's do this." She nodded, her nails dug into my back as though anchoring me to her.

"What are we doing?" I didn't know who I was asking-me or her.

When I hesitated she lifted her hips to mine. "Nico. . ." Elizabeth placed a tiny kiss on the corner of my mouth. "Please. Please do this for me." She was looking at me with trust, like she needed me; that look annihilated any remaining capacity for thought.

If I'd been thinking I would have done something to prepare her. But I wasn't. I wasn't thinking about anything except her softness, the wet warmth between her legs, and the painful stiffness between mine.

She gasped as I entered her. Her gaze moved to a place over my shoulder and tears gathered in her eyes. She gritted her teeth. She was tense everywhere.

She was holding her breath and the only sound in the room was my labored breathing. I told myself to go slow. Her leg brushed against mine, the inside of her thigh against my hip. I wanted to touch her so I did. I skimmed my fingertips up the back of her leg, from her bottom to her knee, as I moved inside her.

She closed her eyes, released a breath, but was still frozen beneath me.

I'd been with virgins before. But-virgin or not-this was the first time that I'd cared so much about whether the girl enjoyed it. I made myself stop while still buried inside her and bit her neck. I tasted the skin beneath her jaw then dipped my tongue in her earlobe. I slid my hand from her leg, along her side, and pinched the puckered skin of her breast.

Please.

I needed her to relax. She moaned. I moved.

Please.

I needed her to enjoy this. Her breath hitched.

Please.

I needed her to let me touch her again when this was over.

Part 2: Meet thirty-two year-old Nico When I walk on a stage or in front of a camera it's easy to become The Face. People make it easy. They want arrogance and dirty jokes and I love acting conceited and telling dirty jokes.

Win-win.

In fact, when I fly first class, when I walk down the street, when I stop by a drug store to buy detergent and gum-it's effortless. I am who people expect me to be. I know so many punch lines, I don't even bother with the jokes anymore.

When I'm interviewed about the show-or, more recently, my movies-it's usually by some spray tan female with fake tits. She always asks about objectification. It makes me laugh. Now there is a joke.

Some bimbo, three chromosomes away from a blowup doll, is asking me about objectifying women. Meanwhile she's slipping me her number, her hand is rubbing do me circles on my thigh, and she's shoving her silicon sweater puppets in my face.

Don't misunderstand, I'm not complaining, not even a little. I love my job most of the time. I love what I do. Making people laugh gets me high every time. Every. Single. Time. My life is filled with moments of pure ecstasy; moments when I can get a crowd laughing so hard, every individual audience member has their eyes closed and they're fighting to breathe.

Nothing matters; everything that came before and all worries about the future cease to have relevance. They fade away.

A perfect moment. . . and then it's over.

It's a feeling almost impossible to duplicate or eclipse.

I've only felt something that surpassed it three times in my life. All three times were with the same girl and, during all three of those times, the moment crested over days and weeks, if not months. Obviously, I'm in love with her. But, she's not just the girl I love. She's the girl I've hungered for, the girl I've worshipped for the majority of my life.

This is the girl.

The first time was almost exactly sixteen years ago, after our best friend died. I climbed in her window, found her staring at the ceiling. She'd just showered and her hair was so wet it soaked through the feathers of her pillow.

She looked at me as I approached; I saw that she wasn't crying, not anymore, but she had been crying recently. She was devastated, near despair; sorrow that's impossible to escape. She was drowning in it.

And I remember thinking that she was beautiful. Even in her grief she was beyond lovely to me.

I didn't pause to consider my actions; I just lay next to her, gathered her small body in my arms, and held her to my chest. That's how I discovered her hair and pillow were wet.

I don't know how long we lay like that, but it couldn't have been more than an hour. I shifted because my arm was asleep and she reached out for me.

She grabbed my shirt in both of her fists, like a person does when they're startled or afraid.

She said, "Stay with me." When I didn't immediately respond she added, "I need you to stay with me."

It knocked the wind from my lungs. It was like I was flying and falling at the same time. I'm sure she had no idea. But, for me, it was a perfect moment. I felt ten feet tall.

For years afterward I would think about it and the days that followed; about how, during those weeks, she needed me. For a long time it was the best and the worst period of my life. I used it as fuel for my early standup routines and learned quickly that bitterness in comedy is rarely funny-and funny only if it's also sincerely self-deprecating.

The second time occurred just before we got married. She surprised me while I was taping my show in front of a studio audience of hundreds in New York City. I was undressing-as I always do-at the end, preparing to Jell-O wrestle with two closet lesbians who got a huge kick out of elbowing me in the face and other essential body parts.

I heard her. Of course, at first, I thought it was feedback from my earpiece or my mind playing tricks on me. But it wasn't. It was her.

I didn't comprehend everything she said, but I did comprehend that she was in a black bra and underwear. Well, at least everything below my waist comprehended her lack of clothing because it immediately reacted to her, to her body. I loved her body. Thoughts of it kept me up at night; what I wanted to do to it, how I wanted to touch and taste it.

She was standing on the dancer's stage, looking at me. Despite the distance between us, she was really looking at me. One of her hands was holding a microphone, the other was palm out and toward me, beseeching.

Then I heard her say, "But the thing is, Nico. . . I need you."

It didn't really matter what she said next, what she asked. I would have said yes to anything. I would have given her anything. Not to get too Italian and melodramatic about it, but if she'd asked me to cut out my heart I would have. But she wouldn't want that.

I trust her. I know she wants my heart in one piece and she always has.

I am of the opinion that women don't really understand men. Most men, real men would do anything for the woman they love. When a man loves a woman enough to marry her, he loves her to the point of obsession. It's the devotion of a male for his mate.

He watches her sleep. He smells her clothes searching for her scent. He craves her admiration like a drug. He lives for her smile, for her laugh, and especially for her touch.

Being needed-by his woman-is ecstasy for a man.

Which leads me to the third time Elizabeth surprised me. It happened just recently and made me think that maybe I have many more of these moments in my future. Maybe I'm one of those blessed bastards whose life will be a series of perfect moments.

We're at a really good point in our relationship and still live in the Windy City. I'd moved the show once we were married and most of the cast moved with me. Over the summers I was filming movies and Elizabeth would come along. She never had any trouble finding a visiting clinician program.