Chapter 58 Chapter 29 (ii)
FAE
That night, Jigo and I chose to go out and eat pizza in white shirts and ripped jeans rather than cook and eat in the kitchen. We would cook tomorrow. We just wanted to relax. But we didn’t stay long at the mall because after a quick visit to a bookstore, we spotted some acquaintances, so we headed home right away.
It was about nine in the evening when he showed me the study to check out more books. He planned to read instead of disturbing me while I read the book I bought before bed. "Like normal couples," he said with a laugh. I should have known it was not just a normal study; it looked like a library in a small museum. There was a long table for weekend meetings or studying. When I mentioned the contract drafting scene between Anna and Christian in "Fifty Shades of Grey," he pulled me to sit at the opposite end of the table from him as I giggled. He settled on the other end, humoring me. He was in a good mood tonight.
He knew the scene because I insisted we watch the first movie in that trilogy. Despite many complaints about the film, it was still the breakthrough of women’s soft porn in a book and explicit sex scenes in a mainstream movie. Plus, I loved the chemistry between Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan, so I revisited it like comfort food whenever I felt down.
“Can I make love to you on this table?” he asked seriously.
“Yes,” I replied.
He smiled. “Sweet.”
“But let’s also make new rules now that we’re married. More specific ones. FYI, I’ll be more obedient to whatever you want if I like the new rules.” I batted my eyelashes at him, giving him a seductive look from across the table.
He stared at me for a moment, then nodded slowly and pulled out a pad of paper and a pencil from a slim drawer in the table. “You first or me?”
“You first.”
He slid them over to me. “Take dictation and I’ll have it drafted.”
“Okay.”
“Number one. As my wife, you can have sex with me anytime you want.”
I put down the pencil and rolled my eyes. “But that’s already a given.”
“Put it in writing,” he laughed, his shoulders shaking. “Number two, you can do whatever you want with your life, Fae. As my wife, you can decide what’s best for your career, use what we both have for your projects, spend time with your friends, enjoy your time with me… explore married life with me…”
Ahh, so he was just repeating what we talked about when he was convincing me to marry him. “Jigo… if your lawyer reads this, he’ll laugh at me…” I complained. “He might think I came up with all this nonsense myself.”
He laughed, too. “But it’s true. Besides, it’s for our eyes only. We’ll sign it, frame it, and hang it on our bedroom wall.”
“Do I have a duty to be a trophy wife?” I asked, genuinely curious.
His face softened. “The moment Lola pushed me to keep an eye on you when you arrived at the island, you already were that.”
I looked at him. “What? A trophy wife?” I insisted.
“She’s liked you for me for a long time. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but she was happy when rumors spread that Carl was marrying someone else. She called me right away and told me to come home. That you’re the ideal wife and I should get you before someone else snatches you up. After her, Carl called me for help with the venue event, but I was already packing by then. Why do you look so surprised?”
“How long?” I asked, my voice hoarse. “I mean, how long has she… said she wants me for you?”
“Since you were sixteen. She was impatient with me. She wondered why I wasn’t trying to ask you out on a date so Carl wasn’t the only one you see. Then at your eighteenth birthday party at Carl’s,” he said. “I danced with you, remember? She was over the moon. She said we were perfect together.” Jigo was relaxed as he recounted this.
“You’re kidding me,” I said, feeling my face heat up. I admitted that Lola Leah had been fond of me. Known for being authoritarian, she had been sweet to me since I was little. I quietly reserved for her a place in my heart for an act of kindness she showed me when I was young.
She gifted me a lady’s watch on my twelfth birthday. It had a thin strap with a preppy design. It was my very first ‘lady’ watch. Later, I learned the watch cost fifty thousand pesos. I didn’t know what to do, so I told my father about it.
But my dad just laughed and said that price was a normal cost to pay for gifts coming from millionaires and billionaires.