“FUCK.”
The sound of a male voice next to me as I switch from dreaming to awake is startling. Convinced I’m ready to be murdered, I jump.
“Good morning.” His voice is rougher than usual, indicative of the long night we spent having sex, laughing, talking, eating, and repeating all of it until our eyes got so sleepy we fell asleep in each other’s arms as the sun began to rise.
He kept telling me he wouldn’t stay, that he’d have to go at some point, but we’d get distracted by a tale of our youth or how many pieces of heat-up bacon we could eat or how soft our lips are against different parts of our bodies.
It was the best night of my life.
Walker is lying on my left, between me and the nightstand, his phone held up in the air over his head. He’s not looking at the screen, though. He’s looking at me.
“Don’t,” I groan, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Don’t what?” he laughs.
“Don’t look at me.” I start to pull the covers over my head when he snatches them away and tosses them halfway down the bed. “You’re a jerk.”
“You’ve said that before. I’m also late to work.”
“That rhymes. Late to work, you’re a jerk,” I yawn.
“This rhymes too. Give me a kiss, or I’ll be pissed.”
“That doesn’t rhyme,” I note, repeating it back to him. “See? Try this: I’ll give you a lick, you give me dick.”
He laughs, his phone dropping to his chest. “Sometimes you seem so cultured. Other times, you’re a cavewoman.”
“I don’t hear many complaints.”
“Okay, let’s try this one. Let’s go to dinner, make me a winner.”
“Ooh,” I say, kicking my feet until the blankets cover them. “I like that one. It makes it sound like I’m a prize.”
“That,” he says, groaning as he moves to kiss me, “is a fact.”
Our lips touch in the simplest, sweetest way. There’s no urgency this time, no desperation to connect in as many ways as possible. It’s like that’s been screwed out of our systems and now we’re on the other side. What that means, I have no idea. But I love the way it’s working out so far.
“Peck has a tractor coming in this morning. He just sent me a text,” he says, rolling out of bed. “I have to run home first and grab some clean clothes.” He slips on his jeans and shirt from last night before rummaging around under my bed for his hat. Sliding it on his head, pulling it snug, he holds his hands out in front of him. “You coming in later?”
“Maybe.”
Shaking his head, he heads to the door but stops in the doorway. “I’ll be there in about an hour.”
“Just go in there like that,” I say. “Your clothes look fine to me.”
His eyes hood. “They smell like your pussy.”
“Walker!” I exclaim, pulling the covers over my head.
The bed bounces as he jumps on it, locking me in with one hand on either side of my mummified body. His breath is hot against my cheeks from the other side of the blanket. “How can that embarrass you?”
“It just does.”
“Well, for the record, I love the smell of your pussy.” He exaggerates the word, his mouth forming every syllable against the fabric. “But I wouldn’t get anything done and God forbid Peck ask me why I was licking my shirt all day.”
“Go on,” I giggle, moving my body to encourage him to get up. “Get to work, slacker.”
The blankets rip down again. We’re face-to-face, his eyes twinkling. “Will you go on a date with me tonight? Like, to dinner or a movie or whatever it is people do on dates?”
“Are we going to Nana’s?” I tease.
“If you want. She’d love that. But I’d rather take you to this place on the other side of Linton. I haven’t been there in forever and I think you’d like it.”
Leaning up, I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him to me. “I’d love to.”
Like a little boy on Christmas morning, his cheeks split. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”
A kiss that smacks my cheek, a vibrating mattress as he leaps off, he’s out the door and in his truck before I can say goodbye. It’s just as well. If he would’ve stayed much longer, I probably wouldn’t have let him leave at all.
“‘BOUT TIME YOU SHOWED up.” Peck flips off the water and dries his hands off on a towel. “I got the tractor coming in any minute. They came for the SUV this morning and I got two more in and out already.”
“Good deal.”
I walk straight through the garage bay and make a beeline for the lobby, knowing the inquisition is coming and not wanting to face it yet. Whatever this is between Sienna and I is wild, like a truck on an incline with no brakes. I don’t know how it’s possible to keep it from running away and talking about it with Peck seems like the worst idea in the world.
As I expect, he chases after me like the pain in the ass he is.
“You know,” he says, the door closing behind him, “I’ve worked here for four years or so and I don’t think I’ve ever beat you to work once. Not even the time you had pneumonia. I beat you today by two hours. Hours. That’s like a hundred and twenty minutes.”
“Good job.”
“Cut the shit, Walker,” he laughs. “What’s going on? Were you with Sienna?”
“Is that really any of your business?”
“You’re goddamn right it’s my business,” he says, bewildered. “I’ve gone through a lot of shit with you. I’ve held your hand, gave you that little push you needed to get her in here. Hell, I’m practically Cupid at this point.”
“Will you shut the fuck up?” I laugh, picking up a pen and throwing it at him. He ducks, of course, and it misses him by a mile. He pops back up and grins. “You aren’t going to, are you?”
“Do you know how long it’s been since you acted like this?”
“Like what?
“Like the world isn’t ending. Like maybe you know how to smile. Like maybe you are—dare I say it?—happy?”
Planting my hands on the desk, I sigh. “You’re acting like a girl.”
“Nah, I think you just have pussy on the brain.”
I wait, telling myself to stop talking, but go ahead and do it anyway. “Damn right I do.”
Peck fist pumps around the lobby, doing the little dance he does at Crave that promptly gets him ejected. I usually find it completely juvenile but today it’s entertaining.
The door opens and old man Dave comes in. Peck almost runs into him in a variation of the Moonwalk, making Dave’s face light up like the sun.
“Well, what’s happening in here?” he chuckles. “I haven’t seen this much activity in this place in years.”
“Peck’s about to lose his job,” I joke, coming around the corner. “How are you, Dave?”
“Good, good.” He places a hand on the wall and braces himself. “Can one of you run out and check my oil? Damn light keeps coming on and I tried to check it this morning but didn’t have any oil at the house anyway. Ended up burning my arm on the radiator.”
“I got it.” Peck pats Dave on the shoulder and disappears into the parking lot.
“Need a seat?” I ask, dragging the chair from the desk around for him to sit. He falls into it with a thankful sigh. “How’re things other than the oil?”
“Not bad. The wife had a good morning. We talked a few minutes about a dog we had back in the seventies,” he laughs. “She can’t remember me most times and doesn’t remember Noodles, the dog we’ve had since Nellie died. But she remembers Nellie, a Reagan-era Pomeranian. So funny what people remember, isn’t it?”
“I guess we remember the good times, right?” I offer. “Maybe Nellie was her favorite?”
“Oh, she was. Just like that girl in here is yours.” He looks around the lobby and then back at me. “Where is she?”
“Who?”
“The cute one. Purple hair. Sweet as can be. You know who I mean,” he cackles, patting my leg. “The one you can’t take your eyes off of. I see you watching her. Even if I didn’t, this whole place is changed in a way that only a woman can do.”
I open my mouth to protest, to say his crazy assumption is as false as a three-dollar bill, but there’s no use. He’s been around enough to see through bullshit.
Taking a deep, battered breath, my arms tired from holding Sienna against the wall last night as I made her squirt all over me, I look at Dave. “She’s not in this morning.”
“But she’s still here, right? Still working for ya?”
“Yeah. For now.”
“Let me ask you a question, son. Are you in love with her?”
“What kind of question is that?” I snort, rising to my feet and putting distance between us.
“An important one.”
“I haven’t known her long enough to be in love with her.”
I think back to how long we’ve known each other, how many days since she hit Daisy with the bat. It all becomes a tangled mess as her face keeps popping through the mental calendar, making me smile.
“Love isn’t confined to time.” He waits to continue until I look up. “Just like if someone passes, like your mother and father, that doesn’t mean your love stops. Right?”
“Yeah.”
“It goes on,” he says, his arms moving through the air to illustrate his point. “Love starts the same way. People say love at first sight isn’t real. How could it be? How could you love someone before you ever say a word?”
“It’s bullshit,” I say without the oomph behind it that would’ve told him, and me, that I believed that.
“Not when you get all scientific,” he says, cringing as he readjusts himself on the chair. “Let’s think of it this way—do you make a choice to love Nana? Or Blaire? Or even Peck? Even if you got mad at them, and I suppose you do from time to time, do you have to choose to love them?”
“No. They’re my family.”
“Exactly. That kind of love is born inside you. You’re born with an energy that connects to someone else’s, and for reasons we will never understand, you’re brought together and it isn’t a choice anymore. That’s true love.”
“I don’t know about that,” I say, forcing a swallow.
“I do. True love isn’t something you pick; it’s something the universe picks for you. It’s like you’re born knowing this woman can cook your sausage patties the way you like, will humor your Thursday night poker games, and will stand by your side as you fight whatever life throws you just because you’re you. For no other reason. That,” he says, jabbing a finger my way, “is true love.”
A chill stirs in my stomach, forcing me to look away. All I can see is Sienna in her sleep and remember how I laid there all night wondering how I could capture the moment for the rest of my life, because as crazy as it sounds, it felt like the place I was meant to be.
I tried to picture her as someone else. I pretended to be home and alone. I thought about never seeing her again, never hearing her laugh, or watching her blush as I call her out on something. And all of that, every single thing, was unbearable.
My stomach roils, knowing she’s said she might leave town. Every part of me objects. There’s not a piece of me that would want to watch her go but I’m not in a place to ask her to stay.
“You’ve been through a lot,” Dave says, bracing a hand on the wall and standing slowly. “Don’t you think it’s time to be happy? The woman before Sienna . . . I remember you with her. No good, Walker. No good.”
“Yeah, well . . .” I shrug, not sure what to say and wishing she didn’t exist in any capacity.
He looks around, a smile stretching across his lips. “I’ve haven’t seen this place so bright and cheerful since your mother would come in the first week of the month and clean up after your father,” he laughs. “I’d come in with some of the guys on Saturday morning and drink some coffee and shoot the breeze. Those were good days.”
“I remember you all doing that,” I recall.
Peck’s voice sounds outside the door, and Dave turns to grab his wallet.
“Don’t worry about it,” I tell him. “It was just a quart of oil or so.”
“Are you sure?”
“You kept Peck busy and out of my hair for five minutes. I really owe you.”
We exchange a smile, a nod to a conversation we both know dug a lot deeper than either of us let on. He turns to go, his hand on the door, when I call out.
“Hey, Dave.”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
With a final nod, he disappears into the parking lot as Peck walks back in.
“Just a quart and a half,” he says, wiping his brow. “Getting warm out there.”
Shuffling papers around, I think about what Dave said. I am happy right now. I didn’t think I’d ever be, but damn it—I am. And I don’t want to ever let it go.
“Do we still get a phone book?” I ask Peck. “They used to throw one at the door every six months or so. Do they still do that?”
“Fuck if I know. Why?”
My eyes close, my hands go still, as I force a swallow. I picture Sienna getting in her car and driving away, the guilt and hopelessness that swamps me is something I can’t deal with even pretending.
“I think it’s time I settle this shit,” I say. “No, I know it is.”
Peck nods, knowing exactly what I mean. “It’s about fucking time.”
“I don’t know where to start. I mean, I haven’t given a fuck about it in so long, God knows where to even look.”
He pauses, his hand on his hip. “You could call Blaire. She’d drop anything to help with this. She might even come home to deal with this.”
“I almost don’t want to call her to give her the satisfaction,” I laugh.
“Just do it,” Peck says, watching the tractor pull into the parking lot. “You handle the problem, I’ll handle the tractor.”
He pops open the door and disappears in to the parking lot.
With Blaire’s name staring at me on my phone, I sigh. “A tractor has never looked so easy.”