Love in Many Languages

by Jamie Bennett

  “You are not fine,” he said, holding me tighter. “You were shaking and freezing.”

  “Now I’m fine,” I said, wiggling a little. We had taken a hot shower together, eaten with my friends, opened a few presents, and I was all good. “What I need is more cake.”

  The main course that I’d had roasting in the oven had gotten a little burned while we were outside helping Mita. All the guests arrived to celebrate my birthday while Cooper and I were still standing on the sidewalk, hugging each other and dripping wet, talking to the neighbors in the rain about what had happened. When we had come in, and were explaining why we had gone for an unexpected swim, one of those neighbors stopped by with news from Devesh at the hospital that his little daughter was going to be fine. It was the best present I could have gotten.

  “Quite a birthday,” Shane, Augusta’s husband remarked, and he passed me a plate with another slice of the cake that he and Augusta had brought over. With the chilled soup I had made and the pizza Reid had picked up, it had been a delicious dinner after all. I had eaten the entire thing perched on Cooper’s leg with his arm wrapped around me, which was absolutely where I had wanted to be.

  “I think this is my best birthday ever,” I agreed.

  “Really?” Augusta asked, her eyebrows raising. “Well, I guess you saving a life would be hard to top.”

  “Cooper and I both did it,” I corrected her. “Mita is all right, you guys are here, so I’m good. Plus, the cake was delicious.” I rested my head on Cooper’s shoulder and he kissed my cheek. Yes, I was definitely down with the snuggle, too. I yawned a little, trying to hide it, but Karis caught me.

  “We should go,” she said immediately. “Happy birthday, Ione. This was definitely better than your birthday last year, when the guests almost set the roof on fire with the roman candles and the police came.”

  “It was fun until then, though,” I said. My parties hadn’t been all bad.

  “I have to agree, last year was fun up until they almost burned the house down,” Reid said. “Goodnight, Ione.” Cooper released me long enough for everyone to give me a hug and say goodbye.

  Not too much later, we were in bed, wrapped up together. “In our birthday suits,” I pointed out. I was full of cake and happiness.

  “That was amazing, Io.”

  “I know. We have to find out where she got it.”

  Cooper sat up on one elbow. “What are you talking about?”

  “The cake that Augusta brought. What are you talking about?”

  “You,” he told me. “You were amazing. That little girl would have died if you hadn’t seen her and acted so fast.”

  “You did, too. I’m so glad that I opened the box of my babcia’s things. See? It really is better to have everything out in the open.”

  He lay back down, face very, very serious. “I think you’re right. It’s new to me, all the sharing and talking, but I think you’re right.”

  “I know I am,” I answered confidently. Except that I wouldn’t be mentioning that Fox came by, which would make Cooper go wild.

  “What were you yelling when you ran down the stairs?” he asked me, drawing circles on my back.

  “I think just that Mita was in the pool. I’m not sure. Was it in Polish again?”

  “No. I was just so scared by you screaming up in the studio that my brain couldn’t process the words.”

  My head was on his chest, and I felt his heart beat harder. “I’m fine, though.”

  “You’re more than fine. You’re a brave, tough, wonderful woman, Ione Szczupakiewicz.” He pronounced it slowly, but perfectly.

  “Thank you.” I picked up my head and kissed him. “You said my name beautifully.”

  “I’ve been practicing more. But we really need to work on Japanese.”

  “Yes, to get you ready for your trip soon,” I said.

  “Well, I think we should both practice. Speaking of that, I had a very nice card for you, but it turned into a pile of pulp when I dove in the pool. It had a note about your birthday present in it.”

  “My birthday present got turned into pulp? That’s ok,” I told him. “My present is you here, with me. And also that I think we’re going to have sex again soon.”

  “That’s a true statement,” he agreed. “But the present wasn’t in the card, just a note about it, so it didn’t get ruined. I got you a ticket.”

  “For what?” I asked him.

  “To come to Japan with me. If you want to come.” Cooper looked at me, waiting.

  I sat up straight. “No. You did not.”

  He nodded. “I did. I hope it’s not too much—” he started to say, but I let him know it was absolutely amazing and that I was very, very excited and grateful, mostly by crying and kissing him, which did very quickly turn into the sex I had seen coming.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Cooper panted, as I lay on top of him, pretty much boned into oblivion. “Io, your mouth…”

  “You too,” I told him. “Well done.” I had to bite him a little, and he felt the same way. After a moment we lay on our sides, looking at each other, satiated and happy.

  “I didn’t see this coming,” Cooper told me. “I didn’t have any idea when you walked into that classroom, that you’d be the woman that I—” He stopped. “I learned something new in Japanese, something just for you.” He cleared his throat, and looked deeply into my eyes. “I shit on you.”

  I sat up in bed again. “What?”

  “That was Japanese. Let me say it to you in Polish.” His face scrunched up as he concentrated. “Coke I say.”

  I understood then what he was trying to tell me. “Cooper.” My eyes filled with tears.

  “I mean to say that I love you, Ione.” Cooper reached and put his hand on my cheek. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” I did, any way you wanted to say it.

  Epilogue

  “That’s it,” Tanner said, wiping off his forehead. “That was the last box. Your house used to be bare, Ione. The first time I went in there, you didn’t even have a chair to sit on. How did you manage to accumulate so much crap?”

  I looked at the boxes filling our living room. “I have no idea. Are we sure that it’s all mine?”

  Cooper looked up at me. “Since both of us packed all these, and then the three of us moved them from your house, I’m fairly certain it is all yours.”

  I nodded, but I still wasn’t sure. I’d need to peek inside each box before I fully believed it. After all, it had only been about a year since I decorated my old house and started acquiring things again. That wasn’t really enough time to fill twenty boxes, especially since we’d already given away a lot of the furniture I had bought. But once I had started nesting, as Augusta called it, it had been hard to stop. “You live in hippie heaven,” she had said the last time she’d been over, while she buckled the new baby into a carrier and kept a firm grip on Phoebe’s hand. “Hippie heaven,” she continued, as she eyed the gauzy curtains, “but I really like it. You’ve made some amazing changes to this house.”

  That thought made me really consider how much time had passed since I had been hurt the summer before, because it really had only been about a year. A year since I was in the hospital, and came home. A year since Cooper told me that he loved me—but when I thought of it that way, it seemed like just yesterday, and also forever. I couldn’t imagine my life without him. The thought made me quickly go over to him.

  “Hi,” he told me, surprised that I was suddenly hanging on his neck and kissing him, but always happy to have my arms around him and my lips looking for his.

  “All right,” Tanner said. He chugged the glass of water I had given him. “I can’t stand it when the two of you start that up. I’m out, I have class tonight. I’ll let you know if I find anything else of yours in the house, like the giant drawerful of condoms I ran across when you asked me to clean out the kitchen.”

  “Birth control is important,” I told Tanner seriously. “You should be happy that your b
rother practices safe sex, in every room.” I had a little more to say on that subject to Cooper later, but I wanted to make sure that Tanner was on the same page about the safe sex stuff. He had broken up with his girlfriend a few months ago, although they were both saying that they were still friends. Since then, he had been playing the field, hard. I had even heard him talking to Corrie a few times in a way that seemed awfully familiar. She had laughed and blown him off, but I had seen him looking at her in a way that was more than casual, and I thought something might start, just maybe. Maybe something good for both of them.

  Corrie was doing much better, with help from me, and Ash, and even Cooper, once the two of them had talked for a while and he started to forgive her some. She had even started a new job at Whitaker Enterprises, my old company. I thought that she was going to be just fine, eventually, but she was a work in progress. Like we all were, really. Corrie just had a little farther to go.

  “Tanner, I did leave some tools for you in the garage,” Cooper said, following his brother out, and continuing to lecture him a little about keeping up the house. I was renting my old place, my grandma’s house, to Tanner and two roommates, and Cooper couldn’t totally let go of the big brother routine to trust him to take care of it. I watched out the window as Tanner put on his helmet with the Detroit Robots decal on it that I had designed, and with his brother still gesturing (I thought maybe it was about raking, but could have been sweeping), he roared off on his motorcycle.

  I continued to watch him go off down the street, hoping the engine didn’t annoy Sania too much as he came and went at my old house, but she probably wouldn’t mind. She and Devesh and the girls liked Tanner a lot, and really, she had been pretty chill about most things lately. She seemed to have lightened up, and the mood next door between her and Devesh was much improved. No more fighting on the back deck, and the little girls were outside playing constantly, a lot more in the back yard since they had taken out the giant pool. It had been beautiful weather, just a perfect summer this year. Everything seemed pretty perfect to me.

  “Tanner will be fine,” I told Cooper when he came in, frowning. “You’ve been working on letting him go, and he’s been doing great. When you give him the space to do it, he keeps on stepping up.”

  He walked over and put his arms around me. He enjoyed the snuggle just as much as I did. “He has been doing great and stepping up. There were just a few things I thought he should know about taking care of your old house.”

  I smiled into Cooper’s shoulder. There were always a few more things he wanted to tell his brother.

  “I’m sorry about all those condoms he found in the kitchen,” I said. “I kind of forgot they were in there. And about them…”

  “He’s been really good with going to school and managing it with work. He’s been visiting my mom a lot, too,” Cooper continued.

  “I know. She told me he’s a major hit with all the ladies in her building.” Cooper’s mom, Sarah, had moved into an apartment downtown and was loving the freedom of no stairs and no sons around. She was doing better with her mobility but still needed help, but I felt like she was on an upward swing. She was welcome to come by whenever she liked, and I hoped she would, to give me advice on the gardens she had started that were now mine and Cooper’s to tend. I had loved his house the moment I saw it the year before and now it was mine, too.

  “Tanner is a hit with every lady in the world, it seems like,” Cooper said, frowning again.

  “He does have some of your magnetism,” I conceded. I could barely keep my hands off Cooper; we were still having issues with having to pull the car over when we got some urges. I felt one now and I looked at his zipper thoughtfully.

  “Hold on, Io, we should unpack,” he said, taking my chin and directing my gaze up. “I want you to feel at home here. This is your home now, sweetheart.” He was watching me a little anxiously. Cooper had been wanting us to live together the moment after he’d asked me to marry him, but I had wanted a little more time to make sure I was all good on my own. Not that I had been really on my own very much—we had been spending so much time together, living together was more just a matter of putting all our stuff at one place.

  Now I was officially moved in to his parents’ old house, our new house together. With all the tons of stuff. Why were there so many boxes? “I’m already totally at home here,” I told him. I thought I would miss my old house, but actually, wherever Cooper was, that was the place I needed to be. “I have been at home here for months. You and your mom wanted me around all the time. Tanner too.” He had developed a real affinity for Polish food.

  “Good.” Cooper kissed me. Then he kissed me more. “You know, maybe we should wait to unpack. There are other things we could do first.” His hand went to my breast and I sighed in happiness.

  “Yes. Let’s definitely do other things first.” The kissing continued as we moved to the couch and nudity happened, too. “Wait, we’re not going to need that.”

  “The condom? Weren’t you just the one talking about safe sex?”

  His fingers were between my legs and it was hard to talk clearly. Or think clearly, for that matter. “Remember the time we forgot?” I asked breathlessly.

  “‘Forgot’ is an interesting word. I remember when we went out hiking a few weeks ago and took that detour and you pulled down my shorts—”

  “Birth control isn’t readily available in nature,” I concluded. “It was just the once in an emergency situation.”

  His mouth was on my breast now and his fingers continued to stroke me. “Why won’t we need a condom now?” he asked, then returned to my nipple.

  I gasped but made myself focus. “Well, it’s a little late to worry about preventing pregnancy.” I had been thinking it, but just that morning I had found out for sure.

  He froze. “Ione? Are you trying to tell me…” Cooper picked up his head, and the slow, wonderful smile spread across his face.

  I thought about our grey-eyed baby. I hoped she would get that same smile.

  About the Author

  Jamie Bennett is a reader turned writer (but still a reader). She enjoys talking about herself in the third-person and picked up a little Japanese while writing this book. Just a little.

  Her many other novels are available on Amazon. You can reach her via Instagram and Facebook @jamiebennettbooks (and join the Rocinante group for extra updates).

  Thanks for reading! ありがとうございました!

  And if you enjoyed this book, please leave a review!

  Read Karis and Reid’s story in What We Know Is True

  Available NOW

  “Are you having fun? Why aren’t you dancing? Let me introduce you to my husband. Oh my God, that’s so weird to say!” Augusta put her arm around me and steered me over to the guy she had been at the front of the church with. About a thousand people also came up to talk to the bride and groom, but Augusta didn’t let me sneak away to watch the dancers from an unobtrusive spot. “No, Karis, stay. I really want you to enjoy yourself,” she told me, when I pulled a little away and said I was going to find a seat. “Shane, let’s introduce her to someone.” She started to study the crowd. “What about your cousin Steve? Isn’t he still single?” She craned her neck. “Where is he?”

  “He’s dating a woman from Arizona. There’s Reid,” her husband suggested, pointing at someone in the crowd.

  “Ugh, Reid,” Augusta answered, rolling her eyes, but smiling at the same time. “He’s just totally not your type,” she explained to me, and I wondered what kind of guy she would have pegged as my type. Antisocial and pale, like I was? Just then she snagged the white tuxedo sleeve of a man passing by. “Reid! Are you ignoring the bride? Come here, we were just talking about you.” She pulled him over and he and Shane shook hands. Then she turned to me. “This is my friend from school, Karis Brown,” she introduced me. “Karis, this is my cousin, Reid McGrath. Reid, you should ask her to dance.” She poked him in the ribs.

  I had to lo
ok up to study him, which wasn’t odd for me, being what my mom termed petite, and what others called short. He and Augusta looked alike, tall and statuesque, with the same bright blue eyes and high cheekbones. Her fiery hair was dark auburn on him, and his face was tanned and tawny next to her fair freckles. But this guy would have turned heads with his good looks, just like Augusta did. He smiled just like she did too, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. He had a face used to smiling. “Hello,” I said, embarrassed.

  “Well?” Augusta urged him.

  “Thank you, Gussie. With absolutely no prompting, Karis, would you like to dance?” His eyes crinkled again as he grinned at me.

  “Oh.” I looked down into the glass I held, full of Tom Collins. I tilted it back and drained it, thinking about liquid courage. “Yes, thank you.” Augusta beamed as we made our way out onto the dance floor, with all the smiling couples. I had no idea of how to dance like this, except what my mom and I had done when we played pretend games when I was a kid, swooping around our various apartments. I had a feeling that this was going to be different.

  “How do you know Gussie? From school, she said?” Reid asked. He had put his arm around me and held out his hand. Carefully, I placed mine in his, and put my other hand on his shoulder. So far, so good.

  “Yes, the math department. We’re both teaching assistants. I graduate in the spring.” I felt a bit warm, and a little giddy. I thought that I should eat more cake to soak up the Tom Collins, wine, and champagne. I stumbled a little as he turned us.

  “Are you all right?”

  I nodded. “Fine, thank you.” There was a long, long period of silence as we moved around the floor. I had to say something. “I guess you know Augusta because you’re her cousin.”

  “Yes, that’s how it works.” He started laughing. “What was in that drink you were holding?”

  “It tasted like a lot of gin,” I admitted. “Alcohol. That’s how Augusta and I really got to know each other.”