by DL White
“Well, you’ve done that. So, now you need a new life’s goal.”
“Technically, I didn’t. You quit.”
“Same thing, baby.”
In a few steps, he is behind me, his hands on my waist, pressing himself into me. His breath is feather-soft on my shoulder as his lips flutter over my skin. I squirm and squeal in his arms, still trying to stir our meal on the stove.
“So, are you now? With a guy that makes you want to have his babies?"
"Kind of an unfair question with your dick in my ass." I angle my head so that I can see him. “You’re saying you’ve thought about it?"
He scrunches up his face and rears back. "Hell no."
I laugh. "That's not a thing guys think about?"
"Some do. Just... not me."
He releases me, stepping back to open the refrigerator, pulls out a bottle of water, twists off the cap, and takes a long swig. He shifts, leaning against the cabinet with his arms crossed.
“I don’t think men have a biological clock."
I bend to adjust the flame under the meat and vegetables. A delicious scent is coming from the skillet. I'm so happy to have someone to cook for, someone who loves to eat and doesn't care what it is he is eating, so long as he eats. “Ed McMahon had a kid at eighty years old."
“Good. I can still have kids after you die."
I glare at him. Then hand him two large cans of crushed tomatoes. "Open these, asshole.”
He grabs the cans and the can opener and goes to work. I pour the ground beef, onion, and green pepper mixture into a pot and turn on the burner under it. Once the cans are open, I empty them into the pot and stir everything together, then put a lid on the pot and turn the flame to low.
I set the timer and start rinsing utensils, the skillet, and other things we've used to prepare food. “Grab a loaf of garlic bread from the freezer. It can defrost while the sauce simmers. It needs to cook for a couple of hours."
"A couple of hours?" He whines, but moves toward the freezer, opens the door and slides out a loaf of frozen, pre-buttered garlic bread. "Where do I put this bread?"
"Up your ass." I close the dishwasher and walk out of the kitchen. “Where do you think? Set it on the counter somewhere. It doesn't matter."
"You’re not raising my kids with that mouth."
“Who said I was raising your kids? And last night, you liked my mouth."
I resume my spot on the couch, making a note to check the sauce in about a half hour. Preston settles in next to me.
We've fallen into a comfortable routine, lately. Before the evenings grew chilly at night, we sat on the patio to watch the waves in the lake and have a glass of wine and talk. Lately, we hang out in the living room, him in his usual spot, and me in mine. Sometimes I read the paper or a magazine. He loves boring educational shows and movies that have subtitles.
During a commercial break of some reality show about pawning ugly shit, I nudge my elbow into his rib. It's the most boring thing ever, but he loves guessing how much money each seller is losing.
“Why were you asking about having babies? Are you testing me to see if I want to give birth to your bighead kids?”
Preston seems unbothered. “If you want kids, we'll make it happen."
"Preston..." I sit up, more than a little exasperated. "There's a whole lot more to having kids than fucking and saying, ‘go ask your mother' all the time. Do you want to be a dad? Do you want to raise little replicas of you and me…with me?"
He presses a button on the remote to mute the sound from the TV, then sits up. "Here's the thing, Angie. I want to be with you. If you want to be a mom and have kids with me, I'm there—one hundred percent. I'm not saying the decision is all you, but-“
He tosses up his hands in a tic of frustration. "I'm not the one that has to carry the thing."
"It's not a thing. It's a child. A piece of me and you. Can you be serious for a whole minute, please?"
His gaze is steady and full of the love I know that he has for me, even though we’re clearly on each other’s nerves. "I don't know, Angie. I never thought I'd be with you again, and if I had kids with anyone, it'd be with you. We're so new again… kids aren't on my mind right now. But I know women have a short time when they can safely have babies, so if you want me to speed up my thoughts on that, you got it. If you want to start procreating tomorrow, I'm all in.”
"Did you want kids with me before?"
"Baby, I was seventeen." He laughs. “From the looks of that bag of condoms you dragged around, I didn't think we’d have kids for about ten years.”
"My parents were so scared we'd end up with a baby."
"Unlimited access to you? Sex in a bed?"
Preston leans over and nuzzles my neck and runs a hand down my torso. The tips of his fingers brush the side of my breasts. My nipples react, standing upright and poking through my bra and t-shirt. My back arcs and I let out a low groan.
"That happening all the time? Yeah.”
I reach for him and let him crowd me, snuggle up against me, arms around me. I run my palms over his curls and kiss his temple. He still smells of the shower gel he uses.
“Preston…”
He sighs, reaching for the remote but then setting it back down.
“What, Evangeline? I said if you want kids, we can—”
“No, not that. I’ve been waiting for you to bring this up, but are you going to have to move out? I hate going back to my apartment. Most of my things are here, and if I have to move them somewhere, okay. But I don't want that somewhere to be back to my apartment."
Without a word, Preston untangles himself from me and gets up from the couch. I watch him walk down the hall and turn the corner to the home office that we've been sharing since I've been staying there. He comes back around the corner, a box and an envelope in hand, and sits down beside me again.
"I was saving this," he says, "but you're impatient."
“It's my fault you have to give me a present."
I take the box from him and angle myself toward him. The box is plain and white, nondescript. There is no logo, no wrapping or ribbon; it is the simplest of presentations. I pull off the lid and remove a couple of layers of cotton before my fingers brush against something hard.
I dig and pull out a key ring that holds two keys, one a sterling silver, the other a brushed gold. I dangle them, listening to the jingle of metal on metal. Preston is bearing the straightest faced expression I've ever seen.
“Keys?”
"One of those is the key to the castle. The other is a surprise."
"Okay,” I pause while the wheels of my mind turn. Preston doesn’t do things just because. “So… you gave me a key to a house that you might have to give up soon. This means what?”
He stares at me, his forehead a landscape of wrinkles. "Have you ever wondered how come you never beat me in court?"
"Yes. I decided that it was because you cheat."
He sighs, rolls his eyes, and pulls me close. “I can keep the house. That's what the key means."
I glance at the key again, a grin slowly crawling across my face. "So, you get to keep the house?"
"I swear I said that."
I'm trying not to throw my arms around him. To choke him. “Answer me!”
"Yes. We can keep the house."
He hands me the envelope, and I put the key down long enough to open the flap and slide out a piece of paper. Inside is a receipt from the county clerk that the deed to the house, transferred to Preston Scott Reid, has been filed. He officially owns the townhome on Lake Conway.
I sink back against the couch and heave an audible sigh of relief. I was worried enough for the both of us.
“Uncle Wayne laughed when I asked if he was moving back to this place. His new wife took the liberty of finding them a big ass mansion. I told him about you, and you'd be mad if you had to pack your shoes up again."
"Again, this is my fault?" But I'm grinning, so huge.
"He's got anot
her place here, his first condo. He's been renting it, but the tenant recently moved out. He asked me to supervise the renovation of that place, and that one goes to Troy at Christmas. But he doesn't know, so..."
He presses a finger to his lips in a shhh gesture. Preston takes the sheet of paper, gazes at it for a moment, then folds it up again and slides it back into the envelope. He tosses it, casually, onto the coffee table.
“We should go over to your place this weekend and start packing up your stuff. I want you here before Christmas."
"Here. To live here. With you. Here."
"I thought we would live here together. Yes.”
I do, then, throw my arms around him. He laughs at my reaction, and then he realizes that I'm on the verge of tears. His hands are warm on my back as he strokes me from my neck to my waist, patiently waiting for my emotional moment to pass.
I sit back, swiping a few tears, clutching the keys in my hand. “Is this the big thing you were planning? Can I say it now?”
“Not yet."
"You said to pack up my shit and move in with you and gave me a key and everything, and I can't say it?"
“Nope. There's something much bigger coming."
I lift the keyring and dangle it in his face. "Does the much bigger thing have something to do with whatever this other key goes to?"
He reaches for the remote and turns his terrible show back on.
I lean over and kiss him and mentally say it anyway.
I love you, Preston.
33
I'm so used to walking into the house and stepping around a landmine of boxes that the day I come home, and the hallways are clear, I wonder if I am in the right house. After a few weekends and late nights, my old place was empty and clean, and Preston's place…our place looked like a cardboard tornado hit it.
I drop my briefcase and lunch bag on the kitchen counter. The patio doors are wide open, a breeze billowing the curtains through the opening. Preston is seated at one of the tables under an umbrella that flaps in the wind.
“Yeah, I think we’re about ready,” I hear him say into the phone. “A couple of things left to check off.” I wave a few fingers at him and head back inside.
A few minutes later, he steps into the house and slides the doors closed. "Hey, you.”
I turn from the refrigerator where I'm trying to decide if I'm having iced tea or something harder. It’s been a rough day, and the latter sounds more appealing.
"I need liquor.”
"Uh oh." Preston pulls the handle from my hand and lets the door shut. His arms slip around my waist, and he pulls me up against him. I tip my head up for a kiss, resting my arms across his shoulders.
There is nothing better than coming home to him. I've turned into the kind of woman I used to roll my eyes at, but now I get it. When you find the one that fills that person-shaped void, that makes you overwhelmingly happy, your life becomes about being happy with that person. At all costs.
Preston tips his head to nibble on my earlobe, my neck, brush his lips across my cheek. "Bad day?"
That's a question he asks every day. Every day, I answer with a depressed sigh.
Things are awful every day. The partners have become ambulance chasers, taking any case as long as it pays. I remember Preston's words, back when he worked for Perry: "Everyone deserves his day in court. Even a murderer needs a defense."
That's why I never went to work for Perry. And now I work for a Perry clone.
Preston hums a pleasant tune in my ear before he pulls back and leads me to the living room. We settle on the couch, and I kick off my heels, loosen my short jacket and let Preston help me pull it off.
"What happened?"
"I flat out refused to take an impaired driving case today. I hate those. It’ll probably end up in settlement, anyway.”
Preston nods, as he and everyone I’ve ever worked with knows I hate impaired driving cases. "I told Flanning I couldn’t take it. I’m busting at the seams. Then he tried to make Troy take it, and he refused, so he made some other associate take it. Troy and I were called into Flanning's office and reprimanded. I'm pretty sure I only have half an ass left.”
"That's how it was getting at Perry when I left."
"See, that's what I mean! I'm not a Perry attorney."
Preston grabs my hand and strokes the back of it with his thumb. Broad swoops that are magically calming and soothing. “Do you still have a job?"
I snort. "Of course. I win cases; Flanning wouldn’t dare let me go. If I get out of that place, I’m going to have to leave.”
Preston gets up and walks to the kitchen. He's back moments later with a shot of whiskey. I'm almost ashamed at how fast I toss it back and hand the glass back to him.
His brow hikes up. “Another?"
I roll my eyes up to him. "Will you think badly of me if I say yes?"
He chuckles and heads back to the kitchen. He's back with my shot, but not as much this time. "Take it easy. You haven't eaten, and you have to drive to Prime in an hour."
"Okay." I am a little tipsy already. "Troy is thinking about moving on. And so am I."
"It’s that bad? Troy’s not the quitting kind.”
"Yup. Drop everything and walk or take the cases I want and go somewhere else."
"Hmmm." He says nothing more for a long, quiet moment. I sip my drink and fume about my day. "Do you have any feelers out? Do you want me to ask around?"
“The entire Florida Bar Association already knows we’re dating. Let’s not make it worse.”
"That's how business works, though. May as well use it to our advantage.”
I can't help but laugh. That's how the business works for him.
"I'll ask around if you want. For Troy, too." With that, he stands. "I want you to see what I did today." I let myself be pulled up and down the hall to the office we share, which is transformed.
Instead of one desk we playfully argue over, there are two desks in the room. Filing cabinets stand alongside each desk, and we have a bookcase each. Mine is full of the books that had been sitting in boxes, stacked along the hallway. Some are legal research or textbooks from my courses at Barry that I still liked to reference. Most, though, are for pleasure reading—memoirs from Michelle and Barack Obama to Nelson Mandela; fiction from Jacqueline Woodson, Bernice McFadden, Eric Jerome Dickey and Terry McMillan.
Preston had unpacked every book, after painstakingly packing them in the first place, and arranged them in order by genre.
“Okay, wow. You've been busy today."
“I thought you'd be more at home, feel more like it’s your place, if your stuff was unpacked and put up. And now you don’t have to sit on the floor in the living room in front of the TV."
“I like sitting in the living room in front of the TV.”
He points to a flat screen TV mounted on one wall, where we can both see it. “Well, now you can work in comfort in your office. I put a streaming stick on this TV, but I don’t have it set up yet. But check this out."
He pulls his phone from his pocket and scrolls through the address book.
In moments, the phones on both desks warble at a low volume. The voicemail picks up, and Preston puts his mobile on speaker.
“Hi, you've reached Preston and Angie. For Preston, press one. For Angie, press two. For both of us, wait for the beep. Thanks for calling.”
“Preston!” I cackle out loud. “You’re so corny! But it’s so cute.”
“And functional.”
I pull out the chair he bought for me, a soft cushioned leather office chair. It rolls easily and smoothly. Satisfied, I get up and move the chair back under the desk and wrap my arms around Preston's waist. I stretch onto my toes to land a kiss on his cheek.
"I love everything about this room. Especially that you unpacked all my books.”
"I wanted your shit out of my way. Boxes bring down the property value.”
“See, you can’t help yourself. You're hiding behind this attitude to mask your
sweet nature. And trying to stop me from saying I lo—”
Preston's face darkens. "Evangeline."
Laughing, I pull away from him. "I call you asshole. You call me Evangeline. I think it means the same thing."
He winds a hand around my waist and pulls me out of the room, into the hallway, back to the living room. "So, do you have to do this thing with Morgan tonight?”
"This thing where I haven't had my weekly date with her in months? We have to catch up."
"You mean talk about me."
"That, too." I head toward the stairs.
Prime feels like a place I haven't been to in years, instead of a few months. It looks the same. It feels the same, like the same kind of people are here tonight that were here months ago. I identified with them back then.
But I am so different.
Morgan rushes in, her ever-present smile as bright as always. I'm glad I changed because she's dressed in skinny jeans and a long-sleeved blouse and boots. We frequently accidentally match.
"Sorry! I left the studio late. One of the Banshees twisted her ankle, so I had to get her understudy up to speed. Then they’re talking about adding a show over at the Loews Resort so I had to sit in on the kickoff meeting.”
She huffs and puffs, sets a Hermes bag onto the seat next to her, and plucks the drink menu from its stand. "You haven't ordered yet?" She asks, frowning at the empty spot in front of me.
"I ordered appetizers. I had a shot and a half at home. Preston would only let me drive myself if I drank a bottle of water and promised to order food when I got here."
Morgan flips the menu over, though she doesn’t need it. After years of coming to Prime, we’ve memorized the menu. “So. How are things?"
I am already shaking my head. I’ve been prepping for this shade all day. “That chair isn’t even warm under your butt. I knew you couldn’t wait to start.”
“I’m not starting!” Morgan protests, through laughter. “Okay, I’m starting, but you know you deserve this, so sit there and take this I told you so like a woman. A woman who was wrong. So wrong. Epically wrong.”
“Fine. Fine, you were right. I was wrong. Enough.” I pick up my glass and gulp a swallow, knowing it is not nearly enough for Morgan.