Quirks & Kinks

by Laurel Ulen Curtis

  “Fine. We don’t need to talk about it anymore.”

  Me: “It’s done.”

  Him: “It’s settled.”

  Simultaneous: “We’re happy.”

  CRACKED ROCK AND UNEVEN soil roiled beneath my feet as I ran, daring me to keep going and challenging me to manage it. So many emotions consumed me, each step felt like a lifetime and a blink of an eye at the same time.

  I kept my eyes active, eager to live each moment—every tweet of each different bird, every bubble of each stream. I didn’t want to miss even one piece of it because I didn’t want Evan to miss even one thing.

  I could feel him with me, pushing me further, helping the air to rush in and out of my lungs on schedule the way he so helplessly couldn’t do for himself. And at the same time, I could feel my drive to change, each step putting me closer and closer to my goal to conquer this challenge and move on.

  After two months of bliss, the day had finally come to fight for one of my most difficult achievements to date.

  Sweet Easie had kissed me goodbye and sent me on my way an earth shattering seventy-nine miles and almost fourteen hours ago.

  Everything about me ached and begged for the chance to cry uncle, but I tuned out the pain and the fatigue and pushed forward anyway. I’d been privy to some of the most beautiful scenery I’d ever witnessed and every last runner in the race encouraged me when I encountered them. But most of the time I was on my own, with nothing to keep me company but my thoughts and whispered murmurings from a would-be Evan.

  I could practically feel him there, running with me, coaching me to keep going, but as an incline built under my feet, his voice seemed to fade.

  Tammy was supposed to come in as my pacer for the last twenty miles, and frankly, it couldn’t come soon enough. I needed someone there, pushing me, pleading with me, and I needed to feel their physical touch.

  The drive to finish for Evan was slowly ceasing to be enough.

  I’d crossed several bridges and run through the thick of wooded trails, but the sight of open space ahead of me waved like a mirage, easily becoming the most beautiful thing I’d seen all day.

  A portrayal of Easie stood there, waiting for me, stretching her tiny, toned legs and winking as I approached.

  I shook my head to clear the dream, but no matter how many times it went back and forth, Easie still stood there, beckoning me toward her with a flirty jaunt and a bend toward the ground that had her heavy breasts making an appearance at the top of her tank.

  Knowing I shouldn’t, that I didn’t have the reserves necessary, I ran harder anyway, eager to get to her whether she was real or fake or the call of my very near death.

  When I got within range, she shuffled into a jog, gradually picking up speed as I approached and matching me step for step by the time I came up beside her.

  “Easie—”

  “Don’t talk,” she told me, throwing up an arm and putting one pretty finger to her lips. “Not yet, anyway.” I sealed my lips but waited for at least a basic explanation. When the excitement settled and my overly rapid heartbeat finally abated, she laid it all out for me, though it should have been obvious.

  “I’m here to pace for you, that’s it. Let’s finish this thing.”

  “Easie—”

  “Shh.”

  “Just one thing,” I told her, holding up one rejuvenated finger in an accompanying gesture.

  She inclined her ponytailed head and pursed her lips—pretended to think about it.

  And then winked. “Okay.”

  Grabbing her neck, I kissed her as we ran, slowing our pace to just enough to be maintainable without falling. I pulled away but never let go of her eyes.

  “I love you.”

  “I know,” she assured me, facing her eyes to the front and officially shutting me out.

  I smiled to myself and watched her as she ran, thanking Evan for sending her to me. A blessing like her could only have come from him.

  She focused her breathing, working through the pain that started to kick in at her ten mile mark, and pushed herself harder to keep the pace I needed.

  I started to slow down, but she caught me, shaking her head no and forcing me back up to my planned pace.

  I watched her work for every step, push for every quarter of a mile. And she was doing it all for me.

  Looking down at my finger, I knew exactly what I had to do, that I couldn’t live another day without making sure she knew where we stood, and I knew just the moment to do it.

  Three hundred yards from the finish line, as she started to pull away to give me the glory of my photo finish, I grabbed onto her hand, laced our fingers together, and refused to let go.

  “Anderson—”

  “Hell no, baby. We’re going to finish this together. I wouldn’t be here without you.”

  She smiled sweetly, the sweat from twenty miles of pushing herself to her limit and beyond sticking a strand of loose hair to her forehead and down the line of her cheek.

  She didn’t try to remove it, the energy to do so nothing but a wasted effort.

  I barely pulled my eyes away from hers to watch where I was going, raising our hands in the air together for the last five yards and the dash across the finish.

  In an effort to keep moving we walked hand in hand, and when that wasn’t enough, arm in arm. By the time we made it to the end of the line of cheering spectators and loved ones, she’d burrowed her way under my arm completely, burying her face in the stank and sweat of almost eighteen hours of physical exertion. If that wasn’t love, I wasn’t sure what was.

  Euphoric and exhausted, I wanted nothing more than to have my lips on hers, so I made it so, leaning down and twisting her until the front of her body met mine.

  She didn’t fight it, meeting my tongue stroke for stroke with her own, and pushing her body as deeply into mine as she could manage.

  “You’re crazy,” I told her, breaking the kiss to catch my breath despite not being anywhere near close to getting my fill.

  “If you need to run, I’m gonna run too. And if you want to hold on to Evan for the rest of your life, you’d best just scoot over and make some room for another set of hands.”

  Her lips met mine again, nipping and biting and licking away at the exterior before delving inside. I worked hard to keep up, but by and large, now that I was still, the fatigue had started to overwhelm me.

  And I wasn’t ready for it.

  “Easie.”

  “I love you.”

  “You, the inventor of the hamster mile, the hater of all things physical, the ex-smoker self-proclaimed couch potato, just ran twenty miles, for me. Yeah, baby, I know you love me.”

  Her eyes went soft at first, and then transitioned to wide as I sank to one knee and pulled Evan’s ring off of my finger.

  “Oh my God,” she cried, making me smile and hold onto her hand tighter.

  What I wasn’t expecting were the four or five “Oh my Gods” that followed, each voice pulling at some distant place in my subconscious.

  Closer than expected, several familiar faces stared back at me.

  Ashley and Tammy. Larry and Howie. My mom and dad. And a woman who looked exactly like the love of my life, but older, huddled under the arm of an attractive man. Easie’s parents.

  Easie saw me notice our audience and shrugged. “I would have warned you.”

  It wouldn’t have mattered.

  “Easie Reynolds, will you marry me?”

  For once she embraced seriousness and expediency and answered nearly before I’d finished the question. “Any day. Any time.”

  There was no thinking about it. No nerves choking the path from her vocal chords to her mouth.

  We both knew it was right.

  The ring swallowed her tiny finger, but aside from the sizing, I’d never seen anything fit better.

  I pulled myself to my feet, pressed my lips to hers, and then moved my mouth to her ear. “And the wedding night? Think you want to try something kinky?”<
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  Her arms tightened almost to the point of pain and her chest swelled to twice its normal size.

  “You bring the helicopter, I’ll bring the kitten.”

  “DO YOU HAVE TO rub the same spot on my skin over and over like that?” Anderson asked as we cuddled on the couch like a couple of perfectly crafted spoons.

  “It’s comforting,” I defended.

  “It feels like you’re going to wear right through.”

  For a guy who was so preachy about ‘to each his own’ and ‘live and let live,’ he sure was good at nitpicking my ways of showing affection. “Aren’t you supposed to yearn for my every flaw? Covet every idiosyncrasy?”

  “I could,” he agreed, pursing his lips and pretending to ponder. “But then we’d be that annoyingly perfect couple. By my recognizing your flaws for what they are, I can still love you beyond anything else in this world, and yet, other people won’t be afraid to hang out with us.”

  “I don’t buy it.”

  “Okay, how about this,” he offered stretching his neck from side to side as if preparing for a fight. “Enjoying your flaws would only magnify my affection for you. As my affection for you already inhabits some of the very highest portions of the “affection chart,” any more would likely lead to codependency. I wouldn’t be able to eat without you, sleep without you. I’d lose all interest in looking after my own welfare in your absence and eventually it would lead to my death. In turn, you’d be so despondent at the loss of me that you’d turn to alcohol and drugs, a sort of whiskey lullaby if you will, and in the end you’d die too.”

  I stared at him, wide-eyed.

  “Do you want us to die?”

  At my silence, he asked again. “Do you?”

  I shook my head in wonder.

  “I, for one, am against it. So, you see, I point out your flaws for our welfare.” His face was grave. “I’m doing this for us.”

  He’d really come into his own since he’d proposed, joking more than ever and even taking the opportunity to relax every once in a while. Before our blowout, you would have never been able to find him on the couch, snuggling and watching TV. If he wasn’t sleeping or fucking, he wasn’t horizontal. But not anymore.

  Though, he made plenty of time for those too.

  Now he lounged. Now he loved.

  And I loved experiencing every minute of it.

  Years had been leading up to this moment, the night before my wedding with my future bride in my bed. Everything about her enhanced everything about me, and I couldn’t wait to make her my wife.

  But, as always, Evan had been on my mind, but it was even more than usual.

  I didn’t know if it was the momentous nature of the occasion, or if he was trying to tell me something, but I’d spent the last forty-five minutes in bed, trying to figure out what it meant and what that meaning meant practically for me.

  Finally, like the flipping of a switch the answer hit me, and I knew what I needed to do. Easing myself out of the bed without waking her, I padded down the hall, into the living room, and pulled open my standing cabinet.

  Paper and pen were easily accessible, kind of as if they had been there waiting for me to use them.

  I pushed the cabinet door closed with a soft click, made my way to the dimly lit couch and leaned forward onto the sturdy coffee table.

  Pen in hand, deep breath in lungs, I put pen to paper and wrote.

  Even I was surprised by the way all of my emotion poured out.

  Dear Evan,

  Hey Little Brother! How’s Heaven?

  Is it really and truly a better place? Everyone says it is, and trust me, with you there, I’m hoping they’re right. But for the first time ever, I’m not really sure.

  See, I finally understand the point of everything you said to me while you were here.

  Since you left, I’ve been making sure to live all of your dreams for you. I hope you’ve seen me. I hope I’ve made you proud.

  But none of them made me dream bigger, made me live a whole life outside of my body.

  Something, that just recently, I finally managed to do.

  I’m in love.

  You’d really like her. She’s fucking hilarious. And she loves it when I tease her. She pretends not to, but her eyes light up and get soft. I’ve never really seen anything like it. And I’ve had the absolute best time learning all of her looks and cues. Even the ones that mean she’s seriously pissed off at me. In some ways, those are the best expressions of all.

  I guess what I’m saying is I’m finally living free and breathing easy. Well, I guess technically, I’m breathing Easie. That’s her name. Can you believe that?

  I’m hoping you can feel it—that God will make it count for the both of us.

  I’ll always miss you.

  But you know that.

  Love, Anderson

  Sneaking back into our bedroom on quiet feet, I tucked the crisply folded paper into the breast pocket of my tuxedo.

  Evan would walk down the aisle with me tomorrow—walk with me on my on my journey one last time—as I officially transitioned from living his life, to mine.

  The End

  I’m extremely fortunate to have tons of supportive people in my life. But, as always, the first person I have to thank is my mom. She’s the first person to have eyes on my book, even when it’s in pieces, and is an invaluable source of encouragement and wisdom. And she’s not a bad editor either. Lol! Thanks, Mamalicious!

  Alison and Kelly—Thanks for beta-ing for me. You did a terrific job. Or, you did a terrible job, and people can blame you for this shitty product. Just kidding!

  My proofreaders! I can’t even. You’re too much. I expect T-shirts within the next week.

  My author friends. There are a ton of you, and you’re all AWESOME. Thank you for sprinting with me, pushing me to keep writing, lifting me up, and assuring me that I really COULD do this. M. Mabie, Aly Martinez, NA Alcorn, and Tara Sivec: I feel like I was separated at birth from all of you.

  Book, B*tches, & Balderdash ladies. You guys are SO much fun! I legiterally have no words for you. None. I think I ran out of all of them talking in our group. Thank you for being some of the MOST awesome people I’ve ever met. Fuck Isaac!

  Blogs. Um, hello, none of us could do this without you. I definitely couldn’t do this without you. You all work so hard, and so many of you have supported me in ways that I can never thank you enough for. But I’ll try. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I’d list you, but then I’ll forget someone and be devastated. Bad mojo.

  You. The readers. Sweet baby Jesus, you guys are awesome. Every message, every comment—they mean everything to me. I spend hundreds of hours working on these books, and just one message from one of you—someone who saw something in my book, was touched in some special way—makes it worth it. Every word written is mined from me, but I go in search of them for you. Please keep reading. I’ll love you forever.

  And, of course, I have to thank my family. My husband and son sacrifice the most, going without food and attention in order to let me push through to my deadline. The BIGGEST reason I fear having a stalker is that they would see how messy my house is through the windows. Thank you for your support and for believing that this book is going to be something big.

  Laurel Ulen Curtis is a 28 year old mother of one. She lives with her husband and son (and cat!) in New Jersey, but grew up all over the United States. She graduated from Rutgers University in 2009 with a Bachelor of Science in Meteorology, and puts that to almost no use other than forecasting for her friends and writing a storm chasing heroine! She has a passion for her family, laughing, and reading and writing Romance novels. She’s also addicted to Coke. The drink, not the drug.

  LAUREL’S SOCIAL MEDIA:

  http://www.facebook.com/laurelulencurtis

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  www.twitter.com/LUCurtisAuthor

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  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/69121
03.Laurel_Ulen_Curtis

  Other Books by Laurel:

  The One Series:

  The One Place

  The One Girl

  Huntsford Hearts:

  Impossible

  The A is for Alpha Male Series

  A is for Alpha Male

  Secret Alpha

  Accidental Alpha

  One Last Night: A Novella

  Hate: A Love Story

  Coming Soon or In the Works:

  Ellie’s Beat (A Hate Prequel Novel)

  Untitled (A is for Alpha Male, #4)

  Trigger

  Fated (Huntsford Hearts, #2)

  . . . and Ashley and Larry’s story. Title to come!