by Howe, Violet
She’d never had any children of her own, and she looked at each of us as her babies. I breathed in her ever-present peppermint scent and thanked her for throwing the party for us.
Cabe bent down to hug her too, and she cupped his face in her wrinkled, twisted hands. “You take care of my honey-girl, and she’ll take care of you. You have kind eyes, son. I see a kind heart. You’re welcome back anytime.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I’ll certainly take you up on that.”
And just like that, Cabe was officially welcomed into the family. Thank God he survived.
Sunday, July 13th
I’d just finished writing last night and turned off my lamp when something tapped against my window. At first, I thought it was a limb from the oak scraping the glass. But when it happened again at the same evenly spaced intervals, I sat straight up in bed and stared at the closed blinds.
My heart beat so loudly in my ears that I couldn’t tell if the sound was still there, but then it happened again, a little louder and more insistent.
“Psst. Ty.”
I threw back the sheet and went to the window blinds, cringing as the floor boards creaked beneath me. I peeked between the blinds and there stood Cabe, on the porch roof, shirtless and in his boxers.
The ancient old window probably hadn’t been opened since I lived in this room, and I began to think it wasn’t going to budge at all and we might have to remove the A/C unit from the other window instead. Finally with Cabe working one side and me on the other, we got it open.
“What are you doing?” I whispered as he climbed through the window and inside my room. I threw both arms around him and pressed myself against his bare chest, feeling the humidity of the night air on his skin.
He tilted my head back and took possession of my mouth, his other hand lifting the back of my T-shirt and pulling me tight against his hips. I slid my foot up his calf, looping my own leg around his. The fire between us ignited it so quickly I wanted to climb up his body and wrap myself completely around him.
We inched our way back to my bed, pausing slightly when the boards creaked, but never parting lips. I fell backward across the bed with his full weight on top of me, his kiss overtaking me as his hands roamed and plundered with a fevered urgency. The bed groaned as we moved, and I pushed against his arms and separated my mouth from his.
“Turn on the air,” I said, motioning toward the window. “It’ll drown out the bed springs.”
“Are you speaking from experience?” He lifted one brow and tilted his head to the side.
I laughed softly. “No, just using common sense.”
He lifted off me and went to the window, and he’d no sooner gone than my body ached to feel his weight against me again. I parted my legs as he lay down, wrapping my ankles around his hips and pulling his mouth back to mine. I ran my fingers into his hair and mussed it, fluffing it out. He’d kept it slicked back since we got here and I longed to see those curls wild around his face again.
Cabe tore away from my mouth but his lips never left my skin. He made his way along my jawline and down my neck, leaving hungry kisses and sucking just enough to make my blood pulse hard beneath the surface.
“Don’t you dare leave a mark, Cabe Shaw. My mama will whip your ass,” I whispered, arching my back as he lingered across my collarbone and dipped lower.
A slow creak whined in the hallway outside my door, and I grabbed Cabe’s head with both hands and held him still. He looked up at me from my navel and grinned.
I motioned for him to be quiet and strained to hear any further sounds from the hallway. My breaths were coming so fast I was basically panting, and I struggled to quiet my breathing so I could hear.
Cabe laid his head on my stomach and waited in the silence with me as I twisted his hair around my fingers. After a few minutes, he lifted his head and propped his chin on his hands across my ribs.
“Think the coast is clear?” he whispered.
I shrugged and turned my head toward the door, praying I wouldn’t hear anything else. I really wanted to get back to where we’d been headed before.
He slowly crawled up my body quiet as a mouse, pausing to give me tiny feather-kisses as he made his way to my lips again. He rolled to his side and I stretched against him, tucking my knee between his knees and nestling my head underneath his chin.
“You’re extraordinary,” he whispered as he kissed the top of my head so softly I could only feel the wind of his breath against my hair.
“What? Why do you say that?”
He pulled me closer to him and moved his lips to my ear to keep his volume as low as possible.
“I can’t even explain what I feel for you after this weekend,” he said. “I feel like I’ve seen a new side of you. I thought I knew you so well, but here’s this whole other aspect I never saw. It’s expanded my view, and I’m even more fascinated than I was before.”
“Wow. Why?”
He traced a figure eight on my back over and over again with his fingers while he talked, sending a series of chills that resulted in tiny muscle contractions rolling over my body.
“I’ve heard you say several times that you don’t want to be average. Ordinary. And you don’t see that there’s nothing at all ordinary about you. I see this place, where you came from, and I see the way you interact with your family, and my heart is full. Your family is sweet. Crazy. Bizarre. But warm-hearted. Entertaining, for sure.”
“Sounds like you nailed them.” I chuckled and buried my face deeper into his neck, breathing in his cologne and enjoying the rumble of his voice against my cheek.
“You’re like the best parts of all of them, wrapped up in a beautiful package. You can fit in here in the woods and the rural environment, but you also fit in with the most exclusive clientele at the Ritz Carlton. When we’re with Dean and my buddies, you can hang with the best of the boys, yet you are feminine and soft and every bit a lady.”
His hands ventured further down my back with their figure eight, and I pulled my knee up higher to get even closer to him as he talked.
“Your body drives me insane. I can’t touch you enough, can’t kiss you enough. Can’t wait to bury myself inside you and find paradise. But at the same time, you’re my best friend. My favorite hang-out buddy, and I feel completely at ease with you, no matter where we are. Your love and your support makes me feel like I can take on the world. So I just look at all that and think you’re extraordinary. I’m the luckiest man alive, Tyler Warren.”
“Did you, like, watch a cheesy movie after you went to bed or something?” I tilted my head back so I could meet his eyes. The love I saw there melted my insides and turned them to goo. He cupped the back of my head and pressed his lips to mine as he closed his eyes.
He held the kiss for an extended pause with no movement, no sound, and then he opened his eyes and parted from me to speak. “I know this sounds stupid when we’re going home tomorrow, but I don’t want to be away from you. What if we set your phone alarm and I’ll get up and go back to the other room before anyone else wakes up?”
So that’s what we did. We fell asleep intertwined in each other and we didn’t move from that position the entire night.
My alarm vibrated at five o’clock, and Cabe stumbled back out the window and made his way across the porch to Carrie’s room. My bed was lonely without him, but I was too tired to miss him long.
When I woke up, sunlight filled my room and I was shocked to see it was after nine.
I walked down the hall to Carrie’s room, but the door was open and Cabe was nowhere in sight.
Mama’s laughter rang out downstairs, and as I made my way down and across the kitchen, I followed the sound of voices to find her and Cabe sitting on the porch drinking coffee, Mama in her rocker and Cabe on the swing.
“Good morning, beautiful,” Cabe said as I came to sit beside him. He kissed my cheek and nestled his nose in my hair, wrapping his arm around my shoulders as I intertwined my fingers in his.
&nb
sp; “Morning, sugar. Want some coffee?” Mama asked. She stood and went inside to pour me a cup, and I smiled at Cabe as he leaned forward to kiss me.
“What time did you get up?” I asked.
“I couldn’t go back to sleep without you,” he said. “I watched some TV on mute upstairs, but then I heard your mom downstairs around seven-thirty, so I came down and we’ve been sitting out here talking. Waiting for the love of my life to awake. I was beginning to think I was going to have to come upstairs and rescue you with true love’s kiss.”
“Damn, I don’t know if the country air is good for you. You’re getting all sappy on me.” I wrinkled my nose and winked at him.
We drank coffee with Mama and then ate breakfast with her and Brad before packing up our stuff and hitting the road.
The trip went much better than I had imagined it would. Amazingly, it somehow made Cabe and I even closer. More bonded. More deeply rooted in each other. Maybe I was wrong to dread the wedding so much. I forget sometimes what a romantic guy Cabe is. How could I have ever thought he would be okay without the pomp and circumstance?
Maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe Cabe and I will be able to enjoy planning. Researching together and deciding what we want for our wedding. We talked some details as we ticked off the miles on the way back home, and I honestly think I may be able to get excited about planning this wedding. We’ll see.
Monday, July 14th
It’s a damned good thing Deacon is so cute.
Cabe dropped me at my apartment when we got back in town and then he went home to Deacon. Dean had called on our way back to say he was leaving Cabe’s house and would put Deacon in his crate.
I guess somehow he failed to latch it, though, because when Cabe got home after dropping me off, Deacon was running loose and Cabe’s living room was destroyed.
I’m talking, it looked like an explosion had gone off.
He’d torn off huge chunks of the couch, scattering whatever pieces he didn’t swallow all over the room.
The window blinds were completely destroyed and hanging in threads.
The mail left on the dining room table was shredded and partially ingested.
The couch toss pillows were annihilated. Nothing left but remnants of cloth and a few puffs of stuffing.
One leg of an end table looked like it had been attacked by a chain saw, and two dining room chairs were turned on their sides and dragged across the room. (Quite possibly to hide the broken lamp from said end table.)
I think it’s safe to say Deacon has some separation anxiety.
I’m also thinking Dean will not be my first choice for dog sitting the next time we go out of town.
“Do you think he left Deacon by himself a lot this weekend?” I asked, trying to justify the dog’s behavior in any way I could.
Cabe shook his head. “No. Dean slept here both nights, and I talked to him a couple of times Saturday. He hung out here all day, playing video games. I called him yesterday on our way home, and he was here until like three in the afternoon.”
“So Deacon did all this in a few hours? Busy boy.”
I walked amid the destruction dumbfounded. It was even worse than Cabe had described it on the phone. I could only imagine how he must have felt when he walked in last night after our trip and found his home in ruins. I’m sort of glad he dropped me off first and I didn’t see it without time to mentally prepare.
“So I guess we’ll be going furniture shopping sooner than we thought,” Cabe said as he lifted what was left of a sofa cushion and tossed it in a trash bag.
“Well…” I started and then stopped. I don’t know why I hesitated. I’d been thinking about it for days, and I knew it made sense to do. I mean, we’re getting married. So obviously I’ll be moving in here eventually. We spend almost every night together as it is, which is often a pain in deciding whose place to stay at and making sure we have clothes and whatever else we need at the right house. Not to mention carting Deacon back and forth between the apartment and Cabe’s place, always worried someone is going to report me for having a dog in violation of my lease. So it made all the sense in the world for me to go ahead and move in here.
But giving up my apartment was hard. It was the last shred of independent life before I merged my decisions, my goals, and my life with another person. From here on out, Cabe and I would make our path together, taking each other into consideration on matters big and small. At my apartment, it was just me. I could do whatever I wanted. However I wanted.
Not that I thought Cabe wouldn’t be on board with whatever I wanted to do in the future, but it’s different when you need to consider someone else. I guess that’s part of what makes marriage so hard. It’s not all about you anymore. You have someone else’s feelings, habits, likes and dislikes interfering with your own stuff. And if you love them, and you want it to work, you kind of have to be open to compromise and taking their wants and needs to heart.
Whew.
I took another deep breath as I surveyed the damage and weighed the next step in the commitment I’d already made. It wasn’t like I had any intention of backing out of that commitment. Hell, with every passing day I was even more sure I wanted to marry Cabe. The sooner, the better. It wasn’t like I didn’t already take his wants and needs into consideration when making decisions, or that I didn’t feel certain he did the same for me.
So why was giving up my place so hard? Was that my “all-in”? Was giving up my apartment the last stumbling block in me being completely onboard with becoming one with Cabe?
I watched him move among the remnants of his living space and pick through the scraps, determining what was trash and what could be salvaged. Deacon sat by the door, tongue wagging without a care in the world. If anything, he looked proud of his accomplishments. Like, hey, look guys! Look what I did! Isn’t it awesome?
Cabe absentmindedly reached to pet Deacon as he walked past him with the full garbage bag and a bent lampshade.
I smiled at Cabe’s ability to roll with the flow. To go with whatever the situation was. Whether that was a room full of wedding industry people fawning over table linens, an animal shelter with us knee-deep in suds and mud, a house full of people quizzing him about his past and his future intentions, or an expensive lesson in dog ownership.
We’d have times where we didn’t agree. I knew that. We’d have days when what I wanted didn’t align with what he wanted or what we’d envisioned didn’t match up. But this was my guy. My future. My life. I had no doubts. It was time to go the distance.
“Well, what?” Cabe asked when I didn’t continue my sentence.
“I was gonna say that my lease is up at the end of August. I have to give thirty days’ notice if I’m not renewing. So I was thinking maybe I’d just go ahead and move in here. We could use my furniture for the time being. Take our time shopping for new stuff so we can make sure we get something we want.”
He turned and smiled at me, the grin on his face lifting my heart and swelling it to near bursting. He dropped the trash bag and the lamp shade at his feet and rushed to me, picking me up in a big bear hug. I jumped and put my legs around his waist and he twirled me around until we both got dizzy.
“When? Tonight? Wanna move in tonight?” He held me effortlessly with his hands tucked under my rump and my legs circled tight around him. I pushed his hair behind his ears and kissed him, first his forehead and then his soft lips.
“I’m thinking I might need a little time to pack.” I slid down him and he kissed me again, this time only lifting me a few inches off the ground before setting me down and releasing me.
“Okay,” he said, his enthusiasm like that of a kid who’s just gotten a new toy. “Let’s do this. Tell me what I need to do to help you.”
I laughed with a mixture of joy and nervous apprehension. I dreaded packing up everything, moving and unpacking. I wished I could just cross my arms and blink hard and magically transport my stuff like a genie.
We finished the clean-up an
d stared at the aftermath. A ruined sofa with no cushions and one end gnawed. One end table destroyed and no lamp for the living room now. One dining room chair with a rickety leg, and another that had more chew marks than we’d first realized.
“You wanted a dog,” Cabe said with a sigh.
“You picked him,” I replied with a grin.
“Let’s sleep at your place tomorrow night. We can get started packing.”
So here we go. Full commitment commencing now.
Wednesday, July 16th
It has begun.
Mama called today three times in a twenty-minute period. I try not to answer her calls at work because I never know what kind of tangent she’s gonna go off on, or what kind of mood she’s gonna put me in, but the frequency conveyed an urgency I thought I shouldn’t ignore.
“Hey Mama. What’s up?”
“I’m at the outlet mall and I found baskets on sale sixty percent off.”
For this she called me three times in twenty minutes?
“Okay. Why are you telling me this?”
“We’ve got a wedding to plan, honey. You can always use baskets. We could do baskets for centerpieces. We could have a basket on a table for when people bring cards. You could have a basket for your rice.”
“I’m not doing rice, Mama. It’s bad for the environment, and it hurts when you get pelted with it.”
“Well, then a basket for birdseed or whatever you’re gonna do.”
I sighed. “I don’t know if I’m going to do anything like that. I think it’s overdone. I kind of just want us to leave without all the hooplah.”
“That’s ridiculous. People want to throw rice. Or birdseed. Or something. It makes ‘em happy.”
“Does it really? Make them happy? Or is just a pain in the butt to get everyone lined up and make sure they have whatever they’re supposed to throw and then hope the photographer gets a shot without your eyes closed or someone’s arm in front of your face?”