“I’ve made a lot of promises to you. I intend to keep all of them. Every last one.”
“Now you’re lying,” she says with a furious groan.
Finally. Phones connected…and we’ve got a dial tone.
“Is this where you want to jump in, Tess? Right here? Fine. What am I lying about, exactly?”
“The promises—damn you!” I hear her nails tapping on the floor and I’m just going to take a wild guess that she’s also twirling a chunk of hair around one finger right about now.
“Why can’t you forgive me for whatever you think I did…and please, what did I do, exactly, that’s got you so damn mad? So mad you were willing to walk away—walk away from us, Tess?”
I’m pretty sure she has it all wrong in that stubborn head of hers, but I need to hear her put it together. I’m willing to help, but an olive branch from her side would be nice. I need to see her fight for us; I need to know she has it in her.
“It was our secret.”
“It still is.” She has turned this thing inside out and has added a few gnarly knots into it for good measure. She’s on the driveway that will never reach a road. Poor girl.
“Liar!” She slams her body against the door. Oh, she’s bringing it now. Coming at me all fire and brimstone.
“Nope. Not me. I’m not a liar…but you are.” This might hurt a little.
“What? Fuck you!”
“No, but you can fuck yourself. I know Roxanne knows. And I said nothing to her, so that leaves you. Liar.”
“I had no choice. I had to talk to someone. You abandoned me.” I hear her get up and start slamming things around. She’s riled now.
“Are you fucking kidding me, woman? Abandoned you! You all but told me to get lost. I was just obeying marching orders!”
“I know what you did!” She has me nearly hung and she’s all wrong about the verdict.
“And what is that, exactly?”
“You told Striker. You showed him pictures. You…talked about re-skinning and re-wrapping and new cans, and you—you said…”
Now we’ve entered the next phase. The full on sob-a-thon. I hate to feel guilty right now, but I kind of do. I could make this whole thing end right now, but I have a plan, and I need to follow it through. If it weren’t such a life-changing plan, I’d take a U-turn and stop the car crash we’re just heading into. But I can’t: the brakes are off. She’ll be thanking me later in all kinds of ways. Trust me. It’ll be the best story of her life. Mine too.
“Yes. I did tell Striker. I wanted it to be surprise. You must have overheard us.”
“I am not some…some thing. I am a person and I am beautiful inside, even—even if…if my skin isn’t…perfect. I know this now!”
“I’ve known it all along. Not sure what took you so long. I’ve never asked for perfect. I love everything about you…I’d never ask you to change.”
“Oh, right! You’d just barge in and take over. You shouldn’t have told him. You’re such an ass. How could you do that to me!”
“I needed his help. Big changes are never easy, Tess.”
“I’m not yours to fix. And anyway, it’s done with. I’m finished with this conversation. No need for you to meddle anymore. I took care of everything myself.”
“Please don’t tell me that, Tess. Please open the door and let me see you. Let me touch you…. We can end this argument right now for good.”
“You don’t deserve me.”
“Maybe I don’t, but that’s not gonna to stop me from wanting you and from making you mine.”
“I’m so mad at you. Why didn’t you just tell me to my face? Why go behind my back? That was my business, not yours. You’ve crossed a line with me, Scout…how can I ever trust you again?”
“You come out here, and I’ll prove it to you. I promise, Tess, you can trust me. I was trying to do the right thing for you. You just chose to believe I was doing something else.”
“Oh please, I heard every word, okay. Do the right thing? What is wrong with you! You’re sick…I mean, sick-sick. You can’t even begin to understand how much it hurt me to hear you say those things.”
Shit almighty, she is pissed with a capital P! I mean, slamming her hands against the door, spitting at me like a wildcat caught in a trap. Too bad it’s a trap she invented, then stepped in.
“How are you going to feel when you see my face, when you see me naked again after saying those words? How? Because I know how I’m going to feel!”
“I’m going to feel love when I see your face, even though you’re madder than a nest of hornets on fire. Let me take you out in my truck and show you how I’m going to feel…”
“Not a chance. You want sex? Ha! You’re practically outside of my species right now. Not happening!”
I brought my tool bag in with me this time. Mama didn’t raise no dummy.
“So are you going to sit in there the rest of the night, with me out here?”
“I don’t know what I’m gonna to do right…oh fuck. Bleeeecchhhh…” She’s scrambling, then retching. Hangover-style retching. The kind where your grip on the seat is the only thing from keeping your head from falling into the soup. You know that kind, right?
“Hey, baby…are you okay? Are you throwing up?”
“Yeah, you are making me sick. You see, this is what’s happening to me…”
Did I say pissed?
“You open that door now.”
“I can’t.”
“Because you’re sick or because you can’t see me?”
“Yes!”
“Fine.” Twice now I’ve removed doors to get to her. Twice.
I start on the top right side. It’s easy, just a little bit of jimmying…and pop.
“Scout. Stop…don’t come in here.” Her hands are against the door, and please forgive me, but I am chuckling. You ever see a little mouse holding a door closed with a buffalo on the other side? Me neither.
“I’m coming in, and then you’re coming with me. I don’t care if I have to throw you over my shoulder and carry your skinny ass kickin’ and screamin’. I love you that much. I do, though, wonder how much you love me, Tess.”
Time to rip the Band-Aid off. Enough suffering. It was fun for a little while—as fun as the doc fondling my nuts, asking me to cough—but it’s showtime. She’s on the opposite wall, back to me (no shit, right?), hanging onto the towel bar like she’s on a palm tree in a tsunami. I kid you not. Cutest damn thing ever. She has on her penguin pajama pants, bunny slippers, and a sweatshirt big enough for a family of six to live in. I want to bury my face in her mop of long, blond, loose curls, but that’ll have to wait until later.
I pick her up and toss her over my shoulder, forgetting for a sec how sore my body still is. Thank God she weighs as much as a sack of potatoes. She’s kicking, smacking my ass, my back…beating the living daylights out me. This is the kind of vigor I want later. Trust me, she’ll be doing that.
For winter, it’s a warm day; we get these now and again. No snow on the ground, sun blazin’ like it’s summer…I’d put it around mid-sixties. It’s late afternoon, and the sky is on the verge of wanting to change, but still holding onto that little edge of blue before she rides straight into the watercolor pinks and plums that drape over the mountains like velvet. I climb into my truck with Tess clinging to my shoulder. She falls off of me onto the seat once we’re both in and scrambles to the passenger side of the truck as if I’m some kind of creep who’s just picked her up off the highway. Sorry, but I’m smiling. It’s funny—to me, anyways.
We head over to my ranch and cross the river that takes us onto the back forty. Back forty-five-hundred, but who’s counting. This part of my land is sacred to me…well, to both me and Tess, really. I bought it years ago once my music started hanging out in the single digits on the Billboard charts. When Tess and I were sixteen, we used to sneak our motorcycles out here and fly like two bats out of hell across this land. Most guys I know wouldn’t do the shit on a bike she wo
uld, but remember, Tess rode bulls. A motorcycle’s got nothing on a bull. Believe me.
“Where the fuck are you taking me?” Ah, that mouth. I’ve missed it. She’s always had it. “Sass” fits her perfectly in every way, shape, and form.
“Just settle down. You’ll see soon enough. Why don’t come over here by me?” I tickle her waist and she slaps my hand.
“Because you’ve kidnapped me against my will and you’ve been an asshole. You haven’t even apologized.”
“Believe me, sweetheart, you’ll be the one apologizing. And you seemed to like it last time I kidnapped you.”
Her back is to me with her face buried against the window.
“You weren’t a jerk back then. Funny thing is…now I know why you needed to see me naked—so you could fuck me! Well, you fucked me, all right. You talked a big game, all hearts and flowers. Weren’t you getting enough ass everywhere else? Did you need me, too? Need to mess with me so you could go tell Striker all about it?”
Lip can go only so far with me. I slam on the brakes and throw my truck into park. I grab her arm, drag her to me, and pin her down on the seat, because she’s too wild and fired up for anything else. She needs this as much as do; more, even. Her eyes are crazed and her lips are trembling, her mouth pinned shut as though her jaws are wired. She tries to look away but I have her chin in a grip and my eyes claim her with lock-on mode. I’m having intercourse with her right now, like it or not, even if it is only with my eyes.
“I’m going to prove to you today how very much I love you, Tess Harlow. Now give me some fucking credit and the goddamned chance to do just that! Now would be a good fucking time to stop ripping into me, because you’re gonna hate all the regret in your gut later on. Got it, sweetheart?”
I don’t even try to kiss her—I’m pretty sure she’d bite my tongue off and I’d be like that Bobbitt fellow from a few years back that got his Johnson nipped off. She says nothing once I let her up. For once, it thrills me.
Finally we get to the barn. This gem has been here for two hundred years or so, and looks like it from the outside. It holds more than memories to me: it holds promises and my future. The one kiss I got from Tess after the eighth grade was out here when we were sixteen, riding our cycles. I’d thought maybe it was going to be more than a kiss. It would have been for me but she stopped us cold as my hands were headed north under her shirt.
I’ve recently turned it into an amazing place, just keeping the exterior shell of it here for memory’s sake. The inside, though, has been beautifully finished off. The original hayloft, where we kissed, is finished out as fantasy bedroom of sorts. You see where I’m going here? I write and sing music for a living, remember…the story part of it just comes naturally to me.
When we pull up, Tess looks like she’s seen an alien spaceship. I’ve not said one word to her about this place since she’s moved here. I’ve known all along it would be a surprise, just not quite as big a surprise as it has turned out to be.
“Remember this old place?” I ask as I open my side of the truck, then drag her across the seat to me. She looks at my face and winces, but comes willingly. I think for the first time she realizes how banged up I look, rough around the edges from the accident.
“Yeah…our kissing barn,” she says as she looks past me, taking in what a beautiful place it really is.
“I wondered if you’d remember that,” I tell her as I lift her out of the truck, setting her on the ground and then taking her hand in mine. For the first time, she doesn’t pull away.
“I want to show you something, baby.”
She looks terrified, I probably do too. Inside, I’m all fireworks. I’ve waited forever for this day. I want to press pause on life and keep us in this time capsule so that I have the chance to memorize every millisecond of it in slow motion. The huge barn doors start going up after I click the remote. The rumbling sound making my knees shake like I’m sixteen again.
Then Tess sees her: Gypsy Girl. I wish I had words to describe the feelings running through me. The look on her face, tears streaming down both of our cheeks, the vibe between us as we stand together looking at her old motorcycle with a new gorgeous bohemian skin—sacred.
“I promised you, I don’t break my promises,” I tell her as I take her hands in mine. We’re a collective mess of love. If we so much as move a step, we’ll surely both slip in the sea of gush and gooiness going on between us.
“Scout, I…” Her arms fly around my body and all I feel are tiny little quakes coming from her. Each one is an I’m sorry, I love you, I understand now.
“This was what you were talking about? My Gypsy Girl? You had a bike doctor remake her, re-skin her? You made her so…oh my God, Scout, so beautiful for me. This was it all along? This is what you were talking to Striker about?”
“Yep. I wanted to surprise you with her, because I knew you wouldn’t do it yourself.”
“I didn’t know. I thought you meant…me. My skin. I thought…”
“You thought what, Tess? That I didn’t love you from the inside out, didn’t appreciate every inch of who you are? Didn’t love us and all the things we are and always have been, the things we’re going to do and be together? You chose to hear what you wanted to hear…something other than love. I wish you had listened to your beautiful heart, your insides. I wish I had known that was what you were angry about from the get-go. I could have stopped you… I’m sorry I didn’t get to you in time. I’ll regret that my whole life, baby. I tried to get to you….”
“Scout, oh my God.”
“I’m so sorry, baby. You’ve always been perfect for me…never needed to change a thing.” My hands hold her trembling face; my lips catch each tear that falls in unison with my own.
“I love you, Scout. I’m so sorry I didn’t trust you. I don’t know what happened. I just…. oh God, Scout, I could have…none of this would ever….”
“Have happened. I know. None of it.” I sweep her into my arms and carry her up the steps to the loft where we had that beautiful kiss at sixteen years old. I suppose it’s good nothing went past that point when we were so young. Fate’s funny like that, sticking her hand into places that at the time you want to curse her for—then, years later, you just want to nod and wink at her as you move into that sweet spot you’ve been hoping for all those years.
“You remember this loft?” I back her against the same wall that still has the heart carved into it with our initials and simple vow: TH + SS.
“Forever I’ll know this loft. It’s etched in my heart like that one we carved right there.” She has a small smile on her face as her eyes flicker at me. I’m pretty sure she might be able to hear my heart pounding, too, because to me it’s deafening.
“I want to give you something, Scout. I…”
“Tess, hang on. I want to give you something too, sweetheart,” I tell her as I go down on one knee and take her hand in mine. The words are clear to me, I’ve been repeating them for days on end…well, for years on end, truth be told.
“You’ve been taking my breath away since I first met you. I’ve almost lost my chance at this a few times now. I never did give up on you; I just kept asking my heart to seek out new pathways to yours. Every time you smile, I feel a little of your stardust inside of me. I want to spend the rest of my life doing what you want to do…lying in the grass, holding hands, making wishes as the stars fall over us…or lying in bed making babies together. You’re my favorite everything—or, to quote you, my forever and a day. Your magic is strong and soft and untethered like an eternal flame, just like our love, baby. Tess Harlow, will you please marry me and be my girl for the rest of my days and nights on this earth and wherever I may go thereafter?”
I take the ring from my jeans pocket. It’s an elegant, wide platinum band with sapphire baguettes kissing each other in an exquisite row, except for one spot that will forever purposely stay open. I slide it onto her finger as she comes down onto her knees in front of me. She’s nodding and, yes,
crying her eyes out. As am I.
“Scout…oh—oh my gosh. Yes…yes. It’s all I’ve ever wanted, my whole life. It’s all, well…this and….”
“I know, baby. Me too. You’ve just made me the happiest man this world has known.”
“Scout, this and…”
“Sweetheart, this and what?”
She reaches into her pajama pants and hands me a white plastic stick. I know immediately—and if you thought I had fireworks inside before, well, think again.
“You’re pregnant?”
“Uh-huh. My fairy tale, right? It’s happening…. Scout, you make everything right for me. You always have.”
“Tessie girl. Dear God, you’re pregnant with our baby? We’re going to have a baby? How long have you known? I’m so happy, sweetheart!”
“Today. When I was in the bathroom…that’s when I found out.”
“Oh, Jesus, Tess—when I was on the other side of the door, that’s what you were doing?”
“Yeah. Peeing on sticks.”
“That’s my girl. Once a tomboy…”
“There’s something else, Scout.” She takes my hand, we stand, and she leads me over to the king-size bed.
“Undress me. I need to be against you. Skin on skin.” The mystery in her eyes is irresistible as she sits on the edge of the bed. We share a smile as I pull her pj bottoms off.
“Tess, Tess, Tess. God, how I’ve missed you.” I wish I could say I wasn’t nervous to see her new skin since the surgery, skin that she’d gone ahead and had surgery on for me. Skin that will likely need ten more surgeries, now that’s she made the first move. I wish I had gotten there in time to stop her.
“Scout, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Forgive me for not trusting you.”
“Tess, it’s okay. You assumed…it’s okay. I’m just sorry I didn’t make it to you in time.” I have the bottom of her sweatshirt in my shaking hands and she has them gently pinned down as though she doesn’t want me to see—as though she can’t let herself. Are we here again? Now?
“You tried. That matters,” she says as her eyes fill with tears.
“Tess, it’s okay. Let me see. You’re beautiful to me, no matter what. Nothing has changed, okay? Well, nothing except that now you’re my gorgeous fiancée and mother to our little one.”
A Mess of Reason Page 23