You & Me (You & Me Series Book 1)

by Lisa Shelby

  “Sure. I’ll have what she’s having,” I say as I take the seat next to Ireland at the breakfast bar.

  I hold Emily’s hand as we walk from Fiona’s car towards my mom. I don’t know why, but I feel nervous. I don’t know if it’s because I wonder if Emily will think this is all a bit strange? I mean it’s not every day your boyfriend takes you to a cemetery to introduce you to his dead mother, but this is important to me for some reason. The nerves could also be because I haven’t been back here in a couple of years. I have some guilt over that.

  I can see her headstone some distance before we get to it, and my emotions start to swell inside of me. Sadness over the loss of my mother. Guilt for being gone so long. Pride in Emily. And joy that I get to share my happiness with the one person who wanted it for me more than anybody else.

  We approach the graveside that reads:

  Caroline Joy Kelly

  Beloved mother, wife, sister and friend

  1965—2010

  “I’ll love you always and forever and wherever I may be.”

  I slow down and Emily squeezes my hand and asks. “Would you like some time by yourself first? I can go sit on that bench and you can come get me when you’re ready if you want.”

  The love and support in her eyes is just want I need to calm my racing heart. I squeeze her hand back and say, “No, please stay. I’m kind of a mess right now and I’d like it if you stayed.”

  “I’d love to. Here, let’s get this cleaned up a bit,” she says as she releases my hand and walks towards mom’s headstone. She brushes away all of the leaves and other random pieces of nature that have landed on it. I think it’s her way to also give me a minute of space, even though I said I didn’t want it. She knows me so well.

  Once she’s finished, she takes the blanket that’s draped across my arm and spreads it out in front of us. She stands there with me waiting for me to make the move to sit. She’s leaving this all to me, and not forcing me to do anything I’m not ready to. She lightly rubs her hand up and down my back until I take two steps forward and sit down on the blanket. She joins me and sits next to me on my side, but turns her body so she is facing me.

  The blanket that Fiona sent with us was my mom’s favorite. It was a Christmas gift from me my senior year of high school. She uses her hands to flatten it so she can read it clearly, and I can see exactly when she notices the words on it.

  “Every night when I was little and she tucked me in to bed, my mom would whisper it to me. It was always a whisper or said into my ear when she hugged me goodbye. I had this blanket made for her my senior year. She loved it. It was in her will that we put these words on her headstone so that every time any of us came to visit, we would remember that she still loves us wherever she may be.”

  “I think that’s beautiful. Your mom sounds like she was a pretty amazing woman, honey.”

  I just nod in reply because I can’t speak. I can feel the emotion taking hold of me and I am not sure that I can keep it in any longer. Emily keeps her eyes trained on mine, and I swear she reaches all the way to the deepest parts of my soul with those eyes of hers. She can see that I’m barely hanging on. She reaches over and brushes her hand through my hair. “It’s okay to let it out, baby. I’m here. I’ll catch you. I’m. Right. Here.”

  Her words are all it takes to open up the flood gates and my unshed tears begin to fall. She pulls herself closer to me and quietly holds me while I cry. Once the tears start they just won’t stop. I’m no longer just crying, I’m sobbing, but she keeps holding on to me. Before I know it she has positioned us so that I’m now lying with my head in her lap and she is stroking my hair. She doesn’t say anything. She just comforts me with her love and her touch.

  “It’s been so hard for me to forgive you for not telling me you were sick, mom. You knew when I was home and you didn’t tell me. For the longest time I couldn’t understand how you could not tell me. I heard the reasons you gave, and they were never enough. But I finally figured it out. If you had done things differently, I probably wouldn’t have gone back to California. I wouldn’t have met my Gracie. As much as I wish I could have been there for you, Mom, thank you so much for sending me back to California and to the love of my life.”

  Feeling a little stronger, I raise myself up to sit cross legged on the blanket. Emily is facing me, but at an angle with her cheek on my shoulder, just letting me have my moment. I turn my head to look at her and she lifts her head so that her eyes meet mine, and I can see the tears that have just started to fall down her cheeks. She smiles at me and puts her head back down on my shoulder.

  “Mom, I found it. That love that you always said was out there waiting for me. I found it and I get it now. You were right, and when you know, you just know. I had to wait over five years to get her back, but she’s here Mom. And not only am I lucky enough to have found The One, but she has a beautiful little girl named Ireland. Emily and Ireland . . . they are what I’ve been missing, thank God they found me. You would love them both, and it really sucks that they don’t get to have you in their lives. You would have been the best Grandma, and I am so sorry you didn’t get to experience that.”

  I turn towards Emily’s head on my shoulder and can’t help myself when I take a small whiff. I love her smell and don’t think I will ever get enough of it. I feel her shoulders shake when she silently giggles at the move she catches me doing so often. I have no shame when it comes to her, and don’t care who knows it. Yes, I am that guy that has to sniff his girlfriend from time to time. So what?

  “Mom, these girls are everything to me. They are both kind, funny and beautiful. Emily is a bit, how should I say it? Independent. She has raised Ireland on her own all these years and Mom, she has done an amazing job. She’s the coolest kid I have ever met.” I turn so Emily knows my next words are more for her, even if I’m directing them to my mom. “Mom, I’m doing everything I can to let Emily see that it’s okay to let somebody take care of her for a change. I know she hates to lean on anybody but herself but I sure hope I can change that.”

  Emily places a sweet kiss to my forehead, she takes my face in her hands and those sky blue eyes of her search mine. “Jonathan, you’ve already broken down those walls. You have taught me to trust and to love and to let somebody else take care of me. You did that when nobody else could. I love you and I’m all in. I hope that we take care of each other for a very long time. You’re my always and forever Jonathan.”

  “See Mom, she’s the one. She loves me just like you always dreamed somebody other than you would love me. Life doesn’t get much better than this, does it? The only thing missing is you. I miss you so much, Mom.”

  The tears are back but just tears, I’m able to keep it together this time around.

  “Watching the work that Emily puts into being a single parent has given me just a glimpse of how hard it had to have been for you day in and day out taking care of me on your own. Thank you, Mom. Thank you for giving me all the love and support a kid could ever need and for taking such great care of me. I never went without, and I see now how hard you worked to make that happen for me. I love you, mom, and I miss you every day.”

  I move us so that we’re now both lying on our backs with our faces pointed towards the sky, holding hands. No more words are spoken. Eventually, Emily rolls to her side and puts her head on my chest and her leg over mine and I pull her tight into my side. I swear this woman has done more for me and my sanity than any shrink will ever do. She gets me, and she gives me so much more than I can ever give back to her.

  Friday morning, the women brave the mall and all the Black Friday shoppers while the three of us men stay home, watch football and continue to recover from our food comas from the day before. I don’t know how the girls were all up and out the door at the butt crack of dawn this morning. It was like they didn’t have a care in the world while we were all still sleeping.

  I only know when they left because Emily came by my make shift bed and kissed me on the cheek and
ran her hand through my hair before she left. I didn’t open my eyes, but I felt it all, and I had sweet dreams for the rest of the morning.

  Robert is in his recliner, Liam is hanging off of the love seat, and I’m sprawled out all over the couch when the girls come home hours later. It takes everything I have to pull my comatose ass up to a seated position to greet them. Ireland doesn’t give me much choice but to wake up as she runs over to me and jumps into my lap to tell me all about her day. A day that included lots of crazy people at the mall, lots of secret shopping for Christmas presents, lunch at Romano’s Macaroni Grill and her first pedicure. She takes off her shoes and socks and shows me her adorable little pink toenails and tells me how much it tickled. She had ‘so much fun’!

  “Sounds like you had a great day, Princess. What’s in the box?”

  She jumps off of my lap and grabs the box from the table. It’s over half her size and looks like a little house.

  “Mrs. Fanua and Kate got me an early birfday present, and it’s the best! We went to Build-A-Bear and I got to make my own stuftie, Jonafon! I got to pick the bear, and sprinkle all her stuffing with love and then help with the machine while she got stufted. Then, I got to pick an outfit for her. Wanna see?”

  “Of course I do. Let’s see whatcha got?”

  She’s talking so fast she can barely breathe and I can’t help but chuckle as she digs into the box.

  I look up at the girls and they’re all watching us with huge smiles on their faces. I figure out why a moment later when Ireland pulls out her stuftie. She’s a pink bear with white on the bottom of all four of her paws and she’s dressed in a police uniform. Once again this little girl has me in the palm of her hand, and is slowly melting my heart into a big pile of goo. I know she has Mick in her life too, but I still can’t put into words how it feels to see this damn bear.

  “Wow, Princess, I like her a lot. She’s a police bear huh?”

  “Yep, just like you and Uncle Mick. Pretty cool, right?”

  “The coolest,” I say memorized by this little girl and everything she makes me feel.

  “Tell him what you named her,” Emily says from across the room.

  “Oooh, you’ll like it, Jonafon! You know how mommy calls you Georgia after your state? Well, I named my bear Savannah after your city! Now she has a nickname like the rest of us! Do you like it?”

  What in the world is happening to me right now? I think you could knock me over with a feather. This little girl and her damn bear have just rocked my world. I am completely thrown off balance over a stuffed animal that happens to be named after me, and the big brown eyes that are looking up at me for approval.

  “Like it? I love it! I think that name is perfect, Princess.”

  She takes her bear, runs to the guest room and comes back with her stuffed Frank. She sits on the floor and starts introducing the two while she enters her own little world of make believe.

  I get up, walk over to Fiona and Kate, and thank them with hugs. They say it was nothing, and since her birthday is Tuesday and they won’t get to be there, it was the least they could do. While talking to them, I feel a hand on my back as Robert steps up next to me and says, “That right there, son is what it’s all about. You are a lucky man, if I do say so myself.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I reply back and catch Emily’s eye across the room. She’s standing there with a simple smile on her face. It’s a smile that says she loves me without words. Robert couldn’t be more right about me being a lucky man. The luckiest if you ask me.

  “Dude, she’s a ten. She’s hot as hell, smart, funny, and puts up with you and your little dick. How the hell did you land her?” Liam says as we drive home from picking up lunch from Chick-fil-A.

  “Man, you wish that was true. If Emily was the kiss and tell kind of girl, I’m sure she would clear that shit right up for you. But, like you said, she’s a ten and therefore not that kind of girl. To answer your question though, dude, I don’t fucking know how I got so lucky. Not just once, but twice. I ask myself that same thing every damn day.”

  I think Liam can feel the change in the conversation from shit talking to a bit more serious as he changes his tone.

  “She’s the one. I can see that, man. Don’t fuck it up,” he says falling into big brother mode.

  “I don’t plan on it, but thanks for the vote of confidence and words of wisdom, old wise one.”

  “I’m not fucking around here, J. She is the shit, and she makes you happy. You haven’t been happy in years. She’s brought out the old you, and I like it. Even seeing you with Ireland is something I never thought I would see. Not that I didn’t ever see you having a family, because I did, but I never would have thought your one would really mean two. Those two are special, and I hope you have plans to make that shit permanent.”

  Liam Fanua talking about relationships and marriage is new and surprising. It takes me a second to shake it off before I can respond.

  “Thanks, Liam. That means a lot especially, coming from a dog like you. I do want to make it permanent. She says she’s ready, but I’m still afraid that it’s moving too fast and she’s not as ready as she thinks she is. I’m working on it, but I can’t push too hard or too fast, ya know?”

  “No, bro, I don’t. Hard and fast is just how I like it, and I don’t ever hear any complaints, if you know what I mean.” He says as he lifts one of his eyebrows. “So no, I don’t know.”

  “Shut up, you’re such an idiot. You do know exactly what I mean, but enough about my love life. What about yours?” I deflect.

  “Oh you know, nothin’ serious.”

  “Are you seeing anybody?”

  “Oh, I ‘see’ lots of people, but not one particular person if that’s what you mean.”

  “So, big, bad Liam Fanua isn’t ready to settle down, or just hasn’t found the one?”

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready, J. There is somebody that I feel like I could give up all the others for, but she hates me and won’t give me the time of day. I deserve it. I’m a player, and I played the game with one of her friends a long, long, time ago. She doesn’t like what she’s heard and won’t come near me no matter what I do. It’s my own fault, I guess,” he says with a shrug of his shoulders.

  “That sucks man. Sorry to hear that.”

  “Ah, well. It is what it is, ya know?” he says with another shrug.

  “You know you could always change her mind. Do what it takes to show her what else there is to you. If she’s really the one, don’t give up man. Let her see that there’s more to you than the bullshit you show to most of the world. “

  Man, he reminds me of Mick. These two men are nothing but good but they don’t want the rest of the world to know. They put up this player persona so that they don’t have to get too close or too real with anybody. That way when it goes bad, they can make it seem like it’s no big deal. The truth of the matter is, whoever they end up with will be lucky to have them.

  “Let it go, J. I have. Thanks for caring, dude, but I’m just fine with my life as it is right now. You were built for all this relationship shit, and you’re good at it. You already look like the perfect husband and father, and there isn’t even a ring on her finger yet. Speaking of rings . . . I know you know, but don’t forget my mom has your mom’s ring should you want to use it sometime in the near future. Just sayin’.”

  “How the hell did we get back to my love life, asshole? We were talking about yours.”

  “Hey, I was just reminding you in case it was something you had forgotten. As for my love life . . . well, it looks like we are plum out of time my friend,” he says pulling his truck into the Fanuas driveway. Just like that, the conversation is over, and it’s time to get ready to say goodbye again.

  We all eat our lunch and watch as the Chick-fil-A virgins dig into their food. Emily has a classic chicken sandwich, and Ireland has nuggets but both were smart enough to get the waffle fries.

  “So good,” Emily says through a ful
l mouth of fries.

  “I still can’t believe you don’t have these in Oregon. That is a travesty,” Kate says as she too shovels fries into her mouth.

  “They’re building one in our area, so it won’t be long now. I’m gonna to need to stay away though. These fries, with this sauce, could become a serious problem.”

  We finish up our lunch and start to get our bags ready to go. We could have stayed until Sunday, but I thought it might be better to get home tonight. It would be nice to have a day so that Emily could do laundry, and get ready for her week, and so I wouldn’t have to take a vacation day on Sunday. I’m saving all the vacation days I can at the moment. I have a plan and it’s going to take some time off of work to come to fruition.

  Liam is taking us to the airport, so he grabs our bags and takes them out to the truck to wait for us while the rest of the family makes their way around to each of us.

  “Ireland, I had so much fun playing with you this weekend! Thanks for spending Turkey Day with us,” Kate says as she lifts Ireland off the ground and into a big hug. “You be sure to take care of Savannah for me!” She says looking my way. She gives me a wink that says she was asking that little girl to take care of more than just her new stuffed bear.

  “My turn! Hand her over Kate!” Mr. F exclaims next to them. I see him take her into his arms and notice Mrs. F and Emily over in the corner having a quiet conversation. I watch as Emily listens, and Fiona reaches up to pat her cheek gently then pulls her in for a hug. Once again, my heart is turning into hot liquid goo over the sight in front of me. The Fanuas acceptance of my girls into the family means more to me than they will ever know. I wish my mom was here, but this has been the best Thanksgiving ever.

  “Take care of these two, Better Big Brother. They’re keepers,” Kate says bringing me in for a hug. Not usually too sentimental, she releases me quickly and heads over to Emily who has just let go of Mrs. F.