A New Leash on Love

by Debbie Burns

  She postured as menacingly as she could, attempting to shoe them away. Sledge whined and tucked his tail as he surveyed the closest pony. Its ears were flat against its head, and its teeth were bared.

  Craig’s here, and instead of talking this out, there’s going to be a miniature pony/German shepherd showdown. “Run out of the gate with him, will you? It’s Sledge they’re mad at, not you.”

  Craig frowned as the darker, fuzzier pony swiveled its hind end around and aimed a double-hoofed kick in Sledge’s direction. Thankfully it missed by a foot. “Isn’t Sledge the predator here? I thought horses were vegetarians.”

  “I’m not sure this is the best time to discuss animal behavior.” Megan smacked her hands together and shooed them off as Craig finagled a whining Sledge through the gate to safety. She followed them out backward, warding off ponies that would make great offensive linemen.

  In the commotion, she slammed into Craig, who’d turned to see if she needed help. “Your clothes. I’m sorry.”

  So swiftly she didn’t realize it was happening, she was enfolded in his embrace. It was anything but a typical hug, the way he enveloped her, enclosing her in his arms and disintegrating the space between them. He didn’t speak or move. The warmth of his body radiated through her soaked clothes, warming her as he became wetter and wetter.

  Sledge cowered by their legs, whining at the ponies stamping their hooves and swishing their tails.

  Craig didn’t move or relax his embrace. It took her a minute to realize he was trembling. Not shivering from the cold, but trembling from the inside out. Craig, the man who never let people in and never lost control.

  “I’m sorry,” she blurted out. “For everything.” She pulled back enough to look at him. “For a week, I don’t think I’ve done anything but make mistakes.”

  “It’s okay.” He ran his thumb along her chin. “Megan, I thought…I was afraid you came here because you’d made the decision to have an abortion. I was sitting in my car, trying not to doze off as I waited for seven o’clock to knock on the door. Then I opened my eyes, and there you were, tearing across the yard to stop Sledge from getting to those ducks, and God help me, I couldn’t help laughing. You get it—what I learned when we lost Andrew. You get how precious life is. Whatever brought you here in such a hurry, I knew when I saw you plunge into that pond in your pajamas that you wouldn’t make that sort of decision without at least telling me.”

  A shiver ran up her spine. Now, if her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her, the worst of her fears was dissolving like the water dripping off her clothes to the ground. Craig was here and holding her and revealing that his strongest fears weren’t so very different from her own. All along, whether she resisted it or not, it had felt like an incredible force helped pull them together. And no matter what happened in the future, over moments that were the most beautiful she’d known, they’d created a life. And that life would be as precious to him as it would to her.

  Maybe there were still a million little reasons to be afraid, and maybe there was a mountain of obstacles they needed to overcome. But the biggest one, the one she’d been terrified of—that his reaction could lead to her falling out of love with him—was anything but the truth.

  Before she could voice her thoughts, the sliding glass door at the back of the house opened and Tyler and Tess tumbled out, laughing and talking over each other and racing their way. As if emboldened by the new commotion, Sledge barked and dropped into a play bow at the closest pony, who was still baring his teeth on the other side of the fence.

  Megan slipped the leash from Craig’s fingers and pressed the back of his hand to her lips. “Come on, you can meet the kids and my mom, and then I need to get in the shower and wash off this smell or I’m going to puke. Again. And we’ll see what you look like in Rick’s clothes, unless you brought along something to change into.”

  Chapter 26

  “So this still feels surreal. Like everything could dissolve and your coming here not have happened.”

  From across the table, Craig stretched out his legs, locking his ankles around hers. “Doesn’t the fact that I’m in a restaurant wearing dress shoes and a pair of tight, three-inches-too-short exercise pants help ground this in reality?”

  Megan giggled. “I never would’ve guessed Rick was so much smaller than you.” In the nearly four months she’d known him, she’d never seen Craig look anything but put together. Rick’s one-size-too-small, short-sleeved Nike shirt wasn’t bad, but it stretched over Craig’s biceps, chest, and back, highlighting muscle tone like he was showing off. From the waist down though, the combination of too-small Adidas pants and shiny leather shoes made it obvious some sort of mishap had occurred.

  But the mom-and-pop coffee shop they’d come to was on the outskirts of town and as good a place as any not to be judged. It was equal parts country diner and wannabe hip barista bar. The modern coffee bar on the side of the restaurant was accented with stainless-steel lighting, slate counters, and contemporary stools. Honey-colored oak tables and booths filled the rest of the place. The walls were dotted with antiques: a giant wooden fork and spoon, old photos of the town, and metal plaques advertising everything from Coca-Cola to Route 66, Borax detergent, and Uncle Sam.

  Margo’s Cup, it was called. Megan had been coming here since she was a kid, but a change in management was causing the clash of styles. The parents were retiring, and their trendy daughter was taking over. The quality of the food had only improved though, and from what her mom had shared, customers weren’t complaining.

  Megan was still cradling her mug of hot tea when the server came, carrying blackberry waffles for her and an omelet for Craig. She found it sweet when, even though he shifted in his seat, he kept his ankles locked around hers.

  He was on his second cup of coffee and looking a bit less fatigued, but the dark circles wouldn’t go away until he had some decent sleep.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “For what I put you through.”

  He shrugged as he sliced into his omelet. “I’ve gotten to meet your family. And I’m going to get a tour of your hometown. It’s working out fine.”

  They hadn’t talked about the baby with any significance. Megan sensed he was too exhausted. And there was so much to weed through. Where they stood in their relationship. How they’d created a life, and how nothing was ever going to be the same. How he’d fit Sophie and Reese and Jillian into this changing world of his.

  And all of these topics needed a relaxed mind that hadn’t been deprived of sleep for nearly two full nights. But he wasn’t angry with how she’d handled things, and he wasn’t holding blame. He was attentive with Tyler and Tess, polite with her mom, and after the kids got on the bus, he let her drive him here even though he looked a bit ridiculous.

  And all of this piled together made one thing very clear. She loved him. And not a questionable bit. She loved him a the-world-is-a-deep-scary-chasm bit. And she was fairly certain he loved her the same way.

  Only it was too big of a feeling, and the idea of voicing it when so much still needed to be decided seemed precarious. She was pregnant, and they had a long row of adult decisions to make.

  She needed to keep a layer of bubble wrap around her heart while they discussed logistics. Confiding how much she cared wouldn’t help matters.

  She nibbled on a slice of bacon and remembered his comment from what felt like years ago, though it was only just over a week. He was committed. He had been before either of them knew she was pregnant. It was enough. She’d hold on to that, and it would get her through what was ahead.

  They finished eating, and Craig had a third cup of coffee—black.

  “If you’re too tired, we can go back to my mom’s and you can take a nap. I can show you around later.”

  “No, I’ll get another cup to go, and we’re not stopping till I’ve seen it all. You spent your first eighteen years here, and
there are a lot of big moments in those years. I want to see it all. The long-winded ‘Grandpa’s had too much to drink and is rambling on and on’ tour.” He winked as the server returned with his card.

  Megan laughed. “Just so you know, the long version will be sweet and sad and pathetic and a tad humiliating. But we might as well start now. My dad and I ate here on Saturday mornings at least once a month. But that sleek coffee bar wasn’t here. The old counter was from the fifties. The stool seats were cracked and wobbly when they swiveled, and my dad never got mad when I wouldn’t stop swiveling.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “One day, a boy from my school who was here with his dad got yelled at for swiveling. He was this kid who had everything. The right clothes, any toy you could think of, and always the latest Game Boy. But he didn’t have a dad who let him swivel, and I never forgot it when I saw him.”

  Craig’s lips turned up into a half smile as he slipped his credit card back into his wallet. “I would very much like to have known your father. He sounds like a man who got it right the first time around.”

  Megan swallowed hard and reminded herself of the protective wrap she’d placed around her heart today to get through all this. Craig had lost a child. If he’d ever been a dad to snap first and regret it later, he’d never be it again. They both had had a powerful brush with the impermanence of life. And with it, understood how giant some of the small things could be.

  “He was,” she said, rubbing her thumb over Craig’s wrist. His skin was warm and inviting. “Maybe that’s the gift they’re given, those people who don’t get to stay here as long as the rest of us. Maybe they have an easier time getting it right.”

  * * *

  It took two hours and a few unnecessary loops around town, taking into account a lack of planning, but she showed him everything. Her elementary school and the half-moon climber out back where she’d knocked out a permanent front tooth. He enjoyed the story of how a group of teachers sorted through mulch chips to find it while she held a towel to her bleeding gum. Her principal was the one who found it. She dropped it in a carton of milk, and Megan’s parents came and rushed her to the dentist. Afterward, she could only eat soft foods for a week.

  She showed him her junior high and the narrow door at the back where she and Ashley slipped out at a dance with a couple of wild boys and they’d both had their first kisses. From there they went to her high school and the garden where she escaped at lunch to be alone in the weeks and months after her dad’s death. Seeing it, it seemed natural to head to her old home first, then the graveyard where her father was buried alongside his grandparents, people she’d never known.

  After that, she wanted to lighten things up. She drove twenty minutes out of town to an old hangout at the railroad bridge that spanned the James River, a spot where fall bonfires had been legendary and she’d laughed even after it seemed she might never laugh again.

  It was only when they were walking underneath the rusted bridge that she remembered how one afternoon, a month or so after her dad died, she’d clambered across to the middle and jumped into the river. It was fifty feet above water and hurt like hell, but she’d been unscathed. A long list of kids had done it before her, as had a long list after. Most were fine. One hadn’t been though. A local boy who everyone said was always down on his luck. He dove and hit his head on a rock under the water. He slipped from life into legend and kids, being kids, still jumped. They talked about him and jumped anyway.

  Life was funny like that, brushing against death, but moving along like the James River—in a hurry at times, impossibly slow at others.

  After the bridge, to keep the bubble wrap in place, she stuck to skating rinks and burger joints, treehouses and lemonade stands.

  “There’s one more place,” she said when the fourth cup of coffee seemed to be wearing off and the first yawn of the tour escaped him. “But I’m not sure I should go there with my lover—literally and figuratively.”

  They’d passed the road twice and she’d considered it, but not turned down it. Her first serious boyfriend had been in college. Here in her hometown, she’d had sex only once. The guy, her first, wasn’t worth making the tour but for the single fact that he’d been her first.

  Craig’s hand was resting on her thigh. He stroked it with his thumb. “Where’s that?”

  Her cheeks grew warm as she broached the topic. “I told you my first serious boyfriend was in college.”

  He cocked an eyebrow but waited for her to continue.

  “There was someone before him. I wouldn’t exactly call him a boyfriend. We had the same group of extended friends, but we never dated. We just…um, you know…hooked up once.”

  “And you want me to meet him?” His voice took on the slight tone of incredibility.

  “No. Heavens no. The where in this case is a bit more notable than the who. I thought I’d drive by and point it out.” She cleared her throat. “If it won’t offend you, that is.”

  He chuckled. “By all means, let’s see it.”

  “It’s kind of pathetic, I guess. I was a senior and getting ready to go away to college. And I didn’t want to start a virgin, if you want the truth. Looking back, it seems ridiculous to surrender what could have been a big moment over a stigma, but it’s what I did. And you wanted to see everything.”

  They were outside of town in the farmlands. She drove down a winding road with green fields and cows and big circular bales of hay. Craig was quiet, taking it in.

  “Maybe a bit too predictably, it was senior prom. One of my friends lived on a farm. After prom, we came back here for a bonfire. Her parents didn’t care if we drank, as long as we didn’t leave.”

  Letting the car roll to a stop, she pointed to a farmhouse on her right. “Her name is Trish, and her family lives there. At least I think they still do. The bonfire was to the left out in that field.”

  “You had sex for the first time in a field?”

  Megan giggled. “No, I wasn’t that drunk.” She twisted and pointed to the other side of the road. “Me and this guy, Trish’s boyfriend’s cousin, we skipped out and ended up in that old barn across the way.”

  The barn was big and ancient and faded red with a sagging roof. The doors were pulled open wide, and a couple of goats milled around the outside nibbling on grass.

  Craig was quiet for so long that she turned to look at him. He was scoping out the road, not the barn. He reached forward and flipped on the hazards.

  “Pull to the shoulder, will you? There’s no way we’re not checking that out.”

  “Are you kidding? You can’t just walk across a field in the middle of the day and into someone’s barn. It’s called trespassing.” She glanced at the house a hundred yards away. It looked quiet enough, but still. They could have an attack dog or a gun. This was a farm in the middle of the country. Odds were that they had a rifle at the ready.

  “Then pull up a few hundred feet. We’ll enter from the other side. They won’t see us from the house. Besides, we don’t look like we’re here to steal something.”

  “You’re forgetting you’re dressed like you might be a bit crazy.”

  He winked and hopped out. “Good thing you aren’t,” he said before closing the door.

  Heart hammering in her chest, Megan pulled forward out of sight of the house and off to the shoulder. The road was largely deserted, but she hid her purse under the seat, took her keys, and locked the doors. She jogged down the road to meet Craig, laughing and shaking her head.

  “This is insane,” she said. “Some parts of the tour were supposed to be roadside only.”

  “I don’t remember agreeing to anything of the sort.” He scaled the fence and offered his hand. Without the adrenaline of early this morning, clambering over the fence was a bit more awkward. As she swung over, he closed his hands on her hips, sending a different sort of rush up her spine.

 
They made it to the barn without seeming to alert anyone or anything aside from the goats. They bleated and trotted inside after them, nipping at Craig’s too-tight pants.

  “It’s no Ritz,” she said as he sidestepped the goats and scoped out the old building.

  Sunlight poured in from cracks in the wood, the doorways on both sides, and the open loft windows. It was a big barn with half a dozen empty stalls, an old tractor, and a few plows. The gentle breeze that swept through it carried a fresh, earthy smell.

  “It could be worse,” Craig said. “Much worse. At least it’s got an ambiance to it. My first time was in a storage closet in a friend’s basement at a party. It was dark and tight and reeked of mold.”

  “It’s hard to picture you as a teenager.” She scratched one of the goats behind the ears. When it tried to eat her shirt, she gave it a firm no and stepped back.

  “What makes you think I wasn’t in my twenties?”

  She laughed. “Not possible. Well, maybe if you dressed like this every day.”

  “I was more awkward back then than you might guess. I’m fairly certain a delayed loss of virginity was entirely possible, had it not been for a bit of luck.” He stepped close and folded his arms as he surveyed the barn. “So, my dear Megan, are you going to reveal where this infraction occurred?”

  “Um, no. But I’ll give you three guesses.”

  “Three, huh? I don’t think I’ll need them. How about I take you there, and if I’m right… Well, we’ll see.”

  She couldn’t help but wonder what the odds were that the sudden energy building between them would result in an impromptu romp in the hay. But this tour had already shed her defenses. Doing that would tear down the last of them. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. Just Friday, you said you wanted to nix sleepovers.”