Seventy-One—Bo
C
hristmas orders were starting to come in. Not many, as it was still just August, but most of my regulars knew that I tended to ignore any personalized requests that came in after September. I was just a one-man show, after all, so it was a good thing they were planning ahead—for them and me. These days, I needed plenty of lead time; I wasn’t concentrating well at all.
It was Ivy. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. And I’d made the mistake of sharing that with my aunt, who’d told me to quit obsessing and do something about it. Lullaby had called from her world-tour honeymoon last week to tell me Matisse had never seen Alaska, so they were taking a detour before they headed home. They were jumping on a nineteen-day cruise, she’d said. Jumping. On a cruise. So very Lullaby. But she’d taken the opportunity of our phone call to let me know she was thinking of investing in some retail property in Savannah, and that she would need someone she could trust to develop it. She said I immediately came to mind. Again, so very Lullaby. I didn’t bite, though her suggestion made my pulse race. To get her off the phone, I’d told her I’d think about it without the slightest intention of thinking about it. Nothing had changed. I was still me, and Ivy was still three time zones away figuring that out—probably beyond grateful that I’d stopped her from saying something she couldn’t mean but would feel compelled to stand by. And yet…here I was thinking the hell out of it, thinking, thinking, and more thinking about my thinking.
I groaned, loudly. It blows to be this neurotic .
My phone buzzed, and I glanced over at it, knowing Katrina Gearhart was texting me. Again. The soap opera producer had asked me to consider duplicating the custom designed snake choker I’d done for her earlier. She wanted one for each of the female leads for Christmas. Eight snake chokers. We were negotiating a price, and she was nickel and diming me to death, but I refused to go lower than $800 each, and that was already with simulated emeralds. I picked up my phone and read the text— Bo, I’m having a hard time clearing this with the purse strings. Any chance you can do all 8 for 5000.00??
I replied—According to my math 5000.00 will get you 6 and a couple of emeralds. I could almost hear her cursing me.
When my phone buzzed again almost immediately, I wanted to throw it and Katrina Gearhart against the wall. The text said Do you still love me? Which I thought was an odd question from the producer. I checked my cell to make sure it was working properly, and then I read the message again. It wasn’t from the producer. I swallowed and typed. Ivy…what???
It’s a simple question, Bo. Yes or no will do.
What r u doing?
Waiting for your answer.
I swallowed again, and it was harder this time—then I typed . I love you so freaking much that I can’t stop thinking about you, and you have no way of knowing this, but you keep me awake at night and ruin my concentration during the day. So, yes Ivy. Nothing has changed. I still love you. What was wrong with me? Delete. Delete. Delete. Yes. Yes, I do.
I want to see u, Bo. R u busy?
What do you mean? Do you want me to come back to Georgia?
Would you do that?
Are you serious?
Yes, Bo. I have to see you. I have to tell you something important, and it has to be face-to-face .
My heart was pounding. What was she saying? My thumbs moved at warp speed. Still a freak and can’t fly, but if I leave tonight, I can make it by Sunday early. I’d pushed send before the daunting task of driving across the country again hit me fully.
Really?
Yes! Daunting but doable.
How ’bout I meet you part way?
Was I hyperventilating? That would be great, Ivy. Where?
On your porch…
??? Yes. I was hyperventilating.
Bo. I’m on your porch.
I stood up from my worktable so fast that I knocked over a container of seed pearls, and the cloud of beads bounced in a clatter of tiny pings against the wood floor. They were everywhere, and I nearly tore myself in half trying to respond to these two urgencies. I immediately got down on my knees and scooped a shaking handful back into the dish but hardly made a dent in the bouncing puddle. Then I got up. What was I thinking? Ivy was at the door. Ivy was at the door! But then I was again on my knees, scooping, impotently. I groaned as more beads scattered with my efforts, fighting the need to see this through against knowing Ivy was waiting. I gave up on the mess and took the stairs two at a time, desperately compelled to turn back.
Upstairs I pulled open the front door, afraid I’d imagined the whole conversation, definitely not expecting she would actually be standing there. But she was, and she looked amazing. Ivy’s thick hair was a little longer than that last time I’d seen her, and her eyes seemed bigger, more wizened somehow, maybe just open wider. She didn’t smile; she just studied me with those eyes as my heart pounded against my ribs. She was wearing a long navy-blue dress, and it made her look taller, and I couldn’t help but appreciate the way she wore it. “You’re… beautiful.” I finally managed, sounding stiffly polite.
“Am I? Thank you,” she said back, also polite .
“Always.”
“You’re so sweet, Bo. How are you?”
My breath caught a little. “Honestly, I haven’t been great since I came back.”
“Why’s that?”
“I think it’s because…because I left Savannah when all I really wanted to do was stay.”
She nodded and tears misted her eyes. “I’ve missed you, too, Bo.”
“You have? Really?”
She nodded, and we moved closer, our eyes sort of diving into each other.
“Thanks for meeting me.” She finally smiled.
I smiled, too. “Do you want to come in?”
“I need to say this first.” She took my hands in hers, and as our fingers wove themselves together, I suddenly realized how much I’d ached for her touch—me, who would have recoiled had she been anyone else. She looked at me with her wide, clear, certain eyes and cleared her throat. “I love you, Bo,” she said. “I do. And don’t you be arguing with me about it. You are not allowed to doubt my feelings.”
When her eyes filled with more tears, I knew she meant it, and I almost couldn’t breathe.
“When you left,” she continued, “you said I was dealing with too much, and I couldn’t possibly love you. And it’s true there is a lot of garbage in my life. Complicated grief. Humiliation. Disappointment—all that and probably more—so yes, I am dealing with a lot of nonsense. But I am not confused about the way I feel, and I’m a little mad that you almost made me doubt myself. You were wrong, Bo. I still know what love feels like. So, I’ll just say it again. I love you, Bo Sutton.”
Ivy probably thought I was having a stroke because I couldn’t speak and I couldn’t move, but I did squeeze her hand—hard, so she couldn’t change her mind and let go .
She didn’t. “It’s gonna take me a bit to get used to Mama being gone,” she said, stepping closer still. “But the other stuff, the Tim stuff, I’m kinda done with.”
She was very in my personal space. And it was okay. It was so very okay.
“I divorced my dad,” she said. “At the airport, just now.”
I narrowed my gaze at her. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “I’m an orphan. But I’m surprisingly all right.”
“You know, neither one of them—Tim or your dad—deserved you,” I whispered. And then my intelligence flooded back and caught up with my emotion. “I don’t deserve you either, Ivy.”
“What are you talking about?”
I sighed, wanting to stay right here in this awesome bubble, but it was impossible. “Ivy,” I said. “I…I appreciate you loving me. I do. But nothing has changed. I’m still me, and loving me…well, that’s just a lot to ask.”
“Who’s askin’? Nobody’s askin’!” She shouted in her beautiful southern drawl. She yanked her hands free, and the look in her eye made my heart lurch. “And you appreciate me loving you? I don’t want your appreciation, Bo. You said you loved me. I want to know that I’m safe inside that love, and I want you to know that you’re safe inside mine. That’s how this works. Now please tell me I haven’t fallen for an idiot.”
“I’m sorry! I just meant…Ivy, you deserve a man who doesn’t drive himself—and everyone around him—crazy. You deserve someone intact, not someone who…” I groaned. “Someone who even now is preoccupied with one thousand seed pearls I spilled downstairs and the pressing need to clean them up. That’s my world, Ivy. That’s the world I live in. Why would anyone volunteer for that?”
She folded her arms, and I watched her agitation dissipate.
“It’s a good question,” she said, calmly. “And you might be right—I probably deserve that kind of man. He sounds perfect. But what would I do with perfect? I want honest, I want a man blind to my backyard. I want a creative man, someone loyal. Someone who sees me in a book would be nice. I want a man who will make room for just me—not a bunch of other girls to compare me to, just me. I want a man who sees me and accepts me with all my junk and will even drive across the country to say he’s sorry when he absolutely has nothing to be sorry for.”
She took a breath and narrowed her eyes at me.
“I want a man who doesn’t pretend to love me, doesn’t feel obligated to love me, just loves me. I don’t much care about his quirks as long as he’s that guy. He can even be a little stupid. Like you. You’re a little stupid if you think because you triple wash your strawberries, or vacuum at midnight, or line up your pills and socks like they’re little soldiers, that you’re somehow not worthy. I don’t care about that stuff right now, Bo. But if it gets to me one day, I’ll go shopping for an hour or a week and leave you to your desperate need to clean or count or organize. But I will always come back. That’s what love is—deep breaths and little breaks from each other.” She sighed and looked hard at me.
I could not find my voice. And that only got harder when she put her hands on my chest.
“Bo, I just want someone who’s real, someone I don’t have to figure out. If I found that guy, I would definitely volunteer to move into his world because it would be a good world. Not perfect, but sort of excellent anyway because we’d make it that way. Now I’m going to ask you one more time, Bo Sutton—and I just want a one-word answer: Do you love me?”
I swallowed and almost couldn’t push the words out. “God help you Ivy, I do,” I rasped. “I adore you.” A tear was running down her beautiful face, and without thinking, I rubbed it away with my thumb.
“I love you too, Bo,” she said. “Now please tell me that will not be a problem.”
As I looked at her, I couldn’t fathom what was happening to me. I just knew I’d never imagined a moment like this, and all I could do was pull her roughly to me. “It will not be a problem,” I said. Then I kissed Ivy Talbot like she belonged to me, like she had always belonged to me. And I knew I would kiss her for the rest of my life because in that kiss was everything: promise, patience, hope, every dream I’d ever dared to dream. We kissed like we were starving for each other, and when our breath took on the sound of marathon runners, Ivy pulled away to catch hers. She looked at me, a little surprised, then sort of panted, “Just so you know, Mister. I think I could get used to that .”
I kissed her neck. “Well, good, because I think you’re going to have to.”
She sort of melted into me again. “Maybe we should go inside.”
“Maybe we should,” I agreed.
But we didn’t move. We just held each other as close as was humanly possible while the night deepened around us.
“Sooooo…” Ivy said after a long silence. “You spilled some seed pearls, huh?”
I groaned, suddenly remembering. “When you said you were on my porch, I jumped up so fast, I knocked them over. They’re everywhere, Ivy. Literally everywhere.”
She lifted her head and brought my face close to hers. Then she kissed me softly and said, “Well, we’d better go clean ’em up, then, so we can get on with more important things. Like dinner…and stuff.”
I looked at her and wanted to cry. “Good lord, woman. Do you have any idea what that means to me?”
She grinned. “I think I do, sweet pea.”