25. #CoupleStatus
TWENTY-FIVE
#COUPLESTATUS
Vance
I am seriously too old for this shit.
It’s past sundown, and I’m peeking into the windows of the West Mansion from the porch while on the phone with my sister. I make out Flynn and Holt sitting on opposite ends of the couch, the lights from the television illuminating their faces. Are they… are they watching It’s a Wonderful Life ?
Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey is hugging his family in front of a Christmas tree.
Yes they are. I never would’ve pegged the West brothers as fans of such a sappy holiday classic.
“Well? Is she there?” Brit asks.
Nose pressed almost to the glass, I look left and right. “I don’t see her,” I whisper.
“You sure she’s there?” Brit whispers back even though she’s forty minutes away holed up in her Pinterest room like it’s Mission Control and she’s the flight controller for my spacewalk.
“Yes, according to my intel, she’s here.” Plus there’s the fact that the holographic van is parked in the drive. I should’ve known that if it didn’t belong to a stripper, the glitterized vehicle would belong to Rose.
I love that about her. But I’m also going to buy our kid polarized sunglasses to protect their eyes from its blinding reflections.
Our kid. The more time I’ve had to think about the baby and not about my irrational fears, the more excited I become about my impending fatherhood. I’m going to be a dad, and not just any dad, a dad to Rose’s baby.
“How reliable is your intel?”
I sigh, coming back to the present. “How reliable is any bribable kid in his twenties?”
“Ten-four.”
A headache knocks at my temples, and I ask myself why I felt the need to take my sister’s advice.
In a weak, desperate moment, I showed Brit Rose’s text about the doctor appointment, wanting to know how to decipher You’re welcome to come if you want .
Does her use of you’re welcome mean she’s willing to give me another chance?
When she says I can come to the appointment if I want , does that mean she doesn’t want me to but she’s inviting me for the baby’s sake?
Hoping female insight would help, I listened to Brittany.
“Don’t text her back,” she said. “Show up on her doorstep,” she said. “Everyone likes a grand gesture,” she said.
So I showed up. After an hour of relentless Houston traffic, I showed up at her condo.
Only to have Rose’s doorman bar me from entering again.
Pacing the sidewalk outside her building, I called. And I called. Despite Brit’s advice, I called.
Finally, after the fourth message where I pleaded for Rose to pick up, a young valet waved me over.
For fifty bucks he informed me that Rose wasn’t home.
For a hundred more, and a promise that I’m not a murdering stalker, the valet admitted to hearing Rose on her phone as she walked out of the lobby, telling someone to meet her at the ranch.
Why I called Brit when I arrived at the West property, I have no idea. They say you’re a fool in love. I think I’m taking that saying too much to heart.
I glance down the porch. “Tell me again why I can’t just knock on the door?”
“If some asshole had knocked me up when I was twenty-one, then ran off like a coward only to come knocking on the door a few hours later, would you have let them in?”
Damn it . “Point made.”
A minute later, I’m tiptoeing around the side of the house like a thief in the night, sticking to the grass to avoid noise, hoping not to get shot by any late-night workhands patrolling the area.
I’ve seen too many Westerns.
“So?” Brit asks after I’ve remained silent for too long.
“It’s dark.” Unlike the front of the house, which is lit from the nearby barn spotlights, the back is not. The only thing helping me make out where I am is the soft glow Christmas lights twenty yards away wrapped around a small, in-ground Christmas tree and outlining a one-stall barn.
“Any lights on upstairs that you can throw pebbles at?”
“Not a one.”
“Hmm. Maybe she’s sleeping.”
A crunching sound has me pulling the phone away from my ear. “Are you eating?”
“What? We’re hungry.” More crunching. “The boys made popcorn.”
“Wait. What do you mean ‘ we’re’ ? Am I on speaker?”
In answer, Jase shouts, “Climb up to her like Romeo, Uncle Vance!”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, the headache growing.
“She’ll love it,” Jacob pipes up, his voice garbled. Probably from popcorn.
“I thought this romantic stuff would go against your new feminist principles.” I wonder if they can pick up on sarcasm yet.
Someone scoffs.
“Please,” Jase says, sounding like he does, in fact, recognize sarcasm. “Everyone knows that romancing a woman is the most feminist thing you can do.”
“Yeah, everyone knows that,” Jacob adds.
I’m not sure what this says about my mental state, but I take my pre-teen nephews’ advice and evaluate the area.
“The porch doesn’t wrap around to the back,” I tell them, running my hands across the wood siding.
“All I’ve got to work with is smooth board and batten planks.
” I step back and look up to the second-floor windows.
“There’s not a foot hold, trellis, or tall enough tree in sight. ”
“Climbing up Romeo-style would be an awesome grand gesture,” Brit says, followed by more crunching.
“Jesus, Brit, it’s not like I can fly—” My eyes catch on something leaning against the barn.
“What? What is it?” Brit sounds slightly panicked, which makes me mildly less annoyed with her.
“Did you get caught?” Jacob asks.
Squinting into the soft glow of the tiny white lights, I make out wooden rungs. “I’ll be damned. There’s a ladder.”
“Yes!” I’m pretty sure all three of them fist-pumped when they shouted that chorus style.
With a promise to call them back as soon as Rose forgives me (they have way more confidence in both me and their Romeo plan than I do), I hang up, needing my phone’s flashlight feature to guide me across the rail fenced enclosure.
If Jules could see me now, Flashlight with his flashlight, I’d never hear the end of it.
Surprisingly, I make it to the tiny barn and get back with the ladder without stepping in shit or running into Cookie the pet cow. She must be sleeping.
But whatever luck got me to this point ends when I set the ladder under the window I think belongs to the bedroom Rose took me to at the wedding. Upright and up close, the ladder is old, worn and not structurally sound. The engineer in me screams, “Abort mission, abort .”
However, as it’s all I’ve got to Romeo to Rose—up I go.
Rose
Tap, tap, tap.
Opening my eyes, I study the ceiling fan above me. Is it unbalanced?
Tap, tap, tap. Not the fan. It’s coming from the hall.
Rolling on my side, I slide off my bed, walk to the open doorway, and stick my head out into the hall, my loosely secured top-knot wobbling.
Knock, knock.
Louder now. From the guest room. Maybe a bird flying into the window?
Shuffling in my fuzzy socks across the hall, I push open the guest room door and peek in. Where I’m blinded by a beam of light.
“What the—” Hand up to block it, I hit the light switch with the other. “Vance?”
His face lights up behind the glass, and he lowers his phone.
Fucking eye crinkles.
I may not look threatening at the moment in my oversized and threadbare Goofy T-shirt and florescent yellow panties, but my narrowed eyes and frown seem enough to dim the happiness in his eyes.
I should just flip him the bird and walk away. Walk away like he did to me.
Vance, either brave or stupid, points to the window lock. Tap, tap.
Sigh.
A second later I have the sash pushed up, and I’m looking down at him without any glass blocking my death glare. “What do you think you’re doing knocking on the guest bedroom window?”
My question wipes the beginnings of a hopeful smile from his face. “Guest bedroom?” He peeks over my shoulder. “This isn’t your room?”
“Nope.”
“Oh.”
When he doesn’t say anything more, I cross my arms over my chest, hiding my favorite Disney character in the hope that’ll make me more intimidating. “So?”
He shakes his head. “Sorry, yes. I ah…” His frown deepens. “Wow, I guess I spent so much time trying to track you down that I didn’t think of what to say when I found you.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing.” I pop my hip. “Seeing as the last two times you did stop and think before we talked it didn’t go so well.”
He cringes. “Yeah. About that.” His breath blows out sharp and fast. “I know sorry won’t cut it, but I am sorry. First for making assumptions about your feelings and ignoring my own. And also for leaving Heartbreakers after, well, after?—"
“I said I was pregnant?”
“Yeah.”
“If you can’t even say it, I’m not sure what you’re doing here. And just so you know, in case you didn’t hear me at Heartbreakers, I’m keeping it.”
“Good.” He straightens on the ladder. “I want you to keep it.”
“You do, huh?” He’d be an idiot to think I’d believe him.
“I know that’s hard to believe.”
Guess he’s not an idiot.
“But I am happy about the baby. I just needed to sort through some stuff.”
I lock down the hope wanting to surface. Fool me once and all that.
“Words aren’t going to cut it, I get it, but that’s why I’m here.” His expression is expectant, like he’s waiting for me to grasp the obvious.
Whatever it is, I don’t get it. “On a ladder?”
His smile is as awkward as it is annoyingly adorable. “I’m Romeo-ing you.”
That surprises a laugh out of me. “That can’t have been your idea.”
“Brit’s.” He considers. “Well, Jacob and Jase’s idea really. Brit was the one who told me not to text you back but to show up.” He follows this with an eye roll, showing me that we’re both on the same page about how that turned out.
“Word of advice to you and Brit, texting back is important if you’re going to take longer than an hour to show up.”
“I did.” Vance pushes his palms into the sill, his vehemence making me jump.
“Not at first,” he concedes with a shrug. “But when your doorman wouldn’t let me in, I called and I called.”