26. Building China #2
I didn’t say anything; I just let go of Annabelle’s foot, walked her back to her corral, and placed a scoop of oats in her bucket.
I didn’t know what to tell Bo. I can’t decide whether I am angry and hurt because he and Tyler discussed whether it was okay for us to date, like I didn’t have a choice in the matter, or whether it is because he left me at the dance and didn’t include me in their little pow-wow.
He is quiet for a moment. "Fair enough," he says, walking back to the house when I don’t answer.
On Wednesday, four days after the Fourth, I am on my way to the chicken coop when I see Bo walking in the farmhouse.
I collect the eggs, and when I come back, he's gone, and I stand on the porch in the last of the evening light, and for the first time since Bo got here, I feel alone. Like a part of me is missing.
At eleven-thirty in the evening, I finally finish my last chore of fixing the barn loft stairs.
I walk in tired and grungy, wanting to introduce myself to my bed when I saw a sink full of dishes.
I could wait and do them tomorrow, but that would smell and drive me crazy all night.
I drop my head and shuffle my way to the sink.
“Hey, there, Falon. Do you mind if we talk?”
I don’t say anything, I just wash the plate, but he speaks anyway.
“Look, I know I screwed up. I know I should have stayed with you, and I know that I never should have let Tyler influence my love for you. Oh, Falon. I have been in love with you since I was old enough to have a crush. You have always been my world, and when I thought I couldn’t have you, I left.
It was easier to leave than to see you every day and know I couldn’t have you.
And I tried to get over you. I dated everyone I could to get you out of my head, but every time I saw you and every time anyone else got close, I felt my heart tighten, and it felt like I was betraying the only one I truly loved.
With every one of your boyfriends, I was so jealous that it was only a matter of time before me and them came to an agreement that if they hurt you, they’d have to answer to me. ”
I think back to school and don’t know whether to be upset or tickled pink that Bo was the reason I was mostly dateless.
Yeah, I went to prom my senior year, but the poor kid looked scared to death the whole night.
I thought it was Tyler, and I didn’t question it, but it was Bo.
Even back then, he was my knight in shining armor.
I just wish I’d known it was him. I saw him with other girls and figured I wasn’t enough for him.
“Falon, it was always you, always has been. And when you are ready, I will be here. I’m not going anywhere. I’ve waited eight years for you, and I will wait eight more, if that is what you need.”
By this time, my hands have abandoned washing dishes altogether and are just sitting in sudsy water.
When he stops talking, I gather my courage to look at him and turn around, but he is gone.
He’d come in and changed everything. He’d spoken his heart, not caring if I wanted to hear it. He was going to tell me, and he did.
I’d been so angry that I didn’t think about what he was going through. I feel awful. I need to find him.
This is the third time he’s just vanished. I walk back out to the guest house, but he isn’t there, nor is Rowdy.
That night, I go to bed thinking about what he’d said. I need to talk to him. I need to set this straight.
The next day, Frank is kind enough to allow me to sleep in until six-thirty. I am grateful for that. When I go outside, I pause at the door. Dispatch was finishing her breakfast, the chickens were out, and everyone was fed.
“Bo.” It had to be him. Thirty minutes later, I see him disappear into the farmhouse again. It was like a hunt and find game, and so far, he was winning.
I’d just left the kitchen when I could have sworn I saw movement through the kitchen window. Where did he come from? I was just in there.
I open the screen door and am about to walk in when I hear voices. Not just one, but a couple. Who did Bo have here? I pause at the door and listen.
“Stop, don’t push so hard,” I hear a voice whisper-yell.
“I’m not, you’re just being slow.”
“Hey, don’t tease the cripple.”
“The only cripple here is your speed.”
“Broken or not, I can still take you on.”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard that before, and yet, here I stand.”
It is Bo and Tyler. They have been bickering like that forever. What are they up to? I cringe when, just then, my phone buzzes in my pocket.
I step back outside.
“Hello.” It is Mom.
“Hey there, sweetheart. Could you come and help me for a minute? Your dad is trying to change a light bulb, and I don’t want him on the ladder.”
“Sure, Mom.” Thirty minutes and one vaulted ceiling light bulb changed, and I am back home, and no one is here.
I start to call his name.
Then freeze. I didn’t even realize I’d started crying.
When I bought the place, Mrs. Anderson had left most of her bigger items. When I’d toured the house after they found the keys to the basement, back in the corner under a sheet, in the basement was an old antique China hutch.
It was still in okay condition and needed a little work, but I was too scared to touch it.
It was like a relic from an ancient past.
But as I stand in the dining room hall, the hutch is against the corner wall. I take a few tentative steps toward it. It is like a dream. I’d wanted to fix it; it was the last piece for the dining room. The one piece that would make it finally complete. And here it is, perfect and fixed.
The wood has been cleaned and treated until it glows. The glass panels are clear, and the brass hardware has been polished to a soft shine. It is standing in exactly the right spot I’d only mentioned once, months ago, in passing, while we were doing something else entirely.
He remembered.
I press my hand to the side of the hutch and tears burn in my eyes.
On the shelves inside, nested carefully is the same China I found in the basement when I first went down there with a flashlight and a legal pad. The original China. Cream with a delicate blue border, each piece carefully washed and stacked as if it had always been there.
My throat tightens.
"The blue border matches the kitchen," Bo says from behind me.
"I know," I say, still looking at the hutch.
"Tyler helped me carry it up.”
I close my eyes.
"I've been trying to figure out how to tell you exactly how much you mean to me," Bo says. He's closer now.
I open my eyes and look at the hutch. At the China. In the room that's slowly becoming what I always saw when I bought this place, and couldn't quite imagine finished.
"I'm not sorry for loving you," he says. "That was what came after. In case you were wondering."
I turn around.
He's standing in the doorway, hat in his hands. He looks like the seventeen-year-old boy again. The man I love.
He looks like mine.
"I know what you're going to say," he says.
"You're going to say you need more time.
Or you're going to say you can't build on secrets, which is fair, and I'll wait.
However long you need, Falon. I'm not going anywhere.
I signed up with the reserves. I've got a meeting with Chief Briggs next week about the ARFF position.
" He stops. Takes a breath. "I'm choosing Everwood. I'm choosing you."
"Bo," I say.
"Yeah."
"Stop talking."
He stops.
I cross the dining room, and I take his face in my hands the same way he took mine on the dance floor, and I look at him for one long second. His hazel eyes, the two-day scruff, and I kiss him.
Our mouths move against each other, and this time I hold nothing back. I have waited for years for this man, and I was going to show him exactly what I wanted. Him. When I stop to catch my breath, he exhales against my lips, and I smile against his.
“Are you already giving up?” I tease, then squeal when his arms come around me, and I feel his whole frame encircle me. He picks me up and twirls me around.
“Not even close,” he says against my lips, and this time, the kiss is slow and deep.
“I'm not waiting for anything. I’m taking what I want,” he says against my lips.
When I pull back, I keep my hands on his face, and I look at him. "I love you."
“I love you, too, Falon Williams. I always have.”
Rowdy barks from the kitchen doorway, and Bo pulls me back in and holds on, and through the dining room window, the Everwood summer is green and gold and endless.
We have a hutch full of China that survived eighty years in a basement.
We have a farmhouse that isn't finished yet.
We have time.
That's more than enough to start with.