Lillah #2
"Because I owe you an apology. A real one. Not the kind I gave you in the coffee shop. A genuine apology that I should've given to you weeks ago."
I looked at him. He looked calm, maybe a bit nervous but his eyes held mine without flinching.
"What sort of apology?" I asked.
"From that first night I banged on your door. It wasn't Cooper." He said.
I looked at him and waited for him to continue.
"A few nights ago, when I got back from a road trip, I saw the woman down the street walking a Rottweiler. She was on her phone, and the dog went into someone else's yard and did his business, and she didn't bother to pick it up. She kept walking."
"So you're telling me you came to my door, accused my dog, and caused an entire scene, and it was someone else's dog the entire time?" I'd told him the truth, and he hadn't believed me, so he could sit in the discomfort of being wrong for a bit.
"Yes."
"And it took you this long to figure it out."
"Yes, and no."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Well, like I said, I've known for a bit."
"Oh, and you're apologizing to me now because you saw it happen, not because you thought I might have been telling you the truth and there was a possibility that you could be wrong."
I could tell he wanted to argue, point out to me he'd been busy, but he stood there and took it.
"That is completely fair. I'm here now though, and I'm telling you I was wrong. You told me there were other dogs in the neighborhood, aside from Cooper, and I didn't listen. I was angry at the situation, and I'm sorry for taking it out on you."
Cooper stopped and looked up at Marshall, his tail wagging. He nudged Marshall's hand with his head and Marshall reached down and scratched behind Cooper's ears, and Cooper leaned against him, his whole body pressed into him.
"Traitor." I said, as Cooper looked up at me.
The smartest thing I could have done was say I accepted his apology, refuse the coffee, and head back to my house. Instead, I nodded. "Fine, one coffee."
"Fair enough. Let's go."
Marshall's house was much quieter without the pounding music and the crew of hockey players inside.
The house was cleaner than I'd expected.
A gray couch, a coffee table with nothing on it, no art on the walls, no rugs.
One photo in the kitchen that I could see from a distance, which I figured was of his family.
He went to work, making us a fresh coffee in a French press.
"My dad taught me." He said, catching me watching him measure out the beans. "Coffee is the one thing he is particular about. That and good fences." He said, winking, which made me smile.
He poured two cups of black coffee, and we sat at the kitchen island while Cooper lay on the floor between us like a chaperone.
Marshall talked, telling me about growing up on a cattle ranch.
He told me he shared a bedroom with his brother Chase until he was sixteen, and about learning to skate on frozen ponds.
He told me that the nearest rink was an hour away from his house growing up and that his dad would drive him there three times a week.
"My cousin Dylan plays for the Vancouver Dominators. When I got drafted, I remember my parents and brother were in the green room at the arena with Dylan. My mom cried when they called my name. My father held himself together, silently high-fiving my cousin and brother."
"They must be really proud." I smiled.
"They are. Later I found out that my mom was more upset at the fact I was moving to Boston and didn't know anyone. I told her not to worry though, the guys would become like family."
"You really love hockey." I said, wrapping both my hands around my mug.
"I do. It's the only thing I've ever been good at. I mean, I'm handy, I can fix a fence, drive a tractor and make decent scrambled eggs, but hockey makes everything make sense. It's the one thing that I do where I don't feel like I'm pretending."
"That's exactly how I feel about design."
I looked at him, the man who'd shown up on my door, who'd spilled coffee all over me, and who'd thrown a party so loud it shook my walls and then kissed me. I still heard the sound he made during that kiss while trying to fall asleep.
He was nothing like Brett. Not even a little, and that realization settled inside me.
Brett had every word calculated. Every gesture he made produced a specific response.
Brett's charm had been a tool, something he'd used strategically.
Marshall was the opposite; that much I already knew from this conversation.
Half of the time he said exactly the wrong thing, but when he said the right thing, it landed and didn't feel like a strategy. Brett had never said the wrong thing.
"I'm sorry too, Marshall. At the coffee shop, I called you a cocky bastard under my breath, but still, I'm sorry."
"I heard it." He shrugged. "It's okay, I was being exactly that."
"You were." I said, smiling. "But I didn't need to say it."
"My father always said, sometimes we need to be reminded when we overstep a line. It's okay." He smiled back, and we both sat there quietly for a moment.
"So, your business, interior design. How is that going?"
"It's going." I said, tracing the rim of my mug with my finger. "Boston is competitive, and I am still working on building my client base and reputation. I'm good at what I do and work is slowly coming along."
"I can tell you are good at what you do. Your house looks like a magazine. Each time I look through my window…"
I frowned. "Every time you look through your window?"
"I notice things, that's all. I'm not spying." He winked.
"Good. You had me worried."
We talked for another hour. We talked about Cooper, and he asked me questions about design and my process.
He listened as if he were genuinely interested in what I had to say and he refilled my mug when he noticed it was getting low.
He got up while I spoke and poured me more coffee as if we'd done this a thousand times.
When I got up to leave, I noticed I'd been there for almost three hours. Cooper was sound asleep on Marshall's kitchen floor, his body stretched across the tile. He'd made himself at home and had decided that this place and this person were safe, which comforted me as well.
"Thanks for the coffee." I said as we got to the door.
"Thank you for joining me." He said, leaning against the doorframe. "Oh, and Lillah?"
I stopped outside his door and turned to look at him.
"The guy last night at the bar, he wasn't right for you."
I frowned, my chest tightening as I studied him.
"How would you know what is right for me?" I questioned.
He held my gaze, looking at me the same way he'd looked up at my bedroom window from his driveway yesterday evening.
"I don't. But I know what it looks like when someone is enduring a date instead of enjoying one. You were enduring."
I wasn't sure what to say to that, so I turned around and walked down the steps of his porch, Cooper following beside me. Maybe Mila was right. Maybe giving Marshall a chance wouldn't be the worst thing I'd done. It certainly wouldn't be the most dangerous. I already knew what that felt like.