Chapter 25
Amy yawned and stretched, feeling good and happy clear down to her bones. She settled herself more firmly against Jones, throwing an arm over his chest, and smiling as his arm tightened around her, his hand resting on her hip.
The funeral had been hard, harder than she expected, mostly seeing the children and her mom, and the stoicism of her brother. It wasn’t that she missed Sally so much, or was so sad to have her gone; it was more to see the pain of people she loved.
The disappointment that they hadn’t gotten her tree decorated, and had come home to more of the same, had her down. But, Jones had flipped all that on its head when he had come out of the bathroom and tackled the thing that neither one of them wanted to talk about head on.
“I love you,” she said, knowing it had been true for a long time. Sure, she hadn’t seen Jones as husband material, but she had loved him forever.
“I love you too. I love you more. I love you forever.”
His words made her smile, partly because she might have said it first, but he said it better. And partly because she didn’t think she’d ever get tired of hearing him say that.
Her leg stretched out over his, and she turned her head, kissing his jawline.
“Thank you for saying something. Who knows how long we would have gone on before I finally found the courage to do it. ”
“I can’t believe it took courage for you to talk to me about something like that. I don’t understand.”
“It took courage for you to talk to me.”
“True. But I guess my fear was it would be awkward, but, don’t hate me, but Judd talked to me a little bit at the funeral, and I realized that no matter what kind of an idiot I made out of myself, you never got mad at me, it’s never been weird between us, and even if you do get upset, which you are human and you do, it wasn’t going to be forever. We could work it out.”
“So you told Judd that you and I hadn’t —”
“No. We didn’t talk about that. Not really. He just said that Terry was concerned about us, and sent him over because she thought we both had the same problem. Neither one of us wanted to ruin our friendship. And she just wanted us to be reminded that there was a reason that we’d been friends for so long.”
“Because you’re awesome, and who wouldn’t want to be friends with you.”
“No doofus,” he said, kissing her forehead to take any sting out of his words, although it sounded more like an endearment when he said it. “It’s that we work through things. We’re good together. We get along, we... Yeah. It was better than I thought it was going to be. If that is even possible.”
His voice faded off a little, almost as though he was in unfamiliar territory and wasn’t quite sure how she was going to take that.
And it made every part of her body feel good.
“Really?” she asked, kissing his neck.
“No. Maybe we ought to do it again just to see if it’s as good as what I remember.”
“It wasn’t that long ago,” she said, but she wasn’t going to argue with him. She was all on board with that suggestion. Not that she wouldn’t be on board with all of his suggestions. Because marriage wouldn’t be any fun if it was all about her, and she wasn’t doing everything she could to encourage and uplift and be the best wife she could be to the man she married.
“Was that a no?” he asked, his fingers trailing along her hip.
“That was yes. Sorry I wasn’t more clear. It was a yes, please, and I’ll help you get started,” she said, as her fingers moved along his abs.
“This could get interesting,” he said, and she smiled. What she said, about everything being more fun with Jones, was absolutely true. She should have known that it would apply to everything.