Colm
One Year Later
Macie is on the kitchen floor arguing with the dog.
The dog is a large, unhelpful shepherd mix named Spruce, who came from a logger last March and immediately understood that his job was to eat dropped food and be adored by a toddler — is sitting in front of her with his ears up, listening with what appears to be genuine interest.
"Spruce," Macie says, very seriously. "The bear goes here."
She places the wooden bear on the floor between them. Spruce sniffs it. Macie points at him.
"No."
Spruce sits back. Satisfied, Macie moves the bear to a slightly different position.
I'm at the counter with my coffee, watching this negotiation.
The bear goes everywhere. It went to daycare until the daycare asked us very politely if it could stay in Macie's bag, and it goes to Juniper's Diner, and it went to the clinic last month when Mila had her twelve-week appointment and Macie sat in my lap and held it the entire time and occasionally offered it to the doctor.
The twelve-week appointment. I am still not done with how that felt.
Mila comes out of the bedroom in yesterday's sweater with her hair loose, carrying her boots because she never puts them on until the last possible second.
She's moving slower this week than last — first trimester is just more this time, she told me, and I said okay and went away and read approximately forty articles about it and have been keeping my opinions to myself, which she would describe as personal growth.
"Fest day," Macie announces from the floor.
"Festival day," Mila agrees, sitting down on the bench by the door to put her boots on. "Shoes, Macie."
Macie picks up the bear and stands. She looks at Spruce. "You stay," she tells him. "Guard the rocks."
There is a small collection of rocks on the windowsill that Macie has been assembling since August. Spruce has never once shown interest in the rocks. Macie instructs him to guard them every time we leave.
Spruce puts his chin on the floor.
"Good boy," she says, and goes to find her shoes.
Mila looks at me over her boot lace. "She promoted him to head of security."
"He's doing a great job."
She smiles. That specific morning smile, the one before she's fully armored up for the day — soft around the eyes, a little slower. I have been studying this smile for twelve months and I am not close to done.
I bring her coffee to the bench and sit next to her while she finishes with her boots.
"How are you feeling," I ask.
"Tired. Good." She takes the coffee. "Ask me again at ten when I've had two of these."
From the bedroom comes the sound of Macie finding her shoes, which involves pulling everything else out of the closet first and narrating each item as it lands on the floor. A boot. Her stuffed rabbit. What sounds like an entire box of crayons.
Mila tips her head against my shoulder. I put my arm around her.
One year ago, she walked into my festival with a toddler on her hip and my own eyes looking back at me and I have spent twelve months learning the shape of this life — the morning routine, the story voice, the way Macie's tantrums peak and break, the specific sound of Mila's laugh when something is actually funny versus when she's being polite.
I have carried a ring in my jacket pocket since February.
Tonight, at the bonfire, I'm going to ask her.
I'm not nervous. I've known the answer since the moment a two-year-old grabbed my finger and didn't let go.
Macie appears in the doorway holding one shoe and the bear and a single crayon.
"Ready," she announces.
"You have one shoe," I say.
She looks down. Looks back up. "Ready for one shoe."
Mila makes a sound against my shoulder that is absolutely a laugh she's trying to swallow.
"Go get the other one," I say.
Macie sighs with her whole body — the weight of it, the profound inconvenience — and turns around and goes back.
Mila lifts her head and looks at me. The morning light is coming through the kitchen window and catching the dust motes and the line of rocks on the sill and the general comfortable wreckage of a house that has people in it.
"You're smiling," she says.
"I know."
"What."
"Nothing," I say. "Go get your daughter's shoe."
She looks at me for another second. Then she gets up, still smiling, and goes to help Macie find the other shoe, and I sit on the bench with my coffee and listen to the two of them in the back room — Mila's patient voice, Macie's running commentary, the thump of something else falling out of the closet.
I finish my coffee. I put the ring in my jacket pocket.
We go to the festival together as a family.
I've had the ring in my jacket pocket since February and it still surprises me every time my hand finds it there, like my body keeps forgetting it made this decision months ago.
The festival takes up the whole day. Macie rides my shoulders past every booth, pointing at things she wants and things she's only pretending to want because pointing is fun.
By six, Macie's crashed — sun-drunk, bear clutched under one arm, rubbing her eyes with a fist that's more dirt than hand. We drop her at Maple's for the night. Maple takes one look at my face and gets a knowing smirk she doesn't bother hiding.
"Have fun," she says, entirely too pleased with herself, and I have no idea how she knows, except that everyone in this town seems to know things about my life before I do.
The bonfire's already roaring when we walk down. I've got Mila's hand in mine and I can't get my thumb to stop moving against her palm — small circles, restless, a tell I didn't know I had until she calls it out.
"You're doing the thing," she says.
"What thing?"
"The thing where you go quiet and your jaw does that."
"My jaw doesn't do a thing."
"Colm."
I stop walking. The fire's throwing orange light across her face and I think, not for the first time, that I could stand here doing nothing but look at her for the rest of my life and call it a full day's work.
My hand's sweating around the ring box in my pocket. I've carried heavy timber, hauled gear off the side of a mountain in a storm, and none of it made my palms slick the way this does.
"I had a speech," I say. "Practiced it on Spruce this morning. He wasn't impressed."
"You never mentioned a speech."
"Lost most of it around June. Kept it down to four words." My voice isn't steady and I don't try to fix it. "Figured I'd better say them before I lose those too."
I get down on one knee in the dirt. The whole crowd around the fire goes quiet the way a room does when it senses something's about to happen — I hear Owen say something low to Grace, hear her laugh catch in her throat.
My hands are shaking when I open the box.
Small stone. Plain gold band. I picked it because it looked like her — nothing showy, exactly right, built to last through actual use.
"Stay with me," I say, and that's as far as the speech ever got, four words, and somehow they're still the only ones that matter.
"Marry me. Let me be there for the next one, and the one after, and every festival for as long as we get.
I've known since your daughter grabbed my finger and didn't let go. I'm done sitting on it."
She's crying before I finish. Fast, sudden tears she's laughing through at the same time, like her whole face can't agree on one reaction.
"Yes," she says. "Obviously yes. Warn a girl next time."
My hands are still shaking when I get the ring on her finger.
I don't trust my legs to stand right away, so I stay there a second longer than I need to, forehead against her hip, just breathing, before she pulls me up by the collar and kisses me in front of the whole fire, the whole town, and somebody starts clapping and it spreads down the crowd like something catching.
"Take me home," she says against my mouth.
"Fireworks haven't started."
"We'll watch from the cabin."
The cabin's dark when we get in. I don't turn on a single lamp. I light the fire pit out back instead, the one I built the spring after she moved in, and I pull the old quilt off the porch swing and lay it out on the grass where the trees break just enough to see sky.
"Sit," I tell her.
"Bossy."
"You said yes to that too."
She laughs and sits, and I sit behind her, legs on either side, her back against my chest, my arms crossed over her front.
The treeline's black against a sky that's going to open up any minute.
The crickets chirp and the wind is warm.
Silver Ridge does its fireworks off the ridge above the lodge every closing night, and from here you see them clear the tops of the pines like something rising.
"I've got questions," she says. "About June. What happened to the speech?"
"I practiced it on Spruce. He judged me."
"He's a good judge."
"He is." I move her hair off her neck, mouth against the skin there, and feel her breath change under my hands. "I kept starting over. Every version sounded like I was asking permission for something I already knew the answer to."
"You weren't wrong."
The first firework goes up — gold, then a slow green bloom over the trees — and she tips her head back against my shoulder to watch it, and I watch her instead.
Married. Not on paper yet, but said out loud, meant, done.
I get one hand under the hem of her dress and she doesn't stop me, doesn't even look away from the sky, just shifts to give me better access and lets a sound out low in her throat when I find her.
"Colm."
"Watch the fireworks."
"Can't. You're distracting."
"That's the idea."
I take my time with her, unhurried, her back still against my chest and the sky doing its work over the trees.
She's changed under my hands this last year — softer in places, sure of herself in ways she wasn't when she walked back into my life with a toddler on her hip and my own eyes staring back at me. I know exactly what she needs now.
I slide my hand higher under her dress, cupping her bare pussy, already slick and hot for me.
She’s soaked. I groan against her neck and push two fingers inside her, stroking deep and slow while my thumb circles her clit.
She arches, pushing back against my cock where it’s trapped hard against her ass.
I kiss down her neck, then ease her forward just enough to bunch the dress higher. “Lift up, baby. I need to taste you.”
She does, and I slide down, laying back on the quilt so I can pull her over my face.
The first slow lick up her pussy makes her moan loud enough to cut through the next firework.
I fucking worship her — tongue dragging through her folds, sucking gently on her clit, then fucking her with my tongue while my hands grip her thighs.
She’s sweet and wet and mine. I groan into her, the vibration pulling another shaky curse from her lips.
I work her right up to the edge and hold her there through two more bursts of color, licking and sucking until she’s cursing at me between breaths and grinding against my mouth.
I finally give her what she needs, sucking her clit hard and curling my fingers inside her.
She comes apart against my face with her hand fisted in my hair and a firework going white overhead, lighting up her face at exactly the right moment.
Her thighs shake around my head and her pussy pulses on my tongue.
I keep licking her through it, greedy for every drop.
I turn her around before she’s finished catching her breath. Get her over my lap, dress bunched at her waist, and she reaches back for my cock with a hunger that still gets me every time, a year in and it hasn’t dulled once. She strokes me once, twice, and lines me up.
“Careful with me,” she says, but she’s smiling.
“Always am.”
I grip her hips and ease her down onto me, slow at first so I can watch every inch of my thick cock disappear into her tight, dripping pussy.
The heat, the way she squeezes me — fuck, it’s perfect.
My hand splays low over the soft curve of her belly where our second one is growing, protective and possessive all at once.
She rocks back against me and sets her own pace, faster than I would’ve chosen, taking me deeper with every roll of her hips.
I let her have it because this is her night as much as mine.
The fireworks keep going overhead, gold and red catching in her hair, and I thrust up to meet her, fucking her harder from below.
She says my name twice — the second time when I reach around and rub her clit in tight, firm circles the way I know finishes fast. She comes again, clenching around my cock so tight I almost lose it, her forehead dropped forward and a raw, beautiful sound tearing out of her that isn’t quiet at all, echoing in the trees.
I keep fucking her through it, deep and steady, chasing my own release. A few more thrusts and I bury myself to the hilt, groaning her name as I come hard, pulsing inside her while the sky lights up with falling color.
After, we lie tangled in the quilt, her back against my chest again, ring hand resting over mine on her belly. The fireworks are down to stragglers now, one last burst every minute or so.
Spruce barks at something in the yard. Somewhere across town our daughter's asleep with an unfinished bowl of popcorn and no idea her whole family just got bigger, twice over. I've waited a year to say four words. I'd wait a hundred more, if every one of them ends here.