36. Tilly
THIRTY-SIX
Tilly
Phasing: Large restorations are permitted and funded one phase at a time, and nobody signs for the whole building at once. The work still gets finished. It gets finished by people who agreed to the next part only after they saw how the last part went.
Sunday afternoon, I fly back to New Orleans with half my brain on school and the other half trying not to replay everything Cooper said.
By the time Jo picks me up, I have mostly succeeded.
She spends the drive from the airport complaining about Ford's work schedule and a professor who assigned a reading project that is going to take her the rest of the semester. I let her talk. It helps.
Monday afternoon, my phone buzzes while I am sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop open. I open a text from Rhodes.
First load made it to Oak Moss without a hitch. Dale signed off on everything. I'm working with him now on scheduling the second shipment for next month.
I read it twice. There's no mention of Friday or the kiss. And there’s no mention of Cooper.
I type back.
Thanks.
Then I set the phone facedown beside my laptop and go back to reading. A part of me is hanging on, waiting for him to say something else. But at the same time, keeping it strictly business is exactly what I want from him right now.
The week gets busy fast. Jo and I fall into our usual routine, and by Friday morning we are out on the reef before sunrise, checking the winter sites and replacing two markers that disappeared sometime over break.
By ten, my gloves are damp, and my hair smells like marsh. Jo throws her gear into the back of her car.
“You heading straight home?”
“Yeah.”
“You want coffee first?”
“I've had three.”
“That has never stopped you.”
“It should.”
She gives me a look but lets me go.
I pull onto the highway with the heater running against my wet jeans. The Chicks come on the radio. My chest tightens at the unmistakable sound of their harmony.
I turn it up and sing at the top of my lungs, "Wide Open Spaces."
When the song is over, I know what I am going to do. I pick up my phone at the next red light and call him. He answers on the first ring.
“Hey.”
My stomach flips anyway.
“Hey. Are you working?”
“No. I actually have the day off. I got back to New Orleans late last night.”
“From where?”
“Houston.”
“Still glamorous.”
“You have no idea.”
I smile, the light turns green, and I take off. “Do you have a second to talk?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
I hesitate, then realize I do not want to have this conversation through the car speakers.
“If you're home, can I come by?”
There is a short pause.
“I'm here. You're always welcome to come by.”
“I'll be back in the city in about an hour.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
I hang up and set the phone in the cup holder.
He opens the door before I can knock twice.
For a second, the silence stretches between us. He's got on flip-flops, wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt, hair still damp like he showered after we hung up. Nothing about him looks prepared for this conversation, which somehow makes him hotter.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
He steps aside and lets me in.
The house looks almost exactly the same, which is more disorienting than if he had changed everything. I set my bag on the chair by the door, just like I used to do every day after class, and follow him into the kitchen.
“Do you want anything?” he asks. “Water, coffee?”
“Water’s good.”
He gets me a glass and leans against the opposite counter instead of coming closer. I buy myself a minute with my drink.
“I’m sorry I disappeared this week,” I say finally.
“You didn’t disappear.”
“I kind of did.”
“Yeah, well, you didn't owe me anything. Don't feel like you have to apologize.”
“Thank you for giving me space to figure everything out.”
His mouth shifts slightly. “I’m getting better at it.”
“That’s actually what I wanted to talk about.”
He waits. I set the glass down.
“I’ve been thinking about the last few weeks. The shell, the meetings, Oak Moss. You could have taken over about ten different times.”
“You had pretty good command of everything.”
“I’m trying to be serious. I appreciate you saying that, but there were times you could have made decisions without asking me. I want you to know I noticed.”
His expression settles.
“They were your decisions to make.”
“I know. I just needed to see that you knew it, too.”
He looks at me for a long second. “I do.”
“Jo told me, by the way, about the pickleball courts, and you asking how I was.
She also told me you told her not to tell me.
" I watch his jaw go tight and stay tight.
"She sat on it for months until she thought I could hear it as a kindness instead of one more person handling me. She was right to wait. I am still telling you I would rather have heard it from you.”
“I understand what I did wrong, Tallulah. I thought helping meant getting ahead of the problem before you had to deal with it. I don’t think that way anymore. I’m still not a perfect man, but you make me want to be better.”
“That's impressive. My seventy-one-year-old grandfather still hasn't learned that.”
“I can’t undo what happened.”
“No, neither of us can,” I say.
“And I’m not asking you to pretend it didn’t.”
“I know. I want this said out loud once so it never has to be said again. My family thinks I made that call. I decided at the time that was best. Now it will cost more to untangle it, and for what?”
I study him for a moment before I continue, the shape of his perfect nose, his square jaw, the way his Adam’s apple moves even when he isn’t talking.
“If we do this, you are going to sit at that table at Christmas and let my father hand you a beer and thank you for putting up with me. You are going to swallow it every single time. I need to know you can do that.”
“If that’s what you want, I can. I am willing to take ownership. I made a fucking bad decision, and it hurt a lot of people.”
“It was a bad decision, but honestly, it all ended up working out the best way it could have. It’s water under the bridge now. Or, should I say, water diverted from the marshline?”
He laughs at that. I rub my thumb over the side of the glass. “Cooper told me something.”
His face changes immediately.
“What?”
“He said you told him you love me.”
Rhodes goes very still.
“You didn’t know that?”
“No.”
He looks down for a second, then back at me.
“I do.”
My chest tightens.
“Why didn't you ever tell me?”
“You told me you wanted to get through Oak Moss before we talked about us. Then everything blew up, and after that you told me to stay away.” He pauses. “I guess I never found a point where saying it didn’t feel like I was asking you for something.”
I hold his gaze.
“Do you still?”
“Love you?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah.” His voice is quiet. “I love you, Tallulah.”
I let the words exist without needing to qualify them or brush them off. Hearing him say it is different from hearing it from Coop.
“I’m not ready to tell you this is forever. We’ve never even been together outside of some kind of bubble.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“I don’t want to move back in here.”
His mouth twitches. “Good. I finally got the kitchen back under control.”
I smile despite myself.
“And I don’t want to go back to what we were. Sneaking around, hiding from Cooper, pretending none of it meant anything because there was always some reason we couldn’t deal with it.”
“I don’t want that either.”
I take a breath.
“But I do want to see what this is without all of that,” I finally say. His eyes stay on mine.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying maybe we date.”
He blinks exaggeratedly. “Date?”
“Yes. Like normal people.”
“I’ve heard of that.”
“Rhodes.”
“I’m kidding. I mean, I'm serious, but never mind.”
“Can we actually go out in public as a couple? I’m not promising you more than I know how to promise right now, and I’m not saying everything that happened is suddenly okay.”
“Yeah. I want that.” Then his mouth shifts. “You may regret it when Nero sends me to Houston three times in a month.”
“I can handle Houston. I think I trust you enough to try it the right way.”
Something shifts in his face. “Enough?”
I nod. “Enough.”
He exhales slowly. “I’ll take enough.”
“So you’d be open to that?”
“Tallulah, I would date you in a grocery store parking lot if that’s what you wanted.”
“That’s not exactly the romantic pitch you think it is.” I laugh, and the last of the tension in the room eases. Rhodes pushes away from the counter but stops before he gets close enough to touch me.
“Can I kiss you?”
That question gets me more than it should. I nod. “Yes. I'd like that.”
His hand settles at my waist, and I slide mine up around his neck. When we pull apart, he keeps his hand on my waist.
He stays there with his forehead against mine and his hand open at my waist, not pulling me in, not moving me anywhere. I understand he will stand exactly like this for as long as I let him. He’s waiting on me.
After a year of being handled by every person who claims to love me, the man who did the worst version of it is standing in his own kitchen, waiting to be told.
That undoes me faster than anything he has said tonight.
I get my fingers into his hair and pull his mouth back down to mine.
This time I don’t let it stay careful. He makes a low sound in his throat that I have not heard in almost a year, and his hand closes hard at my waist. Then he lifts me like I weigh nothing and sets me on the counter I used to sit on to eat his eggs.
My knees fall open to make room for him because they have the answer before I do. He steps in between them and both of his hands land on my thighs. The calluses catch on my leggings in a way that makes me shiver.
"Tallulah." My name lands somewhere under my jaw. “I’ve missed you.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
I twist my hands into the front of his T-shirt and pull until he has to brace an arm on the counter beside my hip.
"I want you, Rhodes. Now.”