11. Lori #2
"I like it." He drops his voice, close enough that his mouth is near my ear and nobody else in this bay can hear what comes next. "You can touch me all you want, you know. Anywhere you want. I'm yours tonight. Just so we're clear."
I want, very much, to be a person who can hear Carson West say I'm yours tonight without my entire circulatory system staging a revolt. I am not that person. The blush starts at my collarbone and goes to my ears, and he watches it happen with the same open, delighted look he gives me at the diner counter the night he throws a pick-up line at me and I pretend it doesn’t work on me.
I flex my hand on his arm, mocking him back. He laughs and I laugh with him. It comes out easy, bright, and genuine.
He folds his hand around mine, and doesn't let go of it for the rest of the night.
Carson's thumb traces the back of my hand while we stand at the drinks table, every pass light enough that he thinks I don't notice, except that I do.
Marisol does a lap around the trucks with Junie on her shoulder, narrating the tour.
And this is where your daddy's friend Danny works.
And this is the big siren that scares everybody.
Junie watches her face with wide serious eyes.
Later, when the crowd has thinned and somebody's wife requests a song for a slow dance, Carson throws a look at me. A look that says, shall we?
"I don't dance," I say.
"Neither do I." A small smile. "We don't have to be good. We just have to be moving."
He pulls me in. One hand at the small of my back.
The other, folding mine between us. My free hand finds his chest because there is nowhere else to put it and nowhere else I want it.
I fit right under his chin without trying.
We sway in a small square of polished floor between the trucks, and for a long stretch neither of us talks.
He turns us once. The song goes on around us.
"I'm scared of this, Carson." It comes out quietly, almost to myself.
"I know."
"I don't know how to do this without breaking it."
"You don't have to know yet." His voice is lower, quieter — the voice he only uses with me. "I'm not going anywhere. I've got nothing but time."
I close my eyes and let my temple rest against his chest. Cedar and clean cotton and the aftershave he puts on tonight because he tries.
His heartbeat is steady between us. The song winds down and we don't step apart.
He brings my hand up and presses my palm flat against the side of his jaw.
One beat. Just to feel it there. Then he lowers it. Our fingers stay laced.
No kiss. And yet, it’s the most claimed I have ever felt in my life.
The music picks up again, something faster.
Carson lets go of my hand to scoop Cadie up for a spin that makes her shriek.
I drift to the edge of the bay, lean against Fire Engine 2 with the chrome cool through the back of my dress, and I watch him.
He's got Cadie on his hip, and she's telling him something urgent about reindeer slippers. His head is tipped down to hear her.
From here, he looks exactly like what he is: a man who builds a whole life out of showing up.
Who holds his daughter and somebody else's baby in the same house and never calls it heroic. Who refuses to be paid for his help, leaves porch lights on, hums off-key over a cast iron skillet every night. He doesn’t know he does it.
But I know. I know because I stand in his kitchen every night watching him do it.
After a while, I look over the dark road outside the bay, my left side still leaning against the engine. When he comes back, he steps behind me, his arms come around my waist, crossing at my stomach, pulling me back against his chest. His chin settles on top of my head.
He says nothing.
My back is flush against his sternum. I can feel his breathing, moving through both of us. The party goes on around us. Diane laughing across the room. Somebody's kid chasing somebody else's between the folding chairs. Marisol bouncing Junie on the far side of the bay.
I lean into him. I cannot keep standing up straight on my own anymore. Every week of refusing help, packing the duffel, smiling through I'm fine, making my spine do what my heart will not.
At 11 p.m., the party drains out. Cadie is asleep on Carson's shoulder, one rainbow boot dangling. Junie is asleep in the car seat carrier in his other hand. I gather Cadie’s coat and the empty casserole dish.
The cold hits, clean and sharp. Just another night in December in Hill Country. So I put the casserole dish and Cadie’s coat on a table before pulling on Carson’s coat.
I’m about to pull the hood up when Carson stops me. "Wait."
He sets Junie's carrier down by his foot.
Shifts Cadie's weight to his left side. With his free hand, he reaches up and pulls a pin out of my bun.
Then another. The loosening runs all the way down my spine, my hair releasing in slow stages, and then he runs his fingers through it from my temple to the ends.
I feel every inch of his palm against my scalp, behind my ear, down past my shoulders to where the ends curl against my back.
My skin goes hot and tight everywhere his hand passes.
I stand there in the open bay door and let him take my hair down like it's the most natural thing in the world.
"I want to do that," he says, low, "since the night you take your hair down at the diner."
I smile at him. Full, uncomplicated, completely unguarded. He looks at me and I see it on his face, the same expression he wears at the diner counter the night he takes my picture and says nothing for a long moment. And then, quietly, yeah, that's the one.
We walk out of the bay door, toward our truck.
He goes ahead to load Cadie and Junie into the back seat. I stand next to the truck door, with my hair down around my shoulders, and the cold pressing my dress flat against my legs.
And I realize.
I love him.
Not the cowboy or the firefighter. Not the Knight-in-Shining-Armor complex.
Not even the fantasy.
Him.
The one who remembers three sugars and a splash of cream from across a diner counter. The one who balances a sleeping six-year-old on one shoulder and a baby carrier on the other. The one who looks at me with my hair down after a long shift and still thinks I’m pretty.
It is not a relief that I feel.
It’s more like vertigo.
Because loving him means needing him, and needing him is the one thing I am taught I am not allowed to do.
Every person I love before takes it as permission — to leave, to spend, to disappear, to hand me a baby on a porch and walk away.
Love is never free. It always comes with an invoice, and I am always the one still paying after everyone else leaves.
But his arms are around me in a truck bay full of people. His chin is on my head. I lean back because I cannot stand on my own anymore, and he holds me like he has been waiting for me to stop trying.
He drives with one hand. His other hand rests on the seat between us, open. I don't reach for his hand. If I do, I might say it. If I say it, the tallying starts.
All the way home, I think the dangerous thought I do not let myself finish.
This is what it would feel like.