Chapter 19 #2
“I’m not judging your mom. I’m just talking about your childhood. And the effects that it had on you. You worked really hard to make sure that none of that hurt your brother and sister. It sounds like Nolan needed you, too, and you were there for him.”
“There was nothing else to do.”
“There was. The adults in your life are examples of that. They found other things to do that weren’t taking care of you.”
She could feel his discomfort, radiating off of him in waves. He really didn’t like to be told he’d done a good job. To be told that he was exceptional in any way.
It was like there was a big wall inside of him that compliments ran right into and bounced off.
Because he just couldn’t handle it. Didn’t want to handle it.
But she wanted him to hear it. Whether he wanted to or not.
“Cody, I am in awe of you. You didn’t have any examples of how to take care of people, but you do it.
All the time. You take care of everybody in your life like it’s the most important thing to you, and I think it is so…
Wonderful. Because I know that not everybody does that.
I know they don’t. I’ve never… I’ve never met anyone like you. ”
He cleared his throat. “I just wanted you to see the place.”
“Someday, I’ll take you back to my trailer park,” she said.
“Okay,” he said, his voice barely hovering above a whisper.
There were a lot of sticky things buried in that hushed response. A lot of questions. If they would be close for that long, if there would ever be an occasion or reason for him to go to Vermont with her. Would they just be done in a week? They weren’t a couple. And it was kind of a couple offer.
But he didn’t deny it, didn’t outright say those things, and she didn’t ask any questions.
They just let it sit there. Then he pulled out of the parking lot and headed back down the main street toward the largest grocery store in town.
“I’d like to cook you dinner tonight, if you have the time,” he said.
“Are you kidding me? I would love that. I mean, I’m getting spoiled just eating out of the Painted Ridge kitchen every night.”
She had a kitchen, and she could certainly cook, but she had never been hugely into cooking, and it was way too easy to just rely on the hotel.
But whenever Cody cooked for her, it was a treat.
Because she did like being taken care of. He did that better and more completely than anyone else in her life ever had, she hadn’t just been saying that to him.
There was something caring about the way he went about everything. Like he genuinely wanted to give her something, but what troubled her was that he didn’t seem to want to take that in return.
“Actually,” she said. “What if I cooked for you?”
“Why?”
“Because I do know how to cook, Cody, and you’ve done it for me a bunch of times.”
“I don’t mind it…”
“Did your brother and sisters ever cook for you?”
“I mean, sometimes they get pizza and…”
“No. I’m going to make you some pasta, and you’re going to like it.”
After that, she took total control of the shopping trip. She bought a loaf of garlic bread, salad fixings, and some jarred pasta sauce that she was going to dress up a little bit with more vegetables and meat. She got some ground beef, and he grimaced as she picked it up out of the freezer case.
“I have beef from the ranch at the ranch,” he said, sounding scandalized.
“I know. But I’m cooking for you. So, you have to accept it.”
“I’ll fill your freezer up after this,” he grumbled.
“Sounds like a euphemism.”
“It’s not,” he said.
“Okay.”
She also picked up a really nice-looking chocolate cake for dessert from the bakery, because while she loved to eat, she was no fancy hand in the kitchen.
But she just wanted to take care of him, the way he had taken care of her. And it didn’t feel like the kind of care that was management to keep someone happy so that they would stay.
The kind of care that made her have to be better than the man she was caring for, so that he felt like he was getting good value from her.
It was too easy for her to see Cody, young and with the weight of caring for everyone else on his shoulders. Serious and determined, this part of him that she had taken as cold when they had first met.
He was just serious. Because he had to be. Because everything had had to work toward a larger goal.
He didn’t have a choice.
It made her sad to think about the eventuality that someday they wouldn’t be together, but maybe there was something good in that, too.
They were just spending time together. Enjoying each other.
For a man who had never done anything of the kind, she hoped it was a gift.
She hoped it was something that made him happy. Something that made him feel good.
They checked out and got back into the truck. “I have to stop at the hardware store too. Gotta pick up some screws.”
She smiled. “There’s a joke in there somewhere.”
“Oh, I’ll wait for you to figure it out, because I can’t wait to hear it.”
“Instead of a joke,” she said, her stomach feeling funny, “why don’t I tell you that I want you without a condom tonight?”
“Fuck,” he said, tapping the brake a little bit too hard as he came to a stop sign. “You have to warn a man before you say things like that.”
“Sorry. But I got my test results back.”
“We don’t… We don’t have to do that, though,” he said.
“I know. I want to.”
It was a complicated feeling. That it mattered, that it felt like a big deal.
That she didn’t want to have only had him with a layer of latex between them.
She knew that it wasn’t supposed to feel that different, or matter, or anything like that.
She knew that safety was supposed to trump everything else, but she wanted… him. All of him.
If this was going to be for just a little while, she didn’t want there to be any intimacy they hadn’t shared.
With the most intense, breathtaking feeling inside of her, that was what she wanted.
“I haven’t done that before,” he said.
Triumph curled in her stomach. “Really?”
“Yes, really. I only have casual sex.”
“I get to be your first? That’s so hot.” She was giddy at the thought, which was maybe ridiculous, but she couldn’t help it. She wanted him. Craved him. Needed him in ways that would scare her if she didn’t also feel stronger and wiser and more complete than she ever had before.
“Now I have to go into the store. With a hard-on, thank you,” he said.
She grinned widely, unrepentant. “The screws that you’re getting in there have nothing on the screw that I’ll be giving you later.”
“Now you have to come with me,” he said. “Because you’re a menace.”
Her smile widened, and he laughed.
Cody’s laughs were like gold dust. They didn’t come easily, and he didn’t give them up without a fight.
When she could earn one, she felt like she was high.
She did go into the hardware store with him, and only mildly harassed him while they were shopping.
“Were you this fun with your husband?”
She stopped walking, confused for a moment. Her husband. Surely there was no husband anywhere. Only Cody. Only this life. Only this moment. But then once she got past that, what stopped her was the question itself.
“Fun?”
“Yeah. Did you tease him?”
She was trying to get to the bottom of what the question actually was. If he wanted to know if he was different for her, or if he was the same, and why he wanted to know it. But she supposed it wasn’t really up to her to determine what the question was about, she just wanted to answer it.
“I’m me,” she said. “Pretty much no matter what’s going on. I don’t know if Aiden would’ve characterized it as fun. I think mainly he would’ve said I was organized.”
“Well, I’ve never had anyone to joke around with. Other than my siblings. So… I guess I didn’t figure…”
“You didn’t think that people in relationships hung out together and had fun?”
He shook his head. “No. I never saw any fun in a relationship like this.”
Of course, he didn’t. He saw his mom, desperate and sad, depressed, always being denied what she wanted. She probably never went out in public with his father. And he hadn’t decided that one could save him. That was the difference between the two of them.
“I’m glad you think I’m fun,” she said. “Really.”
They paid for the hardware and got back into the truck. She was still turning over the conversation as they got out onto the main highway and headed back toward Painted Ridge.
“I believed that a relationship could save me,” she said, “because I thought that the glue of a family unit was the thing that was missing from my childhood. I thought it was what made my life difficult. So, I thought that if I could just make a family of my own, it would fix everything.”
“Oh?”
“I just wanted to tell you that because I understand why you didn’t know that a relationship could have happy moments.
Because you didn’t see one. And neither did I, but I still…
I don’t know if it’s because of princess propaganda or what, I still kind of bought into the idea that I needed a partner to save me.
I really didn’t think of it that way. I have always felt like I was independent.
But also, underneath it all, I felt like my marriage was the thing that made my life stable.
Like it was evidence that I was different than my parents. ”
“Well, your mom left. She gave up on your dad. My mom never did. So even though I didn’t see a dysfunctional relationship, what I saw was this grim determination to stick something out that just didn’t deserve that kind of loyalty. I knew that a relationship, love, wasn’t going to save anybody.”
How grim. She wondered if that was what she was supposed to learn from her divorce.
No. Not quite that. Maybe a relationship hadn’t saved her. Hadn’t made everything okay. But that didn’t mean that love wasn’t real.