10. That Peach Worth It Though
That Peach Worth It Though
"Ru!" I called through the house the second I got in, like it wasn't eight thousand square feet standing between us and she'd just hear me and come running.
Nothing came back but silence as I passed through the kitchen. The breakfast spread still sitting out, she’d picked at all her favorite things. Something in me settled a half a degree just seeing that she'd eaten something.
I kept moving. Checked her room. Checked the bathroom.
Checked the theater room my father built for nobody but himself.
I walked that house top to bottom calling her name into rooms that handed it right back to me with nothing else attached.
By the time I hit the hallway outside the library my hands had gone cold in a way the air conditioning had nothing to do with.
I called her phone. Let it ring into nothing. Called it again like the second time might do something different.
Then I saw her through the glass wall at the back of the house, small against all that morning light, walking the path down to the water. I stood there a second just looking, and something in my chest that had been balled up tight since Madeline's driveway let go all at once.
I started moving real fast through the house fast after that. I made it past the pool and down the shell path with my heart trying to bust through my chest.
By the time I reached her she was stretched out on one of the lounge chairs, slowly working sunscreen into her arm like the whole world hadn't spent the night falling apart around both of us.
"Can't answer your phone?"
She looked up, pulled one AirPod out, then the other. "Sorry. It's on Do Not Disturb. When'd you get back?"
"Been back. Been tearing this house apart looking for you." I lowered myself into the chair next to hers, the wood already holding heat from a sun that hadn't fully committed to the day yet. "You enjoy breakfast?"
"I did." She capped the sunscreen and set it in the sand. "Just needed to come out here and clear my head some."
"About me?"
She looked out at the water before she answered, taking her time with it, choosing the words the way you choose a knife for a specific cut.
"About us."
Two words, and I felt them both land somewhere under my ribs.
Us wasn't a yes and it wasn't a no, it was still a door with the hinge unresolved.
I'd told her last night I was done living in the in-between, and here we were an hour into the morning and I couldn't tell which side of that word we were standing on.
The sun kept climbing, throwing early light across the water in long broken pieces, and I sat there looking at her like I was looking at something I'd grown myself. Something I'd watched come up slow out of hard ground and didn't fully trust yet not to disappear the second I looked away too long.
Aurelia. My best friend. The woman I crossed every line I ever built for myself with, while she still belonged to a man who didn't deserve her exhale.
The woman I told every true thing I had, once, in a car with the windows fogged over, and then drove to her mama's porch instead of keeping, because keeping her that night would've been the easy wrong thing instead of the hard right one.
The woman who came back through a storm to finish what February started, and ended up spread out on my own kitchen counter with another woman asleep upstairs who still thought she was mine to hold.
Messy didn't half cover it. We were stone fruit in every sense.
Sweet to the point of being obscene, and only for about a week out of the whole year.
Bruise easy, handle us wrong one time and the mark shows up two days later, brown and soft, and everybody can see exactly where the pressure went.
And when you finally get past all that flesh, past the good part, past the part worth the mess, there's a stone sitting in the middle of the thing that's hard as a fist, won't dissolve, won't break down, won't ever be anything but what it is.
"I meant everything I said last night, Ducky.
Didn't need to sleep on it." I heard waves hit in the background.
"I want you on the good days. I want you on the bad ones.
I want you on the days you're less than perfect, the days the restraint slips, the days you scare yourself.
Same way you've always wanted me — all of me, no matter what version showed up. "
I didn't say anything for a second. Just looked at her and understood that whatever storm had actually needed to pass through her wasn't the one that came off the Atlantic last night.
Looking at her now, out at that flat easy water, you'd never know what last night was.
That day was sunny, clear and settled. The storm had come and gone.
She was here with me, she wasn't going anywhere, this was real.
I laid back in the chair trying to process the reality of the situation, let my eyes drift out to the water, and reached over for her hand without looking away from it. Her fingers found mine like they'd never once had to think about it.
"So we doing this, Ru? You and me?" I relaxed into the chair, settling into my new reality.
"Yeah..even if it's stone fruit messy."
I turned my head and looked at her. Let a smirk work its way across my mouth slow enough that she'd see it coming from a mile off. "That peach worth it though."
She busted out laughing, and she didn't let go of my hand even doubled over, half fighting it. "We were out of line."
"Completely."
“We’re going to Hell for that.”
“On the first thing smoking, right next to each other.”
"That girl hates me." She stopped laughing all at once, the night replaying behind her eyes.
I brought her hand up, pressed my mouth to her knuckles, kissed it. "She hates me more and she has a right to."
"Called me a whore." Her fingers went tight around mine. "Between Asher and this, maybe there's something —"
"Aurelia. Stop that."
"You told me somebody was in that house and I stayed anyway. That's not a woman who —"
"Look at me."
She chose the ocean instead of me.
"Regarde-moi."Look at me.
She did, finally.
"You didn't let anybody in that house. I did." I kept my voice down where she'd have to come toward it to hear. "You didn't make her a promise. I did. So whatever you're about to build out of one word that woman said to you last night, put it down. It ain't yours to carry. It's mine, and I got it."
"That easy?"
"Ain't easy at all." I turned her hand over and put my thumb in the center of her palm. "But it's mine…you're mine."
She squeezed my hand, settled back against the chair, and the ocean went on doing its slow ordinary business in front of us like it hadn't heard a single word we'd said.
I tugged on her hand, a small pull, enough that she'd get the signal and come lay on me.
She settled against my chest, and her breathing slowed to match the waves.
Mine did too, eventually. Some old, tight thing in me finally let the tide take it out instead of holding on the way it always had.
It was a while before either of us said anything at all, long enough that the sun moved.
"All these years you been coming out here during family week as my friend." I kept my eyes on the water. "Next summer, I'm hoping you're here as my wife. And every summer after that."
I kept my eyes on the water, while I sat there with my whole heart finally out in the open air where she could see it.
"I want that too, Ducky." Came out muffled against my chest, like she wanted the words to reach me somewhere closer than my ears. "And maybe someday we'll have little versions of me and you running around out here too."
I thought about that same beach a couple years out, small feet cutting through the sand, some little girl with her mama's stubborn mouth, some little boy with my grandfather's hands, learning to swim in water that had been patient with all of us a lot longer than we deserved.
"That'd be perfect." I turned my head, pressed a kiss into her hair. "How many you want?"
"Hmm." She tilted her head up, something playful working into her face, the weight of the last day finally lifting off her the way fog burns off once the sun decides to mean it. "I think two's good. A junior for each of us."
"I like the sound of that." I pulled her even closer, felt her ear settle against my heartbeat, like she'd found exactly where she meant to land after seven years of circling it. "Little Ru causing trouble. Little me in the kitchen before he can even see over the counter."
"God help us both."
I looked back out at the water, calm now, done proving whatever it had needed to prove last night, blue clear out to the horizon like it was starting fresh same as we were.
"God's already been good to us, Ru. We just been the ones acting a fool, ignoring what we already knew."
"Are we gonna get reprimanded for last night? We should call a Pastor."
"You not gon' keep beating yourself up for it." I said it sternly, no room in it for argument. "And when we leave here, we bury it. Madeline want any additional conversation, she can have it with me."
"Yes, sir, Daddy Dillion." She looked up at me, mischief sitting plain in her eyes.
Then we kissed like the world had handed us a deadline and we intended to blow straight through it.
"It's July first. We got the house to ourselves," I said, finally coming up for air. "Everyone else won't be here till Friday."
"Never been here with you alone."
"I don't know, Ru. Feel like we ought to make proper use of that." I smirked.
"We should, there’s a whole–"
I got up still holding her, her legs never once letting go of my waist, and walked us both straight into the ocean fully dressed. She shrieked, both arms locking around my neck but kicking her sandals off somewhere along the way, laughing so hard she could barely get words out.
"Dilly Duck, your clothes! Let me take my cover up off, at least give it a fighting chance!"
"Too late now!"