8. Wes
WES
Two months later and I've watched my bar become her bar.
It's a Friday. The rush is on. Ten people at the tables, every stool at the bar occupied, somebody has put a Bruce Springsteen record on the jukebox and Hal Jenkins is singing along under his breath and my wife is behind the bar running all of it like it's been hers for a decade.
She isn't technically my wife. Not on paper.
We haven't had the courthouse conversation yet because I'm, on this front and only this front, being extremely patient.
Harlow knows better. Marie at the diner calls her Mrs. Maddox to her face at least twice a week and Lia blushes and I don't correct Marie.
The ring is in my sock drawer.
It has been in my sock drawer for three weeks. I'm waiting for the right day. I've picked and unpicked the day four times now. Lia sees me standing in front of the sock drawer sometimes and says what are you doing, Wes Maddox and I say inventory and she raises an eyebrow and lets me have it.
She is doing an old-fashioned right now.
She's doing it for a man who drove over from Lakeview because he heard a rumor that the best old-fashioned in the county was being poured by Wes Maddox's girl.
He said Wes Maddox's girl directly to her face and she smiled and charged him four dollars more than she charges anyone else.
I love her so much I can't look at her sometimes.
I'm, I've been told by Leon, making a face again.
Leon calls it the face. He has a whole list of things he will and won't tolerate from me in his bar—his bar, he insists on calling it, as if twelve years of payroll came out of his pocket instead of mine—and the face is number one on the list.
Leon is two stools down pouring a draft. He doesn't look at me when he speaks.
"Wes."
"Yeah."
"The face."
"I'm not making a face."
"You are making the face."
"I'm just standing here."
He finishes the pour and slides the beer down the bar to Hal without looking.
"Wes."
"What?"
"She's pouring a drink. It is a drink. You've seen her pour a thousand of them."
"Her forearms," I say. Helpless.
"Jesus," Leon says, and turns away to serve a beer.
Lia catches me.
She is handing the old-fashioned to the man from Lakeview.
She glances back just as she sets the drink down.
Her eyes find mine all the way down the length of the bar.
I'm at my usual end. She is at hers. The bar is between us.
Twelve feet of polished wood. Eight paying customers.
A great deal of Bruce Springsteen. Her eyes find me down the bar.
Her mouth does the thing. Then she raises one eyebrow at me.
She mouths stop it.
I don't stop it.
I lift my bottle of water at her. Slightly. Like a toast.
She shakes her head at me. She is trying not to laugh. She turns back to the man from Lakeview and asks him if he wants a second and he says yes, ma'am, and she starts the next drink without looking at me again, which I can feel from here is deliberate.
The bond hums.
She is happy. That's the main thing the bond carries most nights now—a low steady hum of she's okay, she's here, she's mine, she's happy—and on Fridays when the bar is full and she's in her element the hum is louder.
Underneath the happy tonight there's also something else.
Something I can't name. Not bad. A buzzing attention. Like she's waiting for something.
I've had this sense all evening.
It has made me count the kegs twice. I can hear Leon sighing about it even from across the bar.
At eleven-thirty the rush starts to die. By midnight it's the stragglers. By twelve-thirty she has wiped the rail and turned the music down and it's just Hal and Millie Henderson at the corner booth nursing one last drink and pretending they're not on a date.
At one she walks them out the front door.
She locks it behind them.
She turns.
She leans back against the door and her eyes find me across the empty bar.
The bond buzzes harder.
"Wes."
"Yeah."
"Can you come over here?"
"Yeah."
I come over.
Leon is in the back doing the last of the clean-up. He has made himself scarce because he has a sixth sense for whatever this is and he's going to let us have it. The bar lights are dimmed. The jukebox has clicked off. Harlow outside is asleep.
I stop in front of her.
She is holding her apron in her hands. She has bunched it up and she's twisting it, and I notice it because Lia doesn't fidget. She talks with her hands, she moves, she gestures, but she doesn't twist things in her hands when she's nervous, which means she's about to say something.
I wait.
She looks up at me.
"I'm pregnant."
I sit down.
I don't mean to sit down. My legs just—my knees give, and I go straight down, and I'm now sitting with my back against the side of the bar and my legs straight out in front of me on the wood floor of my own bar. I'm looking up at Lia Reyes who is looking down at me.
"Wes."
"Yeah."
"Did you just—did you just sit on the floor?"
"I think I did."
She sets her apron down on the bar above my head. The fabric drops into my peripheral vision.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
"You're on the floor."
"Yes."
"Wes."
"Give me a second."
I don't need a second for anything except that the floor is the only thing that feels solid. My bear is humming so loud through my chest that I've lost the ability to make a sentence. I pull a breath in. I reach up one hand and pat the floor next to me.
"Come down here."
"On the floor of your bar."
"Yeah."
"Our bar."
"Yeah. Come down."
She comes down.
She sits next to me with her back against the bar and our shoulders pressed together and she puts her hand on my thigh and I take a breath that feels like the first one I've taken since she said the word.
"How long have you known?" I say. My voice is not quite right.
"Two days. I wanted to—I wanted to tell you Wednesday.
I went to the clinic in Lakeview on Monday.
I just." She looks down at her knees. "I wanted a Friday.
A full Friday, working behind our bar, running the rush, and then telling you.
I wanted the whole day first. I don't know why. I'm sentimental apparently."
"You knew for two days."
"I knew for two days."
"And you worked a whole Friday rush with this in your pocket."
"Yes."
"Lia."
"What?"
"You are," I say, "objectively the strongest woman I have ever met. I would have told me within four minutes."
She laughs. It's a small laugh, shaky, her eyes are wet.
"I wanted to give you the whole day."
"You gave me the whole day."
"And now I'm telling you."
"And now you're telling me."
I pull her against me. Her head goes under my chin. My hand comes around her and spreads across her belly—flat, warm, proprietary in a way I'm not sorry about—and I close my eyes.
The bond roars.
The bear has gone absolutely still and warm inside my chest. He knows.
He has known, I realize—the buzzing attention tonight was this, was his animal awareness of something I hadn't yet been told.
He has been the quietest he has ever been in my life for the last forty-eight hours and I thought it was because he was settled. It was because he was reverent.
She goes still under my arm. I feel the moment it registers in her—she goes quiet the way people do when they are trying to listen for something with their whole body.
"Wes."
"Yeah."
"I can feel your bear."
"I know."
"He's—he's purring?"
"Bears don't purr."
"He's purring."
"He's content."
"He's purring."
"Fine. He's purring."
I can feel her smile against my sternum. She presses her palm over mine where it's flat on her belly.
"Hi," she says. Quietly. Down into her own lap.
"Hi," I say to the same place.
Her head is tucked under my chin. My whole hand covers her stomach. The floor is cool under my legs.
"Wes."
"Yeah."
"Are you happy?"
"Lia."
"Yeah."
"I don't have—I don't have a big enough word for what I am."
"Try."
"I am going to marry you."
She goes very still in my arms.
"That's not what I asked."
"It's what I'm telling you."
"Wes."
"I have a ring in a sock drawer that I bought three weeks ago and I am going to give it to you in the morning because this is too important a day to propose in the middle of too, so I am going to do it tomorrow at breakfast and it is going to be a separate moment that you can have all by itself and I just want you to know the ring is already there and it has been there for three weeks. "
She turns her face up. Her cheeks are wet. She is laughing and crying at the same time.
"You had a ring in a sock drawer."
"Yes."
"For three weeks."
"Yes."
"Wes Maddox."
"Yeah."
"Propose in the morning. I'm not going to pretend I don't know, because I absolutely will remember this for the rest of my life, but yes. Propose in the morning."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Yes."
"Yes what."
"Yes," she says. "Preemptive. So you don't have to be nervous all night."
I lean down and kiss her.
Slow. I'm aware that there's a tear on her cheek and I taste it.
I kiss her the way I kissed her the first time, against the bar, and I kiss her the way I kissed her in the morning light the day I marked her, and I kiss her the way I've been kissing her every morning for two months now—a combination of all those kisses, all on her mouth at once, my palm flat on her stomach.
We don't hear Leon walk out of the back.
We do hear two glasses hitting the wood.
We look up.
Leon has set two glasses of water on the floor in front of us. Filled halfway. No ice. He has his coat on and his newspaper under his arm and he's already halfway to the door, not making eye contact with either of us.
"Drink water," he says. Without turning around. "Both of you."
"Leon—"
"I'll lock up on my way out."
"Leon—"
"Congratulations."
"How did you?—?"
"I have known," Leon says, at the door, "for a week. The bear is louder than you think he is."
He pulls the door open.
"Good night, Maddoxes."
The door clicks shut behind him.
We sit on the floor of our bar with our backs against the wood. Lia laughs, then cries a little more, then picks up the water and hands me the other glass. I drink mine. She drinks hers.
"He knew," she says.
"He knew."
"For a week."
"He knew before I did."
"Wes."
"Yeah."
"I want to go home."
"Yeah."
"Home home. Your apartment. Our apartment. I want to go upstairs."
"Yes."
I stand. I pull her up. I don't let go of her hand.
I carry her anyway.
She complains—I can walk, Wes, I'm pregnant but I'm not made of glass—and I keep carrying her.
I carry her up the narrow stairs to the apartment above the bar.
I carry her to the bed. I lay her down. I strip off our shoes.
Pull the blanket over both of us. I put my hand flat on her belly.
My forehead against her temple. My body around hers.
"Say it one more time," I say.
"Say what."
"That part you said."
"I'm pregnant."
"Yes."
I spread my hand a little wider on her stomach. She is so warm it undoes me.
"I'm pregnant, Wes."
"Yes."
"You're going to be a father."
"Yes."
She turns her head against my forehead. Her breath is against my cheek.
"Are you going to cry?"
"Yes."
"Wes."
"I am already crying, Lia. Let me have it."
"Okay." She strokes my hair. "Okay. I've got you. Cry."
I cry.
Quietly. My face pressed into her shoulder. Her hand on the back of my head. My palm wide open on her belly like I'm trying to protect something small and very mine.
She strokes my hair. She hums something I don't know the name of.
I fall asleep like that. Full palm on her stomach. Mark at her throat under my chin. The bond humming steady and warm through my whole chest.
In the morning I'll get the ring out of the sock drawer.
In the morning Marie will look up when we walk into the diner and know.
In the morning I'll take her hand across the table and say the thing I've been rehearsing in my head for three weeks.
Tonight, in this bed, with my palm on the start of our child, I already know she's going to say yes.
She has been saying yes since the afternoon she walked into my bar.
And so have I.
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