Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Christina
Runzhou may call me a sneaky sweetheart, but I’ve got nothing on Danny.
He waits until Friday lunch at a renowned taco stand to remind me that Friday nights are Reeves family dinner nights, and it’s his week to host.
“Charlie’s on standby to host at his apartment if you would rather just have a night to yourself in The Coze,” he tosses casually over his tacos.
I pin him with a look. “I should punish you for bringing this up so last minute.”
And damn him, he unfurls that slow, crooked smile at me. “You can punish me, baby.”
My pulse revs up so quickly that lightheadedness sweeps over me.
His smile turns to a smirk as images of last night flash across my mind.
Danny was, in fact, very helpful at finding every possible use for that vibrator.
We had to literally pause to recharge it at one point.
But I couldn’t stop taking him in my mouth and in my body.
I couldn’t stop coming when he told me to. I haven’t been able to stop all week.
This week that has been one of the greatest of my life.
I thought completing the items on TJL would be true living.
I couldn’t have known that regular life stuff—reading and making coffee and grabbing lunch and taking walks and briefly kissing on the way to the bathroom and shoving his heavy leg off me when I get too hot in the night only to cuddle back into him when I cool down again—could make me feel so alive.
And I think our daily excursions are deepening my appreciation of the South for all the same reasons I’m able to appreciate Hilltop. Light to counterbalance any darkness.
He finally throws mercy on me as I’m clearly having trouble corralling my thoughts.
“I wasn’t necessarily trying to keep the family dinner from you,” he says.
“I just know how much you need to play things by ear, one day at a time and all that. I thought it might be easier to decide if you wanted to join closer to time.”
I study him from across the picnic table. Jesus, he’s thoughtful. In that he’s always thinking of me. He’s always thinking of what I might need or what I might like or what I might want. I’m his muse whether the cameras are running or not.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that he’s been noting my ideas about the documentary so carefully.
I’ve always known that Danny perceives every part of me, and if he sees a documentarian within, that’s worth paying attention to.
And I felt this spark when he suggested it.
Maybe I was initially drawn to Danny’s documentaries for more reasons than the content alone.
I’m torn, on so many levels. The part of me that still hesitates to trust myself hates the idea of even calling this a path.
I don’t want to be defined or limited. I don’t want to plod along on an existing conveyor belt.
Look at what has even happened to Danny on this path: He feels like he can’t stop.
He sequesters himself in that dark studio and forgets to let the sun on his face.
He’s saving the world, and he felt he had to tuck the real him away behind that silly easygoing exterior to do it.
But then there’s the part of me that wants to belong and find my place and know what I have to offer to the world.
And that part of me is humming to explore this possibility.
Even during our pre-day Coze time this morning, my mind kept wandering to ideas for both TJL and other potential documentaries that would exemplify the complex Sweet & UNsweet Tea dynamic of life in the South.
Then there’s Danny. He adds a layer of complication to this entire endeavor.
In one sense, Danny makes me feel safe to explore.
He creates so much space for my emotions and is so perceptive about me that he would help me recognize what I truly wanted to pursue or not pursue.
But in another sense, being with Danny is so intoxicating that it may be clouding my judgment.
Do I enjoy the work of a documentarian, or do I just enjoy being with Danny?
Am I thinking like a documentarian because that’s truly how my mind works and thrives, or am I thinking like a documentarian because I’m spending so much time with this man?
Is it him that I’m excited about? And how much does that matter?
Either way, there’s no denying how powerful that interview we did together was.
“Christina?”
Danny gently tugs me out of my headache-inducing thought spirals.
I slip my hand into Danny’s on the table and rub his fingers between mine. His concerned expression softens.
“Do you want me to join your family dinner tonight?” I ask.
He snorts lightly. “Is that a real question?”
“I guess not.” I grin. “But I didn’t want to be presumptuous.”
“I don’t know if it’s possible to presume too much when it comes to what I think of you, Muse.”
The intensity of his big, deep eyes has become akin to oxygen for me. It’s transformed into an autonomic function, the accompanying achy and melty feelings integrating into my baseline. I only realize how much it’s sustaining me in its absence.
He continues fueling me with his stare. “You know how when you met Charlie, the world felt imbalanced until I had in turn met Ally?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I didn’t just meet Ally. I met your whole family at Movie Church. And now the world will be imbalanced for me until you meet my whole family too.”
“I feel like we’ve got a situation where you have leftover milk, so you pour more cereal, but then you have leftover cereal and have to pour more milk, and that goes on and on until you’re bursting at the seams and are out of both milk and cereal.
I’m going to end up meeting your Boy Scout leader by the end of this back-and-forth. ”
He barks a laugh. “I do still run into him sometimes.”
Of fucking course he does.
I place his hand on my face, and he instantly crooks his fingers into my hair. “Honestly?”
A small smile from him. “Always.”
“I really wanna do family dinner tonight.”
He sighs in contented relief. “Really, really?”
I chuckle and release him to return to our tacos. “Really, really. I’m kind of desperate to meet the humans responsible for creating you and Charlie. And I’m also desperate to see how this whole dinner unfolds. It’s mind-boggling to me that you do this of your own volition every week.”
He tucks his hair behind his ear. “Okay, I was so focused on wanting you there that I’m only now considering how my family is gonna act.”
I laugh. “We’re in it now, Danny boy.”
My burning man looks back at me. “Yes, we are.”
Jim and Trish Reeves are not of this world.
Trish wraps me in an enormous hug the minute she lays eyes on me like she’s known me my whole life. I can’t remember any hug from a stranger feeling so warm, so sincere. “Not that it matters,” she says, leaning back to look at me, “but you’re just about the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Oof, it is strange to hear such a Southernism in that Boston accent. With her angled bob haircut and bright eyes, Trish doesn’t look a day over forty, although I know she is. Her build is the same as Danny’s—long and lean but strong. I just smile at her.
She hooks our arms together and walks us to the kitchen table that I set while Danny cooked throughout the afternoon. The men trail behind us. “But I also hear,” she says secretly, “that you’re sharp as a tack.”
She lifts her eyebrows at me as if expecting an answer. “I’m at least as sharp as a splinter,” I say.
She explodes in a sudden grin—so like Danny that my heart squeezes painfully. “Quite. There may or may not be a boy in this house who is rather taken with you.”
“Mom,” Danny mutters from behind us, pulling out a chair for his mother.
She sits but doesn’t let go of me, effectively forcing me to yank out the chair beside her and sit, as well. I peer up at Danny behind us, and he gives me a long-suffering shrug. But a quiet smile is also playing at his lips.
Charlie plops down across from his mother. “Yeah, Chris, you have the singular distinction of being the only person Danny has ever invited to family dinner.”
I look at Danny in question as he sits directly across from me, and he simply stares with all of his usual intensity.
Danny has made a lot of first-time exceptions for me since we met: stepping in front of the camera, taking a vacation from work, inviting me to family dinner—each an example of him learning to hear and trust his own inner voice just like I’m trying to hear and trust mine.
I slide my foot forward so our ankles connect under the table, letting my gratitude that we seem to have that effect on one another shine on my face. He rewards me with a soft smile.
“So this is what it’s like to be with Danny and Chris,” Charlie explains, his father taking the end seat we added between him and Trish. “There’s a lot of long pauses for passionate staring.”
Danny rolls his eyes while I stick my tongue out at Charlie. He winks at me.
“Now we’ve obviously heard plenty about the Jezebel List from Daniel,” Trish says as Danny and Charlie remove the foil from the dishes in the center of the table, the mouth-watering smells of Danny’s cooking filling the space, “but I want to hear every single detail from you. How did you come up with this ingenious list? What’s been your favorite one so far?
Has Daniel really been on camera with you the whole time?
Are you feeling like the empowered woman you are?
Has anyone told you how proud they are of you lately?
My goodness, Jim and I are so proud of you, we barely know what to do with ourselves, and that’s just based on what Daniel’s said. Tell me everything, sweetie.”