Chapter 24 Everly #2
We talk about all the things from the garden on our plates. Sonny gives us a long list of the foods he likes and the ones he doesn’t. At the top of that list is lutefisk.
Grey sticks out his tongue. “It smells as bad as Mathias’s feet.”
Sonny giggles.
“Bestemor, Grandma, used to make me eat it when I was your age. She’d even try to disguise it in a grilled sandwich.”
“Do I have to eat it?” Sonny asks as though petrified.
Grey raises a pointed finger in the air. “No. There will be no lutefisk in this house by order of official decree.”
“What is lutefisk?” I ask.
“It’s yucky,” Sonny informs me.
“Very yucky—”
Hearing Grey use that word makes me laugh before he finishes.
The laugh that comes from his chest cranks like a rusty machine starting up after a long year in the rain. Sonny giggles.
Grey says, “It’s like eating one of my football cleats after it’s seen a season on the field.”
“Glad I’m done eating because this was delicious, unlike, at least from your description, lutefisk.”
“You can thank me for making it.”
“If you get to make an official decree, does that mean I do too?” I ask.
Grey tips his head from side to side.
“Everyone gets ice cream for dessert.”
Sonny cheers.
Grey says, “On Fridays only.”
“And Mondays.”
“Deal.”
We sit on the back deck and eat bowls of vanilla fudge swirl. Sonny takes his with rainbow sprinkles and focuses on getting each bite evenly coated. Grey tossed some fresh berries in his.
In a low voice, I ask, “Why’d you do this?”
“Do what?” he asks, taking a bite.
“Bring me here?”
“I already told you, but it’s also because it’s where I live. You’re supposed to coach me up on living right. We’re doing that.”
“I happen to know that football players like you have a lot going on.”
“I happen to know that I’m not great at communicating, but am working on it.”
“So, you admit that you’re an idiot?” In movies, I’ve seen women try to push the guy away by pretending they don’t like him.
The words fell out of my mouth. Maybe to protect myself?
But it feels wrong. Dishonest. Stupid. And I know that if I try to push Grey away, my magnetism to him will only grow in an unkind twist of fate.
His face pinches and he presses his hand to his chest like he’s been struck by an arrow. “Ouch. But if you recall, you did make the first and second rules of the Marriage of Convenience Club very clear.”
“But this is real life, not a club.” All the same, my heart tugs so strongly for these two people—one big, one small. One protecting himself at all costs, the other born into a family whose story I don’t know exactly, but would be painful if he weren’t so young.
“Life etiquette lesson. Tell your wife that you have a kid.”
“What if I was afraid you’d—?”
“Leave?” I steal the last bite of ice cream from Grey’s bowl. “Sorry, not sorry. You’re stuck with me for the next twenty-one days.”
“And after that?”
“We’ll see, but I suggest if you want to pass the Blancbourg program, you start talking more...and singing. I like that too.” I can’t be too mad, because a family is what I’ve wanted more than anything, and it seems that I may have got one in a really roundabout way.
Sonny, who somehow got the vanilla portion of the ice cream into his mouth but not the chocolate, clobbers us both with a sticky-fingered hug.
Full of energy, he bounces up and down. We head to the basement, where Grey has a playroom set up. Once we’ve played cars and trucks, which involves the three of us on hands and knees, pretending to be talking vehicles, he’s finally out of gas.
“Elsie lets me watch Biler og Lastebiler.” It’s cute hearing Sonny speak Norwegian, but I have no idea what he means.
“I’m going to need a translator.”
“Cars and trucks. It’s a show. How about one episode, a bath, and then some books?”
Sonny cheers and I melt. How can this beast of a man be so sweet, so tender?
I didn’t see this coming, not by a long shot.
A prickly part of me urges anger at Grey, but this is what I wanted, even if I walked backward into it with the least communicative and grumpiest man I’ve ever met, and that’s saying something, given my father is the Ice King.
Grey brings his hulking frame upright and winks at me before turning on the television, where we settle in for an animated show about cars and trucks in Norwegian, which would ordinarily give this overthinker plenty of time to prepare a cross-examination.
I’d grill Grey on keeping secrets like this.
I want to be rip-roaring mad. I have every right to be irate.
But I’m not.
Somehow, Sonny softens it all. Smooths Grey’s sharp, gruff edges. Soothes the part of me that thought I’d never get to feel the kind of affection I have these last few hours.
With the little guy nestled between us and Grey’s arm stretched across the back of the couch, his hand gives my shoulder a little squeeze. Our gazes meet, and he winks.
It trips something in me. A reminder that everything is going to be okay if I let it.
Sure, this situation is unusual and most would argue that Grey’s actions are unacceptable, but it’s like I’m at a crossroads.
I can embrace what’s sure to be a challenge at times but also a joy, or I can go my father’s way and turn my back when things get difficult, and retreat into a cold and lonely world.
I can say yes to marriage and family life, or turn my back.
The part of my chest that felt so empty for so long warms, fills, overflows. This wasn’t how I expected things to look, but I was made for a moment exactly like this, and my answer is yes.
Yes, I’ll be a wife and mother. A thousand times, yes.