16. Sixteen
Sixteen
I’ve already sweated through my underwear. Twice.
Every item of clothing I own sits in a pile on my bed as I try on another outfit. And another.
Why I’m so nervous about dinner makes no sense, yet here I am, freaking out.
Finally, a winner: long floral skirt and cream-colored linen shirt with strappy sandals. I quickly braid my hair to the side, showcasing the big feathery earrings that dangle from my ears.
After texting every concern I have about food—for both me and Huck—I told Bo I’d just bring my own cooler. When he said we were having pizza, I nearly canceled the whole thing and offered to cook instead.
He told me to relax, and I did. Sort of.
When I stood on my porch last night and said I wanted to come for dinner, I thought I’d have time. His version of time and mine are very different. I expected a week; he gave me twenty-four hours .
“What’s the big deal? You have to eat dinner every day, don’t you?” He said it like I haven’t planned my meals for the next month. Like I wasn’t nearly having a stroke in front of him.
Yet, here I am, cooler in tow as I meet Huck out at the minivan. The sight of him makes me give an audible aww!
He’s wearing a blue checkered button-down shirt with a red bow tie, and his hair is combed to one side. It’s so adorable—he’s so proud—my heart squeezes as I open the van door for him as Miss Alice waves at us from the porch.
“Huck wonders what Bo’s house is going to be like!” he shouts from the back seat.
“Me too. It’s probably a tent,” I joke, making him laugh as we drive.
When we get there, I’m both incredibly surprised and not surprised at all. Bo lives in the cabin I accidentally liked on his social media page. It’s a poetic sort of irony as we stand outside of it, windows glowing in the middle of the patch of woods as the sun just starts to set. Like Veda’s house, I don’t even need to go inside to know the stacked-up logs create a space that feels like home. Bo built something people both love and share love in. Where life happens.
Lucy meets us first, bouncing down the steps in a yellow dress, running to us at a full sprint. “Birdie!” She hugs me and it’s all arms, butterfly clips, and giggles before she pulls back and stares at Huck.
“I like your bow tie,” she says to him .
He grips my hand and steps behind me, quiet. I kneel down next to him. “Huck, this is my friend, Lucy. I think she has a Venus flytrap plant somewhere.”
Lucy nods. “I do!” She beams. “Do you want to see it, Huck?”
Before I can interfere, “Do you want to see it, Huck?” pops out of his mouth.
Lucy giggles and puts a hand over her mouth. “Sorry, I forgot. What I meant was…I wonder if you want to see my Venus flytrap.”
Bo told her.
Then I see him, walking over to us, and I simply stare. Apparently, I find explaining to your kid how to handle people who are different extremely attractive, because all I want to do is shove my tongue down his throat the moment he’s next to me.
Huck squeezes my hand, reminding me we aren’t alone, and I give him a nod. He looks at Lucy and smiles. She starts running with a shrill, “This way!” and he follows.
Then it’s just me, Bo, and my cooler facing his cabin.
“It looks better in the pictures,” I say, picking up the cooler, which he immediately takes from me.
“Photoshop can do wonders these days.” He looks at me, letting his eyes wander from my head to my toes without care as he rolls a toothpick across his lips. “And you’re beautiful.”
The thank you I say is a flustered mumble as we climb the steps of the porch.
He sets the cooler down outside the front door and looks at me. Gentle yet serious. “I’m leaving this out here, but if you want any of it, I’ll come get it and I won’t be upset. ”
I nod. He means it. If I run out here and pull all of my food out and heat it on his stove while they eat pizza, he won’t be mad. The relief that knowledge gives me is a freeing gift I’m not sure he knows the value of.
He opens the door, we step inside, and I see three things at once.
One, the house is gorgeous. It’s all exposed wood and black iron and windows. The walls are mostly bare, showing off the logs they’re made of, but there are also pictures hanging too. Lucy. Veda and her late husband. Cabins he’s built. Snapshots, nothing fancy. He has exactly one plant in the space, and it sits in a pot that his gran made. Artwork that Lucy has made covers the fridge.
As if it wasn’t already obvious, it confirms that Bo is as sentimental as they come.
Two, the large island countertop is made of two slabs of irregular wood with a center filling, known as a river. But it’s not just any river—which is usually epoxy—it’s concrete. I know the counter as well as my own face. I run my fingertips across it, familiarity tingling my skin. My dad made it, and I spent many of our Thursday night dinners standing around it in his shop as he talked me through the steps.
This means, without a doubt, Bo knows my dad. He’s been to the home I grew up in and the shop my dad and I figured out how to be a different kind of family in after my mom died. I don’t know if I believe in fate, but for some reason—this feels like it. Like Bo having this piece of me in his house means every list, rule, and safeguard in the world couldn’t have prevented me from meeting him .
It’s not the sheer beauty of the house, nor the fact Bo owns something my dad made that steals the breath right out of my lungs: it’s number three. The food. All the ingredients are lined up on one counter, labels facing toward us. There are four balls of dough, all colored red, and bowls of shredded cheese—organic and pasture-raised per the label that’s next to them—all dyed the same color. Red cheese, red dough. Marinara sauce simmers on the stove sending the smell of tomatoes and garlic swirling through the air.
Bo could be next to me as much as in a rocket ship heading to the moon; the food is the only thing I see. Hand to my mouth, I walk around the counter and read every label. They are brands I usually buy, that he’s watched me buy in our hours in the grocery store. Even more, the coloring, with natural dye, is for Huck.
He bought food he never would have and colored it a ridiculous color so we would be comfortable in his house.
Standing in Bo’s kitchen is like watching my life change and I’m gobsmacked by it.
Finally, my eyes find his, and I can barely swallow.
“Does it pass the Birdie ingredient inspection?” he asks, hands shoved in the front pockets of his jeans.
There are a million and one things I want to say. Thank you! Veda raised you right! This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me! Mabel is going to die when she hears this! But all I can make my mouth say is, “Your wife is a damn fool.”
A laugh bursts out of him at the same time he bumps my shoulder with his. “Her loss is your gain, I guess.” And, though he says the words in my ear, they spread through my body and imbed themselves in my bones. Fossilizing himself into me.
When the kids come downstairs, we roll the dough. Huck won’t touch it, but he likes using the rolling pin. Then come the toppings and putting them in the oven. Lucy sings the whole time, and Huck laughs. Bo and I drink a glass of wine—one he drove all the way to Asheville to get because it’s organic.
His thoughtfulness is a boundless thing, and every single detail he’s included feels like him reaching a hand into my chest and plucking another sliver of my heart out that will forever belong to him.
I’ve never had a meal like this planned for me before. Every guy I’ve dated simply bought bags of salad that were really just hunks of iceberg lettuce and called it health food. Hell, even the grass-fed steak my dad feeds me on Thursday nights come from a butcher I order from.
When dinner is over and the kids sit at the table playing Connect 4, it’s a sort of comfortable feeling I’ve never known as Bo and I sit together on the couch and watch them.
“Thank you for this. Again. And again.” I stretch my legs across his lap. With his dark hair tucked behind his ears, worn Monroe Cabins T-shirt clinging to his chest, and bare feet sticking out from the bottom of his jeans as they prop up on his coffee table, it’s such an easy scene it almost hurts. A temporary glimpse of something beautiful that can’t be mine. A life for people who have more time.
He slides a hand under my skirt and squeezes my calf, saying, “Bet you wish you would have said yes sooner,” with a grin .
“Ha!” I lift my wineglass to my lips, saying over the rim, “Joke’s on you! Why do you think I let you come grocery shopping with me? You never would have known how to do this.”
“All this time I thought I was the only one using psychological warfare tactics.” Another squeeze on my calf then he runs his palm along my shin. What he’s doing isn’t even remotely sexual, but the heat from it slinks right up my legs and hits between my thighs where it simmers. Lingers. Thoughts catapulting to my near flowergasm from last night, raising my body temperature by degrees.
Get your shit together, Birdie.
From the table, Huck shouts, “You won!” at Lucy, and I snort out a laugh as the sound pulls me from the lewd desires dancing in my mind. His smile is a permanent rectangle above his now crooked red bow tie. He’s so damn happy.
“Have you thought about adopting him?” Bo asks.
I set my wineglass on the coffee table, filling my cheeks with air before blowing them out slowly.
“Miss Alice, his foster mom, brought that up. She’s trying to find another home for him—her husband is sick.” I pause, imagining all the what ifs . “I don’t know how to be a mom. Look at all you had to do to make dinner for me—” I laugh with a dramatic gesture toward the entire Whole Foods worth of ingredients in his kitchen. “How would I be good at raising someone else?” I pause, more what ifs dancing around my brain. “And because of my situation, I wouldn’t do it unless I had someone that I could put in my will to take him when I die. ”
I don’t miss the way his breath stills and eyes widen. I’ve spent my life talking about death—my grandma’s, my mom’s, mine—I forget everyone isn’t as blasé about the subject. I don’t want to die, but I’ve also accepted there’s a good chance I will, likely sooner than later.
“Anyway, I don’t have a lot of people in my life. My dad, but he’s in his sixties and I wouldn’t want to put that burden on him…” I drop my head back on the armrest of the couch and stare at the exposed beams that line the ceiling overhead.
He shrugs, not looking away from the kids. “Gran took me in when she wasn’t that much younger. She figured it out.”
The mention of Veda tenses my whole body. I won’t be able to lie to him if he directly asks me how she’s doing—my plan is to avoid talking about her at all costs. The second she told me not to tell Bo about the medication, it started eating away at me like a slow-growing parasite.
“And Libby helped me. A lot.” He turns to look at me, clearly oblivious to my internal struggle, rough palm sliding up and down my shin. “People have a tendency to show up if you let them.”
I consider arguing, reminding him that I don’t have all these people like he does, but looking at him—his genuine sincerity and belief in what he’s saying—I stay silent. Instead, I drag my legs off him and busy my mouth by taking a final sip of my wine. He’ll never understand; he has people, I don’t.
“Either way,” I say, dropping my head side to side. “I don’t know if my dad would want to, and I wouldn’t want to ask anyone else. ”
He looks at me—really looks at me—and when he opens his mouth to say something, I stand, guilt over Veda clinging to me like a bad habit.
“Mind if I take a picture of that live edge river top and send it to my dad?” I ask, diverting the direction of the entire conversation.
His eyebrows pinch as he stands slowly. “Live edge river top?” He laughs, pulling the toothpick out of his mouth. “How the hell do you know that phrase?”
Right.
“My dad got into woodworking as a hobby when I was younger.” I shrug. “Guess some of it stuck.”
Staring at my ceiling fan, I replay the best dinner of my life in my head, over and over. I thanked Bo at least a dozen times, but it still doesn’t seem like a big enough word for what he did. When we said goodbye, I was awkward. Like we were leaving something unfinished. Mostly because he stood—casual—toothpick rolling across his slightly smirked lips while I loaded Huck in the minivan.
As the kids yelled back and forth at each other through the closed window, all I wanted to do was touch him. Run my fingers through his beard and let his hands rest on my hips. But he didn’t make a move to get any closer, and neither did I. I opened my door, gave him some kind of rigid wave, and drove away. My stomach flip-flopping in my belly the entire drive.
Grabbing my phone, I send a quick, Thank you. Again .
Bo: You’re welcome. Again.
Me: Are you free Thursday night? I want to take you and Lucy somewhere for dinner.
Bo: Depends. Are you coming with me to church tomorrow morning?
Teeth scraping my bottom lip, I smile at my phone.
Me : Pick me up on the way?
Bo: Always. And I want to tell you something, but I know you’ll just argue if I say it in person…
Three dots appear and disappear and my heart pounds like a jackhammer in the silence.
Bo: If you want to adopt Huck, I’ll take him if anything happens to you. I’m not going to bring it up again, because I don’t plan on letting anything happen to you, I just want you to know. I’ll be here. For you. And him.
I can’t breathe. Every inch of skin on my body shrinks around my bones.
Then, like he’s a damn clairvoyant and knows my brain stopped working with his offer, Night, Birdie , is the last message he sends.
The next morning at church, he doesn’t bring it up. Neither do I.