29. Twenty-nine
Twenty-nine
“I heard you weren’t feeling well yesterday,” I say over the rim of my Veda-made coffee mug.
She scoffs. “I was tired and Bo overreacted.”
“Mm-hmm,” I say, eyebrows raised. “I absolutely believe you.”
She rolls her eyes before taking a sip of orange juice, hand trembling around the cup.
“I thought I could teach you to make flowers today.” She changes the subject.
I only nod.
And while with anyone else it wouldn’t be concerning, she’s pleasant all day—doesn’t snap at me once. Not as she shows me how to make flowers out of clay that I can’t seem to make stick together. Not while she’s wearing her purple, heated gloves as I do laundry. Not when I feed her a nutritious lunch that she usually calls glorified cardboard .
“Birdie,” she says as I’m packing up for the day, “I have a doctor’s appointment Thursday I’d like for you to drive me to.”
“Of course.” My eyes narrow. “Everything alright?”
She gives me the look that says, Of course not, but I’m not telling you that.
I sigh. “Right.” A brief pause. “Of course I’ll take you.”
I start to leave when her voice stops me again. “And Birdie?” I look over my shoulder at her. “It probably goes without saying, but don’t mention it to Bo.”
I nod, hating her just a little bit for asking it of me and hating myself a little more for agreeing to it. Even though I don’t know what I’m not telling him, I know I’m not telling him something , and it curdles in my gut.
As best as I can, I shove the thoughts—and the guilt that comes along with them—in a box with a lid and put it away somewhere in the back of my mind.
“Sam, I brought muffins!” I call Wednesday morning as I open the door.
“Bah!” He shouts. “Bonnie, I don’t need your damn muffins. I’m having a heart attack!”
I look at him, standing in the middle of his living room seemingly fine, and scrunch my nose.
“Are you sure? You look fine. ”
“Of course you think I look fine—you ain’t got no tits!” I don’t bother telling him that there is absolutely zero connection between the two. Instead, I drive him to the hospital.
For five straight hours he tells the doctors and nurses: “I got better care from the doctors in ’Nam than this!”
For five straight hours he tells me: “The cots in ’Nam were more comfortable than this damn bed!”
For five straight hours he’s convinced he’s about to die.
Finally, he’s diagnosed with acid reflux, given a bottle of pills, and I take him home.
While most days the experience would send me straight to an asylum, today I’m unfazed.
After several emails with Sharon and Huck’s new foster parents, Wednesday afternoons are my newly scheduled day to spend time with him.
I pick him up, his blocky grin a sight for sore eyes. I don’t hug him often because he doesn’t love to be touched, but today I do. He runs down the sidewalk to me, and when I wrap my arms around him, he hugs me back. His hug gives me the same relief as propping up tired feet after a long day. “I missed you, Birdie!” he says so loudly it cracks my heart.
“I missed you too, kiddo,” I reply, smiling as he gets into the van. “We’re going to see Bo today.”
“I missed Bo!” he shouts, buckling his seatbelt.
When I park at the address Bo sent me, Huck and I both gape out the minivan windows, no doubt for very different reasons. Huck, of course, sees all the heavy machinery and materials around an in-progress cabin being built. But my eyes land on Bo. He’s talking to a man, signing something on a clipboard, and pointing at a corner of the property.
He’s wearing a T-shirt, ball cap, and jeans, but something about him here makes my mouth physically water. He looks in control. Authoritative. Yummy.
Huck tumbles out of the minivan, screaming, “Bo!” before I can stop him.
Bo smiles at him, waves, and then his eyes hook with mine. It’s a smirk, wink, and easy stride as he walks toward us.
He gives Huck a high-five and me a kiss on the temple, just long enough for my body to know he’s there and crave more.
“I wonder if Huck would like to wear this hard hat while I show you how cabins are built,” he says, resting an orange hat on Huck’s beaming eight-year-old head.
“Yes, Bo!” He laughs loudly.
Bo leans in, letting his mouth linger by my ear long enough to say, “I’ve missed you,” before pulling away. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but the only thing I want to do is pounce on him like a pogo stick.
Instead, I smile, my face heating, and say, “Show us how it’s done, Mr. Monroe.”
His toothpick bobbles with his amused smirk, like he’s thinking the same thing I am, before taking my hand in his and leading us toward the construction .
It’s far from finished—just a short wall framed out around the unfinished floor of the house with one layer of logs stacked onto it.
“The first logs are held in by steel rods,” he says, pointing to one. “Then the logs are held together with log fasteners, which are essentially really big screws.” He grabs one out of a bucket and hands it to Huck. “I wonder if Huck wants to try.”
Huck nods, his enthusiasm at full wattage.
Bo grabs a screw gun, lines the screw up on the end, and shows Huck how to hold it. They find the right spot, then Bo says, “Go for it.”
Huck does, pulling the trigger of the tool and yelling happily as the screw starts to spin, chewing its way into the wood.
The whole moment feels like a huge bouquet being put in a vase that’s too small. A wildly precious beauty that can’t be contained.
When the screw is all the way in, Bo takes us around to see the rest of the house. There’s a framed-out space where a future fireplace will go, and pipes coming up from the floors for the bathroom—seeing a space for a future toilet made Huck laugh especially hard. It’s nowhere near finished, but walking around the piles of wood and boxes of supplies, my hand in Bo’s, I can picture it.
At the site of the future front door, I stop, looking down at the concrete slab we’re standing on. In it, locked in place forever, is a Lincoln Log.
My eyes lift to his and he grins.
“Told ya I was building cabins. ”
I laugh under my breath. “In every one?”
“Every single one.” He scrubs his boot over the unmoving toy log. “A little piece of me. Why I’m here.”
Huck told me once about a spider—Darwin’s bark spider—I remember the name because he said it so many times. It spins the strongest web in the world. Looking at Bo, in his element with a silly log he put into the concrete next to a kid that isn’t his, is like having my heart wrapped in its strong web and knowing I’ll never get it back. Whether he knows it or not, it belongs to him.
It’s a nothing moment. Him smiling and talking us through the details of an unfinished cabin. But it doesn’t feel like nothing; it feels like something. Everything . It doesn’t matter what it is—what it’s called or what it means—I know my connection to him is set forever.
“This was amazing,” I say to him once Huck is buckled into the minivan.
As he presses a kiss to my lips, he murmurs, “Tell me something you like.”
“You. Here,” I say into his mouth, smiling. “You?”
“Still Mabel’s books.” His lips lift slightly as he pulls away. “See you this weekend?”
I bite my lip to hide my smile.
My “Maybe,” earns me a knowing smirk from him. Because he knows, when it comes to him, maybe always means yes.