When she reached the bottom of the apartment stairs and chained her bike to the rail, I found my motivation to pry myself from the confines of Old Bessie. When I shoved the door, it whined open. It didn’t wail as it had before Rowen got it all cherried out for me a couple of years ago, but it was an old truck. It deserved to creak and whine and moan.
Rowen must have heard the telltale sound because her head whipped in my direction, her smile moving higher when she saw me weaving through the condo’s parking lot toward her. “Hey, cowboy! I didn’t think I’d see you for another few hours. They’ve been keeping you so busy I’ve almost forgotten what that fine ass of yours looks like.”
Of course that was the moment our neighbors in the condo below us opened their front door. Their brows first lifted at us before lifting a degree higher when they looked at each other.
Noticing them and their pronounced eyebrows, Rowen tilted her head at me, a smirk in place. “I mean your aesthetically pleasing backside.” She winked at me as I crossed the last few steps toward her.
Our neighbors kept going as if they hadn’t noticed us, but I was figuring out that that was the big city way. People were stacked on top of each other, but they all pretended they didn’t notice the person two feet in front of them. Although, based on Rowen’s assumptions, our neighbors knew everything about us and were probably keeping a diary of complaints for the manager, including how long our showers were; when, how long, and how loud we made love; and how often we walked down the hallway in the middle of the night. She called them the Nosey Newburgs, but they didn’t seem so bad. Or so different from the rest of the people I’d met in Seattle.
“Hi yourself, beautiful.” I shot a wave at the Newburgs, but if it was acknowledged, it didn’t get returned.
Rowen crossed her arms as I leapt onto the sidewalk. “I know you didn’t just call me beautiful. I know you didn’t just stoop to some lame, generic identifier meant to objectify and go against pretty much everything I stand for. Right?”
Instead of answering her, I hitched an arm around her waist and pulled her close. I knew better than to jump into this kind of discussion with her, mainly because she always won.
“Call me edgy, call me spunky. Rough around the edges even. Anything but pretty or sweet or beautiful.” She wrinkled up her nose and attempted to shiver, but the closer I pulled her to me, the more fake the act became.
When she lifted an eyebrow, clearly waiting for my response to come in some form other than winding my arms around her, I shrugged. “Sorry. When I look at you, that’s all I see. Beauty. I can’t change what I see, and I wouldn’t want to either. You’re beautiful, whether you refuse to see it or not.”
She tried to glare at me. She failed big time. She gave up with a sigh and rolled her eyes. “Fine. But you are the only one who can call me the b-word.”
I gave her a squeeze then kissed her forehead before moving toward her bike to grab the shopping bags stuffed into the baskets I’d fastened to the bike. “You know, most girls mean a totally different word when they talk about a ‘b-word.’”
“And the day I can be grouped in with ‘most girls,’ then maybe I’ll bat my eyes and go all wobbly-kneed when someone calls me beautiful. In the meantime, use it sparingly.” She nudged me as she shouldered up beside me, reaching for one of the bags.
“I’ve got it,” I said, slipping the bag away from her.
“Please don’t make me feel like an invalid. We’ve talked about this.” Rowen glanced at the bags in my hands and waited.
“You just rode your bike lord knows how far and have to climb a steep set of stairs to our condo now. I think you’ve stressed your body enough without heaving twenty pounds of groceries up said stairs.” I stepped back when she reached for one of the bags. I wasn’t giving in. I wasn’t. I gave in all the time, but this was important. Where her health and life was concerned, it was critically important.
She threw her arm in the direction of the stairs. “Why are you acting like trudging up a flight of stairs is like scaling K-2 in a pair of Keds?”
“Why are you acting like climbing them is like taking a nap under a tree in the summer?” I would have waved at the stairs too, but my hands were too full with the groceries.
“Because they’re stairs. Twenty of them, the last time I counted. Hardly enough to get my heart rate up any more than if I was taking that nap under that tree.” Her voice was level, calm almost.
Rowen was as used to getting into these kinds of squabbles as I was. We had plenty of them. Daily, sometimes hourly. I’d gotten used to it and had accepted that the reason we argued our point was because we cared. If I didn’t care so much about her, it would be much easier to just give in and wave her up the stairs with bags of groceries about to tumble out of her arms. If she didn’t care so much about me, it would be much easier for her to just let me turn into an anxious creature who had watched her every step since the words “heart condition” filtered through that doctor’s office.
We argued because we cared. Seemed kind of backward, but not once I’d really given it some thought.
“Let me help. Please, Rowen. I’m here. Last time I checked, I’m pretty damn strong.” I curled my arm so my bicep pressed through the material of my T-shirt. She tried not to notice, but her eyes lingered. “Not to mention I’ve got close to two decades of experience carrying groceries. I can get through this, but I need you to let me help where I can.”