“You shouldn’t have driven home like that,” she said, waving at me as I staggered toward her. Her voice was stern, but she couldn’t hide her smile. She was happy I was there, glad I’d made it home for the night. I was even more so. “Getting behind the wheel in your condition is worse than drowning yourself in whiskey and driving. I need you alive, please.”
I grinned as I finished my journey toward her. I felt drunk. But the happy kind of drunk. The warm, tingly kind. Rowen did that to me. She made me feel all warm and happy and tingly.
Kicking off my boots, which was more like almost tripping over them, I crawled in beside her—she’d already scooted over to make room—roped my arms around her, and lowered my head on the pillow beside hers. I was home.
“I need you alive too, please.”
HE WAS GONE. I didn’t have to open my eyes to know it. I could practically feel the side of the bed he slept on was cold and empty. I didn’t like waking up after he’d slipped away without me noticing. I knew why he didn’t wake me before leaving—he was obsessed with me getting every wink of sleep I could—but I didn’t like starting my day without him. It just didn’t feel right. Like it was a bad omen.
Most mornings I stirred before he’d fully rolled out of bed at four. It was our chance to have a few quiet minutes alone to share a cup of coffee and pretend life was as easy and breezy as it wasn’t. I hadn’t missed a morning with him in a few weeks, so that was probably why I was feeling extra-strength grumpy when Lily came into the living room at nine in the morning. As was her routine, she knocked on the wall just outside, like it was a door and she was announcing herself, and waited for an invitation to come in. I found it especially endearing.
“Enter if you dare,” I called, smoothing my hair and blankets so I didn’t look like a banshee and frighten the girl. I woke up looking more like a wild animal than a woman most mornings. Especially so since the bed rest.
“I dare.” She stepped inside wearing a smile that implied she knew a secret no one else in the whole world was privy to. I loved those kinds of smiles. They were a side effect of love in its infancy, when you’re certain no one else could ever know how you feel.
“What are you up to this fine morning?” I asked. Outside, the day was turning out to be a beautiful last-days-of-summer-meets-first-days-of-fall kind of day. If an eighteen-year-old girl didn’t have big plans for a day like this, the world was doomed.
“Colt’s coming to pick me up in a little while, but my chores are done, I can’t mess with my hair for another moment, and was wondering if you’d like to kill a little time with me?”
Lily was wearing one of her linen summer dresses but had slid into a denim jacket to fight off the chill these kinds of mornings brought in. She was in a pair of shortie cowgirl boots and was wearing her hair down and swept over one shoulder. Unconsciously, I’d always pictured Lily as a girl. I’d never looked far enough ahead to see her as the woman she’d become, the one standing in front of me today.
If a sister-in-law could seem to just grow up overnight, how much faster would it seem my own child would? The thought made me mourn a day that was years and years away, almost making me wish the baby would stay in my stomach a little longer than expected.
That wish vanished in the two seconds it took for me to shift myself around in bed and feel like I was more a walrus with no arms or legs to assist me, just some giant thing trying to scoot along through life.
“I’ve got so much time to kill these days, it’s not even funny.” I eyed the chair beside my bed. Jesse usually used it to pull on his boots or drink his coffee in while we talked for a few minutes in the morning before he rushed out the door to spend a twelve- to fifteen-hour day working. “So please, come kill some with me together. Much more enjoyable that way.”
She practically skipped across the room before floating into the chair beside me. Her smile would not be tamed. I doubted little could steal it from her.
“Someone’s looking rather joyous this morning,” I said, arching a knowing eyebrow. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with getting to spend the day with your young beau, would it?”
Her eyes lightened a shade. “It would.” She checked out the window.
I couldn’t even begin to guess how many times I’d checked out that window for Jesse to come pulling up the driveway. No joke that a million was a closer estimate than a thousand.
“But we’re only spending the morning together, not the whole day,” she said. “I’ve got a bunch of things I promised Mom I’d help her with, and he’s got to catch a flight back to California later this afternoon.” Her boyfriend flying away was one of the few things that could wear at her smile.
“How long will he be gone?” I reached for the insulated cup of coffee Jesse had left for me and took a sip. It was decaf, but it still tasted good.
“A week this time. Only a week.” From her tone, it was like she was trying to reassure herself.
“That’s hard, isn’t it? Managing a long distance relationship. Especially when you guys haven’t been together very long.”
Lily nodded and exhaled. “It’s so much harder than I thought it would be. I don’t know how you and Jesse managed it, especially with you guys only having been together a couple of months before you left for Seattle.”
I lifted my shoulders. “We loved each other.”