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“So, who had the idea for the matching shirts?” he asks.
Nancy and Gram exchange conspiratorial looks, and Gram answers. “Your grandmother felt I needed something to do to keep me busy.”
He glances around the little circle, taking in the neon pink and fluorescent lime green tie-dye creations that Nancy insisted we wear. “I love them. It was so easy to find my cheering section.”
“What was louder?” Gram asks him. “Your grandmother’s chosen color palette or our yelling?” Like I said, feisty as ever.
He chugs some water and makes eye contact with each of us. “Thank you. All of you. For being here. This means a lot to me.” There’s a round of chatter, and Mel suggests we head back to the hotel.
“We’ve got a big day today, and you need a shower. Badly,” she tells her son. When she looks away, he shifts his gaze to me and winks.
I pinch his side, squint against the sunlight, and return the smile he’s giving me.
We wait for a bus that can accommodate Gram’s scooter and head downtown, and everyone agrees that regardless of how hungry we all are, we’re waiting until Sawyer has a chance to shower and change before we grab lunch. It’s possible that’s for our benefit more than his.
“Sure you don’t want to join me, baby?” he asks, leaning through the bathroom door as I scroll through a string of emails from my agent and editor.
I swear he uses the pet name to lure me in, the same way he uses his slow striptease or the attention he draws to the boxers slung low on his hips, showcasing his tattoo. I don’t give in, don’t take the bait. Eyes on the phone, nowhere else. “Love to, but can’t.”
“Don’t you love me anymore?” he asks, and he laughs when I roll my eyes. Because of course I love him, which is crazy. We met barely three months ago, but when you spend so much time with someone and see how they care for you and help you in the hardest times of your life, you know. Gram calls it trial by fire, us being thrown into domesticity while helping her, trying to work, and still learning so much about each other. I say we’re forged: beaten and burned, a beautiful creation.
He told me in late December, during a weekend getaway when my parents were in town and staying with Gram.
We decorated gingerbread cookies at a bakery, surrounded by children who had more icing on their hands than on their cookies.
Then we went to dinner, Christmas sangria for me and a lager for him, soft candlelight and piano music waltzing in the air around us.
After, and the whole reason we chose the destination for our night away, a visit to Green Fable Gardens to see more than five million lights on display. It was there, after I nearly choked on my hot chocolate at one of his jokes, standing under a twinkling arborvitae archway, that his smile faded and he swallowed hard.
“Gwen,” he said. “I’m in love with you.”
I remember my heart plummeting and rising, diving to the pit of my stomach and then catapulting to my throat, before settling warmly where it belongs. It was the way he said it: ‘I’m in love with you,’ not just ‘I love you,’ the latter of which is actually the more important of the two, long-term, but can be platonic or familial. In love implies a fire, excitement, this feeling of falling into some abyss, deep and unknown, but diving in anyway. Dumbstruck, relieved, I didn’t answer right away.
“It’s too soon. I know that.”
I shook my head, tears threatening to freeze in my eyelashes. “It’s not—”
“You don’t have to say it back. I just… I couldn’t keep that in anymore.”
“Anymore?”
He nodded, dropped his gaze, met mine with a smile tugging on the corners of his mouth. “I’ve known for a while, I guess.”
“Me too. I mean…That I love you. That I’m in love with you.” My mittens—knit by Nancy—felt too hot, and heat rushed to my ears, toes, and cheeks, too. When he kissed me, there was something new there: some hope or promise we hadn’t explored yet.
And there we were, a snowglobe scene, frozen while other visitors meandered past, taking photos and videos of the decorations, unaware of this momentous thing right in front of them.
We made love as soon as we got back to our hotel, tender and soft and tangled together, limbs entwined, love lingering on our lips.
Driving back the next day, he asked, “When did you know?” His thumb brushing over my knuckles as our hands lay interlocked on the armrest.
“The day you showed up at my apartment,” I answered. His lips curled upward like he was pleased with the response. “I was so grateful that you showed up, that you wanted to stay.” He deposited a kiss where his thumb had just been. “What about you? When did you know?”
He glanced in the rearview, flicked on the blinker, and changed lanes. “Bermuda. When you kissed me.”
My jaw dropped. “No way. You didn’t know way back then.”
“It’s only two weeks before you knew.” He shifted into the exit lane, despite our exit to get back to my place being twenty miles away.
