Page 319 of Nobody's Girl

Her eyebrows go up, as do her hands. She speaks with them often. “Ally! I’m not married. I can’t promise you that.”

The tilt of my head lets her know I know better than that. “That boy would make an honest woman out of you, Laura.”

She gives me her no-nonsense look she’s so good at. “Al, I don’t know for sure that he and I will end up married. I won’t marry him just because of our commitment to you two, or if I managed to get knocked up by him either.”

“I see. Looks like this guardian thing has both of you feeling the same way. Kyle said just about the same thing to me earlier. I’ll tell you what I told him. I don’t want you two to feel like you have to be together because of this situation. Be together, or don’t. It will change nothing.”

She tucks the ducklings in and pushes the box up into the bed of the truck. “I’m glad to hear you say that. Kyle and I had a talk earlier this morning. We might give our physical relationship a break for a while.”

My eyes go wide, because who would agree to that nonsense? “Why in the hell would you do that? Whose idea was that? What are you thinking?”

“Okay, Ally, slow down on the questions,” she says as she turns to face me. “We both came to that conclusion. Kyle told me about you knowing he had trouble choosing between the two of us all the way back when he was fifteen.”

“That should help you to see he’s liked you from way back. That shouldn’t make you question how you feel about him or he feels about you now.”

Her foot kicks at the dirt as she looks down at it. “The problem is the physical aspect of it all. He never thought about me in any other way except the physical way. He wanted my body, not my mind.”

Taking her by the shoulders, I say, “He loves your mind now, though. It takes a little while to find things like that out, you know.”

She smiles at me. “You know I had started to like him about the same time he started to like you.”

“I saw things from your perspective too, Laura. I don’t know if he told you about our kiss—the one that started it all. Honestly, Laura, it was barely a kiss. His lips touched mine for a fraction of a second.”

“Well, that fraction made him decide you were the one.”

I shake my head. “No, Cody did. He told Kyle he would lose us both if he tried anything with you after that. Cody did that because he wanted to start seeing you.”

“Prick! Anyway, all Kyle and I did for the month we went back home to Cloudcroft is a lot of nothing. I hung out with his mother, as he constantly asked me to take her here or there. He stayed in his room, moping over you. The day you asked him to come to New Orleans, he perked right back up,” Laura says and looks up at the night sky. “I broke up with him for all of five minutes. Then he said the words, ‘I love you,’ and I fell back onto the Kyle train with no hesitation.”

“Then getting to know each other better will help you to develop a deeper relationship,” I say. “It may just take some time.”

“We were back at it, Ally. Once he said the magic words, we got right back in bed together and haven’t stopped, until last night. After the ceremony, he was different. He was all about you again. Not out loud, mind you, but internally. When I touched him, he ever so gently pushed me away, claiming he was tired. Just like he did when we went back home.”

Telling her about our dreams is a no go.

I send Kyle, ‘Do not under any circumstances tell Laura about our dreams. She’s not going to take it well.’ Then I send the same message to Eden.

“Have you seen us together, in the future?” she asks me.

“I haven’t seen the future that far in advance. I just saw that we would all be here and have that ceremony. Nothing past that.”

She peers at me from under her thick lashes. “Could you try to see it?”

“I don’t know how to do that, but I want you to know I think you would be crazy not to keep your relationship going just as you have been.”

“It isn’t all up to me, Ally. He has to want it too. He stayed away from me as we talked—the little that we did—about not being physical with each other for a while.”

“I think that will pass,” I say. “The commitment ceremony has him confused. I can tell. He hasn’t ever made such a commitment before. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling right now.”

“Honestly, Ally, I know he’s feeling a lot more for you again. I heard him in his sleep last night. He said, ‘Say my name, Ally,’ then a little later he said, ‘Who do you belong to, Ally.’ This was accompanied by a few groans,” she says as she rolls her eyes.

Good Lord! At least she’s not aware of what we’ve got going on. She’d have a shit fit, and leave. I’d never blame her either.

“Did he say anything to you once he woke up?” I ask.

“No, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask him about it. I guess I don’t really want to know.”

“Yeah,” I say. “He probably doesn’t even remember the dumb dream. I wouldn’t bring it up to him. That’d just be a really dumb argument, you know?”