Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 100661 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100661 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
“I don’t blame you.” He took my elbow and guided me toward the steps. “Second floor. First door on your right.”
“Thanks,” I said, heading up the steps. “I’ll just be a minute. Then I want to say goodbye to your parents.”
“Okay.” He waited at the bottom of the stairs a moment. “Hey, Mabel?”
“Yes?”
“I was wondering. Would it be okay if I stayed with you tonight?”
Reaching the top of the steps, I paused. Closed my eyes. Swallowed. “If you want to.”
“I just feel like we didn’t get much of a chance to talk with everyone around. And you still have to open your presents.”
I turned around and looked down at him. He stood with his feet slightly apart, hands in the pockets of his gray dress pants. The cuffs of his blue dress shirt were rolled up, exposing his thick forearms. His dark hair was slightly tousled, probably from the wind outside, and his cheeks were flushed from the cold. I could warm you right up, I thought. In fact, my body is an inferno just looking at you.
“I’ll just crash on the couch again,” he said.
I didn’t want him to crash on the couch. I wanted him to want me like I wanted him. I wanted to spend tonight with his naked body pressed against mine. I wanted to feel him moving inside me, deep and hard.
But I forced myself to smile. “Sure. That’s fine.”
“I’ll get my bags,” he said, starting up the stairs.
I hurried into the bathroom and shut the door, hiccups coming on with a vengeance.
TWENTY-ONE
joe
It was after six by the time Mabel and I got on the road. “Sorry about that,” I grumbled. “Goodbyes in my family are endless. By the time you hug the last person, it’s been so long, the first person wants another hug.”
“I think it’s sweet. Everyone really loves one another. And your parents are so adorable.” She was quiet for a second, then she turned to me. “Hey, what’s the thing about the tattoo?”
“My dad has my mom’s name tattooed on his chest. They have this crazy history, which they didn’t tell us about until we were a lot older, but evidently they eloped to Vegas when they were like twenty-one or something, and they got tattoos of each other’s names and their wedding date.”
“That’s so romantic!”
“Well, it was, but then for some reason, my dad decided they’d made a mistake. He wanted my mom to take a year to study abroad like all the women in her family had done, and she wasn’t going to do it because she didn’t want to leave him. Her family was really mad about it, and he didn’t want to be the reason she didn’t go. So he broke it off.”
She gasped. “No way.”
“Yeah, with a real dick move—a note by the side of the bed.” I shook my head.
“No!”
“Of course, now he says he never meant that marrying her was a mistake, just that they’d rushed it. But my mom was devastated. She covered up her tattoo, took the trip abroad, and didn’t speak to him for seven years.”
“Wow. How’d he win her back?”
I thought for a moment about what I’d been told. “I’m not entirely sure about the details, but somehow he got her to give him another chance, and she saw that he still had that tattoo. She said she was toast after that. She knew he’d always loved her.”
Mabel sighed. “That’s so romantic. He knew she was the one all that time.”
“I guess.”
“What, you don’t believe in soul mates?”
“I’ve never really thought about it. It just seems kind of unlikely that there’s only one perfect person for somebody.”
“Even so, there’s something wonderful about someone believing you’re the only one for them, isn’t there?”
“Seems like a lot of pressure.”
She made a noise. “Unlike your dad, you are not romantic.”
I laughed. “My dad is a hard man to live up to, but I’m trying. What about your parents?”
“The story goes that it was love at first sight. On their first date, he told her he was going to marry her. And six months later, he did.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes. And then they had five kids.”
“Funny how we both come from big families.” I glanced at her. “Do you want a big family?”
“I don’t know. Four or five kids seems like a lot. I’m still trying to wrap my head around one.”
“Me too.”
“But I would like at least one more. It’s fun to grow up with siblings. I’d like for you to meet mine.”
When I remained silent, she laughed.
“They’re not going to come at you with an axe, Joe.”
“No?”
“No. They can see that I am being taken care of. That I’m happy.”
I rubbed a finger beneath my lower lip. “Are you happy?”
“Yes. I mean, I wouldn’t have chosen this way to go about starting my family. But I’m ready to be a mom. I can’t wait to just love him with everything I have, you know? To hold him and hear him cry and feed him and kiss him and rock him and watch him sleeping and just know that he’s mine—I mean, ours,” she said with a laugh.