“Come on, Rio! Play along.”
“What do they do, baby?”
She rolled her eyes at my dull tone, but she wasn’t deterred. “They get jalapeño business!”
When she saidjalapeño, it came out like, al-ap-en-yo. Translated:all-up-in-yo. A beat passed between us, and she exploded with laughter. I couldn’t help it. I laughed too. It wasn’t really from the joke, but how she’d been lately.
She was being…Mia. I could see the girl she once was and the woman she was becoming.
Mine.
Always mine.
My old man said this place was a sanctuary. A place to find peace in the world. Maybe I had become numb to it because I only felt peace around her. But I could see the difference the time here had made in her.
“Here,” I said, stopping at two crates I purposely left out. All those years ago, my old man had saved them. I helped her sit. I took the one next to her. I checked my watch.
“Need to be somewhere?”
My eyes found hers. “Nowhere but here.”
“Perfetto,” she breathed out.
As she did, the lights in the trees started to flash in time to the tempo of the song that played. Her eyes flickered with it.
“Boxes,” she said, her smile so wide it made her eyes crinkle. “Your old-man music!”
“Boxes” was the name of the song I’d sent to her years ago. It was what she called my old-man music.
“I inherited my old man’s taste in music.” I shrugged. “I enjoy music that’s even more ancient than this one.”
She moved in closer to me, really listening to the song. Her head rested on my shoulder, and her hand came to my knee. When I looked down, her free hand held up the envelope she’d brought.
“For you,” she whispered.
I took it from her. Slowly, I slid my finger under the flap. She hadn’t sealed it. My eyes refused to look away from the picture she’d given me.
Her finger traced the both of us. “Austin, Texas,” she said. “Remember? The Hamilton Pool Preserve.”
I nodded, the knot in my throat too hard to talk past. She was floating around, and I was right next to her. The picture caught the exact moment she splashed me and started laughing. I was a mean-looking motherfucker even back then. Years did nothing to soften me. Somehow, though, she had the power to.
“Mamma took it of us. I had no idea. Not until recently. I wanted to give you something special, but not…a thing. A memory. Something meaningful to both of us. I knew I loved you then, Saverio.” She turned it over. Scarlett had written our names and the date on the back.
Lower than that was more writing. Different handwriting.
“If I were dead and buried And I heard your voice, Beneath the sod My heart of dust Would still rejoice.”Mia read the quote out loud. “That was me, my handwriting. I wrote that.”
I leaned in and kissed her lips softly before I turned to the side and flipped another crate over. I picked up a box and handed it to her.
“Open it,” I said when her hands only caressed the top.
She did, then pulled out a rock that was inside. She lifted it up. “You didn’t.”
“I saved it.”
She’d thrown it at me that day at the pool preserve in Austin. She’d thrown it at me because I’d told her she was going to marry me someday. It pissed her off. I thought smoke was going to blow out of her ears and nose. I’d saved it all those years so I could give it to her when the time was right. The rock symbolized the moment she cracked my darkness and her light flooded in.
“And here I am,” she said, caressing the rock. “Marrying you.”
