“They’re not sad tears,” she assures me with a smile and a gentle shake of her head.
Leaves rustle as the live oak on the other side of the deck’s railing sways in a gust of wind that passes us. As they settle, we’re left in the thick silence of a once-lively city gone to rest.
Jules sniffs as I take up the space next to her, the acrylic of the seat cushion offering a quiet squeak under my weight.
“I had this dream for us,” she tells me. “I thought we’d have five or six little ones running around in the back yard of our cozy pink house. We would have taco Tuesdays and family movie nights every Saturday – everyone would get a turn to pick a movie, so it would be fair. And we’d love them; I meanreallylove them, the way that we should have gotten.”
The pad of her finger dances around the rim of the mug in her hand, eventually stopping to pick at a small chip in the edge. “And then Paxton died, and we couldn’t open the door or touch each other anymore, and that dream died, too.”
I follow her gaze to the door which leads into the house, where our partner is sleeping, and a tender smile pulls across her face to contrast against the tears lining her eyes.
“Connor wants kids,” she continues. “I think you want more, too, and I’m realizing that maybe that dreamdidn’tdie for me; but I’m afraid of it, now. I’m terrified of the loss, but— this feels so silly to say out loud,” she says with a dismissive shake of her head. “I’m even more afraid that we’ll forget him.”
“Baby,” I sigh, my head tilting. My arm hooks around her waist and I pull her body closer to mine, until she twists to let her thighs rest on top of my own. “We’re not forgetting him; regardless of what we do or don’t do. We’re gonna be eighty years old, changing each other’s fucking diapers, and still fighting over whose nose he had.”
A hand clamps over her mouth as a soft laugh huffs past the tears that still insist on falling. Reaching carefully toward her, my thumb gently swipes them away, and for a second, we hold each other there in a smile at the memories that we almost had.
“It was my dad’s,” she insists, but I shake my head in disagreement.
“Montgomery, a hundred percent,” I argue, giving the tip of my nose a few taps with a finger. “I can pull up Graham’s baby pictures again, if I have to.”
Resting her mug onto the table in front of us, she settles onto my lap, straddling me.
Her hands slide up the length of my sides, one of them stopping in its path to settle at the small tattoo that only the two of us know the meaning behind.
When they resume their trail, her palms come to rest on either side of my jaw. Her forehead rests against mine, her voice going soft as she speaks.
“Thank you,” she tells me, her eyes moving between mine, and my brow furrows. “For not giving up on us. For being every perfect thing that you were told not to be.”
“Jules—”
“I’m not done yet,” she tells me, moving her hand to press against my chest, her teeth nipping at the inside of her cheek. Her brow tremors, but she stops it by forcing a smile across her lips. “Thank you for loving me when I didn’t deserve it.”
I let my arms snake around her body, squeezing her tightly with a hand cradling the back of the head that now rests in the crook of my neck.
“Yes you did,” I promise her.
My fingers drum against the tile wall of the shower while I hum along to the music playing in my head. I love hotel showers. Yeah, this may not technically be a hotel, but it’s still a bigger shower that I don’t have to pay for, and the water pressure isperfect. I’d stay in here for another hour if I didn’t know that Jules was going to want to use it before we leave.
Pulling a soft cotton towel from its rack, I wrap it around my waist, throwing the smaller one next to it over my shoulder.
As I step into my boxer briefs, the cracked door opens to let Connor step through it. His hair, still slightly damp from his own shower, comes to life with curls at the ends which will settle into his usual relaxed waves as it dries.
The sleeves on his polo shirt are just short enough to let the memorial tattoo I put on his bicep years ago peek out from beneath one of them. My focus goes to it, his own on the dick that I’m stuffing into my underwear. We meet each other in a smirk as I pull the towel from my shoulder.
“Did her alarm not go off?” He asks, using his head to gesture into the bedroom where our wife is sleeping.
“I turned it off,” I tell him with a shake of my head. Scrubbing the towel through my hair, I toss it onto the counter. “We can handle the packing.”
Using his hands to brace his weight, he leans against the counter, crossing one ankle over the other as I toss the used piece of fabric in my hand into the waiting basket.
“I know taking time away from the shop sucks, but I’m really glad you two were here for this,” He tells me. “It means a lot tome. She would never say it out loud, because that would mean admitting that she’s okay with this, but it meant a lot to Irina, too.”
“We saw that girl graduate high school,” I chuckle as I bounce in place, pulling my jeans over my hips. “No chance we were missing this.”
Reaching past him for the box on the counter top, I pop open its lid and pull out a fresh patch, slapping it onto the space above my hip. I shouldn’t have lowered the dose again before a road trip, but I’m getting tired of playing pin the tail on the fucking donkey, trying to find a new place to put the things every day. I’m ready to just get it over with.
“I didn’t think you’d actually use them,” Connor comments, laser-focused on the square patch.
