I nodded in agreement.
“Would you have really done it, you think? At the end of the day, could you have made yourself?”
I shrugged. “I’m not getting any younger, and I want kids, so I might could have if I had known for sure that Dan wasn’t coming back.” I felt a shudder run down my spine. “Although the idea of having to make a baby with him is like drinking snuff spit.”
We both laughed.
“So what’s it like?” I asked.
“What’s what like?”
“Sex, of course,” I whispered, though we were the only two in the house. I could feel my cheeks turning pink at the mere mention.
Katie Jo stopped and smiled. “Well, I guess it depends. If you just aren’t so nervous, then it’s wonderful.”
“Are you ever nervous, Katie Jo?”
She laughed. “Oh, no, darling. I think I was born without the ability to be nervous.” She winked. “Which is why it’s always so wonderful for me.”
I thought of Dan, that familiar heat, that pain of desire rising through me. I had waited my whole life to give myself to a man. And I just knew that he would be worth waiting for.
“Are you still waiting until you’re married?” Katie Jo asked. “I mean, I’m not ever getting married, so I couldn’t possibly have waited, but you’ve almost made it.”
I grinned at her. “I don’t think I can wait.”
She gasped and hugged me. “You have to tell me every detail!”
“Ew, Katie Jo.”
“Honey, that’s what best friends are for.”
And I was so grateful for a best friend because, only a few hourslater, after telling my family about the engagement, I certainly wasn’t grateful for them anymore.
“Lynn, let’s just go back and talk this whole thing out,” Dan called from behind me as I stomped down the dirt driveway to nowhere in particular.
I crossed my arms, planted my feet in the dust and spun around. “I’m not talking to anyone. If they don’t want to be a part of our wedding, then they won’t be a part of our marriage either.”
“Sweetheart,” Dan said, finally catching me in a hug.
As I leaned into him, I thought of how nice it was to feel the strength of those gun-carrying arms around me. I inhaled his aftershave, imagining the shape of the bare torso underneath that starched white shirt.
“You know they have to be stunned. They were expecting you to come home and be engaged to this other man. Imagine how they must feel.”
I put my arms around his neck and kissed him again, this time more passionately.
Between kisses he said, “I’m sure if you just give them a little time, they’ll come around.”
Dan’s hand trailed down the back of my shirt as I contemplateda little more time. And, all of a sudden, I realized I was out of time. I wanted to feel the heavy weight of him on top of me. I wanted to put my lips on the skin underneath that crisp shirt.
I had waited twenty-five years. And I wasn’t waiting one more minute.
I threw my lips on his, my breath vanishing into his lungs, lost in the dream of his body and my body becoming one, of our lives and our hearts converging in a swift, passionate motion. “Can we go somewhere?” I whispered.
He smiled down at me. “Anywhere you want.”
I raised one eyebrow suggestively. “I meanalone.”
His eyes widened in surprise. “Lynn, but you’ve waited all this time.”
