“It’s like you’re composing a love sonnet.”
“I could.”
“You don’t have to.”
We both heave ourselves off the floor. Several joints pop.
“There’s a rhyme scheme, right?” I say. “What rhymes withplease ride my cock?”
Andi makes an explosive squeaking noise and turns to me, eyebrows all the way up, already blushing. I’m also blushing, mostly because I saidcock.
“You went straight to that from loading the dishwasher?”
“You still haven’t given me a rhyme,” I point out.
“I’m trying not to encourage you,” she says, and we head to the parking lot.
* * *
In the boxMatt brought over, there’s a picture. An old one, a little faded, worn and wrinkled in a few spots like it’s been touched a lot, looked at, treasured and loved in a hands-on way.
In it: two toddlers, sharing a bathtub, both covered head-to-toe in mud. One light-haired and one dark; grinning and frowning.
It’s been a long time since I was sure what I believe in, but I know I don’t believe in fate. I don’t believe that my life had a set path for me to follow or that what’s happened was always meant to happen. Certainty is for the faithful.
But when you lose your faith, you find possibility. Sometimes it’s terrifying, a gaping maw ofeverythingthat feels like it could swallow you. Sometimes it’s wonderful, a map of all the places you could go. Awful and freeing. Falling and flying.
The photograph is older than my memory, and there she is. It’s strange to think that I’ve known Andi longer than I’ve known myself, but it makes sense that she’s there, intrinsically woven through my life; it makes sense that after she pulled at her thread, the rest started to unravel.
It isn’t fate. There’s nothing inevitable about us: we could be anywhere, with anyone, but we’re here, together. A thousand choices, and I chose this one; a hundred ways to be happy, and I wanted her.
* * *
Reid did,in fact, load the dishwasher wrong.
CHAPTERFORTY-THREE
GIDEON
Andi and Reidmay be the two least sneaky people on the face of the earth, and they’re both currently in my kitchen, trying to casually convince me to come to whatever it is they’ve been “secretly” planning for the last week and a half.
“It’ll be fun!” Andi is saying. “Dwayne Wayne’s Honkytonk Orchestra is playing tonight, and you can just throw your peanut shells on the floor—”
“Neither of those things appeals to me in the least,” I point out, just to be difficult. I’m going to say yes sooner rather than later, and we both know it.
“There’s allegedly line dancing after eleven,” she says, waggling her eyebrows.
“You know how you like line dancing,” Reid deadpans. “And peanut shells.”
I’m not exactly sure what, but they’re Up To Something.
“I haven’t electric slid in years,” I say. “And I’m sure my boot scoot is rusty.”
“No time like the present to practice,” Andi says, grinning, and tilts her head a little to one side. “C’mon. It’ll be fun.”
“You’ve heard of fun,” adds Reid.
No one is dressed for line dancing. Andi’s got on a long-sleeve shirt with one of those wide necks that keeps falling open over her shoulder, and Reid’s wearing a short-sleeved button down with multicolored triangles over it and jeans. It’s the first time in a while I’ve seen him out of oversized hoodies, and I’m still trying to figure out how to tell him he looks nice.
