“Fred?” Dan looks over at Winnie. “I thought your name was Winnie!”
“Tan calls me Fred, it’s because my name is Winifred.” She shakes her head. “He’s weird.”
Now Tanner takes another piece of zucchini and throws it. This time it bounces off Winnie’s forehead and lands right on her lap. Her little giggles turn into a deep belly laugh, which just sends everyone into another fit of laughter.
When dinner is long over, nobody brings themselves to leave the table. Danielle passes around the bug spray, and we sit in the warm evening air. Our faces are lit by the citronella candles, and our conversation is backdropped by bugs and crickets and birds and Lemon’s playful barking when he chooses the next person at the table to throw the tennis ball for him.
Tanner has reached over at some point and folded my hand in his and then brought our hands to rest in his lap together. He traces the ridges of my fingers and knuckles as he talks and as he listens. The lines by his eyes deepen with each smile and laugh. The dimple on full display while I run my finger along the back of his necklace.
“You okay?” he asks quietly after a while.
I nod, unable to let the words out, so I squeeze his hand.
“You know what we need?” Jackie stands after a while. “We need s’mores. What do you think Winnie? Marshmallow roasting contest?”
Winnie looks up from where she now lays in the grass with Lemon and nods excitedly. Pieces of grass in her hair and a grass stain on her dress.
“No marshmallow contest boys. Remember what happened last time? Uncle Harry almost lost a finger.” Danielle shoots them a glare. “How about you guys go clean up. The girls will get the fire going.”
The boys laugh under their breath, sweep up the plates, then head inside with Winnie and Lemon on their heels.
“I have never seen him this way,” Danielle says as we walk through the lush grass.
“What do you mean?”
She shakes her head as she lifts a couple logs and hands them to me. “He just seems content. He smiles more. He laughs more. He tells us more. He just seems lighter, you know? In love.”
“Never? Not even when he was engaged?” I ask, and she nearly scoffs.
“He proposed because it was what he needed to do. Not because he loved her. He did care about her, but not like this.”
Mayben leans back in her chair and rests her hands on her belly. “He really loves you and Winnie.”
When the guys come back out to us, Tanner doesn’t hesitate to lean down and place a kiss on my head. And since we did very little in the effort to actually start a fire, Dan quietly steps over, kisses his wife, then begins to assemble the logs. He even shows Winnie how to start and keep the fire going, telling her about air flow and wood placement. Jackie and Mayben talk about baby names they like. Danielle tears up the thought of the babies again. Everyone is occupied, content.
I pick my head up off Tanner's shoulder and take a deep breath, letting it out slowly.
“What is it?” Tanner asks, sensing something.
“What if I stay?” I ask so only he can hear. “Just add on a few months to my trip and I don’t know, see where this goes? Really give this a real shot.”
There’s a flash of surprise on his face. “What would Winnie think?”
When I look over at her, I see the little blonde sprite staring up at Tanner’s dad the same way she looks at Paul. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. In fact, I think she would prefer it.”
Tanner turns my chin to meet my eyes. His are deep and steady and the very place I find myself continuously coming back to.
“I would love that,” he whispers and presses his lips into mine. The kiss is quick but entirely what I need because this time it feels like one of many to come, and not possibly the last.
I settle back under his arm with a calmness in my heart. Dan helps Winnie make a s’more and fends off everyone’s attempt to turn it into a contest of who could brown the perfect one. Tanner makes me mine, and even though he claims burning it is against his morals, he makes it perfectly blackened and burned for me. I sit there taking this all in and I don’t think I have ever felt more at home than I do under Tanner’s arm.
30
“They just landed at the airport.”
I blink at my phone to make sure it was, in fact, Lauren calling me and not a wrong number. Winnie and I are watering the seeds in the planter boxes on the bacon-knee that Tanner helped us plant the other day.
“What are you talking about?”
