AllFreeNovel
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“Hey, if you know you’re not supposed to see this, why do you keep looking?” I ask. “Give a girl a break, big guy.”
I slam shut the giant photo album I’ve secretly been working on for weeks and, come to think of it, it’s no big deal whether he sees it at this point.
It’s for him, anyway. Well, both of us, really.
I leave my mess on the floor where I created it, where I’ve camped out for a few hours every day when he’s not home, to put together a scrapbook of everything we’ve shared since we met at my mom’s fundraiser auction.
“Hey, can you come meet me in the living room, babe?” I call.
He pokes his head out of the bedroom. “Thought I wasn’t supposed to look. Shall I close my eyes? Wear a blindfold?”
“Just get over here,” I huff.
He plops onto the sofa next to me after kissing me on the temple. “Mmmm. Baby smells like Elmer’s Glue. Sexy.”
I put my hands on the album, an anthology of our life to date. “This is a scrapbook I made for us. Check it out.”
He looks at me and slides the album onto his lap, and when he flips it open, he immediately starts howling.
The first image is of me onstage with my mother, just having learned I won him in the auction. My expression is part confusion, part disgust.
In short, it’s not flattering, but also perfectly captures the start of our romance, when there was nothing but resistance, irritation, and wariness.
“I’m so glad you started with that photo. It really is classic. You have ‘I’ll have nothing to do with that guy’ screaming across your face.”
“Totally. I thought it was the perfect way to start the chronicling of us.”
He flips through the following pages, filled with the coffee stirrer I swiped from our first meeting where Vince was babysitting, to a napkin from our steak dinner in Vegas, to the marriage license from the wedding chapel.
“Holy shit. Do you just collect shit wherever you go?”
Busted. “Yeah. I tend to do that. Fill my pockets with stuff that I just drop into a drawer in case I want it later. I have a lot of stuff from our encounters. Look, here’s a napkin from one of your games covered with nacho cheese.”
I’m classy that way.
He crinkles his face. “Gross. I there something wrong with you?” he laughs.
I nod. “Most definitely. But look, I don’t hide shit. Don’t tell me anything I do surprises you.”
He keeps turning pages. “True. I always know what I’m getting with Petal Parker. Holy shit. You took a picture of the jumbotron when Tyler filled my water bottle with lemon juice?” he gulps.
I’m trying not to laugh. “Lucy took it. I had to include it. So perfect.”
“This really is. Thank you, baby. It perfectly captures the insane shit show that has been our relationship to date. I love how you recorded all this because if it wasn’t here in black and white, no one would believe it.”
“Just wait till our kids see this someday.”
His gaze snaps in my direction. “Are you trying to tell me something by mentioning kids?”
My eyes widen. “No. Hell no. That might be in the cards for us, but not just yet.”
“Cool. Cool, baby. Hey, what’s this thing right here?” he asks.
At the last minute I threw in a picture of a ring I found on the internet, and pasted a question on top of it.
“What do you think it is?” I ask.
He turns it right-side up. “Will you be my teammate for life?” he reads.
