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I purse my lips and just stare at him. “I highly doubt there are multiple little shits you have complained about to me over the past few weeks,” I reply. “You know who I’m talking about.”
Bishop sighs, rubbing at the stubble that’s been growing in on his face.
“He’s still just as talented and just as stubborn as he’s been since day one.” He pauses. “He thinks he knows everything and doesn’t want to listen to anyone.”
Snorting, I shake my head. “A boy who thinks he knows everything and doesn’t want to listen to anyone, huh? How is it looking in a mirror?”
He playfully tosses his coaster at me, and I catch it, giggling.
“You and Rush keep making that comparison—which I do not appreciate, by the way.” He sighs again. “And say what you want about who I was as a cocky, young baseball player, but I was never angry. Even when I was mad.”
I bob my head. “I guess something to think about is why someone becomes so angry. I mean, I wasn’t very friendly when we first met. I was a teenager carrying a lot of hurt. My guess is your kid is dealing with hurt, too.”
Bishop narrows his eyes at me. “Can’t you just let me loathe him? Even for a little bit?”
Laughing, I pick up my beer and take another sip. “Nah. I did too much therapy to let moments like this pass me by. If I have advice, you’re getting it.”
His head tilts to the side, surprise on his face. “You finally went to therapy?”
I nod, twisting my beer on the coaster. “I did.”
Bishop sits forward, resting his arms on the table. “That’s so great, Gabi.”
“It was great. I’m not like…healed or anything, but it helped to talk about my mom. A lot more than I realized it would.”
He reaches forward and takes my hand in his. “I’m proud of you. I hope it doesn’t sound condescending to say that.”
I chuckle. “You know, there was a time in my life when I would have said it was condescending, but I don’t feel that way now—because of therapy. So…thank you. It means a lot.”
We sit quietly for a bit, sipping our beers and watching people as they come and go. As much as Bishop and I have always liked to talk, we also always found it very easy to sit in silence and watch people together.
After a while, we grab a deck of cards from the cabinet in the corner and deal out a round of Speed, a game his older brother Boyd taught us when we were in junior high. It’s been close to a decade since I’ve played this game, junior high being probably the last occasion I did so, and Bishop absolutely destroys me to the point that he asks multiple times if I want to try a different game.
Eventually, I admit complete annihilation and we switch to the much calmer gin rummy, spending another hour or so playing and chatting before calling it quits for the night.
“You sure you don’t want to come in?”
Bishop grins at me. “I’m sure. But I’ll definitely walk you to your door.”
I’m not much of a giggler, but this thing Bishop is doing makes me want to do just that. Part of me gets it. He’s making a point that he’s not just in this for the sex. It’s sweet, though entirely unnecessary. That’s where the other part of me lands: in the camp of We’ve been apart for years, we have a lot of sex on the horizon to make up for what we’ve missed out on.
But I don’t say that. Instead, we walk to the front door and kiss like we’re 16 again. It’s filled with passion and anticipation and I can’t help but moan when he pushes me up against the door and begins to lick down my neck.
Okay, he definitely didn’t do this when we were 16. The stubble on his face tickles me, but I love it, and I tilt my head back, communicating with my body that I want him to continue doing just that.
“Be careful,” I murmur as he sucks gently on my skin. “I can’t show up to school with a hickey.”
He chuckles then leans back slightly, one hand braced on the door behind me and the other resting gently on my hip.
“What a scandal that would be, Ms. Ventura.” He kisses me again, this one more chaste. “You coming to the game on Wednesday night?”
I nod. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
One more kiss, and then he pushes away, takes my hand, and presses a kiss against my wrist. He told me once that kissing my wrist was how he told me he loved me back when we were too young to say the words. Now, years later, I wonder if that’s still true.
As Bishop smiles and takes a few steps backward, his eyes watching me like I’m the most important, beautiful thing in the world, I worry that it is.
When I take a seat in the bleachers on Wednesday evening, I’m grateful I brought a thicker jacket and a blanket to sit on. Cedar Point normally doesn’t get too cold until closer to Christmas, with most of the snow coming in the new year, but the weather report is showing that we’re going to start dipping into even cooler temperatures by this weekend, and there’s been plenty of talk around town about if we’ll get snow earlier than normal. I’m hopeful it holds off just a bit longer, at least until after Thanksgiving. But maybe that’s all it is: hope.
