Throughout the week, Bonnie and I didn’t get a lot of time together. Everything felt rushed and abbreviated. I was always in a hurry to close out, to lock up, to just ... get to her. Worried she’d wear herself out waiting up for me most nights. I was just as desperate to get her clothes off as I was to get twenty minutes to talk to her about her day. I wanted to take her out and share a meal. I looked forward to her stealing my samosas over dinner.
Funny what a few months could change.
I’d given her a key to my place so that on the weeknights she came over—most of them—she could let herself in and relax. My schedule wasn’t exactly set, and depending on how busy the bar got, I couldn’t expect to leave at the same time every night.
Sometimes I woke her up on my couch, where she’d fallen asleep waiting for me. But it wasn’t always about getting her naked. There were nights I just carried her to bed and wrapped myself around her, relieved to have her in my arms, knowing she was safe and sleeping soundly.
I should have been worried. Should have been scared shitless that in the last three months, this woman had somehow become the single most important part of my life. It wasn’t just Magnolia anymore, or Lia. I didn’t know if I was excelling at the work-life-balance thing yet, but there had definitely been progress.
It was Bonnie who occupied my thoughts. Soft skin and a sweet smile. Her body behind me on the back of my bike, arms tight around my middle. The way she breathed my name while I moved inside her, indulgent and demanding at the same time. The scent of honeysuckle finding me in my dreams.
My life wasn’t just the bar anymore. I had something besides payroll and vendor shipments, employees and tourists filling seats at Magnolia.
There was Bonnie, but there were also emails from Eloise Carter in my inbox. Not to mention the little girls breathing down my neck about coaching soccer in the spring. I had a place in this town, with these people, in a way I’d never anticipated. And part of me knew that it had all changed because I’d let one person in.
“Are you really going to just stand there and ignore her?” Bonnie poked her head around the doorframe and stared pointedly at my feet, making sad puppy eyes. Well, actually, sad bunny eyes.
From my place on the couch, I glanced down at Oreo.
Truthfully, I’d gotten distracted while Bonnie had been in the bathroom, washing her face and brushing her teeth. I hadn’t really noticed the rabbit sitting by my feet, desperate for my attention. But now that I wasn’t thinking about all the ways my life had changed this fall, I could see more damage inflicted by the persistent little furball.
“This rabbit is obsessed with me,” I called to Bonnie, who’d retreated down the hallway. “I have holes in my socks, Clyde. All of them.”
I heard her laugh from the other room, the sound ricocheting through my chest and warming me through.
For whatever reason, the bunny was weirdly obsessed with me. She followed me around and nibbled on my socks when I wasn’t giving her attention. I liked to tease Bonnie, but I’d honestly gotten used to the rabbit. I was more of a dog person, but Oreo wasn’t so bad.
I picked her up and set her next to me on the couch, stroking her long, floppy ears.
A moment later, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw a text from my grandmother.
Lia: Breakfast is on in the morning. Eggs and grits. Bacon, if you’re lucky.
Her typically brusque and abbreviated method of communicating was familiar, if not warm, and it made me smile. I usually saw Lia on weekday mornings, after Bonnie left for school. It had been a while since she invited me over for breakfast on a weekend.
My fingers continued to pet the rabbit’s soft fur as my gaze strayed toward the hallway. Bonnie emerged in pajamas—another one of my tee shirts and some fuzzy pants that had snowflakes all over them—and gave me a sweet smile as she spied me with Oreo.
“Want some popcorn to go with the movie?” she asked, already standing on tiptoes to reach the stovetop popper she kept in the cabinet over the fridge.
“Sure,” I agreed, a formality at this point.
My phone had gone dark, but I stared down at it for a long moment. Before I let myself think too hard, I pressed my thumbs to the screen and started typing.
Me: Could I bring someone? Would that be okay?
I watched the screen for nearly a minute as the smell of hot oil and the sound of popping corn drifted in from the kitchen. Then a surprisingly few letters appeared, considering how hard those dots had been working.
Lia: Yes
“Hey, Clyde,” I called over my shoulder.
“Yeah,” she replied over the rapid pop, pop, pop and the squeak of the hand crank.
“Would you want to come with me in the morning? Lia just texted and invited us over for breakfast.”
The squeaking halted suddenly before resuming after a beat. “Sure,” Bonnie said. “That sounds great.”
I hadn’t exactly told my grandmother I was seeing someone, but I’d noticed she’d laid off her spiel recently. Her typical, less-than-subtle nudges at me to get a life or a hobby or a girlfriend had been markedly absent. And her questions about Magnolia Bar hadn’t contained the distinctive undertones of “you’re going to die alone with a bar towel slung over your shoulder.” I figured gossip about me and Bonnie had spread by now to her trivia team or knitting group or whoever the hell she spent her time with. In a town this size, it was inevitable.
