He shrugs. “Nine minutes and forty-eight seconds if the traffic light on Main Street is in your favor.”
Wren looks at Gus with pride and my chest constricts. I rub at it pathetically.
“Do you enjoy it?” Mom asks.
“I do. It’s a perfect fit for me, I’d say.”
Mom offers a polite smile. “The story of how you two met and fell in love really is something.”
The table falls quiet and so she follows up with another question. “What made you want to propose?”
Gus shrugs like the answer is so simple. “I love Wren.”
Wren clears her throat, sending her fiancé a look, and he instantly shifts in his seat.
“I love her,and…” he looks as if he’s struggling to find more to say. “Um…and I want to spend my life with her.”
“Anything else?” Mom asks, unsatisfied with his answer.
He shrugs again, a pink tinge lighting up his face. “I’m not…um…” He looks to Wren for help, but I feel bad for the guy, so I step in.
“Gus doesn’t mean it in a bad way,” I say. “When he says he loves her, he means he loves every aspect of her, even the ones that annoy him. Simple words always have complex meanings.” I turn to him. “Right?”
He looks surprised that I understood, but, hey, I pay attention.
“Right,” he replies, a small smile tugging at the edges of his mouth. He offers me a nod of gratitude before turning back to my parents. “He’s right. There is not a single thing about her that I don’t love. When I say that I love her I don’t mean that in a shallow way. I am obsessed with your daughter. I would do anything for her. When I say I love her, I mean that I love every part that I get to see when I wake up, go to sleep, see after she’s back from a trip, all of it. I proposed because I love her enough to argue with her for the rest of my life.”
Well, fuck.
I did not expect the pang of sadness racing its way toward my already aching heart. I didn’t expect the feeling of longing and anticipation to run across my chest like horses at a race, each hoof thumping against me and reminding me why I’m alone. I’ve been so busy with work, I never even thought about anything along the lines of what Wren has found with August.
Now that I acknowledge how he looks at her when she’s unaware and the way she smiles to herself whenever he touches her, I think to myself that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad having someone who makes me feel like that. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to come home to something other than an empty house.
My parents look impressed with Gus’s amended answer. I think it’s a comfort to know that your daughter is loved as much as she possibly can by someone.
By the time we’re done with dinner, I’m already up and offering to clean all the dishes alone. Unfortunately, my mother decides that dishes will forever be a two-person job.
We begin washing in silence, her drying the dishes that I pass to her. She hums softly to herself as plates turn to bowls.
“You should go and pick her up,” she eventually says, ruining any thoughts I had of getting off scot-free.
I heave out a heavy sigh. “No, I shouldn’t, Ma.”
“Why not?” She whines, sounding like a petulant child.
Because I’ll be alone with her and will probably kiss her again.
Cliff—Wren’s golden retriever—trots into the kitchen looking for either some attention or some leftover food. He sniffs around my feet before licking my wrist. He spends most of his time on the farm so I barely see him, either.
“Mama, why are you so set on believing that Oakleigh and I are supposed to be together?”
The question makes her pause. She continues drying the dishes as if in a daze. She takes the bowl from my hands before answering.
“I can’t explain it,” she eventually says. “It’s like looking at two pieces of a puzzle that just…fit. There’s no one thing or no one reason, it just works.” She offers a teasing smile. “I’m your mother, I’m supposed to know these things, you know.”
“Did you know when you looked at Gus with Wren today?”
She waves me off. “Oh, I knew long before today. I knew they were right for one another the moment she told me that he flew to Charleston to join her the first time she went away for work.”
