Page 44 of The True-Blue Romance

“Can we hold hands?”

“Yes, you dope.” Joey presses a hummingbird kiss to my neck, there and gone, then sighs happily while squeezing me tight. “God, I’ll never get sick of this. Ever.”

“Don’t say never. Maybe in twenty years⁠—”

Joey slaps his hand over my mouth. “Shut the fuck up. We’ll be eighty-five in a nursing home and I’m gonna want your ass. You’re my man now.”

“Oh.”

“Get used to it.”

“I’ll try,” I whisper, a little embarrassed at it all. Joey knows me so well at this point that he stays quiet, just rolling out of bed without a word. He tugs me up by my hand, and we do our morning ablutions beside each other in the bathroom, then wander into the kitchen in our hastily pulled-on sweatpants. Feeling disconnected from my body, I watch Joey fill the electric kettle with water and grab a tea he keeps tucked away in my cupboard. This one is peppermint, the one he usually makes me when my stomach hurts. I think of all the teas over our lifetime as friends and wonder how I never realized that maybe, just maybe, he felt more for me than simply friendship.

“You really just… never realized?” I ask in the comfortable silence of the kitchen.

Joey turns around, pressing his palms against the edge of the counter. His eyes are sleepy soft still, brows a little furrowed as he thinks over my question. “I mean, looking back… maybe I should’ve known. I guess it never felt like an option. You’re my best friend. I just thought that’s the way it was supposed to be.” Joey rubs a tired hand down his face and sighs. “Maybe… I don’t know, maybe I wasn’t ready to see it. But it’s probably always been you.” He sends a gorgeous Joey smile my way, dimples popping and making my knees go weak. “I’ve never made love like that in my life.”

“Oh.” I send him a shy smile, feeling warm all over when it seems to make his own smile grown ten times larger. “I’ve never made love either, so we’re even.”

“You’ve never dated,” Joey points out, succinct as always.

“Nah, like I said the other night, it felt wrong. I couldn’t do that to someone. Not when you were my last thought every night. I guess I was hoping one day it would go away. The next time you got married and that stuck, maybe you’d forget me, let me live.” I shrug even as Joey’s smile turns into a frown. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Joey’s quiet as he turns around and pours the tea for each of us. His shoulders are curved in slightly, and I can see the tension my words brought him. I immediately feel bad and want to make it better, to ease that ache that Joey has because of me—an old, learned response from the trauma of growing up with a drunk father who liked to hit when he imagined everything that went wrong with his life was my fault.

“It’s okay, Joey.”

Joey turns back around and walks toward me at the other counter, setting the steaming teas beside me so he can cup his warm hands around my hips, pressing in close to me until the warmth of him settles that weird feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“I don’t wanna spend the rest of our lives apologizing for it, but I’ll spend the rest of our lives making sure you know that it’s only you I want going forward, forever. Okay?”

“All right,” I mutter, tilting my head to avoid his earnest gaze.

Joey uses a finger to tilt my face up. He smiles, soft and warm, eyes glittering a little in the darkness of my kitchen. “I love you, Andrew Bradley. I want to take you out on a date real soon. Wednesday night? Maybe Beau and Trevor can babysit Savannah for us.”

“No, let’s do something with her. We can save the weekends for us.”

Joey’s eyes grow even mistier at my words. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but Savannah is just as much a part of our relationship as we are to each other. He’s kissing me before I can even realize it. His lips are supple, sliding against mine in a decadent sort of way that reminds me of the first bite of chocolate cake. I want to melt into him, kiss him until my lips are bruised. But Joey keeps the kiss soft, despite commanding every moment of it. All the kisses before Joey meant nothing. My universe narrows down to the slide of his lips against mine, until only we exist in the world. I chase Joey’s mouth when he pulls away and he chuckles, squeezing my hips hard enough to make my eyes widen as I take in the glorious sight of him.

“We can have dinner here with her, ease her into it. Okay?”

“If you’re sure.”

“Lee.” Joey shakes his head as if I’m the silliest man on earth. “I’m sure. Get used to it.”

“How’s the restaurant going? Beau hasn’t mentioned it in a while.” I desperately need the topic to change before I melt into a puddle at Joey’s feet.

Joey sends me a look like he’s onto me. “Good. I think it might be done by August, in time for fall. Good time.”

“And how’s Benji doing?”

“Kid has a lot of sense in the kitchen for never having attended culinary school. He’s teachable.”

“Good.”

Joey grabs our teas and turns toward the back porch. I follow him out into the dark that’s starting to lighten from the impending sunrise. We sit side by side on the steps, bare feet in the grass, wet from the morning dew. Everything inside me settles. Joey hands me the tea, which seems to be cool enough now. He then grabs the ends of the tea bags and carefully lifts them, setting them beside him on the deck.

“Drink,” Joey says before taking a sip of his own tea.