Page 239 of Romeo

The three dots disappeared.

For a while, neither of us sent anything.

The silence didn’t bother me. Somewhere along the way, Fiona and I had stopped treating every gap in a conversation as something that needed filling. We could leave each other sitting for ten minutes, an hour, sometimes longer, then pick up exactly where we left off.

I took another drink and looked around the clubhouse.

This was home.

The scarred bar. The mismatched furniture. The brothers who could annoy the shit out of me before breakfast and still be the first men beside me if something went sideways. The old ladies who liked to mother more than just the kids. My business was here. The club was here. Most of what I’d built as an adult existed within a few miles of where I sat.

Fiona had never seen any of it.

Not really.

Pictures didn’t count. Stories didn’t count.

She knew Diamond Creek through whatever I chose to show her from fifteen hundred miles away, one conversation at a time.

And now she knew the weather without asking me.

Me: So, Christmas.

Ma Belle: You’re persistent.

Me: Very.

Ma Belle: What about it?

Me: Hypothetically, if somebody from Virginia ended up spending Christmas in Nebraska someday, what would she need?

Ma Belle: A plane ticket home

I smiled.

Me: Cruel.

Ma Belle: A coat.

Me: Covered.

Ma Belle: Boots.

Me: Easy.

Ma Belle: Gloves.

Me: Done.

Ma Belle: Hot chocolate.

Me: Thought you drank coffee?

Ma Belle: I contain multitudes

Me: Expensive multitudes.

Ma Belle: And a Christmas tree.