Page 125 of Roadrunner

There was nothing dressed up about it. I found, sitting there, that I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

I took his hand.

He shook it. Firm. Two pumps. Exactly the way Antonio used to shake a hand, exactly the way I’d watched Riley shake Arthur’s the first night the two of them ever met.

“It’s all I have to offer,” he declared.

This man.

The man who had been the answer to every question I’d ever asked since the moment I stood in the desert waving my arms at a stranger on a motorcycle.

“It’s all I need,” I said.

He looked at me. “Is that a yes?”

“That’s a yes,” I replied.

He held my gaze for a moment.

Then he picked up his root beer. “Okay.”

I laughed.

He glanced at me. “What?”

“Nothing,” I said. “That’s just the most Riley response possible.”

“What did you want me to do?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It was perfect.”

He looked at the mountains.

I looked at the mountains.

Inside, Arthur’s chair scraped back from the kitchen table. Martina said something. Arthur responded. The ordinary sounds of a Tuesday evening in a house that was becoming exactly what I’d wanted for longer than I’d admitted.

“Riley,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“I want Arthur to be there,” I said. “Whatever we do. However we do it. He stands with us.”

“Obviously,” he said.

“At Della’s,” I said. “I don’t want a production. I don’t want a venue and a caterer and three hundred people.” I looked at him. “I’ve done that. It was wrong for me then and it would be wrong for me now.” I held his gaze. “Della’s is the only place that makes sense.”

He nodded. “I’ll talk to her.”

“She’ll say yes before you finish the sentence,” I said.

“I know,” he said.

“She’ll also try to take over,” I said.

“I know that too,” he said.

“Let her,” I said. “Whatever she wants to do. Let her.”