Page 60

His tail thumps once.

I’m not sure if he’s agreeing to stop being so judgmental or just giving up on me.

I ease out from under her arm. She makes a low sound and rolls into the warm spot, pressing her face into my pillow, pulling it toward her with both hands. My whole chest seizes up. It’s too full. I’m standing naked next to my bed, watching the woman who just kept coming until I let her in, and I’m dying to wake her up and tell her what she means to me.

It’ll keep. The feelings will still be here once she’s properly rested.

I have a shower, pull on some clean clothes, then head to the kitchen to put on some coffee.

The machine's the one premium item in this kitchen. One pan, one pot, four mugs, and a coffeemaker that cost more than the microwave.

I load it, hit the button, and lean against the counter listening to it drip while the harbor gets painted in gold through the window.

I'm happy.

Not the version I've been telling myself passes for it. Now that the real thing is coursing through my veins, I know I’ve been in survival mode for the past three years. And this is more joyful and fizzy than anything I’ve felt before. This is the real thing. The stupid, dangerous, everything-is-different kind. And it’s all because of her. It would appear that I’ve fallen in love for the first time.

The coffee finishes. I find a pen in the junk drawer and a hardware-store receipt in the pocket of my jacket hanging by the front door. I scribble her a quick note.

Going to the yard. Coffee's on. Truck keys on the counter if you want to join me or go home. Take your time.

I look at it. Consider adding something more romantic but finally don't. I want to see the look in her eyes when I tell her how I feel. I prop the note against the mug I set out for her and leave the keys next to it. The thought of Vanessa Daniels driving my truck through town, for everyone to see, especially after they already saw us canoodling at the festival yesterday, sends a jolt of pride through me.

I want them to know. Vanessa Daniels is no longer on the market. She’s spoken for. Forever.

Diesel appears in the kitchen doorway with his leash in his mouth. The particular expression of a fourteen-year-old dog who has watched his owner stand in the kitchen grinning at a coffee cup and would like to go outside before he dies of old age.

"Yeah. All right. You’ve developed far too many opinions since she arrived. I suppose I can’t really blame you."

The walk takes twenty minutes when I'm not in a hurry and nothing’s chasing me today. The harbor's dead calm. A lobster boat chugs out past the breakwater, the engine sound carrying across the water the way it does when there's no wind. Diesel trots ahead and circles back like he's seven instead of fourteen. Like he's gotten younger. Maybe we both have. Vanessa’s enchanted us with her exuberance.

My head keeps going forward. Past the summer. Past Labor Day and the bet I made on a handshake with a woman I was planning to fire. What her apartment looks like properly fixed up and kitted out with working appliances and a considerably bigger bed. There’s no space for one like mine, but we can do better than the rickety little twin she currently has. We’d likely break it within a week if I spend more nights there indulging myself in her sweet curves.

I think about what my bed looks like with that chestnut hair on the pillow as a permanent condition and not just the occasional sleepover. I don’t want to scare her off. We’ll fix up her place first, so she knows she has her own space, but I want her in my bed every morning. Very soon.

I want to come home to lights on and her voice calling hello. Children laughing. Diesel parked wherever she is because he switched loyalty the moment she arrived and I can't even pretend to care.

I want a future with her in it. The whole thing. I want to marry her, and I want to get her pregnant on repeat and I want to stand in our kitchen holding a tiny infant against my chest, soothing our child with a lullaby while Vanessa sleeps in.

The thought doesn't arrive like a decision. It arrives with all the hesitation burned out of it. Nothing left to question.

The front gate hasn't moved since the nineties, and this morning I love even that. The rusted-open stupidity of it. The gulls screaming at each other over the dock. My yard. Her office. Our dog, apparently.

I'm whistling when I unlock the office door.

Marcus whistles. I don't whistle.

Yet here I am, whistling.

The fan is still running in the office. Tommy was the last one out, he must have forgotten to switch it off. Vanessa’s calendar is on the wall, every appointment in her handwriting, color-coded in a system she explained once and I pretended not to follow. The invoice trays she bought with her own money are sitting on the desk, labeled PENDING and DONE. She scoffed when I told her to reimburse herself from petty cash. The DONE tray’s been fuller than the other one for weeks.

Diesel circles twice and drops behind the desk. His home away from home.

Sunday mornings at the yard are quiet. No Marcus, no Tommy, no engines. I need the silence today. Room to figure out how you tell a woman you're in love with her when you've never said it to anybody and don't have the first idea where to start.

She came to me with plans to improve things around here and I dismissed her. Too sullen and grouchy to believe things could ever get better. But she’s right. We could be pulling in more money. I’ve been stuck in a rut. When she gets here, I’ll ask her to tell me again what she has in mind and this time I’ll listen.

We may need to get a loan in order to upgrade things. I may as well get the documents together. The filing cabinet is against the back wall where it's been since Dad bought it. Three of the four drawers are organized and labeled according to her system. Everything in its place.