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That made me melt completely. “I have to admit I’m… surprised.”
Pike shrugged. “I know. I don’t seem the type.”
“No, I just… I thought because of your parents.”
“That’s fair.” Pike grinned at me. “But hey. I promised myself that I wasn’t going to let them define me. I have a good family. I have your parents, and Jones at the garage. They always looked out for me. Family’s what you make of it and what you choose.”
I hoped that he would choose me. Me and his child.
“Of course, this depends on the garage, I want to be able to support that family so, I’m not trying to rush into anything too much. But… I know what I want. And I don’t want to just sit around if I know what I want.”
I smiled at him, feeling my face heat up, and then our dessert came and the conversation shifted.
God, I wanted it to be like this all the time. Holding hands as we walked to the car. Making love slow and sweet later in the hotel room. Curling up together and talking sleepily about the most nonsense things until we fell asleep and then waking up molasses slow in the morning.
“When I was a kid I used to wake up early on Saturday so I could sneak downstairs and watch cartoons with Morgan,” I whispered.
“We can stay in bed and watch cartoons,” Pike replied, chuckling and kissing my hair.
“Oh, fuck no, are you kidding me? We have to get Christmas presents for people, there’s no better place.” Besides, we’d slept in too late, the best cartoons were already over.
Albuquerque had a great Old Town area with lots of fun little shops, all of them decked out for Christmas. To my surprise it snowed here, which I hadn’t thought would happen since it was a desert—but a desert could get cold, too, and apparently this year it was colder than usual.
We tramped down the streets, looking in all the shops, and when we talked to people, Pike was quick to point me out as his girlfriend. He seemed to love saying it. “This is my girlfriend, Billie.” “Billie, my girlfriend.” “So my girlfriend and I…”
Every time I heard him say that, I felt warm all over. I found myself calling him my boyfriend as much as I could, too, to show that I was just as happy and excited about this as he was. We got hot chocolate, and stopped for some carolers, and found presents for everyone we needed to get things for—not a lot of people, admittedly. I got something for Michelle, and my parents, and Morgan. Pike got something for Amber since, for some insane reason, he still considered her a friend, and something for Jones.
There were a few moments where I saw him pausing in front of a little something, like a coffee mug or a scarf, and I knew without asking that he was thinking about Morgan. That he wanted to get Morgan something. But Morgan wouldn’t have appreciated it, so he didn’t.
That hurt. I was used to fighting with Morgan. I’d been doing it my whole life, long before we’d had our big fight and our four-year cold war. But Morgan and Pike had been inseparable. It had to hurt Pike, and that hurt me, to see this person that I loved so much in pain, missing someone that he cared about.
Love.
All right, yes, I loved Pike. I had been crushing on him for years, of course it hadn’t taken me long to fall for him. I had never really considered any other man, had never really wanted any other man, and I didn’t think that I ever would. Some people had to go through a few different possibilities, a few relationships, before finding the right person, but I knew. I had always known. It was him.
It was always going to be him.
After a while I noticed Pike tugging me a certain direction and I laughed, letting him lead me down the street. “If we’re going to stop by the museum let’s at least put these presents in the car first,” I laughed. Pike relented, and we put the presents in the trunk before going inside to the car museum Pike had mentioned yesterday.
Pike looked like a kid at Christmas, his eyes wide and his grin even wider. I laughed and took his hand. “Try not to spontaneously combust with happiness,” I whispered.
“No promises,” Pike whispered back.
We went right up to the lobby desk to sign up for a tour. Luckily it was a small group, since most people seemed to be preoccupied with shopping and the like rather than going to a museum about, of all things, cars. The tour guide was a guy about our age, mid-twenties, looking like he would rather be pretty much anywhere other than working at a museum on a beautiful Saturday so close to Christmas.
