AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We both laughed.
“They should let the raccoons be part of the charm,” I said.
“I don’t think the people from away would like that very much,” she said.
“Probably not,” I agreed.
I had to go grocery shopping after work, and I made sure to ask Natalie what she wanted. If she was going to be over at my house a lot, I wanted to have her preferred food and snacks on hand.
I wished I could have shopped with her, but she’d gone straight from work to the library for her knitting club.
“How was work, dear?” I asked, when she hopped in the car when I pulled up in front of the library.
“Exhausting,” she said, leaning over to give me a kiss. “But knitting was good, see?” She pulled out what looked like the start of a lumpy scarf with a few holes in it.
“Nice,” I said. “Getting the hang of it?”
“I think I am,” she said. “I’ll probably just rip it out and start over again, but it’s nice to have some kind of progress.”
She put her knitting away and then kissed me again.
“Let’s go have dinner.”
* * *
Natalie helped me put away the groceries when we got back to my place.
“So, my parents asked me what was going on and I told them,” she said.
“What did they say?”
“They said it was about time,” she said with a laugh.
“What?”
“Yeah, they said they were completely expecting it.” She shrugged.
“I still haven’t told mine. I guess I’ll have to do that eventually. If other people see us around, they’re going to find out anyway.” Gossip moved faster than fire through a paper factory in Castleton. I should probably tell my parents before they found out from someone else.
“Ugh, I don’t think they’ll care that much, but still. I never know how they’re going to react to things.”
They’d been so nonchalant when I’d come out that I had to double check that they’d heard me.
“You don’t have to tell anyone that you don’t want to,” Natalie said.
“I know.” Speaking of that, I actually did want to tell my friends.
I messaged Paige and Esme and Linley and Gray, asking if we could get together this weekend, offering my house. It would be cramped, but we could always head outside to the picnic table if the weather was nice and the mosquitos weren’t too bad.
Everyone was in, so that was settled.
“You good with everyone coming over here on Saturday? We can tell them then,” I said.
Natalie bit into an apple. “Yeah, sounds good.”
“Don’t eat that. You’ll spoil your dinner.”
She rolled her eyes.
