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“Lenny?” Junie whispered.
Lenny looked terrible. His hair was a mess, and not in the sexy way it was messy when he was on stage, but messy in a way you imagined he’d been running his hands through it due to stress. He was wearing a badly wrinkled suit, his dress shirt was untucked, and it didn’t appear as if he’d shaved or showered that morning.
He looked like a man on a mission, and I, for one, did not want to get in his way. He scanned the room quickly, nodding politely to Minty, and broke into a huge smile when he caught sight of Junie.
He strode to the back; the pent-up energy vibrating all around him. When he got to Junie he stopped short and stared down into her upturned face. Then he gently cupped his hands around her exquisite face and bent to brush the gentlest of kisses against her lips. Junie pressed her palms against his shadowed jaw and kissed him back. A single tear squeaked out from under her closed eyes. He drew back slightly and thumbed the moisture off her cheek.
“I got your message,” he said softly.
Junie’s eyes skittered back and forth.
“I know,” she replied softly back. “We talked and you said that you still wanted to wait until Sunday.”
“I did. But obviously things changed with your message. The other message,” he explained, “the video.”
Junie still looked confused, but the pieces of the puzzle were quickly clicking into place for me.
“Junie, can I talk to you for a minute?” I ventured.
“Kind of in the middle of something, here,” she answered without looking in my direction.
“The video,” Lenny went on as if I hadn’t interrupted. He pulled out his cell phone and showed Junie the video. The video, if my assumption was correct, of my ultrasound.
Junie’s face fell. “I sent that to you by accident. It’s someone else’s.”
Lenny’s mouth fell open even as his brows snapped together. “You’re having someone else’s baby? What the fuck?”
“No!” Junie protested, her eyes going wide in her face. “That’s someone else’s belly!”
“So, you’re not pregnant?” Instead of calming him, this information seemed to anger him further.
“No. I’m not pregnant. Does this change anything?”
“Yes! Yes, it fucking does!” he exclaimed. His jaw was tight as he pulled her close to his chest, tipping her head back with his hand at her jaw, and let loose that famous Irish temper. “You’re out of time. You’re going to take me as I fucking am and you’re going to love me even when I fuck up, which I will, and I’m going to plant my babies in you, one every fucking year if I have to, and when you fuck up, which you will, I’ll be there to accept your apology without giving you a week or even a fucking minute to decide if you really mean it.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” He barked.
“Okay.” She said firmly.
“Good,” his shoulders relaxed. “I’m exhausted. I drove all fucking night. What do you say I go take a shower, you make me something to eat, and we work on getting one of those videos of our own?”
Junie skipped out with Lenny, turning with a delighted grin, and giving me a double thumbs up on her way out the door. I turned to see Minty wiping her eyes.
“You crying, Mint?”
“Just a little. I’m happy for you girls. You deserve your happily ever after.”
“I’m going to ask you the same thing you asked me months and months ago. Don’t you want a happily ever after for yourself?”
“I do,” she replied firmly. “I’m just not willing to settle, and so far, there has been no Lenny or Barrett for me. I’d like to find somebody, but I can be happy on my own.”
“Happiness is the goal.”
“To be content. To have gratitude. To want what I already have. That’s my happiness.”
“I never properly said thank you, to you, for leaving me in my apartment with Barrett that night.”
