Page 118 of Hold the Pickle
“The royalty is about seven places removed.” We walk across the staff parking lot to Dalton’s Jeep. “But the Avalonions treat the Pickles like family. There’s no disdain. No royalty on your side?”
He scoffs as we pass under a lamp. “I don’t have much of anything at all. My dad’s parents passed a long time ago. I never really knew them. My mom, well, you know about her. Her dad is long gone. Her mom is in a nursing home in Georgia.”
“Do you have aunts and uncles? Cousins?”
“I think so, but I don’t know them. Dad had a brother who married a woman abroad where he was stationed and neverreturned to the states. Mom has a sister somewhere. Florida, maybe.”
“So there could be a whole league of them about.”
“Maybe.” He unlocks the Jeep, and I climb into the passenger side, fixing a duck that has turned sideways. It’s an Elvis.
“I bet we could find them. Do some traveling once your schedule is better. Meet some Murphys.”
He starts the engine. “You make it sound so easy.”
“It doesn’t have to be hard. You’re not asking anything from them. Just a meeting. If they suck, you don’t visit them again.”
He turns around the back out of the slot. “It’s quite possible they all suck.”
“I think it’s worth finding that out. Who knows? By the time we get serious, maybe you’ll have a whole slew of Murphys to invite to a hypothetical wedding.”
His eyes meet mine. “A wedding. That’s a nice thought. You sure you know me well enough to consider that as part of your future?”
“I know the important things.”
We pause at the exit, not yet pulling out onto the street. The night is quiet, the lamps glowing over an empty bus stop.
“What are the important things?” he asks.
“That you love my cooking.”
“I do.”
“That you don’t hog the covers.”
“Unless you try taking Optimus Prime.”
I laugh. “That you take care of our space and the creatures in it, even when they aren’t allowed to be there.”
He reaches for my hand and lifts it to kiss my knuckles. “Our home is worth whatever it takes to keep it happy and safe.”
I hesitate a moment, my head rushing with what I want to say next. But then I just do it. “And I know I love you, Dalton. I think I knew it before, but it seemed illogical. Too fast. Toonontraditional. It didn’t fit the usual order of meeting, and dating, and learning each other little by little.”
He kisses my hand again. “I think that’s why it happened so fast. We skipped the boring parts.”
I laugh again at that. “It has never been boring.”
He leans across the space between us. “I’ve loved you since the moment I realized we were fighting for the same apartment.”
I shake my head. “Not possible.”
He reaches out for my chin and lifts it so our gazes meet. “I think love is a seed. But it’s not a given that it will grow. It takes the right environment. Nurturing. Care. But I think it can be planted from the very beginning. And I feel certain that seed arrived the moment you turned around in that chair at the first apartment office.”
He might be right. Each moment was another sprout. Accepting Catzilla. Helping with dinner. Pickle jokes. Romance novels. Taking in the kittens. It grew as our lives intertwined.
I lean in the rest of the way. As our lips brush against each other, that spark hits me as it always did. Two bodies. Brain chemistry.
A match.
