Page 108 of This Time Around
She left the parade with a bag of candy that weighed twice as much as theirs.And I was pretty sure at one point, she shoved Nathan to his butt racing him into the street to get a beer bottle koozie, even though she adamantly denied it all the way home.
My arm wasslung over her shoulder and her head rested on mine.In my other hand, I held a beer bottle.Night had fallen, dinner had been eaten along with a half-dozen pies and cakes and cookie-type bars and more cookies.At least forty people still hung around, though many more had been around earlier.Apparently, most of the locals in town and those Rebecca grew up with came to this party every year and had been doing it since they were teenagers.She hadn’t mentioned it was such a long-standing tradition.
When we’d come back from the parade, Rebecca on a sugar high from all the flavored Tootsie Roll type candies, she’d put me to work pulling out a half-dozen large Rubbermaid bins from a storage area in one of the barns.The contents of those bins…hula hoops and jump ropes, at least a dozen sports balls and mitts and bases and tons of other children’s toys were now scattered all over the lawn.
Kids were still squealing, running and chasing each other while most of the adults had broken off into smaller groups.We’d pulled out some of the square hay bales and placed them around the patio and the front, grouping them like benches, but most who came showed with arms full of food and desserts and drinks and their own folding chairs slung over their shoulders.
I’d been standing around with Ryan and some other men he knew, all of whom volunteered with the fire department, but when Rebecca had disappeared into the house for a few minutes, I grabbed her for a private moment on her return.
“You should have told me this gathering was such a big deal around here, I wouldn’t have teased you so much about you freaking out about it.”
“I sort of wanted you to experience it as it happened.”She tilted her chin up to me.“It’s my favorite day the year.”
“I sort of got that.”
“Today was one of the best.”The glimmer in her eyes softened and I twisted so I could kiss her.She said with her eyes what I knew she couldn’t say with her words.It was more than enough.My chest swelled, heat kicked up and spread through my limbs.
“Mine too.”I pulled back and aimed my beer at the mess of kids running around.Dirt kicked up to their ankles, hair that had once been in sweet little pigtails or braids now a disheveled mess.“Not to make shit serious when it’s been a great day, but did you and Joseph ever talk about kids?”
Her hand wrapped around my back tightened.She gave me the dark parts of their history the other night, but like a clam, she snapped shut afterward.I didn’t ask where that picture frame went, but I hadn’t seen it since.And at some point, she’d painted over the dented wall.Erasing all the evidence of him.
I didn’t want that for her.I wanted her to move on, to find something new again, and hopefully, that’d be me, but I didn’t want to pretend like he hadn’t existed either.At some point, she’d either find a way to forgive him and let him go, or she’d release what she couldn’t control and would never know, into the abyss.
But I wasn’t going to pretend like he hadn’t shared a decade of her life with her, either.
“Yeah, we’d planned on it.Then my parents died and things went skewed and got difficult.We kept saying later, or soon, and then…” She shrugged and her voice trailed off.“I wanted them though.”
Wanted.Like she thought she couldn’t have any anymore.Didn’t exactly bode well for me, but I’d already put myself in danger of drowning earlier, what was one more leap.“I want them.”
“Yeah?”I hoped like hell it was hopefulness in her tone and not surprise.Couldn’t exactly tell.
“Camilla always said later because she didn’t want her body changing.I understood because of her modeling and there’s only a small age range where you can hit it as big as she did, but still.Not wanting a family because you might get a stretch mark or a bigger ass?Should have known then she was a selfish, cold-hearted bitch.”
So my anger with her hadn’t exactly dissipated.It was shit like this that brought up old demons.
Rebecca quietly laughed.“While I wouldn’t agree with the name-calling, I see your point.”
I wasn’t laughing.“Six,” I stated.
Her brow furrowed.“Six?”
“Yup.”I nodded.“Six.I always wanted six kids.”
“Wow.”She looked out toward the barn, quiet with that bottom lip in between her teeth.“Why six?”
“I don’t know.I have a sister and we’ve never really been close even though we are in age.I wanted brothers, a homemade basketball team where we could throw the ball around or shoot hoops when Dad was always traveling.Had a friend in school who was in the middle of the pack of ten kids and his home was always crazy wild.I could show up there and I swear sometimes, they just thought I was theirs, they were used to so many mouths to feed.”
“Ten?That’s a lot.”
“Yeah, that’s why I settled on six.”She laughed and sipped her lemonade.
“And you say I’m crazy.”
“You are, in good ways.But, I wanted more than two or three, wanted an even number, six was the best thing I could figure.How many did you want?”She licked her lips.Sipped her drink.What she didn’t do was answer me.I bumped her hip.“Rebecca?”
When she turned to me, her eyes shined.“Six,” she whispered.“I always wanted six.”
She rolled to her toes and pressed her lips to mine before I could do the exact same thing to her.This woman.She did it for me.She gave me life and made me think.She taught me things I never realized I wanted to know.She opened her arms and pushed through her grief and she did it all with the sweetest damn smile I wanted smiling at me every morning I woke up.
