“He needs this. Whateverthisis.” Rose dragged the secondthisout. I imagined her flicking her hand around a little with the emphasis or wiggling her eyebrows. “He doesn’t think I see how lonely he’s been since Pappy Jacky left, but I see it. You’re good for him.”
There was a protracted moment of silence, and then he said, “Rose, you don’t even know me. Why do you think I’m good for your father?”
“The sparkle’s come back to his eyes. It started when he first saw you at the gas station the other day.”
I tilted my head to the side, wondering what she meant. Had I really been so dead inside that my eyes were reflecting my moods so clearly?
“What do you mean?” Marshall asked curiously after a quiet moment, thankfully asking the question for me.
“Hmm….” She paused, and I heard her chair scrape against the timber flooring. “Um, like… okay. So when I first arrived here and Daddy Danny was with Pappy Jacky, there was this glint in Daddy’s eyes, right? Like you could see his happiness even when he wasn’t smiling or laughing. But then it faded, and I thought it was because of me, you know?”
Without conscious thought, my right hand covered my open mouth to stifle the horrified noise I tried to swallow down. Oh, Rose.Honey, no….
“But after a while, I noticed that Daddy’s eyes seemed to sparkle a bit when he was with me, but when he was with Pappy Jacky….” Another slight pause alongside another chair scrape. “But then Pappy left, and the sparkle disappeared entirely.”
Closing my eyes, I tipped my head back and willed myself not to get too emotional. I’d tried so hard to keep all of that from her. How had I failed?
“But the other day, when we were all down in that storm shelter at the station? And he was talking to you? I saw it come back.”
“You saw…?” Marshall sounded about as dazed as I felt.
“Yeah. That’s why I think you’re good for him. He sparkles around you. I’ve missed it.” Yet another chair scraping sounded, as she must have shifted in her seat again. Typical Rose. She never could sit still. “Say you’ll stick around? Let him sparkle some more.”
Another long pause, and then he uttered a rough and emotional, “Rose….”
“Just say that you’ll think about it? Please?”
Resigned, Marshall sighed. I knew exactly how hard it was to say no to Rose, and I’d had years of practice. Poor Marshall had no hope. Even I would have struggled this time. “Okay, I’ll think about it.”
“Yay!” Rose squealed in excitement, and I think I heard her clap her hands a little too. “I think you’ll enjoy it here! In Rockdale, I mean. The town tends to collect the lost and the lonely.”
“Rose—”
“Oh, I know, I know. You’re not lonely. Not like Daddy.” She stopped talking when I heard plates being piled together. “But youarelost. Aren’t you, Sparkle Marshall?”
The silence that fell was almost deafening, broken only by Rose’s chair scraping the floor again and the general noise of her moving around the kitchen area. The sink tap went on, and I could hear the water hitting each plate as she rinsed them before placing them in the dishwasher.
When things quieted down, Rose asked, “Can you let Daddy Danny know I’m outside? I want to go play with Puppy Bucky now that the rain’s stopped.”
“Sure…,” Marshall said weakly.
“Thanks! Come on, Puppy Bucky!”
I heard Rose unlock and slide open the sliding door that led out to the rear decking, the scrape of Bucky’s nails on the floorboards as he scrambled to follow her, and then the slide and click of the door as she closed it behind them.
Standing there for a minute to get my bearings, I thought about last night and how the memory of Marshall moving under me had played on my mind this morning. The way his head tilted back, his gasp as he came. The way he’d relaxed afterward, hisnails lightly scratching my back as we lay on the couch simply existing.
We’d eventually tidied up and gone our separate ways after a lengthy good-night kiss, but my dreams had been consumed of thoughts of him, driven by his scent that had lingered until my shower this morning.
And I thought about how I’d felt when I came home after picking Rose up to find he’d prepared lunch for us andthenoffered to fix a broken gutter.
Hell, Rose was right—in a way, at least. Ihadbeen lonely, and that dark yawning feeling of loneliness that had teetered on despair for so long had slowly disappeared over the course of the last couple of days. But when I searched for that same feeling now, I couldn’t find it.
Being around Marshall feltgood. In such a short time, he’d made me happy—happier than I’d been in years. How was that possible? We barely knew each other.
Obviously, there was attraction between us. The steamy frotting session we’d had last night proved that. Yes, he was years younger than me, but there was a dynamic there that worked a million times better than the dynamic I’d originally had with Jackson. I couldn’t deny being curious to where Marshall and I could take things… if only we had more time together.
But we’d only known each other a few days. I couldn’t know all of this after such a short amount of time, surely?
