Drew’s expression cleared. “When we decided to meet for coffee partway between your place and mine and wound up in that weird little town with the store that was all about pickles? Of course. It was amazing.”
Personally, I didn’t think anyone who was from the Hollow had standing to call another town weird, but I didn’t argue.
“I fell in love with you that day,” I told him, though he already knew it. “Didn’t matter that I’d never been with a man before, or that you lived nearly three hours away in cow country, or that I had a bad track record with relationships.” Hadn’t mattered, either, when Drew told me he wouldn’t leave the niece and nephews he’d agreed to help raise. “I was all in. I’d recognized what I couldn’t live without, and then it was just a matter of doing whatever it took to win your heart and keep it.”
“Winning my heart was easy, handsome charmer that you are.” Drew touched my cheek gently. “Keeping it, though…” He rolled his eyes.
I smiled ruefully. “I hadn’t been anyone’s partner in years. I was a bit bossy back then, I know?—”
“A bit?” Drew hooted. “Back then?”
I’d swear I could feel that damn rooster’s eyes on me. “Possibly a little now, too,” I admitted, rubbing at the back of my neck. “I don’t mean to be.”
“Eh. Some may say I have an opinion or two of my own.” Drew patted the front of my shirt, smoothing invisible wrinkles there. “I’ve always known that you loved and appreciated me for exactly who I was. Dramatic and loud and opinionated?—”
“And vivacious and beautiful and strong.”
Drew beamed. “Every partnership has road bumps, but we learned how to navigate them in a way that brought us closer, right? And we learned how to make up.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Remember how you’d buy me those ceramic birds as peace offerings? By the end of our first year together, I had a wholeflockof geese and chickens and ducks, and I’d started associating poultry with makeup sex.”
We both laughed.
The familiar hum of the old refrigerator took over while our laughter faded. I looked around at the farmhouse kitchen, the faded pencil marks from Drew’s insistence on measuring the kids’ heights over the years, even after they’d become adults. The quirky mushroom-shaped sponge holder that was missing its matching gnome hand soap dispenser after the thing had fallen into the garbage disposal one night when Emma was learning how to clean up after dinner.
The faded spot on the floor where I’d spun Drew around every March fourth in celebration of International Waltz Day. Like many things in the Sunday family, it had started out as a joke. And quickly became family tradition.
“You blew the doors off my world, Drew,” I said softly. “You showed me how to be more open-minded. More open-hearted. How beautiful life can be when you’re honest aboutwho you are and who you love. You taught me to dream again when I’d forgotten how. And that’s why I’m so excited for us to have this next chapter together. Getting to see all of these new places through your eyes… it’s going to be phenomenal. And there’s no one in the whole world I’d rather experience it with.”
Drew kissed me—a kiss filled with love, and memories, and no small amount of the mischief Porter had inherited.
“That’s beautiful, honey.” Drew’s mouth tipped up at one corner, and he pressed a hand to his heart right over Bea Arthur’s caftan-face. “Truly beautiful. And I can’t tell you how much it means to me to know that I have a partner who values openness and honesty so highly.”
“Well, I?—”
“Which is why I have to wonder…” Drew peered at me over the tops of his red-framed glasses. “When exactly you planned to tell me that you gave away my cock.”
CHAPTER TEN
DREW
Marco squeezedhis dark eyes shut, and his shoulders drooped. “You knew.”
“Pffft.” This was a silly question, so I didn’t bother answering it. I’d stared at that rooster fondly every night while making dinner for the better part of two decades and glared at it any time Marco made me mad. I’d recognized it immediately.
It hadn’t taken a big-brain genius to figure out how Hawk had come to “buy” it either. No doubt it was the same way I’d been able to “buy” my own freaking caftan at the rummage sale last weekend.
Marco—the man I loved beyond all others—had donated my shit.
I’d considered confronting him about it right there at the rummage sale, but I hadn’t.
For one thing, I’d guessed how it had happened, and I knew it wasn’t malicious. The last time we’d done a “Keep, Donate, or Toss” session, it had gone about as well as it had today—in other words, I’d steadfastly refused to part with ninety percent of my things. Marco had started out patient, but eventually, he’d thrown up his hands in frustration,carelessly shoved aside the bin we’d been sorting, and bossily declared we were going out for ice creamright this minutebefore his brain melted out of his ears. At some point, he must’ve grabbed the wrong box when he went back to tidy up, mistaking the unsorted box for a donation box. A simple, careless mistake.
For another, the look of dawning horror and guilt on Marco’s face when he’d recognized my caftan at the rummage sale had been pretty compelling. He’d felt genuinely bad that his impatience had led to this, as well he should.
And for yet another, I’d gotten no small amount of amusement out of watching Marco sweat as I’d pretended not to recognize that the caftan was mine and waited for him to admit his mistake.
As I’d told my niece and nephews repeatedly, it didn’t do to let your partner get too complacent.
But the real reason I hadn’t confronted Marco about it was that I felt bad, too. I had not been handling this whole “downsizing” concept with aplomb.
