Page 69 of By Blade, I Love
I sat alone at the dining table and looked out the window. It was the end of August, so the tourists would finally return to their pockets of the world. September was my favorite time of year because the weather was perfect and everything was less crowded.
About an hour later, Francesca,my wife, came downstairs. She must have found my bag because she wore one of my t-shirts that had been packed inside. Her face had been washed, so she must have found the toiletries too. Some of the curls were still in her hair, but most of them had fallen out, though the volume was still intact.
She smiled when she looked at me, her eyes tired. “Morning.”
“Morning.” I left my chair and came around the table to kiss her. I wrapped my arms around her petite frame, and I held her against me, a little thing in my arms and the perfect fit. I brushed a kiss against her hairline. “Cappuccino?”
“Please.”
I made her coffee first and set it at the table before I made mine, just a black espresso. “Hungry?”
“Starving, but I don’t know why.”
“Maybe because it’s two in the afternoon,” I teased.
She sat at the table and tapped my screen to see the time on my phone. “Oh wow, we were up late last night.”
“And I have a feeling we’re going to be up late again tonight.” I turned on the burner on the stove to reheat the food still sitting in the pan, and once everything started to sizzle, I scooped it up and served it on a plate that I brought to her.
She smiled when I served her. “I don’t know… I’m pretty sore.”
“There are other places I can put it.”
She was about to take a drink of her coffee when she released a quiet chuckle instead. “I forget how innovative you are.”
“And you know I’m good with my hands—and my mouth.”
A hint of a smile was still on her lips. “You never let me forget it.”
I drank my espresso as I looked at her across the table.
She took a few sips of her cappuccino before she tried a piece of her bacon.
“Still going into work today?”
She released an abrupt laugh. “God no.”
I’d already known that wasn’t gonna happen.
“The place can burn down to the ground for all I care.”
“But I’d rather it not because I’ll have to rebuild it too.”
She grabbed the salt and pepper and sprinkled them over her eggs. “I can’t believe you did this all by yourself. The windows alone are so heavy.”
I shrugged. “I lift more than that every day.”
“And then all the other things you had to do,” she said as she looked around the room. “I don’t even know what because Idon’t know shit about carpentry. The bullet holes, the paint, I know the island was pretty much destroyed…”
“Yeah, it was a lot,” I said. “But I know how much you love this house. And I love it too. I wasn’t going to let someone destroy something so special to us. Even if I could have hired a crew, I wanted to do it myself.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s our home,” I said simply. “The place where we fell in love, the place where we’ll live together, raise a family…”
Her eyes softened as she looked at me. “Kind of small for a family.”
“I can expand it,” I said. “Build an extra bedroom here and there.”
