Page 85 of If You Were Mine (After We Fall 3)
Success! said the screen.
We’ll see.
Theo wrapped his arms around me and squeezed. “I’m proud of you.”
My heart was beating furiously, and my belly still hadn’t settled down, but I smiled. “Thanks. I needed the push.”
“Feel good?”
I took a deep breath, grateful for him. I tipped my head onto his shoulder. “Yes. I do.”
Things with us had only gotten better. The magic grew stronger. The more time we spent together, the deeper I fell for him. I’d never fallen in love before, but I was positive this was it. There were times I looked at him that I felt like my heart was going to explode. I wanted to be with him all the time—he was the first thing I thought of in the morning, and the last thing I thought about before I fell asleep at night. He was all I wanted.
Theo wasn’t the type to offer up his feelings in words, but everything he did for me told me he cared, from the restoration work to building my confidence about my art to tolerating my sappy movies to meeting my friends and family to printing a picture of us and sticking it to his fridge (held there by a magnet his nieces had given him for Christmas that said Best Uncle Ever). And I knew that he hadn’t grown up in a household like mine, where we expressed our feelings and said I love you and never worried that the people who loved us would leave us. I thought about what he’d told me about his mother’s note a lot—to him, words like I love you were probably empty and meaningless. What you did mattered more than what you said.
Yet there were moments when I would have liked the words. It wasn’t that I needed those specific words, exactly, just…some reassurance that I wasn’t alone. That I mattered to him as much as he mattered to me. That we were meant to be together. I tried hard to make sure he knew he was enough for me, despite his initial misgivings that he wouldn’t be.
But he remained silent on the subject of his feelings, and I didn’t push.
When it came to sex, on the other hand, he was anything but silent. The things he said to me were shocking, but I loved every filthy word out of his mouth. And there was nothing he liked more than when I talked to him that way, telling him what I wanted him to do to me. Somehow our chemistry had gotten even hotter since New Year’s, and often I found myself fantasizing about him at odd times—during teacher meetings, in line at the grocery store, when stopped at a red light. People would have to honk to get my attention. “Sorry, sorry,” I’d mumble, giving an apologetic wave. But I wasn’t sorry. It was the best sex I’d ever had—the dirtiest, the daringest and the most intense.
I felt like a different person. And I liked it.
By the time Margot’s wedding day arrived, we’d been seeing each other for six weeks, spending almost every night together at my house. He was there when I received the notice in the mail that I’d been accepted at the July art fair, and didn’t even tease me about how much I cried with relief and joy. He just held me and said over and over again how proud he was. How this was only the beginning.
I believed him.
Thirty
Theo
* * *
She was always beautiful.
Especially first thing in the morning. I have no idea if sleep somehow erased the memory of just how lovely she was, but every time I woke up to find her sleeping next to me, I was amazed all over again.
Or maybe I was just amazed she was still there.
Frankly, I was amazed I was still there sometimes. I kept waiting for that restless feeling to kick in, that twitchy feeling in my bones that meant I was feeling trapped, it was time to pack up and move on, or at least change the routine. But it never did. For the first time, I found comfort in the routine. It didn’t feel like monotony, it felt like ease. It didn’t feel like a cage, it felt like heaven.
Aaron and I had put out some ads for Two Brothers Carpentry with a discount for new customers. We were getting calls, slowly but steadily, and Zack was very accommodating with my schedule at the stoneworks. He’d even given Aaron a job as well.
I’d survived meeting Cl
aire’s friends and family—actually, I’d even enjoyed it. Claire’s mom was slightly overbearing, but she was kind and inquisitive, and it was easy to see where Claire had gotten her beauty. Her father, as promised, was easygoing and friendly, and I’d enjoyed talking about football with him. It was no trouble at all to pretend I’d been born in Connecticut (I was more than happy to forget about my early life in Kansas City), and even though I hadn’t gone to Ohio State (Claire took the blame for that one, feigning confusion), I was able to talk college football with him. It was a little nerve-wracking when her father asked about my degree, but he didn’t seem shocked or disapproving when I said I’d left school before it was completed. I probably felt worse about it than he did.
Meeting her friends was a lot of fun. I got a kick out of hearing stories about shy, awkward high-school Claire with braces, and the way they teased each other made it easy to see how well they knew each other. I had the feeling I was there under inspection, so I tried my best to be the kind of guy they’d choose for Claire while still being myself. If I felt less confident than I acted, I hoped it didn’t show.
Aaron and Josie loved her, and my nieces kept asking me if she was my girlfriend. “I guess she is,” I told them one day when I was there alone. “Is that OK?”
“Yes,” said Ava. “Should we call her Aunt Claire?”
“I don’t think just yet.” Josie jumped in to rescue me. “Let’s give Uncle Theo some time to get to know her better before we start calling her ‘Aunt.’” But she’d winked at me. And later my brother had said, “That girl is the real deal. Don’t fuck this up.”
I was doing my best. But this was a new world to me, and I wasn’t always sure I belonged in it.
Most of the time, the magic between us was enough to allay the whispers in the back of my brain, the ones that said things like, Don’t kid yourself, asshole. You’re not what she wants and sooner or later she’s going to realize it. After I met her friends, the voice would add things like, You’ll never be able to give her the things a successful guy like Quinn would. Jack owns forty-four acres, a house, and six horses. What do you own?
