Tabby fumbled through and took out a disc and dropped it into the player. Grabbing the remotes, she pulled over one of the smaller bean bag chairs and sat down next to me.
"I know I want to be up there right beside you," she said, looking over at me with her beautiful eyes, "but I'm worried I'd jostle you too much if I did. I've wanted to hug you all day really, but I can't."
"Maybe Monday," I said. "I'm sure the stitches will be nice and secure then. I'll even ask Sophie tomorrow if I can give you a hug after she checks me out in the morning."
Tabby gave me a small grin and nodded. "I'd like that. Now, before we begin, let me just tell you, this is a very special movie to me, so no wise cracks, okay? Only very special people get to watch this with me, so if you screw it up, I'm going to jam a remote up your butt."
"Sorry, not into remote controlled sodomy," I countered. "But thank you."
"For what?"
"For letting me watch it with you.”
Tabby looked at me with unspoken words on her tongue for a moment, then shook her head. "Come on, let's watch the movie."
Using the remotes she dimmed the lights and turned on the film. "People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it...."
For the next hour and forty minutes, I let myself be sucked into the emotional, action packed story that meant so much to Tabby. I kept most of my attention on the screen, but I also paid attention to her, watching her as she was moved by different scenes and different characters. As I did, I saw a lot of insight into Tabby, and everything I saw made her even more precious and special to me.
As the final music played, I felt strangely at peace. I understood my role in this little grouping more than I had when I woke up that morning, that was for sure. "Thanks," I said to Tabby when she brought the lights up. "I'd seen it before, but it's a good film, and it’d been a while."
"You're welcome," she replied. I growled lightly in my throat when she got off her bean bag to crawl on all fours across the carpet to the player, her butt wiggling at me the whole time. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw what she was doing, and simultaneously blushed, giggled, and looked apologetic. "Sorry."
"You didn't mean to," I said, "but yeah, it's very enticing."
"I'll remember that," she teased lightly before getting to her knees and at least knee walking over to the player, taking out the disc and putting it away. "I know you still aren't tired though."
"Not really. After all, I slept until nearly noon again. It's kind of nice having a vacation, haven't gotten enough of those lately. I have a question though, if you don’t mind.”
“Go ahead,” she said, sitting cross legged on the floor like a little girl at a slumber party. It was innocent and cute, and her smile lit up the room. "What do you want to know?"
"When I went to the gym on one of my walks, you know Mark and I talked."
She nodded. She hadn't been too happy about the idea, but she understood Mark's point. At the same time, she didn't want Sophie out there risking her life alongside Mark either, so in a lot of ways her feelings were torn. "Yes, I remember. Go on.”
"At the end, when I said I wanted to do the training, he said the first thing I would have to do is survive his wife. What did he mean by that?"
Tabby grinned and smacked her hands together, again increasing the youthful factor in her appearance. "Okay, well, I don't know the whole story, but here's what I know. When Mark and Sophie first came back as Marcus Smiley and Sophie Warbird, one of the things they did was put Owen Lynch on notice. I'd found out that Lynch had brought in a couple of Russian mercenaries. Mark and Sophie came back into town, and in the end, they killed the two Russians. But, Mark ended up getting shot two times, once in the leg and once in the shoulder."
"Yeah, I saw the scars today," I replied. "The one on his leg is pretty nasty, all twisted up and stuff."
"That was just a flesh wound," Tabby said, "Anyway, after that, Sophie took over his rehab. I don't know the exact details or the numbers or anything like that, but she pushed that man harder than he'd ever been pushed before. You know that gym downstairs from my office? If you check their numbers, Marcus Smiley's name is up on their record board in quite a few places. I'm not saying that Mark's not a great athlete, he was beforehand too I bet, but Sophie.... Sophie's got a side to her that she turned loose on him in the gym that took him from good athlete to world class. She wasn’t like that before, but Mark brought it out in her, and I love it.”
"Yikes," I said. “Is she that tough with you? You told me once you did workouts with her."
"I do. She’s obviously not as hard on me, but she’s still tough. And that's the man she loves. What do you think she's going to do to a guy she doesn't even like that much?"