Colt couldn’t argue with that and he didn’t. Feb knew the conversation was over, took her shot and didn’t miss.
When she circled the table looking for her next one was when it hit him and he knew.
The kiss on Sunday morning he gave her wasn’t about her rolling her eyes at him, reminding him how she used to be. The kiss that morning was the same. Colt climbing into bed with her last night and having pizza and beer with her now, the same.
He’d avoided the conversation they needed to have because he had no fucking clue why one day he’d known in a dark place in his soul there would be no February and Colt and he wasn’t going to go back there and the next day he was kissing her, flirting with her, giving her the family day she needed to keep her shit together.
Now he knew that feeling that stole around his chest at looking at her jewelry wasn’t about going back to the February and Colt there used to be.
It was about finding the February and Colt there could be.
It was about that jewelry being there when he got up in the morning because she laid it there when she got home at night. It was about the woman she was now, not the girl she used to be. It was about a woman who’d make him toast and pour coffee in a travel mug when he needed to get to work; a woman who’d listen to his day and take his mind off it with a hand on his neck, a bourbon on ice, a constitution that could take the shit he saw everyday and, after, challenging him to a game of pool; a woman who’d pay a man to work in her bar who fucked up just because she knew his life wouldn’t be what he needed it to be if she didn’t; and a woman whose best day was a day with her family and friends around her doing nothing but talking, laughing and being together.
He knew it was also about their history, the fact that the girl he once knew was in there, buried, maybe never to come out again but that didn’t erase the history they shared and the fact that she was Feb.
But it was more about what was happening in the right here and now, who he was and who she’d become and the fact that he liked it.
And he knew, he played it right, he could take the advantage Jack said there was to be taken.
And he was going to take it.
After he beat her game four, she saw him stifle a yawn and her eyes got as soft as her voice when she asked, “How much sleep you get last night?”
He didn’t lie. “‘Bout three hours.”
She took her cue to the rack on the wall and stowed it, saying, “You need your rest.”
She wasn’t wrong but he wanted that rest to come with her in his bed, those two silver necklaces she didn’t take off jingling as she moved. The ones he suspected she never took off. They had delicate chains and from one dangled a chunky, oblong charm proclaiming her a “party doll”, the other one a disc, not chunky, with a heart made out of hammered copper on it, a flower etched around the edges of the heart, the word on it contradicting her other charm, announcing the complexity of the woman wearing them. It said “peace” at the top of the heart.
Colt, however, suspected she let him get away with climbing into bed with her after she fell asleep when she had another load of shit dumped on her finding out Denny Lowe had been in her house but she wouldn’t allow it again when she was awake and had her faculties about her. And in order to play it right, he wasn’t going to push it.
“You goin’ to bed?” he asked and she eyed him, dubious about where he was going with his question.
“Gonna clean up the pizza and yeah, me and Wilson could use an early night.”
“I’ll change while you clean up,” he told her and he felt her eyes on him as he walked away.
He saw the bed made when he hit his bedroom. His clothes from last night, which he’d thrown on the floor, had disappeared. His shorts were in the laundry hamper. He got another pair and noticed her journal, pen beside it, on the nightstand. A book, the title he couldn’t see, on top. Some tub of something next to it. He smiled to himself as that warm feeling swirled deeper through his chest.
She was in the kitchen when he walked out carrying the blanket and pillow that either Feb or Jackie put away in the hall closet.
She eyed the blanket and then her gaze came to him. He didn’t see relief. He saw something else, not disappointment exactly, but close.
She’d turned out the lights in the den and now she left the kitchen, flipping that switch too.
“‘Night, Colt,” she murmured as he flicked the blanket over the couch. She didn’t quite meet his eyes but she wasn’t avoiding them for the same reasons she used to and he smiled to himself again.
“Nice night, Feb,” he replied and her eyes jerked to his, a small movement indicating either embarrassment or the depth of some unknown emotion but it was there. It was solidified when she lifted her hand and tucked her hair behind her ear, self-conscious definitely and maybe even shy. It made the woman Feb was seem almost girlish and Colt liked that too.
She nodded. “Yeah, it was good,” she looked away and finished, “sleep well.”
Colt settled in and Feb closed the door behind her. He listened to her going about her business but even when the noises stopped, the light didn’t go out. Either she was reading or writing in her journal. He doubted it was the journal. She’d think twice about sharing her thoughts with the page now thanks to Denny Lowe, the sick fuck.
Colt’s mind went from Denny to Amy.