“Slept with you more nights than any man I’ve had, won’t be a problem,” she declared.
The memories that came from that made me smile.
Lacey switched subjects.
“Love for you to be on my tour.”
“Maybe closer to the end,” I told her because that would be early next year, after Christmas in Colorado in my new (hopefully by then, fully-completed) house. “I’ll join you, hit a couple of stops.”
Something to look forward to.
A change of scenery at a time that was much more time than I usually gave it that I’d take it.
“What I’m saying, babe, is love for you to be on my tour.”
I closed my eyes.
“Lace,” I whispered.
“All I’m gonna say. You don’t do my thing. Not sure you could put on even a single sequin and bust a move with ten dancers behind you. But you’d still kill. You always did. And it’s safe to say, lotta folks would love to have you back.”
“Mm-hmm,” I mumbled.
“Think about it,” she urged.
“Mm-hmm,” I mumbled.
“Pain in my ass,” she mumbled back.
“Lace?” I called.
“Yep?” she answered.
“Love you to the sole of my boots.”
“Love you to the tip of my stiletto, Jussy. Let you go now. I’ll be in touch about dates.”
“Can’t wait.”
“Me either, babe. ’Bye.”
“Later, Lacey.”
We disconnected and I put the phone down to lift my cooling coffee mug up (one of two I owned, both costing $3.99 on sale at the local grocery store, both having been chipped already as they were super-sized and being washed in a bathroom sink, not my most logical purchase).
I sipped and stared at the river, feeling the nip in the air.
Summer was closing, it was the end of August. The leaves would change. It’d get wet. Then it’d get snowy. Then it’s get wet again. Then it’d get warm.
Change of scenery in one place.
God, how had I not seen that was how life could be? Always chasing the horizon. Never realizing, if I stood still, the sun actually came right to me.
On this thought, I heard someone’s vehicle approach and I engaged the screen on my phone to see it was ten eighteen.
Max and his man.
Right on!
I pushed up from my chair, grabbed my mug and phone, and walked through the French doors that led to the private deck that jutted off the side of the house. I moved through my bedroom, in which I’d only put a big four-poster bed, two nightstands, a couple of lamps and a dresser. All new, picked for me, approved by me, ordered and arranged to be sent by the interior designer Dana used in Kentucky.
Before I found my forest oasis, I had no furniture because I was me.
I was a Lonesome.
I was a gypsy.
Until now.
I moved out of the finished space into the skeleton of the house, a hall that led to what would be a powder room, the utility room and the garage.
I exited this and hit the main room, thinking how strange it was that I was beginning to long for walls.
It would never have occurred to me that I’d find myself in a place in my life where I’d yearn to be closed in.
Yet I was.
My step in my crocheted flat sandals (you didn’t go barefoot in my house, except if you were going to remain in the bedroom) faltered when I looked to the door.
The door had been an early sign this space was going to be mine, it was that magnificent.
The house was made of stone, wood and windows, but mostly windows and stone. The front door was recessed from a graceful stone arch set in another stone arch in which was set a kickass wooded arch and even the door was arched. The wood of the door was painted a distressed, fired-earth green.
The entryway gave an impression you were about to arrive someplace cozy, snug and mountainy. Not over three thousand square feet of house but somewhere you’d sit fireside with a glass of wine or eventually be handed a stick on which to put a marshmallow so you could make a s’more.
The door also had an arched window with what looked like antique glass, the waves distorting what lay beyond, even as you could see it.
And what I saw was not Holden Maxwell.
It was a wall of chest in a white T-shirt that at a glance, without having clairvoyance ever in my life (except when I was six, met Luna, saw through her fawning over me and knew she was going to be a bitch), I still somehow knew was Deke.
I kept moving, thinking my God or no god could be so mischievous as to play with me like this, making Deke the “travelin’ man” temp that Max would make a foreman at his company if he just stuck around.
Bubba was a big guy too. Tate was no slouch, same with Max.
Maybe in the mountains they made them huge.
So maybe it was another guy.
But as I opened the door and looked up, I saw that my God was feeling just that frisky.
It was Deke.
Fuck.
He looked at me and his head twitched slightly.
I looked at him wondering if I should have found a forest oasis in Oregon.
“Yo,” he greeted.
“Hey,” I pushed out.
“Max not here yet?” he asked.
“No,” I answered.