He was turned, arms crossed, hands cupping his elbows, swaying and looking at me, and I didn’t know if he understood he’d put me where I was and felt bad or if he was still freaking about the rain.
“Ta-Ta, Ta-Ta, Ta-Ta,” he chanted then lunged forward, coming to his knees, putting me in a tight grip and yanking me to him as he fell to his ass, burrowing into me as I slid my arms around him. “Ta-Ta, Ta-Ta, Ta-Ta, Ta-Ta, Ta-Ta.”
“It’s okay.” I ran a hand over his hair. “It’s okay. I’m here. You’re okay. I’m okay. It’s all okay.”
I didn’t know it was forecast to rain.
If I knew, I’d have taken him back to the home.
He wasn’t good in the rain.
The doctors didn’t think it had to do with the damage to his brain. Not in that way.
They thought it had to do with the fact it had been raining hard when he’d had his accident and this was the way his mind dealt with that psychological trauma.
“Let’s get you to bed, yeah? Let’s get up in bed,” I cooed.
It took a while for me to get him up but I did, got him in bed, and then I slid in with him.
He rocked as I held him in my arms, shushing him and fussing him until he fell asleep.
I kept doing it until the rain stopped.
And I continued to do it until I felt certain it wouldn’t start again.
Only then did I slide away, tuck him in then go downstairs to grab some ice for my eye because it hurt like hell.
I took the ice in a Ziploc bag wrapped in dishtowel with me when I returned to bed.
I did it with my door open, Andy’s open, but even so, I didn’t get much sleep.
Andy was up, sitting at a stool at my kitchen island, scooping up a spoonful of Trix from one of the huge bowls I used for ice cream during my PMS times (and other times besides, if I was honest) when I walked down in the morning.
I kicked myself for oversleeping but was relieved like crazy he just got himself a bowl of cereal and didn’t do what he sometimes did before I learned (or more accurately Keith and I had learned) not to oversleep.
That being walking out the front door and taking a stroll.
My relief didn’t last long when he turned to me, dropped his spoon into the bowl with a plunk and a splash of milk and stared at me.
I knew why.
I had a shiner.
Crap.
“Andy—”
“Me . . .” He straightened from his slump over the bowl, his anxiety chasing away his ability to find words. “Bad. Me bad.”
Unfortunately, since it was random what he would remember and what he wouldn’t, he remembered last night.
I moved to him and put my hand on the island. “It’s okay.”
His eyes were riveted to my black one. “Bruise.”
“It’s okay, darlin’. It doesn’t hurt,” I lied then gave him a huge smile. “And it makes me look badass.” That wasn’t a lie, but unfortunately it didn’t make me look, say, Chuck Norris badass, and not just because Chuck Norris was so badass, he’d never get a black eye. It made me look trailer-trash-had-a-rougher-than-normal-night badass.
His head twitched, he looked to me, his gaze moving over my face then his lips tentatively curled up.
“Put up your dukes,” he joked.
I did, punching him lightly with one on his biceps.
He started laughing.
Crisis averted.
I moved in and gave him a kiss on the side of head.
Then I moved back, leaned against the island and asked, “What are we gonna do today? You wanna go shopping for some new clothes?”
He’d turned back to his cereal but he twisted his neck to frown at me. “No shopping.”
Just like a man.
“Wanna go to the shelter and play with the dogs?” I suggested.
He liked that and they liked when we came. Those dogs needed love and attention and Andy had the capacity to give a lot of both.
But he frowned. “They won’t let me take one.”
This was new.
And it was true.
Maybe I needed to get him a dog.
Of course, that would mean me taking care of said dog while Andy only had visitation.
Next idea.
“Parks and Recreation marathon?” I tried again.
His face lit up. “Yeah!”
He loved that show. We’d seen every episode at least four times.
“Thank goodness I got the stuff to make pulled pork so it can cook all day while we laze in front of the TV,” I replied.
“Pulled pork, Ta-Ta, cool. Thank you.”
He loved my pulled pork.
“Right. We have a plan. I’ll get that in the Crockpot while you finish your Trix, and then get a shower. I’ll get cleaned up and we’ll spend the day with Leslie Knope and Andy Dwyer.”
“Awesome,” he muttered, turning back to his Trix.
I moved around the island to get the Crockpot out of the cabinet under it.
Andy ate his Trix and got a shower as I put the pork shoulder in the Crockpot with the rest of my secret ingredients (secret to the extent Andy didn’t know them but the rest of the world did since the recipe was on the side of the spice packet).
We watched Parks and Rec.
When the time came, we pigged out on pulled pork, homemade macaroni salad and waffle fries. Not long enough after, we scooped up ice cream in my special ice cream (and Andy-cereal) bowls. Some time after that, I went to bed feeling like I weighed a ton and having a dull throb in my head from watching too much TV, not being active enough and eating way too much.
I didn’t care even a little bit.
On Sunday, Andy was feeling the pull to play with the dogs at the shelter.
So we did that after I got a latte and Andy got a hot cocoa at Babycakes, during which Andy, as was his norm, charmed the pants off of Babycakes Watson, the owner, who had that moniker for reasons unknown to me.
She also had a history of dogs she named the same thing, one after the other that replaced one when it had died. They were all poodles and she was currently on Babycakes IV (who was in attendance during our visit at the coffee house, then again, they always were), a standard red who had replaced the sadly departed Babycakes III, a standard blue who had died last year.
After playing with the dogs (and cats) at the shelter, we came home and watched movies.
After that, I took him for ribs at Po-Jack’s barbecue place in Morsprings to finish up our barbecue-themed weekend.
Then my weekend with my brother was done.
So I took him home, went back to my place, made myself tea, gave myself my moment and finally went out to my porch.
Alone.
Just as I’d done every night since Hix ended things.
It was Monday night and I was in the produce section at the grocery store when the first thing happened.
That being Shari walking her cart up to mine and crying, “Ohmigod! Your eye!”
This, or a version of it, had been the refrain all day (and from the workers at the shelter, Babycakes, and the folks who saw me at Sunnydown).
I was learning that a black eye didn’t start out black. It started kinda faded purple.
It got a deep, ugly, horrid black that defied concealer after a few days.
“Andy winged me with an elbow accidentally,” I told her, also a constant refrain that day (though I didn’t share that with others in front of Andy). “It looks worse than it is.”
That last was true. It hurt the first few days but now it was just a dull ache I barely felt at all.