He gives me a sidelong glance. “Wait. I hope you don’t want us to live in your mom’s house. We need our privacy. I want to be able to bend your sweet little ass over the coffee table whenever I want.”
I laugh and squeeze my thighs around his playfully. “You are so bad!” I say. “But no, I definitely don’t want to live with my mom.”
“Well, if you don’t want to buy a house and you don’t want to live with your mom, the only thing left is renting, and that drains a lot of money, too.”
I feel embarrassed, because it’s to the point where I have to talk about Andrew’s money as though it’s mine also, which I doubt I’ll ever get used to.
I look away from his eyes. “Remember when you said we could get a little house somewhere?”
“Yeah,” he says, and his eyes are getting brighter, as though he knows what I’m going to say already.
“Well, we could maybe pay cash for a very small house or a condo, just big enough for us… I don’t know, something cheap but decent, and still have a lot left over to keep in the bank for our trips. We won’t have rent, and all we’ll have to pay every month are utilities and things like that, which we can do from working and from playing gigs but never take from our savings.”
Why is he smiling like the Cheshire cat?!
I feel my head fall in between my shoulders, my face getting hot. “What’s so funny?!” I ask, pressing my palms against his chest and trying not to laugh.
“Nothing’s funny. I just like it that you’ve finally realized that what’s mine is yours.” He tightens his fingers around my waist.
“Whatever,” I say, trying to conceal the blush in my cheeks, pretending to be offended.
“Hey,” he says, shaking my hips, “don’t do that—just finish what you were saying.”
After a long pause, I say, “And when we leave to go wherever that piece of paper in the hat tells us to, we can get Natalie to housesit. Or!” I point upward. “When we finally find that peaceful place on the beach that you dreamed about and want to live there, we can either sell our house in Raleigh or rent it out to draw in extra income. Maybe even rent it to Natalie and Blake!”
I can tell there’s something going on inside his mind. His smile is still soft and he never takes his eyes off me. But he’s so quiet until finally he breaks the silence and says, “It sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into this. How long did it take you to figure all of that out?”
Only right now do I realize that it’s been long enough. I think back to the day when I started trying to piece together our future, when I officially had it in my head that I did want to settle down and that I was tired of being on the road.
Andrew waits patiently for me to answer, always with soft and thoughtful eyes, his way of constantly reminding me that nothing I can say to him is going to create any negativity between us.
“It was on the highway after we left Mobile,” I say. “When I first told you that I wanted to see Italy and France and Brazil one day. When I said I never wanted to settle down forever. From that night on, I was determined to figure it out. How we would pull everything off.” My gaze strays. “I broke the rules and planned it all out.”
He leans forward and kisses my lips.
“Sometimes planning is necessary,” he says. “You did a good job. I think the whole plan is perfect.” And then he crushes me against him, kissing me passionately.
When the kiss breaks, I gaze at him for a moment, his face in my hands. “But I want to marry you here,” I say, and his eyes brighten. “I don’t want your mom to feel left out, y’know? She’s really the only reason I feel bad about wanting to move to Raleigh. And I feel even worse that she was planning that baby shower and we never got—”
“She’ll like that,” he says, stopping me before I start babbling again. “I definitely do.”
He kisses me again.
Andrew
33
I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day. The weather is perfect. The plans to get married that we didn’t make all fell perfectly into place. I called my mom up yesterday and told her meet us on the beach on Galveston Island. She made it on time, without having any idea why we asked her to be here.
I raise my hand above me when I see her, waving her toward us, and the second she sees us, she knows. Her face breaks out into the biggest smile, and it’s easily contagious.
“Oh, you two,” my mom says, stepping up to us, “I can’t believe you’re finally doing this. I’m just… I’m so…” Tears roll down her face and she reaches up to wipe them away, laughing and crying at the same time.
Camryn, barefoot and dressed in that ivory vintage gown she found at the flea market, wraps her arms around my mom and hugs her.
“Oh, Marna, please don’t cry,” she says, though I think it’s more of a plea because seeing my mom cry is choking Camryn up.
“Is anyone else coming?” my mom asks when she pulls away.
“You’re our exclusive guest of honor,” I say proudly.