“I should just let her be with him?”
Her shrug was easy, a little distant, but I knew what she was getting at. “That’s not your choice, baby. It’s hers.” That grip Mom had on my wrist tightened, bringing my gaze back to her face. “You just need to let her figure out that you’re the one she wants and you need to show her that she’s the one you want.”
Mom’s kiss came quick, but sure, her warm lips on my forehead before she left me out on that patio to think about my new agenda and how I’d execute it.
As the glass door slid shut, I glanced down at my cell, nodding to myself when I noticed the reply I was too pissed to read before my mother’s approach.
Aly: Two is good. See you then, shoushou.
Shoushou. Sweetie.
My shoushou, she used to say. Had said, in fact, right beyond this patio, in that pool house across from me. The building was small, simple, like most things my parents created on this property. The soft gray ship lap surrounded the wood framed building, meant to welcome, to warm and it had that night. It had every night that Aly led me away from our family onto one of the small metal framed beds, right into the soft, crisp white linen bedding.
She’d take me down every time with little fight from me.
That small building stared back at me across the slow trickle of pool water lit up like fireflies under the water’s surface. I swear it stared. Taunted me. Reminded me of how long it had been since that last night alone with Aly at my parent’s lake house. Five years ago. My twenty-third birthday.
It was the last night she called me shoushou. Aly had been too irritated at me after that. There had been too many arguments for sweet pet names.
Tristian had finished his degree a full semester early, wrapping up his hard work during the half-semester that summer. My birthday and my favorite clunk headed cousin’s achievement was excuse enough to bring Leann and her family back from Florida and give my parents a reason to bring out the liquor and order up several pounds of boiled crawfish—the perfect Louisiana delicacy.
Tristian ate up the attention we shared together that day and I was happy for it. My cousin deserved the props for working so hard when his college basketball career had ended. There would be no NBA for Tristian and he was fine about it. Later, he’d go on to spend his post-undergrad years doubling up in med school and making time for me only when there was a break in semesters. He’d always worked harder than me.
The crawfish, potatoes and small cobs of corn were perfectly spiced. The Abita was ice cold and our family and friends had travelled from all over to celebrate the day with us.
It was as it should have been—the hint of Zatarain’s spicy crab boil in the air, the selfish, sporadic breeze from the lake lifting off the water and onto the patio, music nearly as loud as the laughter coming from us all and at the center, my beautiful woman decked out in a green bikini wet from her infrequent dips in the pool. I’d watched her for hours, lounging on a chair, beer lazily held in my loose grip resting on my knee as Aly laughed with our family, teased my little brother and sister, ribbed Tristian for his inability to keep a woman. She was on her game—the social butterfly who’d ripped free from that introvert’s chrysalis she’d kept herself in when we first met.
My gaze never left her as she moved around the party, patiently waiting for me. We’d been together so long I knew her game, how she liked to play. That day had been no different. A flick of her glance in my direction. The slow, lazy gaze of her eyes watching me, taking in the sweat dampening my thin Dolphins t-shirt and the raging hard-on straining against my shorts as I watched her. I’d wanted her badly. Hell, I always would, but that day as the crawfish shells and half-eaten corn cobs were cleared away and the wet newspaper and empty beer bottles were stuffed in the trash and recycling bin, I’d slipped from the crowd, bidding those still moderately sober good night before I moved to the pool house.
Aly found me on the small bed with my feet hanging off the end. The air shifted when she opened the door but I kept my eyes tight and the right side of my mouth arched in an expression I was sure looked a little superior. I hadn’t cared if it did. Aly’d loved the way I liked to disturb the peace. Sometimes it was her doing the disturbing first.