The creak of the roof boards being blown in the breeze was music to my ears. It wasn't the sound everyone wants to hear, but to me it was satisfaction. It was the sound of my first home. Our first home. It was a fixer-upper, but I liked to think myself handy enough to get it done. There was plenty of acreage to spread out some two-by-fours and plywood to patch that hole over the den and, once we saved enough for some real equipment, raise an honest-to-gosh barn. I sighed; a barn. Momma was pretty set that I shouldn't try to start a farm. But this is what I wanted, not the dusty old place Pop said he was going to leave me. Aarondale was dead; the recession had hit it hard and it never got back up. Even before I had graduated high school, I knew I wanted to get out of there and make my own life somewhere else. Lucky me, I had met her; she had made this all happen.
She was the most city-girl girl I had ever met. I remember seeing her get dropped off outside the high school, in her pleated skirt and pastel-blue oxford with a massive purse slung over her arm, looking like she had just been tossed into a pen with an angry steer. I had laughed too that first time she stepped in the cow pat with her "brand new heels," or the look on her face the time the ol' mare Tabitha had practically washed her face trying to get at the carrot she was snacking on.
But now, I wasn't laughing at her, I laughed with her. She was the sweetest thing in the world. I remembered how she had come to watch our semi-final game against Techuwain High even though she didn't really care for football. I sold the game to her pretty hard in the build up the week-of, and I hadn't been sure if she would be there. When I saw her in the stands, though, waving the green-and-purple "A" with the rest of her friends, I knew it was going to be a good night. I even broke the record for single-season sacks by an outside linebacker that night. She was my good luck charm. Then there was the time we all got lost in Kopp's orchard and I had to carry her on my shoulders so we could find our way back to the road. Eddy had been right, beers were a bad idea that night. We'd never admit it, though; Ed was always a bit of a priss.
She grew into the country, and the country grew into her. Before long she was baling hay with me in Pop's barn and driving the truck into town for him when he ran out of chain link. It still hurt, what he had said about us; she had been nothing but good to him, it was the least he could do to return the favor. Her hard city talk had even smoothed into a cultured drawl, but one thing that never changed was how fast she talked. The only way you could tell she wasn't country-raised was that she never slowed down, never just stopped to chat. But I liked that about her. It kept me honest, it kept me on-task. Without her, I wouldn't have amounted to much.
I looked at the clock on our bedside table. 2:00am. It wasn't a surprise; I was too excited to sleep. You would think that two weeks would be enough to get used to the feeling of being your own man, but you don't know until you've experienced it how good it feels. I put my hands behind my head and sighed, looking up at the creaky ceiling with a quiet satisfaction. This was my house, my life now. I wouldn't have had it any other way.
A hand slipped over my chest. "Hey," came the soft voice from the pillow beside me. I turned my head, knowing well before I even laid eyes on them that her baby blues would be glowing in the moonbeam that shone across the room. Her white-blonde hair was curtained across the pillow like a cascading waterfall of sea foam, and visible to me as well was a hint of her porcelain skin as her shoulder peeked out from the neck of my faded t-shirt she loved to wear to bed. She looked so soft, so smooth. My fingers tingled with the memory of touching her body, how cool and comfortable she was. She blinked groggily. "Why are you awake, sweetie?"
I removed a hand from beneath my head and ran it along her cheek. "I should say the same for you," I replied softly, "you've gotta head into town tomorrow to start up at the school."
She puffed some air out of her button nose, her cheeks wrinkling over the whisper-light freckles beneath her eyes. "I'll be fine," she said, "I only asked because you woke me up moving around."
"Oh! I'm so sorry, sweet-heart," I said, "I didn't mean to!"
She giggled. "Don't, it's okay. Let's just go to sleep." She wriggled herself closer to me and wrapped her arm around my chest, burying her face in my neck.
I smiled, pulling the sheet further over her now-exposed arm. "Good night, Elsa," I said softly, kissing the top of her head. She hummed a reply, buzzing my skin with the vibration and making me feel all warm inside.
This is where I wanted to be. Not in Aarondale, not at Pop's. I wanted it to be 2:00am with her reaching over, a faded t-shirt hanging off her shoulder. "Yep, yep," I whispered.
That's where it's at.