a/n: if you follow my other story, goodbye to all that, you know that it's been a rough month. thank you for all of the kind thoughts and words.
this one's for xxosai because she's incredibly kind and asked for more of these two.
it's been a while. i hope i've done them justice. let me know what you think and what your favorite pie is. mine's pecan.
much love, inez
There was something especially beautiful about that fall.
They were both getting old—okay, she was only twenty four, and he twenty six, but the age of inspiration was slowly being drowned out by exhaustion or complacency or something else that no one really had a good phrase for, and so it was just generically ignored as the daily grind.
They were there—in New Hampshire, where nothing great had ever happened except a hug in a coffee shop—and she was singing along to the radio of his Land Rover, a bit off-tune in her renditions of Emmylou Harris and Aerosmith and some kid from Arkansas—no, Oklahoma—called Ben Rector.
One of his arms rested against the rolled-down window, lackadaisically steering their way down Route 112, headed no where in particular except Chicago eventually, to see his sister, but that wasn't important right now, or they wouldn't be in New Hampshire.
One hand was on the wheel, the other twitching, wanting to grasp hers.
In a fashion entirely true to the whole length of their pseudo-relationship, they hadn't discussed that classroom kiss.
If it were anyone but her, he wouldn't have fallen asleep that night without setting things straight, but this was her, and she was so jumpy, so hesitant, and god, the last man who'd claimed to love her had shown it in the form of a fist.
As if the radio was reading his mind, "Cherry Wine" came on. He automatically flipped past it, cursing himself for not thinking when he added Hosier to the playlist.
She didn't notice, he thought.
She did.
They chatted about mundane things without mundane intentions.
"How's Ruby?" Didn't mean 'is your niece walking yet? It's about that time.' It meant 'Has the cancer relapsed? Is your sister okay? Are your parents still monsters, and is the baby's dad one too?'
"Fine."
She wasn't fine.
They'd stop dancing around things soon enough, but for now, both were probably too exhausted.
She fell asleep around 7, and he rolled up the window, flipped to his James Taylor playlist, and rerouted to Chicago. She hated interstates almost as much as she hated James Taylor, and so he'd tried his best to lull her to sleep before actually getting on with the drive. He didn't mind wasting the day if it meant making her happy.
She'd curled up like a cat in the passenger seat, the same way she curled up against his chest when they watched old Italian films and she was too engrossed to realize what she was doing.
He reached over, pushing a curl behind her ear, tracing her cheek. He grasped her hand, and could have sworn he saw her smirk.
She woke up somewhere around New Haven with a grumbling stomach and attitude. "If I hear "Carolina In My Mind" in my mind one more time, I'm gonna throw your phone out the window."
He chuckled, then hit repeat.
She muttered a choice word under her breath that she couldn't have said in front of her high school students, and he full-out laughed.
"Good morning, sunshine."
"It's eleven at night."
"Eleven-oh-seven. That means it's only fifty-three minutes until it IS morning. You've practically slept the day away."
She had the grace to look a bit ashamed for falling asleep on him, and ducked her head with an open mouth. He reached over and grabbed her hand again, giving it a firm squeeze.
"Hey. You're fine. It's been a long day for you. Going there—seeing that, visiting him... It can't be easy for you. God, I don't even know how you do it."
They both pretended like his voice didn't crack with aching for her sorrow.
"You wouldn't visit your dad's grave?"
He scoffed. "Maybe at the funeral. Maybe."
There was a long silence, and he worried about having said exactly the wrong thing. Then she raised their joined hands to her lips and kissed the back of his tenderly, rubbing reassuringly with her thumb.
He felt it as a sharp pang in his chest—a feeling like being shot, or having a heart attack, or maybe just pure true love, even though he didn't believe in those things.
It was the first affection she'd truly initiated, and he thought he'd die from happiness right there if the act hadn't been out of such sympathy.
Or pity. He couldn't put his finger on which the kiss was meant to be, and the thought soured in his mind. He pulled his hand back, agitated at himself.
So he had a shitty dad. At least he was a shitty dad who was alive.
"Hey, don't do that," she murmured, voice still scratchy from sleep. "Don't pretend like this doesn't hurt you. It's okay to feel pain, and betrayal, and... abandonment."
"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference," he murmured. "Elie Wiesel."
"But that afternoon he asked himself, with his infinite capacity for illusion, if such pitiless indifference might not be a subterfuge for hiding the torments of love."
He scoffed. "Who the hell is that? Jane Austen?"
"Márquez. Love in the Time of Cholera."
He scoffed again. "I don't need Márquez and his magical realism right now."
"I think he hits too close to home and makes you uncomfortable."
"I'm not some old man declaring his fifty years of undying love for a newly widowed woman after I've had hundreds of affairs. My dad is. Stop psychoanalyzing me."
He was nearly growling, so she shifted back and closed her mouth.
The silence rang with "Carolina In My Mind" droning on in the background.
"Hey Siri, play the Les Misérables soundtrack."
"God, no."
"If you're going to be a melodramatic jerk, the least you can do is be a melodramatic jerk with Javert."
"You want me to jump off a bridge and kill myself in the Seine."
"I want you to know that, however horrible your father may be, it's okay to love your dad."
"I'd sooner commit French suicide."
This conversation was going nowhere, so they sat in brooding silence until "Bring Him Home," at which point he couldn't take anymore and changed the playlist to something vague and 'recommended.'
"I never took you for a Lady Gaga kind of guy."
That drew a smirk.
"Shut up."
And there they were again, him thinking that he should probably bring it up—that it would be a good time, so why not. They could talk about a kiss here on the freeway. He could voice hopes for the future after a day of mourning the past.
"Hey Siri, play Earth Wind and Fire."
Or maybe not.
He adored Thanksgiving. Rephrase: he adored Thanksgiving with her.
There was something beautiful about having someone to share moments with, and standing at his sister's red door, waiting for someone to answer the knock, he looked over at her and knew that he wanted to stand in front of red doors on Thanksgiving with her for the rest of his life.
Okay, so he'd already known that. For a long time.
He'd convinced himself at this point that the more he thought about the rest of his life, the more nerve he'd have to ask her to be a part of it.
It wasn't working very well for him.
"Shoot."
His staring was interrupted by her hissy little foot-stomp.
"I was supposed to bring her the Dostoyevsky."
"Liz?"
"Yeah."
"Babe, my sister doesn't read Russian literature. She says it's too depressing."
She shot him a look. The term of endearment just wasn't going to catch on, was it? Damn. He wove their fingers together anyway.
"I'm converting her. I told her that she needs some realism to break up her never-ending consumption of dime store porno lit."
He fought a guffaw and turned, unable to resist a wide-open opportunity to jab. They were, after all, had to come by when he spent most of his time with her.
"You've been awfully... realistic lately. If I recall, it was not a week ago that you were talking me into a watery suicide."
"Good God, now we're back to this? It was a comparison of attitude, not the fates of the anti-24601 brigade."
"Brigade? It was one man. You're digressing. Becoming increasingly more preposterous."
"I'm not the one still bringing this up. See? You can't help but be like Javert. ValJean stole a freaking loaf of bread, and decades later, Javert was still so hung up that he practiced diving on the rapids. Should I worry about you when we're forty?"
Sensing that this was yet another argument he wouldn't win, he backtracked.
"You've been lied to."
"What?"
"Flummoxed."
"Are we still talking about French literature?"
"I was referring to the play the entire time, but that's beside the point. You fell into her trap. Been deceived."
"And just what makes you think that? She agrees that any book with a cover image of an oiled, wannabe Antonio Banderas is probably of lower quality than any Russian great."
"She doesn't really. Hoodwinked by my baby sister. Classic. It's almost cute."
"Cute my ass. You were in this world for three whole minutes without me. Give it up."
The couple jumped. Somehow his sister had managed to open the door and eavesdrop without them noticing.
"How long have you been there?"
"Long enough to know you two are the most disfunctionally perfect couple in the world. And for my toes to freeze off. Get in here and see your niece, you absent uncle, you."
Liz trotted off, and they were alone again.
He squeezed the her fingers, still between his, and noticed how red she'd gotten. Whether it was from their bickering or embarrassment or the cold, he wasn't certain.
"C'mon," he gave her a soft smile. "Dostoyevsky can be mailed. Pumpkin pie cannot."
"I'm allergic to pumpkins."
"Shit. I forgot about that."
She stared at him.
"Don't they make you turn that weird shade of orange—you know, like Gene Wilder's Oompa Loompas?"
Now she was glaring, shoving his hand away.
He laughed. He couldn't help himself.
"I asked her to get the ingredients for pecan pie. I got the recipe from your grandma—that woman sure knows how to chat over the phone, by the way. She kept asking me abo…"
He trailed off. She was staring.
"You got Grandma Morgan's recipe? You called her landline for it?"
"Of course." He said it as if it was just as obvious as the sky being blue and the grass being green. Because it was. But suddenly, he was wary of having overstepped.
"You said it wouldn't seem like Thanksgiving without it. We'll probably have to make it after dinner, so it'll be late when it's done, but it's bet—"
And then he couldn't nervous-babble anymore, because she was kissing him.
It was short and sweet, not much more than a press and release, and then she was gone, into the house, headed back to the kitchen.
He stood for a few more seconds in shock. He didn't even bother trying to fight his smile when it finally bloomed so far that his cheeks hurt from it.
This was already infinitely better than any Thanksgiving he could have ever imagined. And they hadn't even carved the turkey yet.