"Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it."
- Terry Pratchett
This is the first weekend that Sam is going to spend at the house. Charlie has been open to the idea, though distant. He obviously doesn't want to talk about it.
Jack is taking Charlie to Denver for the day for his birthday. They'd offered to bring Sam along but she has no desire to go to a Rockies game or do any of the other things they've got on their itinerary.
She'd suggested they go for the whole weekend, but AP tests are on the horizon and Charlie needs to study. His words.
Jack leaves a set of keys with Sam and gives her the number of his contractor. The kitchen has been gutted - hell, most of the house has been gutted. The new toilets are all in - Jack had complained, "I just dropped five hundred dollars on something that you crap into." She'd laughed.
She picks up her tools from her storage unit and takes them over to the new house. She has some idea of what needs to be done, but she needs to take a good hard look and make a list of supplies they'll need. And she doesn't want to do anything cosmetic without Jack and Charlie approving them. But there are things she can do. She unlocks the door and first things first, goes around and opens all the windows and the back door because it has a screen. She's not sure she'll ever really get the place aired out.
The kitchen is basically a skeleton. Jack had decided to keep the cabinets and just repaint them. The kitchen fire had been at the stove and there had been black smoke up the wall, but that's been torn out. There are no counters, and a hole where the sink had been. There's a new sink just sitting on the floor. She could install that. She could spend the day ripping up the linoleum.
Hell, she could just wash every wall in the house. It'll all need to be primed and painted.
She carries her tools in the from the car - it takes a couple trips. She has a lot of tools. They'll have to rent some though, definitely a sander for the floors. She wants a dark stain. She has a feeling that Jack will okay whatever color choices she has, but she'll still ask. It's hard not to wonder what the house looked like before the frat boys. What it looked like when it was the house Jack lived in with his family. With his wife.
She starts with the sink.
oooo
Sam can hear them arguing all the way up the front walk. She thinks they probably don't realize all the windows are open.
"I told you, it's not a big deal," Charlie says.
"I think it is a big deal, kiddo," Jack replies.
"Dr. Shapiro said I should come do this like three years ago," Charlie says. "It's past time."
"Well you never did, though," Jack says. "Which made me suspect that you didn't want to."
"You didn't want me to," Charlie says. "You always put it off. I figured you weren't ready."
"Don't worry about me. I come here all the time," Jack says.
Sam has stilled, her hand hovering in the air. She's afraid to make noise that they will hear; she's afraid to make noise because she won't be able to hear them. She'd been filling in small holes in the wall with spackle and she so carefully and quietly puts the lid back on the container so it doesn't dry out. They have obviously stopped on the front walk somewhere because the sound of their voices doesn't move any closer.
"I'm worried about you worrying about me," Charlie says. Jack makes a huffy noise.
"You don't have to go in is all I'm saying," Jack says, sounding sharp and mean.
"What do you think is going to happen, dad?" Charlie asks. "I'm going to kill her again? I'm gonna kill my physics teacher? It's over. It on."
Sam closes her eyes and bites the tip of her tongue to give herself an anchor. It's so difficult to hear. It's difficult to hear them communicate so poorly - have they ever talked about it? - and it's difficult to hear the venom in their voices. She's never heard Charlie talk like that, ever. He sounds cruel and wounded.
There's a long silence that just drags on and on and then a hard knock on the door.
Sam sets down the putty knife carefully and wipes her hands on her pants. She waits a moment and then opens the door with a smile.
"Hey guys!" she says. "How was Denver?"
"Fine," Jack says. He holds out his hand, telling Charlie to walk in first. "Charlie, knock yourself out."
"Charlie," Sam says, hoping to divert the conversation. "I got you something."
There's a gift wrapped box on a folding chair by the door and she picks it up and hands it to him. It's large box and they struggle to exchange it.
"Your dad said it was okay," she says, preemptively, which may be a mistake after what she'd just overheard, but it doesn't stop him from setting the box on the ground and then crouching to open it.
Inside is a motorcycle helmet. It's a good one, one that will cover his whole head, that has a polycarbonate visor that lifts up and down. It's a dark green.
"Wow," he says. "Wow, this is really cool."
"Try it on," Sam says.
He does, struggles for just a moment before he gets it on. She reaches out and knocks on his head. He spins around, looking a full three hundred and sixty degrees before he pulls it off again.
"Thank you," he says.
"I told Sam she could teach you to ride," Jack says. "You can learn on the Harley."
"Really?" Charlie asks.
"I'd rather you learn with someone who knows what they are doing so you're safe," Jack says.
"That's awesome," Charlie says. "Thanks."
Jack doesn't stay. He goes off to run some errands. Sam starts Charlie in the kitchen, scraping up the old linoleum. When Jack comes back a few hours later, he has lunch. Charlie is sweaty and dirty but most of the floor is up and he's taking a break, doing Chemistry homework.
"Did he go upstairs?" Jack asks when Charlies goes into the bathroom to wash his hands.
Sam shakes her head no.
oooo
"Tomorrow is your AP Physics exam," Sam says Monday morning. "Who is excited?"
She's met by a sea of faces, most dead in the eyes, a few openly terrified. Charlie rubs his palms on his jeans, Cassie stares so hard at her desk that Sam expects it to smolder. Trevor's knee is bouncing up and down so fast that his whole desk rattles. Patricia looks bored and angry and lets her face rest against her hand, like she has to prop herself up.
"Great," Sam says. "Me too."
They've gone over all of this before, but it's too late to prepare them for material, so she spends it trying to prepare them for the actual test.
"Your test is when?" she asks.
"Tomorrow," they drone back.
"And you sit it where?" she asks.
"The library," they say.
"And it starts when?" she asks.
"Noon," they reply, though they sound less sure now.
"I will be there," she promises. "I will be right outside of the library. If you come here and I'm not in the classroom, then you know you're in the wrong place."
She spent the hour giving them study tips. "Read all the questions first and then answer them in the order that feels comfortable to you."
"Hard ones first?" one of the Jennifers ask.
"Well," she says. "I might do the ones I was certain of first and then tackle the harder ones. At least then you know you'll have some answered correctly."
She reminds them to eat breakfast and that coffee alone is not considered breakfast.
"Even if you add cream to it, Cassandra Frasier," she says pointedly.
Cassie, as always, rolls her eyes.
A quiet girl, one of the Jennifers, raises her hand and says, "If we don't pass the AP test, do we fail this class?"
"No," Sam says. "I mean, I will have failed, but the AP test doesn't affect your grade."
This seems to bolster some spirits, at least.
"Relax," she says, just before the bell rings. "You are all as prepared as you can be. It'll be fine."
It's a lie, but a kind one. She wants to tell them just to try and not fuck it all up, but she can't, so she offers pleasant words instead.
oooo
Sam sits with Daniel behind the tall circulation desk in the library. It's been interesting, juggling the AP tests with her regular classes. She can't just ditch her afternoon classes to sit in here and watch her AP class take their test, but there's a little overlap and she's in it now. Daniel looks tired, like he isn't used to people actually being in his library.
Sam herself feels mopey and slightly out of sorts. She's got cramps and under slept trying to get through the bulk of her grading so she wouldn't have to spend all her weekends doing it. Daniel keeps glancing over at her and then quickly back at his computer monitor like she won't notice.
"What?" she says finally. They have to speak softly, but they're far enough from the kids that they can still talk.
"Nothing," he says.
"Then stop gawking at me," she mutters.
"So you and Jack and banging pretty regularly now, huh?" he asks.
She stares at him, her mouth hanging open.
"I'm just saying," he says.
"Like?" she sputters. "How is that your business at all?"
"Well, it's not," he says. "But gossip seldom is."
"This is a weird school," she says, slouching on her stool. She wishes she had a chair with back support.
"Jack seems happy, is all," he says, shrugging. "It's nice. He's not usually so, um, jovial."
"Jovial," Sam repeats. Jack is not prone to emotional displays. She wonders how he was before she met him if this is what Daniel considers jovial. "Well, I mean. Good?"
"Yeah," Daniel says.
"It's actually sort of difficult," she says. "Finding time to date. Between work and the house and sports and Charlie, alone time is scarce."
"Summer is so close we can taste it," Daniel says.
Someone coughs and every head looks up to glare at that person. Cassie sighs so loudly that Daniel snorts back laughter.
"She's like the most angry teenager girl I've ever met," he says. "I find that delightful."
"It's hard being a teenage girl," Sam says. "I'd be mad too."
"Were you mad?" he asks. "At her age."
"Just sad," she says. "Dead mom."
"Oh right," he says.
"I mean, think about it though. Growing up in a world that almost completely favors men, right when you're developing sexually so the men who have dismissed you for your entire life suddenly are paying attention to you but in all of the wrong, most demeaning ways. And anything you like is considered stupid or frivolous or if it's not stupid, the teenage girl is considered stupid for liking something she couldn't possibly understand." Sam shakes her head. "The entire system is against you and somehow makes you believe it's your fault, so yeah, anger is the correct response. Why aren't more of them angry?" she asks.
Daniel stares at her.
"You disagree?" she demands.
"Nope," he says. "I'm a little scared for Jack, now."
"Jack can take care of himself," she says. "Jack is no dummy."
Someone raises their hand. There is someone there to actually proctor the test and she and Daniel watch her walk over, confer with the student, and then point to the clock. The student sinks wearily back down into her chair.
"Pee on your own time," Sam whispers.
Daniel snorts again.
"What's going on with you and Vala?" she asks.
Daniel sees something of sudden interest on his computer screen and leans in, squinting. "Hmm?" he says absently.
"I mean, did you try and it didn't work out or…?"
"Hmm." Daniel's reply is a little sharper.
"If you can get past the shiny stuff and sheer volume, she's really nice, Daniel. Don't you think?"
Daniel sighs, whips his glasses off and rubs his eyes with two fingers.
"Not so fun, is it?" Sam asks. "I have a thousand questions. I could ask them all day."
The bell buzzes and she glances at the clock.
"Time's up," Daniel says. "Bye now."
"To be continued," she says pointing at him as she hops off the stool. "I promise."
"Hmmm," is all he says.
oooo
Sam gives notice to the apartment complex. People are constantly moving in and out of the place - there's always a moving truck double parked somewhere. The rent is reasonable, the neighborhood is good, and they offer month to month. All in all, it wasn't so bad, this little place.
Jack comes over to help her start packing up the first morning that school is out. They're both tired - they'd had to work graduation and a few grad night events, but it's a good tired.
"Where's Charlie?" she asks when she opens the door. Jack has a grey t-shirt on, jeans, and a ball cap with the Liberty logo on it, just green and a little faded from use. She feels a pang when she looks at him, like she is undeserving of his attention. He so stoic, in a way, it's hard to know what he's thinking and sometimes it gets too easy to assume that he's thinking he'd rather be elsewhere with someone older or younger or more athletic or prettier.
"He informed me that it was the first day of summer and he'd be sleeping all day," he says. "So just me."
She steps aside and lets him in. She's got flat boxes from the a moving truck rental place, rolls of tape and she'd bought a couple Sunday newspapers to wrap up her breakables with. She sticks her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and looks around as he closes the door.
"Where do you want to start?" she asks.
"Bed," he says, hooking his hand around her elbow and giving it a gentle tug. "If that's okay with you."
She smiles at him, relief spreading in her chest like balm on a burn.
She gets a little red from his stubble, mostly around her mouth and down her neck. There's an angry patch above her right breast that she looks at while she washes her hands. It feels like such a luxury, this mid-morning liaison. Jack makes her whole body hum like there's something electric in her blood.
When she comes out of the bathroom, he's still sprawled across the mattress, dozing. She pulls her robe from the top of her dresser and puts it on, tying it around her waist tightly. She'll let him sleep.
She clicks her bedroom door closed as softly as she is able to, and then goes about getting to work. She puts together a few small boxes, the packing tape screeching as it unrolls. She pauses to see if it wakes up Jack, but the bedroom door doesn't open. She starts in the kitchen with the business section of the paper. She'll wrap up the things she never uses - the rice steamer, the french press that is lovely to look at but too much work to actually use on any regular basis. She wraps the two vases that she owns - one crystal one that had been her mothers, the other from the roses Jack had sent a few months back.
She tosses a couple pot holders in to fill up the rest of the box and then pushes it aside.
She's wrapping up wine glasses when the bedroom door opens and Jack comes out in his boxers and his t-shirt.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to fall asleep."
"You don't have to be sorry," she says. She's sitting at the dining room table so she has to look up at him.
"I wanted," he says and then pauses.
"What?"
"To keep you in bed all day, I guess," he says. She laughs, not at the notion of spending all day with him, but at the idea that either of them are young enough to manage it.
"I'm too old for that," she says kindly. "But I appreciate the sentiment."
"I know we don't always get the chance," he shrugs. "Which is why I think we should go to the cabin this summer."
"You do?" she thinks.
"Yeah," he says. "I've been thinking about it. Charlie is going to baseball camp for a week in July."
"You want to go without Charlie?" she asks.
"He could come after camp," Jack says. "That way we get a little time to ourselves first."
"What about the house?" she asks.
"The house'll hold," he says.
She finishes wrapping up the last wine glass, tucks it into the box and says, "Okay."
"Yeah?" he asks.
"Why not?" she says. She can't think of a good reason not to go and it sounds like it could be fun.
"That's the spirit," he says. "Why not."
She rolls her eyes but kisses him anyway.
oooo
Charlie attends a national baseball camp in Iowa, so they decide to drive to the cabin and drop him off on the way. It's a little tight in the truck because Charlie has gotten so tall that the back seat is cramped for him, but he doesn't complain that much about it. Sam offers to switch with him for awhile. And they do because Charlie has his license now so Jack lets him drive for a bit and Sam sits in the back reading on her ebook reader.
"How do you read in the car?" Jack asks, looking back at her which he does a lot, she's noticed.
"Doesn't bother me," she says.
"Makes me sick," he says. He faces forward again but Charlie is a good driver and they're on a long, flat stretch of highway going straight. Sam looks back down at her book.
"Sam?" Charlie says. He finally started using her name after the last day of school and she likes it.
"Yeah?" she asks.
"What did you get on your AP tests?" he asks.
"AP wasn't really a thing when I was in school," she says. "You'll do fine. You did fine."
"Okay," he says.
"Don't worry about grades, kiddo, think about baseball." Jack sounds confident enough that Sam reaches up and swats at his head. "Hey!"
"Where did you go to college?" Charlie asks.
"I went to the University of Chicago for my undergrad," Sam says. "MIT for my masters."
"Do you need a Masters to teach high school?" he asks, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.
"No," she says. "I actually was going to get my Ph.D. and do lab science, but I didn't quite finish it."
This gets Jack's attention. "How far did you get?" he asks.
"I finished the coursework, I just never completed or submitted a thesis," she says.
"Why?" asks Charlie.
It's an uncomfortable subject, one that still makes shame heat the back of her neck even a decade later, but Charlie is curious about her and that's good, it's a step, and so she respects his question.
"I got engaged," she says. "And I took some time off to plan the wedding."
"You were married?" Charlie asks, but this time he looks at his father.
"No," she says. "I didn't end up getting married. I ended up moving to San Diego to live with my brother for awhile, I got a job at a high school to get back on my feet and I just never went back."
"Oh," says Charlie.
"I regret it," Sam tells him. "Do all your schooling young because it's hard to stop and start again."
"You could go back," Jack says.
"That's true," she says. "But I've discovered that I actually really like teaching high school. And you don't need a doctorate for that."
"But then people could call you Dr. Carter," Charlie says. "That would be awesome."
"I'll tell you what, I'll look into it," Sam says.
Charlie is quiet for a few moments before he says, "Why didn't you get married?"
"Charlie, that's none of our business," Jack snaps.
"It's okay," Sam says.
"No it isn't," Jack replies.
"I think it is our business," Charlie says. His voice shakes a little, but he's standing up to his father and maybe that isn't a bad thing. "You said you want Sam to be a part of the family and that means we should know more stuff about her. Even hard stuff."
"You said that?" Sam asks. "That's sweet, Jack."
Jack makes a gruff, embarrassed noise but does not correct his son again.
"Let's see," she says. "I didn't get married because I realized that marrying the wrong person was a bad idea."
"Seems reasonable," Jack says.
"Why did you say yes then?" Charlie says.
"Because I was young and I thought I was supposed to," Sam says. "He was really smart but we wanted different stuff and when he realized I didn't want to settle down and make babies right away, he got angry and his anger scared me."
"Did he hurt you?" Jack asks. He asks it like he's going to beat the guy up. Sam thinks about Jonas so rarely - she doesn't even know where he is, anymore. Has no desire to find out.
"It was a long time ago," is all Sam says. "I'm hungry. Shall we stop for lunch?"
oooo
It's not the camp that Sam imagined. She was thinking rustic, cabins, a lake with a row of canoes at the shore, but instead they drop Charlie off in Cedar Falls at the University of Northern Iowa. He'll spend the week sleeping in a dorm room, not a sleeping bag. Charlie isn't nervous, he'd come to the same camp last year.
He pulls his canvas duffel bag out of the bed of the truck and slings it over his shoulder.
"See you in a week," he says.
"Nice try," says Jack.
They stay with him through check in and help him find his room. His roommate is a boy named Alexander and he's gotta be like 6'4" because even Jack looks up at him. Charlie shakes his hand and Sam swells with pride - Charlie is such a nice, good kid. She knows it's nothing she's done, but she gets to be a part of his life and that's enough to feel proud.
When it's really time to go, Charlie and Jack hug and then, before she knows it, Charlie is hugging her too and he's tall enough to kiss the top of her head and it's so sweet that she tears up.
"Bye, Sam," he says.
As they're walking down the hall, she hears Alexander say, "Your parents seem cool."
And Charlie says, "They are."
Jack squeezes her hand.
oooo
There's a picture of Sara on the mantle in the cabin. It's not just Sara, she's obviously holding Charlie who is still a chubby baby. They're in a row boat and Sara is young - younger than Sam is now. Sam picks the picture up and dusts it off with her sleeve.
Sara was attractive - no typical beauty queen, but pretty enough. She was blonde - not quite as blonde as Sam - and tan and she looks happy. She wishes she could see Jack, too, that young.
"Oh," he says, coming into the living room. "Ah. Sorry."
"Don't be," she murmurs, replacing the frame carefully. "Can I help with something?"
Jack has already carried in their bags. They stopped in the town closest to the cabin - a good twenty mile drive and bought groceries and ice. Jack had packed a big empty cooler and it had made sense when, in the parking lot of the grocery store, they'd dumped the ice into and loaded up the milk and ice cream and other perishables for the rest of the drive. They'll have to go back to pick up Charlie and they'll stop again, but this will take them through the week.
"Unload the groceries?" Jack asks.
They do it together. The fridge is still warm but it's humming and it'll cool down soon enough. Sam unloads things and hands them to Jack who nestles them into the small refrigerator. He has a place for everything - boxes of cereal, the canister of oatmeal, the two loaves of bread, the bottles of alcohol - wine and vodka and two cases of beer. Potato chips, lunch meat, boxes of mac and cheese. He even scoops up what's left of the ice and puts it into the freezer, dumping the rest over the railing of the deck onto a patch of grass trying to grow through a blanket of pine needles.
The kitchen faucet sputters when she turns it on and it makes her jump a little but after a few seconds, the water runs clean and strong. She rinses her hands off and the water is so cold, comes out freezing. She must make some expression that says how cold it is because he says, "Best drinking water in the world."
"How long has this cabin been here?" she asks. The appliances are old, the decor dated.
"I think Jesus stayed here once," he says. She rolls her eyes. "It was built in the forties."
"Who built it?" she asks.
"My grandfather," he says.
"I… I don't know anything about your family," she says. She has the assumption that Charlie is his only family because he's never mentioned anyone else.
"Only child," he says. "My parents were dead before Charlie was born. Both of Sara's parents are gone too. She has a sister, but she lives in New York and Charlie has only met her a handful of times." He shrugs.
"My sister-in-law keeps promising to come out to visit but I suspect I'm going to have to go out there before schools starts again," she says. "I think Mark is kind of ticked at me for moving away. I have barely spoken to him since I left California."
"He won't talk to you?" Jack asks, surprised.
"Well," she says. "It's like he's never home when I call. I always just miss him. Or his wife relays messages. I'm not sure he's doing it on purpose, but… I know he's a busy guy with a tough job, I'm not mad or anything."
She's a little hurt. She's not sure what Mark expected - for her to just hang around forever? She'd stayed near when the kids were young but now they're older and don't need to be babysat so much. Sam had needed to get a life and now she has one she actually likes.
Jack opens and the doors and windows that have screens and lets the place air out while she pokes around inside and out. It's pretty isolated, but they are close to a pond and Jack says not far from a larger lake if she wants that, instead.
"No fish in this pond," he says. "But we could still fish. If you wanted."
"Sure," she says.
He smiles, lopsided, guarded, but pure.
oooo
The pond is too cold for swimming even though it warms up during the day. She sits with her feet hanging over the edge of the dock, her toes dragging through the water.
She's reading an old paperback she'd found in the cabin. There were some westerns, some dime store mysteries, and a couple romance novels. She'd grabbed a mystery but she isn't very interested in it. Mostly it's sitting in her lap while she watches the water swirl around her feet.
Jack comes back out onto the dock with a soda for her and a beer for him and he settles back into his folding chair.
"I was thinking about the house," Jack says.
"Which house?"
"The frat house," he says. They have to find a better nickname for it, she thinks.
"What of it?" she asks.
"Well, you're out of your rental now, and living in this half completed house," he says.
"Yes, I know," she says. It isn't great. The place needs a new hot water heater, the flooring upstairs still needs to be replaced, and she thinks she's going to have to completely refinish everything in the downstairs bathroom because replacing the toilet helped but the walls are dingy and she just can't get the sink clean. But it isn't unlivable.
"Maybe you should stay with me and Charlie until things are a little more put together?" he asks.
"You want me to move in with you?" she asks. She feels her stomach bottom out and she can't tell if it's nerves or fear or something else, something good.
"I mean," he says. "Not like move in, move in. Just stay for a while."
"What does Charlie say?" she asks.
"Charlie thinks it's funny that we pretend like we don't have sex around him," Jack says.
"You can Charlie talked about us having sex?" she asks, immediately mortified.
"Not on purpose!" Jack says, holding up his hands in defense. "I asked him what he thought about you staying with us and he said something about booty calls being easier." Jack frowns. "You're more than a booty call to me, Carter."
"Thanks," she says, dryly.
"Anyway, he's okay with it," Jack says. "Are you?"
"I don't know," she says. "Can I think about it?"
"Okay," he says. "We can consider this trip practice."
He doesn't bring it up again. Sam does think about it, thinks about waking up everyday to a place that isn't empty. Thinks about coming home to a house that isn't dark, waking up to the sound of someone moving around downstairs, the TV on low, the dishwasher humming, the buzz of the dryer.
But the other side of that is living with a moody, damaged teen boy, a man who has a past so tragic that she still can't tell how deep the hurt goes. Someone always touching her stuff, dishes in the sink, every dinner containing burnt red meat. Living alone can be lonely but living with other people is a lifelong series of concessions, always compromising so that everyone involved is the least amount of miserable possible.
In bed, the small lamp on the nightstand is glowing softly. Jack is propped up on a couple pillows, reading one of the tattered novels. She's doing a crossword puzzle in a old book of them that she found. It's easy, she's filling it in rather methodically but it engages her brain enough that it lets her think freely of other things.
"What if," she says, penciling in 26 across (Capital of Punjab; Chandigarh), "I move in and I like it but you decide that you don't?"
"What if," he says turning a page and not looking up at her, "wild monkeys start flying out of my butt?"
"What?" she asks.
"Oh, I thought we were asking stupid questions," he says.
"I'm trying to be serious," she says.
"You can't anticipate every scenario," he says, turning the book over on his lap and looking at her over the top of his reading glasses. "Sometimes it's a gamble."
"You can certainly think through your choices," she says. "Aren't you a tactical expert?"
"I was," he says. "Now I coach high school sports."
"Jack," she sighs.
"Yes," he says. "I am a tactical expert and I think you moving in is tactically sound. I'm not going to suddenly stop liking you because you leave your dishes in the sink or take long poops."
She wrinkles up her nose. "I'm very regular," she says.
"Great," he says. "That settles it."
She tosses the puzzle book on the floor next to the bed and slides down so her head is on the pillow.
"You can say no, Carter," he says. "I'll live."
"I don't want to say no," she says, biting her lip. "I'm just scared."
"Okay," he says. They're both quiet for awhile. Sam stares up at the wooden ceiling and Jack looks at his book, though he never turns the page. Finally, he closes it, tosses it on to the nightstand and whips off his reading glasses. "Is this because I haven't said to you that I love you yet?" he says.
"I… Jack, no, I…" she fumbles, flustered. "I only want you to say that if you feel it. When you're ready," she says. "I haven't said it either."
"I do," he says. "I love you. If that helps."
"Jesus," she says. "Fine. I love you, too."
"Great," he says, smiling smugly.
"Good," she says. She rolls over and closes her eyes.
He pats her butt with no small amount of affection.
