Fix It Up - Mary Calmes Page 0,49
spicy.”
“Yeah, I know,” I repeated, giving him a look that I hoped conveyed the level of dumbass he was for not listening to me. “I think she burned out the heat indicator in her mouth years ago. And tomorrow morning, you shouldn’t drink her coffee.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because she makes it so strong she once gave my grandmother a bladder infection.”
“Are you kidding?”
“I think we’ve established that I am, in fact, not kidding when it comes to my mother.”
“Jesus, does it stain the cups?”
“All coffee stains cups if you let it sit,” I clarified. “I think what you mean to ask is, does it peel the glaze off the inside of the cup, and the answer is yes.”
His eyes opened wide.
“This is just another thing that makes her, her,” I said magnanimously. “You have to roll with it, my friend,” I said before I went back to eating salsa.
“Are we?”
“Are we what?” I asked, sniffling as I put another chip in my mouth. It was best to eat one chip with salsa, one without, and alternate like that the whole time.
“Friends.”
“Well, yeah. I think we’re getting there, don’t you?”
He nodded. “I want us to be really good friends.”
I winced, and his chuckle, and the way he reached for my knee and squeezed it, warmed me inside even as I kept up the pained expression on the outside. “So you’re saying, once I leave, we still gotta exchange Christmas cards and talk on the phone and shit?” I asked, like that was the absolute worst thing I could think of.
He looked startled.
I clapped him on the shoulder. “What’s the matter? Too horrible for words?”
“No, that’s not—it just hit me that yeah, you’re gonna leave.”
“Once you get going on the album and your life is in alignment, yeah, I need to get outta the way so you can make with the living.”
His gaze held mine.
“Isn’t that what you want?”
“You’re missing the point,” he informed me. “Haven’t I been living since I woke up on that first Saturday in June to find you in my kitchen?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“I think an argument can be made that I’m living now.”
“You wanna talk semantics?”
“No,” he said, and there was a trace of a smile there. “My point is that you don’t need to leave for me to get on with my life. Those two actions are not mutually exclusive.”
I scowled at him. “Of course they are. I’m the fixer, and you’ll be fixed up by the time I walk out the door.”
“And why do you have to go?”
“Well, for starters, because you don’t want me there when––”
“When what?”
“When you start to date again,” I snapped at him. “You’re going to want your privacy, and not have me there breathing down––”
“You’re wrong,” he said, and really, those eyes of his were quite something, burnished golden brown. I was drawn in and held there. “I need you.”
“Not forever,” I replied gruffly, looking down at the salsa. “You’re young, Nicky. You need to spend a ton of time dating and getting to know people, and along with all the other amazing changes in your life, finding the right person will be great too.”
“I so enjoy having you to do all my thinking for me.”
I chuckled, lifting my eyes to his face. “You see, that’s what I’m talking about. I’m a buzzkill, and you know that’s true.”
“No,” he replied softly, hoarsely. “I thought you were. I thought a lot of things about you, and then, I don’t know when it was, but I was standing on the patio one night and I realized I could hear the crickets.”
I grinned at him, knowing where he was going, because it only made sense.
“I’d never been outside and been able to hear them before, not at the new house, and definitely not at the old one.”
“And that was a good thing?”
“Yes,” he said with a sigh, his eyes warm and soft as he stared at me. “And when I looked around, everything was where it was supposed to be, and not sterile, you know, not perfect, but clean, and everything has a place, and it feels like home.”
I nodded, because it did. “When you start having more people over and having people stay, then––”
“No. It’s like a retreat now,” he informed me, “and it needs to stay like that, gentle and easy, like a sanctuary, not a frat house.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” I assured him. “I think you need a place to decompress once you’re out in the world again on a