I stopped thinking these thoughts when the pad of his thumb whispered across my lips.
That was when the tears pricked my eyes.
Because I knew that was when he was going to let me go.
For always.
No check ins. No Suburban at cabin eleven.
No John Priest.
No man called Deacon.
I was right this time.
Without a word, his hand dropped from me, he turned, and walked right out the door.
* * * * *
Late that morning, after I’d made the rounds with the renters who were still in their cabins to apologize for the noise that night, Milagros and I stood in cabin six with the windows and doors open.
We surveyed the space.
“I’ll take the throw blanket with the sheets to clean,” I muttered.
“I’ll need to shampoo the sofa as well as the rugs to get out that smell,” she muttered back.
She would. The stench was lingering. We could air that cabin out for a year and it’d still smell like puke, pot, smokes, and beer.
“I’ll look on Craig’s List but maybe this weekend you might wanna go with me to that antique place in Chantelle to look for a new coffee table?” I asked and looked to her at my side.
She was an inch shorter than me. She had seven years on me. And it was arguable (me arguing that she did, her arguing that she didn’t) that she had better hair than me.
She looked to me. “Manuel can sand that down and refinish it.”
I moved my gaze to the coffee table. I liked that coffee table. In fact, I’d found it at the antique place in Chantelle and thanked my lucky stars, it was so cool, in such good nick, and so cheap.
Not to mention, Manuel wouldn’t charge me a thousand dollars to refinish it so I could pocket the rest and that wouldn’t suck.
I looked back to Milagros. “That’d be awesome.”
She grinned and replied, “I’ll ask him to come after work and get it tonight. But it might take him past the weekend to get it back to you.”
That worked for me and I told her so. “That’s okay. This cabin is booked next week but if he’s not finished with it, I’ll bring down my coffee table from the house to act as a stand in.”
She nodded and grinned at me.
I gave her a mini-grin (which was all I had in me after the events of last night and this morning) and moved to the pile of sheets on the couch that we’d pulled off the beds. The comforters and shams were in another pile. I’d come back later to get them in order to launder them with a shed load of fabric softener in hopes of obliterating the smoke smell.
She was headed for the carpet shampooing machine while I headed to the door, saying, “Come by the house for a cup before you go.”
“Cassidy?” she called as response.
I stopped at the door and looked at her to see her gaze was on me, kind but assessing.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Milagros. The mother of five children, the loving wife of a good man, both meaning she could read people easily.