“Be careful,” I told him.
“Always,” he whispered.
Then he was gone.
* * * * *
Lee woke me up getting into bed.
I rolled into him and he tucked me against his side.
“Everything okay?” I mumbled, though I couldn’t imagine he heard me because my mouth was mostly mushed up against his chest.
“Yeah. Go back to sleep,” he said.
I laid there a second, close to dreamland then I asked softly, because I had to know, “Is this gonna be my life?”
His body was tense when I rolled into him but had relaxed after he tucked me in. It got tense again at my question.
“Yeah,” he answered, ever the straight-talker.
I took a deep breath into my nostrils and let it out my mouth. “Just promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“I want you to wake me when you get home.”
His body stayed tense for a beat then relaxed. “I can do that.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Then I fell asleep.
* * * * *
Early the next morning, I was standing outside in the middle of my yard wearing a pair of cutoffs and Lee’s olive drab shirt that said “Army” across the chest. I had a coffee cup in one hand and the hose in the other hand, the spray gun locked down and I was watering my flowers.
I heard a door open and then Stevie called, “Do ours too, will you?”
Still in my morning stupor, I lifted my coffee cup in a half-assed, “gotcha” not even bothering to turn around and I heard the door close again.
I noticed Lee run across the sidewalk at the front of the house. He stopped and opened the front gate and walked into the yard to stand a couple feet away from me.
I looked up at him. He was wearing another pair of sweats cut at the thigh, these black and faded. The shorts were topped with the white Night Stalkers tee that I considered mine, the shirt was plastered to him with perspiration. His running shoes were shoes that had been run in, not fancy-ass, look-at-me shoes.
Even with all that sweat, he was somehow not breathing heavily and if I wasn’t in a haze, I would have jumped him, I didn’t care how sweaty he was.
“Hey,” I said.
He looked at me, then looked in the direction of the spray. His eyes crinkled and he looked at me again.
“Hey,” he said.
“I’m watering the flowers,” I told him.
He shook his head. “Honey, I hate to tell you this but you’re watering the fence.”
I looked toward the spray and saw that I was aiming a little high, the force of the flow was hitting the fence and running down, not hitting the flowers.