The Sky Beneath My Feet - By Lisa Samson Page 0,12
myself next to him, resting my head on his chest. “And what do you want?”
“What do I want?” He slips his hand under my top, resting his cool fingers against the warmth of my back. “I’m gonna have to think about that. I can see the pros and the cons. I’ve invested a lot in my current position—”
“Would we have to move? Of course we would. I don’t know how I’d feel about that.”
“We could make a nice little profit selling this place.”
That’s not what I want to hear.
“Rick, I’m not sure about the timing.”
“You mean the boys? I don’t know.” He falls silent, his eyes studying the cracks in the ceiling. He runs his hand absently up and down my spine. I can hear his heartbeat like it’s inside my own head. His slow, steady breath.
“We have a month to think it over,” I say. “And guess what?”
I get off the bed and start digging through the pile of junk on the dresser.
He props himself up on his elbows. “Another surprise?”
When I turn, the keys are dangling from my hand. “These go to a beach house in Florida. It’s ours for the month of October. We can drive down on Monday. If you want, we can leave right after church on Sunday.”
“The boys have school.”
“They’re responsible,” I say. “Plus, Deedee’s next door and she won’t mind checking up on them, I’m sure. What do you say?”
He reaches for me. “Let’s do it.”
I toss the keys on the bed and follow them there.
Is this happening? It is.
And afterward, I pad to the bathroom and back, feeling better about Rick and worse about the job offer. Accepting would mean leaving everything we know. On some level, I’d be willing to do that, but there would have to be some concrete purpose, a real hope of change, and not just the prospect of living in the same rut with better pay and another rung up the ladder.
None of which I can confide to Rick, not yet. Sprawled on his side of the bed, eyelids heavy, he couldn’t process any of it. Since I’m in the mood to ramble, I curl up beside him and launch into an inventory of the day’s events, all the details of frenzied preparation he set in motion with his announcement this morning. When I get to the part about Chas Worthing and the Rent-a-Mob, my embarrassment at the sparkling Jesus fish, he chuckles and coils an arm around me.
“I don’t know if you draw the crazies to you,” he says, “or if you actively seek them out.”
“Don’t complain. If I didn’t seek them out, we never would have met.”
“Meaning what?”
I prop myself up on my elbow. “You haven’t forgotten how we met, have you?”
“Of course not,” he says, without elaborating.
“The Baptist Student Union, remember? One of those Monday night jam sessions they used to have on campus—”
“There was nothing crazy about that.”
“There was to me. All those people holding their hands in the air, the choruses repeating over and over, the earnest, handsome man up front giving a talk from his falling-apart Bible.”
He smiles. “It was in pretty bad shape, wasn’t it?”
“I would never have gone in there, only . . . I don’t know. Like you said, I actively seek them out.”
“You can’t honestly compare the BSU to a bunch of lefty antiwar nuts, Beth.”
“No, of course not,” I say.
“Be-e-e-eth.”
“Is that the time? I feel so sleepy all the sudden.”
My eyes open and the room is dark. If I could see myself in the mirror, I know I’d be smiling. I’d see a stupid, teenage grin, the kind of smile I haven’t believed in since forever. Is it really that easy to make my problems go away? Maybe it is. My body is warm under the covers, but the air on my exposed shoulders is pleasantly cool. I roll over toward Rick, expecting his tousled hair and sleep-puckered lips. Instead, the sheets are pushed back and he’s gone.
The nightstand clock says it’s three in the morning. I get out of bed, fumbling in the dark for my robe. On the landing I pause at Eli’s door, listening for the music he always plays to go to sleep. He’s in there, dead to the world. I pad down the stairs, expecting to find lights on in the kitchen. The house is dark. Through the back window, I see the lights on in the shed.
After watching for a minute, waiting for some sign of movement, I decide to