Page 91 of Between Brothers

“What do you mean?” I asked carefully, spearing some more of my salad onto my fork.

“Do I need to get us a place?”

I shook my head and he stared at me, waiting me out. I finished chewing and said, “My dad is letting me clear out one of the upstairs rooms so that I can build it into a nursery.”

Blue nodded and didn’t look happy but what could either of us say. He sighed heavily and said, “I’ll come by and help you with it… you know, paint and stuff.”

“I won’t know for a while if it’s a boy or a girl, although if you’re in a hurry I suppose we could choose gender neutral colors, like green or yellow…”

He shook his head, “That shit’s for pussies.”

“I don’t know about that…”

He smiled and sounded just like Duracell, or something that Duracell would say when he said, “I do. A boy is a boy and a girl is a girl. I don’t much like fucking with that and giving kids screwed up ideas.”

I looked at him pointedly and said, “Next thing you’ll be telling me I belong barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.”

“You’re already pregnant, but no, that’s not what I mean… what I mean is there’s nothing wrong with blue versus pink and there’s nothing wrong with a girl hunting, shooting, or doing whatever the fuck she wants. Boys are boys, girls are girls, activities and colors and shit aren’t gender specific, they never have been.” He shrugged. “People just made ‘em that way.”

I could see his point and knew what he was saying and the view was mighty progressive for these parts… he was just really bad at explaining it.

“Melody wants to hold a baby shower…”

“You should let her. The club and ol’ ladies love to do shit like that and they can be a pain in the ass if they don’t get to…” it was his turn to look pointedly at me. “And I’m not just saying that to save my own ass, I’m telling you so that you can save your own because it won’t be me that they pout and whine to until they all get their way. You just inherited a whole bunch of siblings. You’ll get used to it.”

I changed the subject, slightly uncomfortable with where this was going, still wounded and preferring my isolated bubble right now. The one where I chose who could and could not come in.

“So, what movie were you taking me to go see?”

He took me to a romance, something sweet that left my face slick and salty, and I have to say I melted a little, my resolve to stay angry, to not forgive him, weakening but still steadfast. Just because I understood why didn’t mean that it was okay… but I had to keep telling myself that.

He took me home and stopped me outside my studio door.

“I have to go, my little one…” his voice was strained and filled with regret and I looked up at him.

“Why?”

“Because if I don’t, I’m going to stay and I’m trying to win you back, not get pushy and drive you away further.”

“Oh.”

I wondered if he was going to kiss me, but he didn’t. Instead he pulled a fine golden chain out of nowhere and said, “Lift your hair for me.”

I did and he reached for me, I turned around so that he could clasp it behind my neck, and felt it fall against my skin. He kneaded my shoulders and before I could drop my hair to protect the nape of my neck against the cooler evening temperature, his lips fell warm in a single, simple, chaste kiss.

I sucked in a breath, hair standing on end and delicious shivers cascading along my back, setting my whole body awash in light, pleasurable tingles. I’d never felt anything like it.

“I love you, Hayley,” he murmured by my ear and then he was gone.

I turned around to watch the back of him, the brightly colored patch on his cut fading into the dark as he made strides down the driveway along the side of my house to his bike he left parked at the curb out front.

I unlocked my studio door and went straight into the bathroom, flipping on the light. I stared into the mirror at the glinting bit of gold at the hollow of my throat. A perfectly folded paper crane, except not paper at all… somehow he’d folded it out of a thin sheet of gold and attached a loop.

Tears, hot fierce and immediate welled in my eyes and I let my breath out in a shuddering hitch, bracing myself against the sink basin as the enormity of just how much Blue loved me overwhelmed me.

I ended up slipping to the linoleum floor where I sat and just cried my eyes out, swearing it would be the last time. I needed to sit down with him, make a plan, and figure things out.

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