Page 112 of The Fix-Up

FORTY-SEVEN

Love is when they smooch each other when they’re getting married.

—ANDREW, AGE 7

The next week, I arrived home to a sticky note on the door.

Go in the backyard.

Follow the signs.

—G and O

I smiled as I wandered around to the backyard. There were signs, arrows drawn in crayon. They led me past where Gil had set up his tent compound way back in February and toward the old, faded red barn. The grass should have been wildly out of control, but it had been cut back so that there was a clear path. The humid, still June heat pressed down and created an instant sheen of sweat.

ALMOST THERE, a sign read, dangling from a tree. I paused to look at the picture Oliver had drawn hanging next to it. It wasof the house with flowers blooming and a tire swing on the tree out front. Three people stood in front of the house. Oliver, me with a yellow ponytail, and on the other side of Oliver, there was a man with dark hair and carefully drawn glasses. We were all holding hands and smiling.

But it was the fourth person in the drawing that made me tear up. In one of the puffy white clouds sat an old man with bushy eyebrows. He might have had the biggest smile of all of us.

“Mommy, hurry up.” Oliver appeared about twenty yards ahead, waving his arms and yelling, “Hurry.”

“I’m coming.” Thirty seconds later, the path turned and I saw it. A gazebo. A big pink bow had been tied on a post.

Oliver ran to me and grabbed my hand. As he pulled me closer, he talked at warp speed. “Come see what Mr. Gil and I builted for you. Uncle Chris helped some and Mr. Theo, too. And then Mr. Malcolm came, and all these people came and helped a little at a time while you were at work. I had to keep it a secret for a long time but every week I kept it a secret, Mr. Gil gave me one whole dollar and now I have four of them but I’m going to save them ’cause I want to get a guitar like Mr. Gil has.”

Gil stood on the top step of the gazebo, one shoulder leaned again the post, his hands tucked into his jean pockets, his gray t-shirt molded to his chest with sweat. And the toolbelt. He had that on.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him; he’d never looked hotter. My pulse rocketed the closer I got. “How did this happen?”

He lifted a shoulder and came down a step. “You had GAZEBO written on one of your sticky notes. I figured that meant you wanted one.”

“It’s beautiful.” I ran my hand along the railing and looked up at him. “You built this?”

“I had a lot of help from this guy.” He ruffled Oliver’s hair. Oliver grinned and took off at a dead run into the expansebehind the gazebo. Acres and acres to run. “And some other friends. Regulars from the café. Even Teddy. It was a group effort.”

“But how did you do this without me knowing?”

He came down another step. “It wasn’t too hard. You’re gone all day. You never take a day off. You never even take a lunch as far as I know.”

“Am I really that oblivious?” A scary thought for when Oliver was a teenager.

Gently, he tucked a piece of flyaway hair behind one of my ears and stared down at me, his eyes liquid and intense and completely unreadable. “I guess so.”

I peeked around his shoulder and caught a glimpse of Oliver chasing a butterfly. “No one’s ever done something like this for me.”

“You deserve it.” He leaned closer and gave me a small, chaste kiss on the mouth.

When he made to move away, I slid a hand around his neck. “That’s it.”

“Oliver might see.”

“I’ll risk it.”

Carefully, like I was precious, he cupped my cheeks. He rubbed his nose against mine. He smelled like sweat and sawdust and a hint of varnish and hard work. I loved it.

The kiss was slow and sweet, lazy and thorough. It made my chest ache with how easy it was to stand here with this man and make up dreams in my head. Like how one day, maybe the two of us could stand in this very spot on the steps of the gazebo he built and say I do.

He pulled back and I kept my eyes closed for just a bit longer. Long enough to keep that made-up dream in my head. Because the truth was, I didn’t know what the future held. I knew, for now, Gil and I were on a timer that was close to reaching the end.This gazebo he’s spent all this time on? If we sold this place, I’d never see it again. Maybe I’d never see Gil either.

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