Page 139 of Mr. Picture Perfect
“Lord help us all, this unfathomable summerheat!” groans my mom in despair as she fans herself over the snack table. “All my chocolate Doug Bugs are meltin’!”
“They still look cute,” I say from the other side of the table.
The half-eaten one in my hand looks adorably cross-eyed. My other hand is shielding my face from the sun. I’m still waiting on Cole to arrive. He’s been held up at work for some reason, though that reason seemed vague.Wait, did he even give me a reason?
“Darling, I told you it’d be better to keep them inside,” says my dad, interrupting a chat he was having with Cole’s father to come up to the table. “Nadine has got all that counter space in the house, and these would go great with Jacky-Ann’s milkshakes.”
“But it’s the Fourth of July, sugar booger! It’s anoutdoorevent! Everyone’s outhere! Not inthere!”
“I know, muffin baby, but chocolate’s no match for the sun whether it’s got a cute ol’ face on it or not.”
“Gosh dang it, honey bunny, I think you’ve got a point, and I hate it.” She sighs. “Well, help me take ‘em in, then, will ya?”
“Sure thing, sweetie-poo.” The pair get to work bringing in all the trays of chocolate Doug Bugs back into the Strong house.
Nearby, Cole’s parents Lauren and Robert observed the whole exchange. “Is that the secret to a happy marriage?” teases Robert with a beer in hand. “Exchanging saccharine pet names?”
“If you ever call me a sugar booger or sweetie-poo, it’s over,” says Lauren.
Then the two look at each other.
And burst into laughter.
I guess it’s safe to say that therapy has been doing them well over the past several months. Though I would be remiss not to attribute some of Mrs. Harding’s improved state of mind to her mended friendship with my mom. Of course, I happen to be seeing her on a good day, and I know through Cole that his dad still has a lot of work to do on himself, but it’s encouraging to see the two of them laughing and smiling at each other.
Even if it’s a tiny bit at my parents’ expense.
That’s okay; my mom would probably have laughed, too, then made a jelly-filled “sugar booger” Bundt cake in honor of them.
When Mrs. Harding recovers from her laughter, she meets my eyes, then gives me a little wink.
I wink right back, then smile.
It seems like over the months, she and I have formed this kind of odd yet endearing wordless relationship with each other. She winks at me. I wink back. It’s like a love language. And this comes from the guy who doesn’t do vagueness. She expressed how much it means to her to see her darling Cole happy again, and somehow, she totally and completely blames me for it.
That’s something I don’t mind being blamed for at all.
The truth is, we love our parents and the family we’ve created in bringing us all together. Yes, sometimes my parents cramp our style when Cole and I try to enjoy some alone time at my house, and my dear mom suddenly has a middle-of-the-night “tasty new addition to the Jiggle-Wiggle family” she wants us to taste. Or my dad asks Cole if he’d like to hear the latest exciting happenings in Windville—to which Cole is always compelled to say, “Of course, Mayor Windville! Lead the way!” And though we do eventually get to enjoy our time alone together, my house is beginning to feel smaller and smaller by the day.
But that hardly compares to thecock-blockageat Cole’s.
It seems like nearly three times a week that Anthony shows up unannounced to give Porridge her “overdue lovin’ n’ snuggles”, he calls it. Half the time he’s drunk, won’t leave, and eventually crashes with us, usually after a slurred soliloquy about how we’re his best pals in the world. Cole’s Nan woke up once in the middle of the night to find him on the couch as silent as a stone, with his mouth wide open and tongue hanging out, and kicked him just to check if he was dead. Porridge, who was usually found sleeping atop his legs, would just pop her sleepy head up.
No matter where Cole and I are, we’re surrounded by family and loved ones.
And while that’s amazing most of the time, it has inspired us to engage in some entertaining pastimes, one such pastime being looking at houses for sale, pretending we have the income to buy one, then fantasizing about what our life can be like living alone together. “Is it too soon?” I asked him one time as we drove back to my house. He quirked an eyebrow and shot me a look. “Don’t you mean, ‘it can’t happen soon enough’?”
No matter when it happens, whether a month from now or a year from now, I enjoy the dream of it, and I am happy to have a guy like Cole by my side.
Well, literally not by my side rightnow, as I continue to check my phone, wondering when he’ll join me here at the Strongs’.
Just about everyone I know in Spruce is here today for the big Fourth of July blast. I found out earlier that last year’s party was held at Billy and Tanner’s little house out by the “modest Strong lake”, but it was apparently super crowded, and only Billy and Tanner’s friends were invited, so of course Nadine volunteered to host the whole shebang at the main house so as to accommodate a considerably larger guest list that could be a lot more inclusive. The list even includes the McPhersons, Whitmans,andEvanses—a first in many years, for all three of the “big families of Spruce” to be brought under the same roof.
I spot TJ a number of times, flitting from one group of friends to another, always a plate in his hand, munching on food. I also catch Mindy and Joel swinging on a hanging bench together, as their twins race around in the grass in front of them playing a demented form of tag involving screeching at each other like a pair of pterodactyls (and not in any way disproving they might, in fact, literally be monsters). Reverend Trey is here with his hunky, brooding husband Cody and both of their parents—namely Trey’s widowed father, former reverend of Spruce, and Cody’s single mother, a round-faced woman who wears an impressive amount of makeup on her face at all times. Chatting with them are Lance Goodwin and his boyfriend Chad, along with a few of the nurses from the clinic and Dr. Emory himself, who always looks strange to me when he’s not in his white doctor’s coat.
From what I heard, Trey and Cody have to duck out of the party before the fireworks on account of a “very important out-of-town guest” named Pete they’re about to host for a few weeks, and the house needs some TLC before he arrives. Apparently Cody saved Pete’s life back when he was in the army, and it will be the first time he’s seen Pete in over six years, if I heard correctly.
The person I heard these things from, of course, is my close friend who never misses a thing: Tamika. She arrived separately from Frankie, I noticed earlier, and all day so far, they’ve seemed to hang out with different friend circles. “Everyone keeps thinking we’re a thing, I have no idea why,” says Tamika, “but I swear we’re just friends. He’s adorable though, isn’t he? Went through thick and thin back in school, especially when we had to fight on behalf of Toby, Vann, and Ms. Joy to turn a straight play gay. Remember that fiasco? Didn’t you write an article about it in the paper back then? Pretty sure I read it—and loved it. Anyway, Frankie will make a special someone happy someday, I just know it. He’s a gem.”
