Page 52 of This Love
She’d trusted me from the beginning, in the swirling lights, and even the next day when she met me all over again.
Why was it harder now? She couldn’t be different.
It was me. My expectations. My foreknowledge.
Even when my brain knew she didn’t recognize me, remember me, or know how she once felt, my heart insisted she should.
Hell, we’d tattooed it on our skin.
The heart remembers.
So, why was it so difficult? Why did it take so long?
And why was it so hard to bear?
Chapter 20
Ava
Dating was fun.
Tucker took me to a food truck park where we could choose from tacos or sushi or gyros or burgers. I picked cupcakes. Tucker agreed that life was uncertain, so dessert first all around.
We saw more movies. And went bowling, which I figured out I’d done before when I rolled the ball and knocked all but two pins down on the first try.
“Muscle memory,” Tucker said. “You were always a good bowler.”
I wondered what other skills I had.
He lingered more and more at the door when these dates were over. One day at Harry’s, I finally asked Flo about it.
“What would make Tucker stand by the front door for like forever when we go home?”
She laughed, using her phone camera to apply a layer of bright red lip gloss. Flo was thirty-six and cared a lot about her makeup being “on point” and that her bleached blonde curls never frizzed. “Girl, he’s on the prowl, of course, he is. He hasn’t gotten any since your wedding day, and he’s bound to be getting blue in the balls.”
Harry passed by for the last part and stopped dead in his tracks. “Flo, mind yer business and clear those tables.”
Flo popped her hip in tight white jeans. “Aww, why can’t Jimmie do it? What’s the point of a busboy if we have to bus ourselves?”
“Everybody buses,” Harry said, his voice dark and low.
“Oh, listen to you, you big ol’ bear.” Flo flounced off but not toward the tables. She was probably off to find Jimmie to do it.
Harry sighed. “Don’t listen to Flo. She’s never had a man like Tucker and definitely not a situation like yours.”
I stacked plates, mindful of the forks so they wouldn’t fly off the edge. I wanted to ask him what Tucker hadn’t gotten any of and what balls would be blue? Like the gumballs in the little machines by the door? Some of those were blue.
I told him, “I didn’t understand a word she said.”
“Probably for the best,” Harry said and moved to the bar, where a customer was waiting.
So, he was no help.
But maybe I got the idea. People in the movies were always kissing or getting into bed together. I wasn’t sure exactly how it worked. I could probably Google it.
I know Tucker and I slept together in the bed in our house. And I did feel things when I was with him.
I was just…scared. Those emotions were hard to contain. Superman and Lois had an epic fight about relationships. And David Rose and Stevie and Patrick were always mixing it up on the show. Not to mention Alexis and Mutt and then Ted.
