Page 104 of Go Find Less

I’ve never lived anywhere rural enough to see stars at night. At least, not like they do in the movies, where you can look up and point out constellations like a game of I Spy. Even on my few trips to see family back in Italy, the night sky was dimmed by the bright city lights. But it’s never kept me from gazing up at them.

In the days between Mickey’s passing and his funeral, Ava told me to write him a letter. Tell him all the things I wish I’d said, or hoped he knew, and leave nothing out, she’d said. A final goodbye after months - years, really - of heartache and grief. I sat under the dim stars and bright city lights near our last home together, where he barely spent a few weeks total between hospital stays and doctor’s appointments, and put pen to paper on a notebook I’d had since college.

Pages. I wrote him pages and pages of thoughts, of feelings, of anger and grief and sorrow. Pages of things I wish we’d done together. Pages of the life we could have lived. Selfishly, pages of the things he took away from me when he broke my heart over and over again. And pages of why I’d forgiven him. I put the pages in his casket at the visitation, along with one of Bex’s old collars, his baseball mitt, and the coloring pages his niece and nephew had completed while we waited for him to come out of his first grueling, hours-long surgery all those years ago.

But looking up at this night sky, now years later, all of those feelings bubbling up seem so different now. They were raw and real and so very very heightened in that time, every thought and function consumed by them until the feelings were all I had left. And then having spent years tamping them down with avoidance and alcohol…

This feeling in my chest. This ease. This…surety. How could I already be feeling it with the man asleep a few feet away from me, when I’m not even positive I ever felt it with the man I buried states away, years ago?

“Penny for your thoughts?” I nearly jump out of my skin as Fitz’s long arms wrap around my waist, securing the sheet wrapped around me. I shake my head, clearing the surprise, and tilt back to meet his gaze. He rests his chin on my shoulder after planting a kiss there.

“Is it heated?” I nod my chin toward the pool at the center of the yard. I feel Fitz shake his head.

“Not right now, we - uh, I - usually keep it off until a few hours before we use it.” He looks down at me. “You thinking about going for a swim?” I shrug. “The hot tub is available,” he says after a moment, and I crane my neck to peer outside. Sure enough, in one of the corners is a large, covered hot tub, surrounded on two sides by vines and on the third by the wall of the house. When I look back up at him, he’s smirking. “I’ll be right back.”

I stay standing as he disappears, returning seconds later with a towel wrapped tightly around his hips, handing me another. I strip off the sheet and start to wrap the towel around myself when I catch him standing next to the door, fingers on the handle, watching me.

“What?” I ask, feeling my face flush. I use the tie on my wrist to pull up my hair. He shakes his head, like he’s clearing a thought, and then holds his free hand out to me, opening the door. Bex and Roscoe follow us outside - it’s a rare clear, moderate spring night in Texas, so I’m not shivering as I follow Fitz to the hot tub and watch him fold back the cover, turning on the jets. They bubble to life as he brushes off some leaves from the steps, and then tests the water temperature. He gestures for me to do the same.

I moan. It feels perfect. His lips thin into a line, but he holds his hand out to me again. With a glance around the yard, I see that all the neighbors' lights are off - the only ones around us are the soft lights coming from inside Fitz’s bedroom. So, I pull the towel off, setting it on the back of a nearby patio chair and climbing into the warm water.

My entire body melts into the seat on the opposite side from the steps, and I watch appreciatively as Fitz climbs in, leaving his boxers on. Hm. Maybe he’s a little more worried about being arrested for indecent exposure than I am? He also lives here - I’m less likely to have to deal with nosy neighbors seeing me naked.

He wades over toward me, and I let him settle on the seat beside me before I turn halfway, letting my back rest against his chest. His arm wraps around my stomach, holding me to him as we rest together. After a minute of comfortable silence, I repeat his words, “Penny for your thoughts?” His chest rumbles behind me.

“Touché.” I wade away, turning to face him. “You never told me why today was a bad day.” I bristle immediately. What a way to sour the mood.

“Just work stuff,” I answer, probably more dismissively than necessary, and he raises an eyebrow. “Seriously.”

“Seriously,” he echoes, and in the warm water, beneath the bubbles, his hand finds mine. His fingers intertwine with my own, and he lifts them so I can clearly see where they meet. “You want me to open up? This makes that a two way street, Piper.” He squeezes my hand for emphasis, and I smile back at him.

“Does that mean you’ll tell me more of your secrets?” I give his chest a playful jab with my free hand, but he bats it away, twisting our joined hands until I’m back against his chest. I let out a long sigh, pushing away a drifting leaf on the water’s surface. “Do you remember that conversation we had in the office at the Pine?”

“Vividly,” he says, almost immediately, and I’m tempted to turn and see his facial expression. He keeps me firmly against him.

“I told you that I stopped making myself small for people a long time ago.” He hums against me. “I feel like I’m making myself small again.” I feel him still instantly against my back.

“With this?” he asks, and I can tell he means us.

“No!” I try to turn, but his other hand snakes around me, his lips kissing the top of my head like he’s relieved by my reaction. “At work. With all this design stuff…” I chew on my lip, unsure of how to phrase how I’m feeling. “I thought for a long time that if I could just get out of marketing, and do something that I truly loved all the time, I’d be happy.” I sigh again. “I thought that seeing my stuff in stores, on people, would make me happy.”

“And it hasn’t?”

“It’s not that.” I close my eyes momentarily, trying to take in this moment, here, with him. “So much has changed since I started at AllHearts. I’ve changed.” I give his hand a squeeze. “I’m starting to think maybe I need to find something else to do for work, so I can get back to doing what I love under my own terms, not someone else’s.”

There’s a few moments of silence, and I can hear crickets chirping off in the distance when Fitz finally replies “Then let’s find you a new job.”

With my hand, I squeeze the forearm around my waist, and he loosens his grip, letting me turn until I’m straddling his lap. My wet hands find the nape of his neck, and his eyes flit down to the clear line of cleavage just above the water level.

“Just admiring the view,” he says after I roll my eyes. Fitz’s fingers trace patterns on the curve of my hip. “Admiring you.” I give the sides of his toned neck a little squeeze as a smile plays on his lips.

“I’m admiring you, too.” I run my thumb over the sensitive spot behind his ear, and one of his hands trails over the fold of my hip, that gathering of extra skin when I sit. Involuntarily, I swallow, and his brows furrow. “Sorry,” I start, and then give an awkward little laugh. “I’ve always been a little self conscious about that.”

Lie. I’ve always beena lotself conscious about that. Even at my “I forgot to eat because I'm too busy taking care of my dying husband” skinniest, the way my stomach folds when I sit has always been a point of contention with myself.

“With this?” Fitz watches my face as he moves his free hand over the soft part of my lower stomach, the way it covers part of the triangle of dark hair - where I’d really like his fingers right about now. A shudder runs down my spine at the thought, and he does it again. “What is there to be self conscious about?”

The laugh I emit is not graceful or ladylike - not that I’ve ever claimed to be either.

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