Marcus glanced back and forth between the two of us, his eyes like a pendulum. Then he shrugged. “Life is weird. No big deal.”
Joshua found that funny, giggling. “Life is weird,” he agreed.
Then everything was settled again, and the starved four of us were diving back into our food. Marcus started talking our ears off about anime-this-and-that. Joshua kept interrupting to grab tots from across the table—which eventually Tanner slid closer to him so he didn’t have to reach. And in the middle of it all, while taking a sip of my Coke Zero, I caught Tanner’s eyes, finding him smiling ear to ear.
And just like that, we were a family.
Not perfect.
Maybe not ready.
But together in it, no matter.
I’m still thinking about that day when Tanner finally comes home from school and the kids have moved their playing into the bedroom, leaving me in the armchair with my book, which I’d just started being able to focus on. “Not supposed to go this late,” he says right away, as if anticipating me wanting an apology for being all by myself or something, “but my assistant coach, bless his poor heart, had eighteen different plans—eighteen, Billy, eighteen—to get our team in shape. I about needed a break to call Harrison and ask why I ever decided to go into coaching. Even back when he and I were playing alongside each other, he always talked sense into me. Are the kids in bed already?” On cue, he picks up the sound of the two of them playing in their bedroom. “Oh, good. Wanted to talk to Marcus. Didn’t have much of a chance after the—”
“That was sweet, what you did.”
Tanner stops by the kitchen counter, just having dropped his car keys into the dish we keep there. “What?”
“Lying.” I set the book aside on the squatty marshmallow nightstand, still missing its drawer. We’d decided to leave well enough alone. You know, like we’re doing with our marriage, I guess. “I wouldn’t normally encourage lying in front of our kids, but I have a teensy feeling Principal Whitman despises us, andMarcus is damned well allowed to make any sort of beautiful demented art he wants.”
Tanner smiles, looking relieved. “I’m … really, really glad you came to that conclusion. I’ve been thinkin’ about it nonstop. What you thought of my …response. But I think Marcus is old enough to understand. You know. And the bigger lesson was there, right? He should express himself how he wishes. Everyone’s happiness is—”
“—a little bit different,” I finish for him.
Tanner meets my eyes, going quiet.
I rise from the armchair and come up to him. He goes stiff, as if the idea of me entering his bubble has become a long-lost idea, a wish that might never be fulfilled again. Once more, making me feel like I really have been the ice queen of broken love, allowing ourselves to fall apart and blaming him for it all.
I want to do better, even if my heart isn’t fully in it yet. I want my smiles to become less plastic and more genuine again. It has to be possible to resuscitate the crazy love we once shared. Look at how long my parents have been together. And Tanner’s.
I want to be the beacon of light everyone in Spruce expects of me—ofus.
Maybe it’s the memories that have been rolling in lately, but I find my mood changed completely in this moment, seeing Tanner look at me the way he is, something between curious and scared, anticipating something, breath held, eyes sparkling and bright.
It’s suddenly very possible that he hasn’t been ignoring how I’ve felt.
He’s been keeping it inside, too. Pasting on a smile.
Clinging to the hope that we can salvage this.
And maybe we can. “I … I think we should … sleep with our doorclosedtonight.”
Tanner lifts his eyebrows. “Why? So the kids have privacy?”
“Sowehave privacy,” I answer right back, voice deepening.
I meet his eyes.
He meets mine.
The message is sent.
Not a second after the boys go to bed, we do too. I shut and lock the door. Tanner watches me with this hungry look in his eyes I haven’t seen since we were first dating, that prickling look of uncertainty, anticipation in his every breath. “Keep your voice down,” I warn him, “though I know it’s gonna be damned near impossible to, considering what I plan to do to you tonight.”
He comes up to me and cradles my face with his hands. “Are you sure, babe?” His lips are close, his eyes shining like pale glass in the moonlight from the window. “Are you—?”
I kiss him midsentence. Gently at first. Then growing with force until my fingers are curled into his shirt and we’re both out of breath. Then I pull back. “Do I seem sure to you?”