Suddenly he shifted and she felt herself being lifted. He set her on the opposite end of the couch facing him again. Then re-settled on the cushion. He stared her down.
“What could you still not do after I worked with you?”
“Just a couple of little things.” She winced again. “But things that would have made me fail my driving test.”
“What things?”
“Fine. Parallel parking. And passing traffic on the highway.”
“And who worked with you on this?”
“Does it really matter?”
“Yes, it fucking matters. Was that Jason?”
Again, it would be good news to him that it had not been Jason. But he actually wasn’t going to like this answer any more than he had knowing who her geometry tutor had been.
“No, it wasn’t Jason,” she said.
“Was it Zeke?”
She shook her head. “No.” She paused, then sighed. “It was Zander.”
Fletcher shook his head for a moment. “So again, one of my brothers, who is two years younger than us and did not have his own driver’s license, was able to teach you something I couldn’t?”
“In his defense, Zander had been driving since he was about twelve. Not legally, of course,” she noted. “But he knew what he was doing. And he, somehow, was able to teach me how to do it.”
Fletcher ran a hand over his face.
“Fletcher, the point is, everything you did completely helped me. You helped me get over my test anxiety and my anxiety driving. If you hadn’t done that, nothing they tried to teach me would have sunk in.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that you needed more help?”
She shrugged. She knew she needed to be honest here. He was her husband now. That made things different. “Because I knew how much it meant to you to be the guy who fixed everything. I was afraid if you knew that you hadn’t actually done that, you would quit trying.”
He just looked at her for a long moment, not saying anything.
“I loved when you helped me. I loved every night we spent studying. I loved every time we went out driving. Because the studying wasn’t just about geometry. We would talk and laugh. One time we made cookies. Another time we experimented with putting different things on our popcorn. When we went driving, we always ended up parking somewhere and talking. Remember the time we ended up at the farmers’ market?” she asked. “To this day, I’ve not had apples that good again.”
Finally, he nodded. “I might have stopped doing some of that,” he said, almost as if he found it all a little baffling. “I really liked being the save-the-day guy. And if I’d known that I wasn’t, I might’ve quit trying. I mean, I still would have been there for you, but I might have handed off the driving lessons or something.”
She nodded. “And that’s my point. You were doing all of those middle things. Those things that you think you’re not good at. All of that middle stuff not only made it possible for me to learn the stuff at the end when Zeke and Zander taught me, but it gave me some great memories with my best friend. And the best apples I’ve ever had.” She smiled at him. “You are good at the middles too, Fletcher.”
“Yeah, maybe I am.”
“Can I say something else?”
He didn’t look totally convinced that he wanted to hear it, but he nodded.
“After my grandpa’s funeral, that was the middle too. It wasn’t like after that I was totally over everything. It wasn’t like I was never sad and never cried about it again. You taking me out that day was in the middle of a lot of things I had to get used to. But you were there. And then you took me fishing the first time I ever went with anyone other than my grandpa. You went with me to see the Christmas lights in Audubon Park the first Christmas he was gone. I had never seen those lights without him.”
“I didn’t know that about the lights,” Fletcher said, his voice gruff. “Your family just invited me along.”
She nodded. “I know. Because I knew that you being there would make it better.”
He looked like he was having trouble coming up with words. He just swallowed hard and then reached out and squeezed her foot.
She gave him a wobbly smile, feeling her eyes stinging. “You’ve been doing middles for a long time. And it’s totally my fault that you didn’t know it. I wanted to make you feel good about being the superhero, so I always let you have your big grand gestures. But I didn’t tell you about the little ones that meant just as much. Or more. So it’s my fault you don’t think you can do the middle stuff as well.” She leaned forward and squeezed his foot in return. “I’m sorry.”
They just sat looking at each other for several ticks of the clock.
Finally he said, “I really love you.”
She sucked in a little breath. The emotion in his voice and his expression was something she’d never seen before.
She felt her eyes fill with tears, but she gave him a big smile. “I love you so much.”
He didn’t say anything. He just sat looking at her. And squeezing her foot.
“Do you want to make out?” she asked.
Because she really did.
That got a smile. He shook his head. “No. You need to take it easy tonight.”
She’d figured that’s what he was going to say.
“But there is something I’d really like.”
She lifted a brow. “Okay.” Anything. This guy was…everything.
She’d thought she’d been in love for eleven years. Actually, she had been in love. She’d definitely loved Jason. A little bit of her still did. In a way.
But she’d never felt for Jason what she felt for Fletcher.
“I’d really like to do something for you tonight. Something that’s actually helpful. Something that might get you through tonight feeling better. Something real. No telling me you’re fine if you’re not, like with the parallelograms and parallel parking.”
Yeah, he was going to keep bringing that up for a while.
She rolled her eyes, but smiled. “Okay. Then I think I should go to bed. And it would be really amazing if you wanted to come up and lie in the dark with me and listen to the audio book I’m listening to.”
He perked up. “I could do that.”
“Well, just a warning, it’s a steamy romance. There might be orgasms.”
He gave her a little smirk. “Huh.”
“Huh? Just huh? You can handle that?”
“Listening to a book that you really like, hearing stuff that turns you on, could be very interesting. And educational.”
“Educational, huh?”
“I’m still very dedicated to getting all of that right.” He narrowed his eyes. “You will not be going to my brothers for any additional help in that area.”
She laughed. “I don’t want anyone else helping me with that.” She squeezed his foot again, then ran her hand up and down. “You are very good at those grand finales.”
Then he winked at her.
Winked.
And she realized that he’d just forgiven her for learning to parallel park with Zander.
18