Over the door, in neatly stenciled white letters, it reads VARMINT PALACE.
I’m rendered fully speechless.
“I thought Terry, Larry, and Jerry would like it,” Seth finally says.
I clear my throat. I clear it again. I’ve completely forgotten everything that I was going to say to him.
“I can’t say I know their taste in architecture, honestly,” I tell him.
I’m still staring.
“You built a raccoon castle?” I say. “That’s what I’m looking at, right?”
“Yep,” he confirms. “You like it?”
“I do,” I say, and that breaks the spell. I step forward, touch a turret, look into it. I crouch and look through the doorway. It looks big enough for all three of them to fit in at once, though I’ve got no idea if raccoons snuggle.
Then I straighten, face Seth. He’s watching me, his eyes still cerulean in the faded light.
“I like you,” he says, and a smile tugs at one corner of his mouth. “That’s all, really. I like you. I like that you’re funny. I like that you’re stubborn. I like that you’re always up for adventure and I like that you only have really weird liquor in your house and I like that you have a million beautiful tattoos and I even like that you feed disease-ridden varmints because you’re soft-hearted.”
This time, I know better than to ask about the but.
“I like you too,” I say. “Even when I wish I didn’t.”
“I can’t be without you any more,” he goes on, softly. “I thought I could, but I was wrong every single time.”
He steps forward, puts a hand on my cheek. The floodlights behind us flick off, and suddenly we’re in the slate-blue of near darkness.
“I’m the man who’ll answer every time you call,” he says, simply. “Whatever you ask, I’ll say yes. Like it or not, Bird, I’ll be yours until the the day I die.”
I take a deep breath and put my hand over his, slot our fingers together.
“I’m not gonna leave you for someone who likes golf,” I say, softly. I don’t trust my voice because I’m afraid I’m about to start crying. “That’s not what I want. I want you. If I wanted someone else, I’d be with someone else.”
I swallow hard, close my eyes.
“I know it took a long time to get here, but it’s you, Seth.”
He kisses me, then. His other hand cups my other cheek and he kisses me, softly. Carefully, but not gently, like he knows exactly the pressure I can bear.
“You’re enough,” he murmurs, my face still in his hands. “You were always enough. You always will be.”
Now it’s my turn to kiss him, my hand on his face, my fingers curled in his hair, suddenly possessive. The still-healing star on my wrist winks at me in the darkness, and after a long kiss, I pull away.
“You were right,” I tell him. He raises one eyebrow. “Back at the condo, when you found the box of stuff from my ex—"
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs.
I put my fingers over his mouth. He raises the other eyebrow, too.
“I tried to erase you and I couldn’t,” I tell him. “You were always there, Seth, even when I tried so hard to forget you. I tried to replace you and wound up calling you the moment I filed for divorce.”
I slide my fingers from his lips, and he takes my hand.
“You never told me that part,” he says.
“It was an hour after Nolan got the papers,” I say. “Sixty minutes to work up my nerve, just in case I had to beg.”
I take half a step back, hand him the scrapbook. The first page is us at Ava’s wedding, one of the professional shots. We’re dancing, in each other’s arms. He’s grinning and I’m laughing, the people behind us a blur. Instead of all the stuff we bought for the scrapbook, the page under the photograph is a drawing, all in pink and gold: the wedding fading into bubbles, drifting away; a bird winging its way across the top.
Seth holds it up to the nearly-gone light, brings it in. Turns, so his shadow isn’t over the book.
The next page: the program from a production of Guys & Dolls our high school put on. A piece of torn notebook paper that says Delilah Loveless in my big, loopy teenage handwriting. On the page underneath, the view of the football field from the nook where we first kissed. I can tell from his face that he recognizes it, even in the low light.
Seth holds out his hand, and I take it. We walk back to my house, past the cars, go inside. We sit on the couch, his arm around me, and I look at what I was up most of the night making.
In the end, I didn’t lay it out the way Ava thought I should. The book doesn’t tell a story because we both know the story already, by heart, inside and outside and upside down.
It’s more abstract: organized by mood, feeling, sense. The first time I met his family is grouped with when he gave me a key to his college apartment: times when his home was mine. A prom photo and a hotel key, together. The coaster from Fall Fest backed by a two-page almost-pornographic drawing of us, horizontal on a couch. All that’s visible is one nipple, but it’s clear what’s going on.
Seth understands. He knows, intuitively, laughs at some of the pages, runs his fingers over others like he wants to touch what’s inside them. He teases me sometimes and kisses me sometimes and when he reaches the last page I’m curled into him, still on my couch, my head in the curve of his neck.
It’s the label from a bottle of Frog Holler Cider, pulled off and stuck to the page. On it there’s a picture of the barn and an apple tree, and on the page underneath I drew the rest of the scene: hills behind, stars above. In the distance, two tiny figures holding hands.
“That’s the night I knew it could work,” I say, softly. I don’t know if it’s the most romantic thing, but it’s the truest thing.
“I knew before that,” Seth says, pulling me in closer.
I nuzzle against his neck.
“No, you didn’t,” I say.
“I did. I knew in the car.”
I’m laughing. So is he.
“No, you didn’t,” I say again.
“I had a vision,” Seth says. “Of us in twenty years, my hair going gray, and you in the passenger seat with a giant map arguing with me about directions. And I knew.”
“What, that we could argue?”
“That I loved you,” he says, the rumble of his voice reverberating through me. “And that whatever happened, I’d fight for it.”
Tears prick at my eyes, and I bite my lips together. Take a deep breath.
“I love you too,” I say, and we kiss again.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Seth
The sliding glass door in the living room opens and closes again, and a few seconds later, Delilah comes back into the kitchen with the plastic container of kibble.
“Nothing just yet, but I think I tempted them,” she says. “Once they’re in front of their new digs, they’ll be curious and check it out, right?”
I rinse the dish soap from a pan, then stack it on her dishrack.
“Maybe they need better treats to tempt them,” she muses, leaning back against the counter next to the sink. “Do raccoons like filet mignon?”