***
Kevin felt himself hit the wall—a big brick wall he couldn’t go through and could see no way around. A dead end.
“I can’t go on like this, Beth.”
Her shoulders slumped as though she recognized the note of finality in his voice. “We decided a long time ago the best thing we could do for Lily was be friends.”
“We are friends. But I love you, Beth.” There. He’d said it again. “I want to be your husband, too.”
He could see by the rising panic on her face he wasn’t going to get the answer he was looking for. And once she said no, he was going to have to cut her loose. No more playing at house from across a hallway divide.
He’d find a nice place for rent and make sure his child-support checks covered it so she and Lily could live in a real house with a nice yard. His daughter would come to visit as often as possible. She’d have a special suitcase for going to Daddy’s and he and Beth would make inane small talk when he picked Lily up and dropped her off again.
His gut ached at the thought, but he couldn’t stand life on the wrong side of the door anymore. He finally understood that old cliché so close yet so far.
“I’m tired of living across the hall from the woman I love and my daughter. Tired of having two doors and a hallway between me and my family.”
“And I’m tired of knowing I wouldn’t ever have seen you again if I hadn’t gotten pregnant. I’m tired of wondering if anything really holds us together besides Lily. And I don’t want to get married and then spend my whole marriage like Lisa, wondering if it’s not real under the surface.”
“Everything I feel for you is real, Beth.” He didn’t know how to make it any more clear than he had. “And I think we’ve proven we don’t need to marry for Lily’s sake. She’s born, she’s named, her parents are friends. If we go our separate ways, she’ll spend time with us both and be fine, just like all the other kids out there whose parents aren’t married or get divorced.”
Beth sat back down at the table and he wondered if she realized her coffee cup was still empty. “What do you mean by go our separate ways?”
“I told you I can’t go on like this anymore. And, while it’s not a big deal right now, before we know it, Lily will be up and about. She can’t live in a third-floor apartment over a bar without so much as a blade of grass to play in. It’s time to start looking for a place and the only question is whether or not I’ll be going with you.”
Her face paled. “See? I knew this would happen. Our relationship’s falling apart and now I need a new place to live.”
Only the fact that Lily was gurgling to herself in her seat kept his temper in check. “Don’t do that, Beth. Don’t make it sound like I’m throwing you out in the street. I’m talking about finding a decent house for you and the baby that you’ll be able to afford with support checks.”
“That’s not what I want from you.”
“Then what do you want?” She only shook her head, staring into the bottom of her cup. “You want things to continue on as they are, but I can’t anymore. I’m sorry. I want more.”
“I don’t think I have any more to give right now. But I don’t want… I don’t know.”
Rather than sit there and keep beating his head against the brick wall, Kevin took that as his cue to leave. He stood up and, after kissing Lily, turned to Beth, who looked as miserable as he felt. “You need to think about it for a few days and then we’ll talk again. We’re either going to have a real relationship or we’re going to go our separate ways and share custody of Lily. Let me know.”
He walked out before he could change his mind—before the sadness in her eyes made him take it all back and tell her they were okay. Because he wasn’t okay.
And if she told him it was over—that she’d decided they should go their separate ways—he might never be okay again.
***
Those are the times you need to dance in the kitchen the most. It’s good for your soul.
In the middle of the night, with the radio quietly playing a sad country song, Beth danced with her daughter in the kitchen. It was a song about love and loss and heartbreak, and she tried to keep her tears from dripping onto Lily as she swayed with her in her arms.
She missed Kevin. Even though he was in the same place he was every night, probably doing the same thing, it felt different tonight. He was just across the hall, but so very far away. And unlike the countless other times they’d danced around the subject of their relationship, she wasn’t sure he’d come back this time.
That hurt more than any of the possibilities she’d spent the last…well, almost a year considering. She’d spent so much time worrying about what would happen if she let him in and he left her, she drove him away.
Now that he was gone, she could see it. Even if they went their separate ways, as he’d said, they’d make it work. They’d maintain a good relationship and Lily would be fine, just like he’d said.
Beth was the one who wouldn’t be fine. She wanted him back.
Over the top of Lily’s head, a square of white on the counter caught her eye. It was a Jasper’s napkin and for the first time since Kevin walked out the door, she smiled.
Ten minutes later she sucked up her courage and dialed his number. He answered on the second ring, his voice heavy with sleep. “What’s wrong?”
“Lily’s okay. I…can you come over for a few minutes?”
“I’m already over. Unlock the door.”
He was standing in the hall in nothing but a pair of sleep pants, with his hair mussed and the phone still held to his ear. She felt a pang of guilt for calling him in the middle of the night—he must have thought something was wrong with the baby and literally run across the hall.
“What’s the matter, Beth?” he asked, coming in and closing the door behind him.
“Nothing.” Lily squirmed in her arms, wanting her daddy. “We were…”
She stopped as Kevin set his phone on the table so he could take his daughter, giving her cheek a nuzzle. It sounded stupid now, Beth realized, and she shouldn’t have dragged him out of bed in the middle of the night.
“You were what?”
Sighing, she resigned herself to telling him the whole story. “Lily and I were dancing in the kitchen and…we missed you.”
“You did, huh?” He moved closer to her, cradling Lily in one arm. He didn’t look like he thought she was stupid for calling. And he didn’t look angry or sad, either. He looked hopeful and that made her feel hopeful, too.
“Yes.” She swallowed hard when he stroked her cheek with his free hand. “It didn’t feel right without you there.”
“I’m here now.” He slid his arm around her waist, tucking Lily in between them, and started swaying a little.
She swayed with him. “We made you something.”
“Wow. Dancing. Arts and crafts. I had no idea my girls were so busy in the middle of the night.”
His girls. Warmth flooded her and she handed him the napkin before she could change her mind. He had to let go of her waist to take it, but he stayed close enough so she had a front-row seat to his reaction.
She didn’t own a Do-Me Fuchsia lipstick, but she had a dark blush color that showed up against the white. Above the Jasper’s logo were two lipstick kisses—hers and a tiny, puckered imprint of Lily’s. Under the logo she’d painstakingly written her message in the same lipstick. We love you.
He looked at it a long time, until anxiety started gnawing at the warm glow she’d had going on. Even Lily started squirming, as though she felt the tension suddenly making her mother’s stomach hurt.
Then he looked at her and the hot intensity in his gaze turned her breathless. “We?”
“I love you.” It was so much easier to say than she’d thought it would be. It felt so right and seemed to loosen a band constricting her heart.
“You kissed a napkin for me.”
“It must be true, then.”
“Just so we’re on the same page her
e, I want it all. I want you to be my wife. I want to find a nice house outside the city with a big backyard.”
She looked up into his eyes, almost afraid to believe it. “I want that, too.”
“And someday, when this monkey finds a guy willing to marry her, I want to dance with you at her wedding and look at you the way Pop still looks at my mother.”
“Yes.” She wanted that, too.
Holding Lily in his right arm, he scooped Beth close with his left and kissed her. “Dance with me.”
She put her arms around Kevin and their daughter and laid her head on his chest. “Always.”
Epilogue
Beth Hansen became Mrs. Kevin Kowalski two weeks later, on a balmy Saturday night in the middle of a playground. She wore shorts, a relatively clean white shirt, a streak of marshmallow in her hair from pre-wedding s’mores and an accumulation of at least a half-dozen layers of bugspray.
She carried a bouquet of wildflowers Kevin’s nephews had picked for her in the woods. While she couldn’t identify them all, she’d been assured—by Mary, not the boys—that none of the leaves were poison ivy and all the blossoms were insect-free. Lily snoozed in her stroller, the entire thing draped with mosquito netting, and Kevin wore a T-shirt with a fake tuxedo pattern printed on it, a last-minute gift from his brothers.
Her father walked her down an aisle lined with strings of lit Chinese lanterns borrowed from a camper, while her mother sobbed and Paulie, her maid of honor, tried not to swear at a particularly determined horsefly.
Every year the entire Kowalski family made the trip to northern New Hampshire to camp for two weeks, ride their four-wheelers and swim in the pool. It wasn’t exactly primitive camping, since they were all bedding down in very nice RVs, but there were s’mores and hot dogs on sticks and plenty of mud. Kevin and Beth’s shiny new RV—an extravagant wedding gift from Joe and Keri—was parked by itself in an isolated spot across the pond from the others, on account of it being their honeymoon.
She’d questioned the wisdom of bringing a two-month-old baby camping but Kevin had pointed out that Lily didn’t really care where she was as long as she was fed, changed and cuddled. Plus, he’d said, she was a Kowalski. She could take it.
“I now pronounce you man and wife,” the justice of the peace declared. “You may kiss the bride.”
She flung her arms around her husband’s neck as he lifted her right off the ground to kiss her senseless to a soundtrack of cheers, applause, wolf whistles and what sounded like a few groans and gags from the juvenile male crowd. That was followed, naturally, by a very unhappy squawk from Lily, who didn’t particularly care for having her naps interrupted.
Kevin set Beth down, but Paulie—who wasn’t camping but had made the drive up with Sam—was already at the stroller, lifting the baby out. Kevin and Beth were hugged and kissed as they made their way down a makeshift receiving line—more like a gauntlet, she thought—and then she was able to take Lily.
“At least you know how you’ll be celebrating your anniversary every year,” Paulie said. “The Annual Kowalski family camping trip.”
“Of Doom,” Beth and Kevin said together and everybody laughed.
Then there was food and more food and then the cake. Or the cakes, rather, because there were three sheet cakes to accommodate the family, their friends and pretty much everybody in the campground.
Lily was fed and changed and eventually, after a round of pass the baby, she finally went back to sleep in Shelly’s arms. Stephanie plugged her iPod into a set of external speakers somebody had provided and a sweet country song drifted across the campground.
Kevin pulled Beth into his arms and they danced for the first time as man and wife. She laid her head on his chest, tears brimming on her lashes. She wasn’t sure how he’d managed to stumble across the Tim McGraw and Faith Hill duet, considering his taste in music, but it was perfect. His love definitely did something to her.
“I thought I’d never get to dance with my wife.”
She loved the sound of that. “You sure know how to show a girl an interesting time, husband.”
His hands slid down her hips—not far enough to be indecent in front of the family, but far enough to promise he’d get indecent later. Beth preferred to think the warm tingle spreading across her skin was the thrill of the moment rather than the high concentration of DEET eating her flesh.
“Are you going to be sorry someday you didn’t get the dress and the flowers and all that crap?”
“I’ll never be sorry. And I had flowers. Special flowers picked just for me.”
“Umm…were you able to identify all of them before you touched them?”
“No, but your mother checked them for poison ivy and bugs.”
She rested her head against him as he laughed and she felt the rumble through his chest. His hands slid up to her back and he rested his cheek on the top of her head as they swayed together through the rest of the song. As the last notes faded away, he tipped her chin up and kissed her again. Then he moved his mouth close to her ear.
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this,” he said so quietly nobody could hear him but her, “but I’m glad you made me wait. Made us wait. For this, I mean.”
So was she. This marriage wasn’t going to be chased by doubts. No staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night wondering if her husband had really wanted to marry her. “I love you.”
“And since you wrote it on a napkin, it must be true.”
True to his word, Kevin had framed the napkin she and Lily kissed in the middle of the night and hung it over the bar. She was hoping that, along with the wide and shiny gold band on his finger, would cut down the number of napkins in the basket.
“Do you want your present now?” he asked.
“Right here in front of everybody?”
“Everybody helped. Joe just finished up his part while we were dancing, as a matter of fact. I think they’d like to see you open it.”
She let him lead her over to the table set up for the gifts and she laughed when he handed her a flat package wrapped in newspaper and secured with what looked like an entire roll of tape.
“We either forgot the extra wrapping paper or it’s hiding in one of the campers,” Keri explained.
“I wrapped it,” Brian said.
Bobby shoved him. “I helped!”
“It looks wonderful.” Beth turned the package over in her hands until she finally found what looked like a weak point in the tape. It wasn’t easy, but she managed to get the flat box unwrapped without using her teeth.
When she lifted the lid and peeled back the tissue paper, her breath caught in her chest and tears sprang instantly to her eyes.
It was a collage photo frame, identical to the one she’d given Kevin for Christmas. The picture Mary had taken of them with Lily when she was three weeks old was in the center. There was a photo of Beth playing with the boys and Stephanie at Christmas. A shot of her and Paulie laughing together at Jasper’s she’d never even known was taken. A photo of her parents with Lily, taken while they were still at the hospital. A group shot of the entire family, with her at the center in her tiara, taken at her baby shower.
And there were two from that very night. One taken as they looked into each other’s eyes and said their vows. Another of them in each other’s arms when they danced as husband and wife.
That must have been Joe’s part, she thought. He had a laptop and a small printer with him, so he must have printed the last two pictures while they finished their dance.
They were all there in candid moments captured forever under glass. Her family. “It’s beautiful.”
Kevin put his arm around her waist and pulled her close. “They’ll look awesome hanging together in the new house.”
There wasn’t a new house yet, but Kevin was pretty determined Lily would spend her first Christmas in a real house with a yard she wasn’t old enough to play in. “Yes, they will. In the meantime, they’ll hang together over your—
I mean our—couch.”
He kissed her again, until Bobby’s voice broke into the moment. “Time for the Wedding Garter Toss of Doom!”
Beth and Kevin broke apart, and she laughed when she saw the game they were setting up. Instead of horseshoes, they’d be tossing rings painted to look like wedding garters at the stakes. The kids were already arguing over who was on which team, and the guys were surreptitiously switching out paper cups of Kool-Aid disguised as wedding punch for beer and sodas.
Her family, she thought again and there was no hesitation. No pangs of regret or longing for Albuquerque. Hell, she even had her eye on a late-model minivan for sale down the street from the bar.
This was her home, with the people who cared about her. She loved them all, especially the tall one arguing with his brothers about how many paces should be between the stakes and whose paces they were going to use.
“I love you,” she mouthed when he looked in her direction.
He grinned, flashing full dimples at her. “You might love me right now, but the kids said we have to be on opposite teams. The groom’s team and the bride’s team.”
Beth laughed and joined her family, ready to kick her new husband’s ass at the Wedding Garter Toss of Doom.
About the Author
Shannon Stacey married her Prince Charming in 1993 and is the proud mother of two incredible sons. She lives in New England, where her two favorite activities are trying to stay warm and writing stories of happily ever after. And while her two cats refuse to curl up on her lap and keep it warm while she writes, her Shih Tzu is never far away.
When she’s not writing, she’s indulging in her other passion—four wheeling! From May to November, the Stacey family spends their weekends on their ATVs, making loads of muddy laundry to keep Shannon busy when she’s not at her computer.
You can contact Shannon through her website, http://shannonstacey.com, where she has maintained an almost daily blog since 2005, when she sold her first book. You can also visit her Facebook page, http://facebook.com/shannonstacey.authorpage, or email her at [email protected].
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