For You(151)

Jessie had run into Josie at the Coffee House when she was on her way over and had stopped to pick up breakfast for her and me. Josie, being a friend, knowing her husband was working at Colt’s house (and therefore being curious), hooked up with Jessie and came with her. We’d been nattering for half an hour while Chip and Brad put the finishing touches on Colt’s new security system, playing double duty as bodyguards to me. When they got there, Darryl dragged his ass off the couch and went home.

Through the window I saw Colt head down the walk that ran the front of his house and I was watching the door when he came through it.

Jessie and Josie twisted on their stools and I straightened, pushing off my forearms which I was resting on the counter. Colt got four, “Hey Colts,” and he returned the greetings but I was giving him the jaw-tilt and not only did his eyes never leave me, he came directly to me.

I turned to him when he hit the kitchen and got close. Instead of smiling at me, he put a hand to the side of my neck and used it to pull me toward him and up. I went on my toes and he touched his mouth to mine. I heard, straight out, Josie’s loud sigh and I nearly rolled my eyes but that might make Colt do more than a lip touch and I liked Josie, I didn’t want her to expire from delight in Colt’s dining area.

“You catch ‘em?” I asked when he lifted his head.

“Baby, I just left the crime scene.”

“So? I thought you were Superman.”

He grinned and his grin communicated two things. One, he thought I was funny. Two, he was remembering our conversation last night. I felt warmth hit my cheeks and other more intimate places and found that, two minutes before I was happy for all the company I had. Just then, I wished they’d all go away.

His fingers at my neck gave me a squeeze and he said, “Gotta hit the shower and get back to the Station.”

At the thought of Colt in the shower, Josie sighed again, this time louder.

He let me go, slid a glance across a grinning Jessie and a stars-in-her-eyes Josie and walked out of the kitchen and through the living room. Jessie, Josie and I watched him go. I was concentrating so hard on watching him move, I didn’t note where their eyes were fixed. Personally, I was having trouble deciding where to put my own. Colt was a big guy and there was a lot to see, all of it good. He’d need to walk down a football field for you to have time to get it all in.

I turned, opened the cupboard, grabbed a mug and poured him some joe before following him with a, “Be back in a sec,” aimed at the girls.

When I hit the bedroom, Colt was standing by the bed and staring at the large pile of black clothes Jessie had brought over for me to go through in an effort to find something respectable to wear to Amy’s funeral. Wilson was curled into a ball in the middle of the pile and he was ignoring Colt and me. It was morning naptime which fed naturally into afternoon naptime after which there was a short period of energy during the evening where sometimes he’d run around the house like a mad cat and others he’d just wander around meowing for no reason before it was time to bed down for the night.

“They’re Jessie’s,” I told Colt, explaining the pile of clothes and handing him the mug of coffee.

“She movin’ in too?” Colt asked, eyes still on the clothes, lifting the coffee to his lips but I had stopped breathing.

What did he mean “too”?

Was I moving in? Did he want me to move in? Did I want to move in?

We’d been back together for four days. I thought that was pretty much the definition of “too soon”. Then again, we’d known each other for thirty-nine years and that was undeniably the definition of “about fucking time”.

“Feb,” Colt called and my body jolted before I focused on him.

“What?”

“You were starin’ at me like I’d grown a second head.”

“Um…” I started then decided to shy away from the subject, “I asked Jessie to bring them over. I only own bar clothes. I don’t have anything to wear to the funeral.”

“You looked nice in that jeans skirt the other night.”

“I can’t wear a jeans skirt to a funeral,” I informed him, though I knew this was a wasted effort. Women shouldn’t bother saying things to men about the intricate rules of clothing, such as what was appropriate to wear and when. It wasn’t that men didn’t listen. It was that they were genetically programmed not to process such statements, “And anyway, I bought that to go with you to Costa’s. That’s my Costa’s with Colt Skirt.”

“You bought it to go to Costa’s?”

“Well, I didn’t. I sent Jessie on a mission.”