“So, how long has this been going on?” Mrs. Sandy starts, waving her hand between Wes and me.
Before I have a chance to speak, Wes answers for the both of us. “Since the first night, at the bonfire.”
“What? Y’all have been sleeping together since the first night?” she screeches, her eyes bulging.
“No, Mom. God, no.”
“Oh. Thank you, Jesus. For a second there, I thought… Never mind, I don’t wanna know. We’ll just leave it at I know what the two of you were doing in the bathroom.” She gives us both a pointed look.
Heat rushes to my face. My eyes slide to the corners, looking at Wes. How can he just sit there completely calm and collected? I turn my attention back to Mrs. Sandy.
“Look. I’m not dumb. I know that you both are adults, and are going to do what you’re going to do. All I ask is, please, don’t do it under my roof. And if you do, you better not get caught.” A slow smile spreads across her face, and I feel a fraction of my embarrassment begin to slip. “I was young once, too. Your father and I were pretty hot and heavy,” she adds.
“Mom. I don’t wanna hear about you and Dad,” Wes groans, dropping his head to the table.
A small laugh escapes me at his discomfort. He rolls his head on the wooden table and looks at me with a smile playing on his face. “You think that’s funny?”
That makes me laugh harder. “I do,” I say between breaths. The muscles in my cheeks hurt. My eyes water, and I’m starting to get a stitch in my side. Suddenly, I look over to Mrs. Sandy who is laughing with me.
“Great. Now you’re both laughing at me.” Wes pushes his chair away from the table. As he stands, he leans down and kisses me on my forehead. “Come and get me when you and my mom are done,” he says as my bellyaching laughter starts to subside.
I take deep breaths, trying to compose myself as I nod. “I will,” I reply breathlessly. When I turn back to Mrs. Sandy, her eyes are wide, and her mouth is in the shape of an ‘o’. Curious as to why she’s looking at me like that, I ask, “What’s wrong?”
“I just can’t believe it,” she breathes out, as a smile spreads across her face.
My eyebrows furrow in confusion. “Can’t believe what, Mrs. Sandy?”
She reaches across the table for my hand. Grasping it, she says through a smile, “My son is in love with you.”
Now it’s my eyes that bulge, and my mouth that’s forming an ‘o’. No. No? He can’t be in love with me. It’s too soon. This is a joke. I get it now; Mrs. Sandy’s making a joke.
“And you’re in love with him, too,” she adds with a twinkle in her eye.
Slowly, I pull my hand out of her grasp. “I like him… a lot, but love…” I’m at a loss for words.
“Honey, I know love when I see it. You two can deny it all you want, but I know these things.” She leans back in her chair and winks at me. “Tell me, Kenleigh, do you like him as a person?”
“From what I know so far… yes.”
“Do you like being around him?”
“I do. We have fun together. I feel like I can be me. I don’t feel like there are any false pretenses when it comes to me and him,” I answer truthfully.
She nods at my answer. “Most importantly, how does he make you feel?”
I lean back in my chair and stare at her. There’s no contemplating that answer, so I lay it all out there. “Alive. More alive than I have ever felt. When he looks at me, he makes me feel like the only person in the room. Like no one else can compete with me. For a long time, it felt like there was this weight on my chest, crushing me, and it hurt to breathe. But not with him. He makes me feel like I can finally breathe again, no restraints, no constrictions, just a welcoming deep breath.” Tears well up in my eyes and threaten to spill over as I continue. “It’s more than that though. What we have, it’s seems exactly what my parents had. And I never want that feeling to go away,” I say, fading that last part out.
“See. Love.” She says it likes it’s so obvious as she grabs my hand again from across the table.
The tears spill over while I shrug my shoulders. “It’s too soon to be love, isn’t it?” I ask, sniffling back tears.
“No, it’s not. Who says love has a time restraint? Who says it takes six months to a year to fall in love? Love is love. When you know, you know. People fall in and out of it all the time. I fell in love with Will one month after we met, and the next month we were married. I knew when I met him that there would never be anyone else out there for me. And look at us; we’ve been married ever since. We have gone through a lot of hard times, but we’ve also had a lot of good ones. But no matter what happens, love always wins.” She squeezes my hand. “I have loved you like a daughter since the moment you pulled up on our ranch. You’re such a beautiful person, Kenleigh, inside and out. I knew once my son met you, he would see it too, and I’m so glad that he did.”