"Calm down, Jeannie, there's no need to panic." And yet the gleam in her eyes made me think there was, in fact, a very large need to panic. "You may not have been in Cotton Creek in a while but you know how the town works and you have to admit, you and Abraham Hansom are definitely front page news."
"Why, because he grew up on a fucking plantation and I grew up in a two bedroom trailer on the other side of the train tracks?"
"Uh, no." Beth blinked and sat back. "Because you're stupidly successful and you bought the old Fisher place and you tell people to go to hell as easily as most people breathe and Abraham runs a bar and restores cars when he's bored and both of you look as if you should be doing photoshoots for ‘casual, cool, sophisticated couple slumming it in backwater town'." She drummed her fingers on the table and frowned. "Now, not to be rude but where the hell did that statement come from?"
"I'd blame hormones and say I'm on my period but that's insulting to your intelligence and mine-to the entire gender, really." I pushed my glass from right to left and back, watching it leave a condensation trail on the cheap plastic laminate and putting off the inevitable. "Let's just say this town really did a number on my self-esteem and every time I think I've gotten past it... well, I find out I didn't."
"Oh." She drew the single syllable out to nearly ten, her eyes going even wider as she nodded knowingly. "Yeah, I can see how that would make you go from zero to bitch in the blink of an eye." She crossed her arms and nodded again. "Every now and then, Ben will say something that reminds me of Lynn and it takes everything I have not to kick his balls up in to his throat."
"Oh." It was my turn to widen my eyes and I dropped my hands to my lap, wiping my wet palms on my jeans. "Ah, congratulations on not following through. I guess."
"Oh, it's fine. Even if I did it, he'd know I didn't mean it." She rolled her eyes and chuckled. "Lynn always had to be the best, you know what I mean? She had to be the skinniest and the blondest and the most popular. The only thing she wasn't good at was getting Abraham to notice her, although in hindsight I guess it's easy to see why she failed there." She shrugged, shifting restlessly in her seat. "I know we were mean to you-hell, we were mean to everyone-but she was just as mean to me and Dana. And after she got pregnant and her entire life went downhill, she just got meaner."
"Is that why you're not friends anymore?"
"It's funny. I was able to put up with her being horrible to me but when she started being horrible to my baby...." Dana trailed off, clucking her tongue and shaking her head. "That was the line. I told her when she's ready to stop being miserable, she knew where to find me. That's been about fourteen years."
"I'm sorry. I didn't really have friends growing up-or ever, if I'm being honest-but I have to imagine making a decision like that wasn't easy." I found myself twisting my hands in my lap and immediately stopped, annoyed with myself. "And I hope you can imagine why it's hard for me to believe people are actually being friendly and want to be friends."
"Honey, if I'd grown up the way you did and been on the receiving end of the same amount of bullshit, it would have taken a lot more than somebody dying to get me to throw my life in to a tailspin and put down roots here." She reached across the table, laying her hand on my arm and squeezing once. Sitting back, she said, "Now, if I'm going to start doling out relationship advice, I think I deserve at least a hint or three about the no doubt mind blowing sex the two of you have to be having."
LATER THAT NIGHT, I squinted as the light flashed on in the bathroom, rolling to my back and using the flat of my hand to block the worst of the glare. "Abraham?"
"Yeah, sorry. Go back to sleep."
The numbers on the bedside clock were blurry but still readable. "It's almost four."
"Had a little trouble getting people to close their tabs and get the hell out and then when they did I was stuck cleaning up the mess." He paused in the threshold between the bedroom and the bathroom, the light from the latter throwing him in shadow. "I didn't mean to wake you up."
"It's fine." I struggled to a sitting position, shoving my hair out of my face. "What's wrong?"
"It was a long night, Jeannie." He stripped over his clothes, tossing them in the direction of the hamper before killing the light and padding across the room to the bed. Climbing in on the opposite side, he stretched out on his back and sighed. "Let's just go to sleep, okay?"
"What's wrong?"
"Maybe I don't want to talk about it."
"Then maybe you shouldn't have come in slamming doors and throwing on lights." I would have been more than happy to go back to sleep and ignore the fight that was brewing under the surface but something told me he was upset about more than a bad night at work. Turning to face him, I said, "You can either tell me what's wrong or we can have a good, old-fashioned shouting match and we'll both look like shit in the morning when we take the kids to school."
"One of the guys we went to high school with, you may not remember him, Julian Pomeroy, he came in to the bar tonight."
I waited for him to continue. When he didn't, I lifted my brows and widened my eyes. "And?"
"He got engaged last week. And I got an invitation to Elliot Greenway's co-ed baby shower in the mail yesterday." He sat up, the filmy curtains thick enough to block the light, keeping everything in half darkness. "I thought I was happy with the family we have. I thought it was enough. But it's not."
"Oh." Even to my own ears, my voice sounded curiously flat. "Well." I started to slide out of the bed, freezing when he grabbed my arm. "Abraham, I like to think I'm a relatively mature adult but I'm not mature enough to sleep in the same bed with you after you've told me you want to break up."
"That I want to...." He trailed off, staring at me as if I'd grown a second head. "Why would you think... Jeannie, I don't want to break up with you." He shifted, reaching behind him and opening the drawer of his bedside table, pulling out something and all but tossing it in my lap. "I want to marry you, damnit, and I was trying to wait and be patient but I can't."
"What?" I croaked out the single word, staring at the small black box in my lap as if it was a rattlesnake. "What?"
"I'm not speaking fucking French, Jeannie." Picking up the box, he fumbled it open one handed, the ring throwing off a dull glint. "I want to marry you and share this family with you and maybe add a few more members to it."
"I think I'm going to pass out." That had to be the reason why my stomach was pitching and the room was starting to spin. I flopped backward on the mattress, staring at the ceiling and willing everything to stay in place. "Why on earth would you want to marry me?"
"You want a goddamn list?" He dropped the box on my stomach and started ticking off points on his fingers. "You're brilliant, you're beautiful, you're the best fucking thing that's ever happened to me in my entire life." He dragged one hand through his hair and huffed out a breath. "Okay, I may have consolidated a few points there because if I were to actually list all the reasons why you're amazing and I want to marry you, we'd be here all night and half of tomorrow."
"Abraham, I grew up in a trailer with subpar plumbing."
"And I grew up in a plantation house with subpar parents."
"One of my parents drank herself to death and the other is God knows where and my sister shot her husband and hung herself not even three months ago."
"My great-great-great granddaddy was a bootlegger and his daddy was a Klan member." Abraham snorted. "And don't even get me started on my mother's side of the family."
"I'm not the kind of person who gets married." Mostly because I'd never even considered the possibility that somebody would want to marry me. Now that there was somebody, I didn't know what the hell to do. "Abraham, it's been a month."
"When you know, you know, and I swear, some part of me has known my entire life that you were the one." He stretched out next to me, propping his chin in the palm of his head, starting down at me. "Maybe you can just try it on for a little while, see how it feels? Who knows, maybe it won't be nearly as terrifying as you seem to think."
"Abraham...." I sighed, knowing it was a stupid idea-because once it was on my hand, there was no way Abraham was letting me take it off without a fight-and knowing I was going to give in anyway. Abraham liked to joke that I had him wrapped around his finger and while it might have been the case he wasn't the only one who had difficulty saying ‘no'. "Fine. But I haven't agreed to anything. I'm just trying it on."