“I’m not allowed to smile now, hmm?”
“I feel like you’re planning something,” I say.
“I’m not planning anything.”
“Who is, then?”
She shrugs again, with that same enigmatic smile on her face.
I giggle, laughing in a carefree way that has become my new regular these past few days.
Ever since Angie said she was on board with me and Trent, my worries have started to drift away like sand through my fingertips. I don’t find myself sinking into holes of anxiety, breathless as I try to climb out.
I can just be.
It’s the best feeling in the world.
If I was scared Angie didn’t mean what she said, I was soon proven wrong. We’re closer now than ever before.
The five of us – Mom and Liam, Trent and me, and Angie – even had dinner together a few nights ago. It was wonderful, laughter quivering in the air, with smiles and jokes and happiness.
“What sort of answer is a shrug, Mom?”
She shrugs over and over, doing it with turbo speed until I’m left with no choice but to break out into frenzied giggles.
There’s something so wonderful about seeing her like this, carefree and playful like she was when I was a kid. In the really bad days during her illness, a sad part of me started to believe I may never get to experience this side of her again.
I know I’m not going to get any more answers out of her this morning, but my mind can’t help but skip to crazy places, to Trent-touched places.
He was weird last night. I don’t know how to describe it exactly.
On the surface, everything was the same, and yet beneath his every gesture, buried within his every word, I sensed there was a double meaning that was just beyond my reach. I sensed that there was something he wanted to say.
Or maybe I’m just wishing, hoping—
My thoughts are cut short by the doorbell.
“I think you should get it,” Mom says. “I’m busy with the pancakes.”
I look closely at her, trying to gauge the mischief in her eyes, trying to see if I should be worried or relieved.
She shrugs again – of course, she does – and I walk from the kitchen toward the front door.
The door is new, the paint no longer chipped, replaced by my man just like the kitchen floor was. I’m hardly going to say no when he offers to do jobs around the house. It makes mom’s life easier and I get to see him all sweaty, his muscles showing through his shirt.
It’s a win-win.
I open the door and then open my mouth to let out a shivering gasp.
“Are you kidding?” I say, staring at the sight of my man in a tuxedo, the jet-black jacket hugging onto his irrepressible body.
Behind him – looking more than somewhat out of place on our quiet Youngstone street – sits a carriage and two patient horses.
Trent smirks down at me, his clean shaven face looking somehow boyish in his delight. His eyes dance with light.
“Are we going somewhere fancy for breakfast?” I ask, hardly hearing my own voice.
This is all so wonderful and unexpected.
“Something like that,” he says, offering me his hand. “That is… if you’re free.”
“If I’m free?” I cry in delight. “Um, yeah, I think I might be. I knew something was going on. Did you talk to my Mom?”
“I had to ask her something very important,” he says with a nod as he pulls me onto the porch, crushing me against his unyielding body and moving his hands up my back and through my hair.
My belly swirls as I walk onto the porch and down the steps toward the carriage. Trent has his hand on the small of my back, that special place he so often touches, pressing into me with what feels like all the affection in the world bursting out of him.
“Is this why you asked me to wear the dress?” I murmur.
I was supposed to be meeting him in half an hour at his place, wearing the golden dress I wore for our first real date. I’ve worn tights with it this time since it’s daytime and I know my man doesn’t like me displaying too much of myself for other men to see.
I know other women might find this too possessive, but I love how he wants to save me all for himself.
He chuckles and opens the carriage door, waving me inside.
“No comment.”
“Oh, aren’t you mysterious?” I tease. “Wait a sec… who’s driving?”
He smirks and leans down, kissing me tantalizingly on the forehead. My skin tingles and shivers move down my neck and over my breasts, scorching me, setting me alight.
“Who do you think?”
“You really are crazily multitalented, Trent, you know that?”
“Careful,” he says, “or you’ll give me a big head.”
I giggle at the callback to one of our earlier jokes when he said I was giving him a big head in a whole different type of way.