Quirks & Kinks (33 page)

Matching smiles growing on both of our faces, Anderson and I looked to each other and back to Howie as one, linked our hands together, and gave speaking in unison one more try.

“Fine. We don’t need to talk about it anymore.”

Me: “It’s done.”

Him: “It’s settled.”

Simultaneous: “
We’re happy.
”

CRACKED ROCK AND UNEVEN
soil roiled beneath my feet as I ran, daring me to keep going and challenging me to manage it. So many emotions consumed me, each step felt like a lifetime and a blink of an eye at the same time.

I kept my eyes active, eager to live each moment—every tweet of each different bird, every bubble of each stream. I didn’t want to miss even one piece of it because I didn’t want Evan to miss even one thing.

I could feel him with me, pushing me further, helping the air to rush in and out of my lungs on schedule the way he so helplessly couldn’t do for himself. And at the same time, I could feel my drive to change, each step putting me closer and closer to my goal to conquer this challenge and move on.

After two months of bliss, the day had finally come to fight for one of my most difficult achievements to date.

Sweet Easie had kissed me goodbye and sent me on my way an earth shattering seventy-nine miles and almost fourteen hours ago.

Everything about me ached and begged for the chance to cry uncle, but I tuned out the pain and the fatigue and pushed forward anyway. I’d been privy to some of the most beautiful scenery I’d ever witnessed and every last runner in the race encouraged me when I encountered them. But most of the time I was on my own, with nothing to keep me company but my thoughts and whispered murmurings from a would-be Evan.

I could practically feel him there, running with me, coaching me to keep going, but as an incline built under my feet, his voice seemed to fade.

Tammy was supposed to come in as my pacer for the last twenty miles, and frankly, it couldn’t come soon enough. I needed someone there, pushing me, pleading with me, and I needed to feel their physical touch.

The drive to finish for Evan was slowly ceasing to be enough.

I’d crossed several bridges and run through the thick of wooded trails, but the sight of open space ahead of me waved like a mirage, easily becoming the most beautiful thing I’d seen all day.

A portrayal of Easie stood there, waiting for me, stretching her tiny, toned legs and winking as I approached.

I shook my head to clear the dream, but no matter how many times it went back and forth, Easie still stood there, beckoning me toward her with a flirty jaunt and a bend toward the ground that had her heavy breasts making an appearance at the top of her tank.

Knowing I shouldn’t, that I didn’t have the reserves necessary, I ran harder anyway, eager to get to her whether she was real or fake or the call of my very near death.

When I got within range, she shuffled into a jog, gradually picking up speed as I approached and matching me step for step by the time I came up beside her.

“Easie—”

“Don’t talk,” she told me, throwing up an arm and putting one pretty finger to her lips. “Not yet, anyway.” I sealed my lips but waited for at least a basic explanation. When the excitement settled and my overly rapid heartbeat finally abated, she laid it all out for me, though it should have been obvious.

“I’m here to pace for you, that’s it. Let’s finish this thing.”

“Easie—”

“Shh.”

“Just one thing,” I told her, holding up one rejuvenated finger in an accompanying gesture.

She inclined her ponytailed head and pursed her lips—pretended to think about it.

And then winked. “Okay.”

Grabbing her neck, I kissed her as we ran, slowing our pace to just enough to be maintainable without falling. I pulled away but never let go of her eyes.

“I love you.”

“I know,” she assured me, facing her eyes to the front and officially shutting me out.

I smiled to myself and watched her as she ran, thanking Evan for sending her to me. A blessing like her could only have come from him.

She focused her breathing, working through the pain that started to kick in at her ten mile mark, and pushed herself harder to keep the pace I needed.

I started to slow down, but she caught me, shaking her head no and forcing me back up to my planned pace.

I watched her work for every step, push for every quarter of a mile. And she was doing it all for me.

Looking down at my finger, I knew exactly what I had to do, that I couldn’t live another day without making sure she knew where we stood, and I knew just the moment to do it.

Three hundred yards from the finish line, as she started to pull away to give me the glory of my photo finish, I grabbed onto her hand, laced our fingers together, and refused to let go.

“Anderson—”

“Hell no, baby. We’re going to finish this together. I wouldn’t be here without you.”

She smiled sweetly, the sweat from twenty miles of pushing herself to her limit and beyond sticking a strand of loose hair to her forehead and down the line of her cheek.

She didn’t try to remove it, the energy to do so nothing but a wasted effort.

I barely pulled my eyes away from hers to watch where I was going, raising our hands in the air together for the last five yards and the dash across the finish.

In an effort to keep moving we walked hand in hand, and when that wasn’t enough, arm in arm. By the time we made it to the end of the line of cheering spectators and loved ones, she’d burrowed her way under my arm completely, burying her face in the stank and sweat of almost eighteen hours of physical exertion. If that wasn’t love, I wasn’t sure what was.

Euphoric and exhausted, I wanted nothing more than to have my lips on hers, so I made it so, leaning down and twisting her until the front of her body met mine.

She didn’t fight it, meeting my tongue stroke for stroke with her own, and pushing her body as deeply into mine as she could manage.

“You’re crazy,” I told her, breaking the kiss to catch my breath despite not being anywhere near close to getting my fill.

“If you need to run, I’m gonna run too. And if you want to hold on to Evan for the rest of your life, you’d best just scoot over and make some room for another set of hands.”

Her lips met mine again, nipping and biting and licking away at the exterior before delving inside. I worked hard to keep up, but by and large, now that I was still, the fatigue had started to overwhelm me.

And I wasn’t ready for it.

“Easie.”

“I love you.”

“You, the inventor of the hamster mile, the hater of all things physical, the ex-smoker self-proclaimed couch potato, just ran twenty miles,
for me.
Yeah, baby, I
know
you love me.”

Her eyes went soft at first, and then transitioned to wide as I sank to one knee and pulled Evan’s ring off of my finger.

“Oh my God,” she cried, making me smile and hold onto her hand tighter.

What I wasn’t expecting were the four or five “Oh my Gods” that followed, each voice pulling at some distant place in my subconscious.

Closer than expected, several familiar faces stared back at me.

Ashley and Tammy. Larry and Howie. My mom and dad. And a woman who looked exactly like the love of my life, but older, huddled under the arm of an attractive man.
Easie’s parents.

Easie saw me notice our audience and shrugged. “I would have warned you.”

It wouldn’t have mattered.

“Easie Reynolds, will you marry me?”

For once she embraced seriousness and expediency and answered nearly before I’d finished the question. “Any day. Any time.”

There was no thinking about it. No nerves choking the path from her vocal chords to her mouth.

We both knew it was right.

The ring swallowed her tiny finger, but aside from the sizing, I’d never seen anything fit better.

I pulled myself to my feet, pressed my lips to hers, and then moved my mouth to her ear. “And the wedding night? Think you want to try something kinky?”

Her arms tightened almost to the point of pain and her chest swelled to twice its normal size.

“You bring the helicopter, I’ll bring the kitten.”

“DO YOU HAVE TO
rub the same spot on my skin over and over like that?” Anderson asked as we cuddled on the couch like a couple of perfectly crafted spoons.

“It’s comforting,” I defended.

“It feels like you’re going to wear right through.”

For a guy who was so preachy about ‘to each his own’ and ‘live and let live,’ he sure was good at nitpicking my ways of showing affection. “Aren’t you supposed to yearn for my every flaw? Covet every idiosyncrasy?”

“I could,” he agreed, pursing his lips and pretending to ponder. “But then we’d be that annoyingly perfect couple. By my recognizing your flaws for what they are, I can still love you beyond anything else in this world, and yet, other people won’t be afraid to hang out with us.”

“I don’t buy it.”

“Okay, how about this,” he offered stretching his neck from side to side as if preparing for a fight. “Enjoying your flaws would only magnify my affection for you. As my affection for you already inhabits some of the very highest portions of the “affection chart,” any more would likely lead to codependency. I wouldn’t be able to eat without you, sleep without you. I’d lose all interest in looking after my own welfare in your absence and eventually it would lead to my death. In turn, you’d be so despondent at the loss of me that you’d turn to alcohol and drugs, a sort of whiskey lullaby if you will, and in the end you’d die too.”