Page 103 of Keep You Close

“Go where?” he asked, his eyes bright.

“I don’t know. We can spin a globe and point for all I care.”

“We’re not exactly in great shape right now,” he said, touching my wrist, then waving toward his boot.

“We don’t have to go sky diving. Maybe just… sit on a beach somewhere for a weekend.”

“You know what?” he asked.

“What?”

“I like the way you think,” he said, reaching for his laptop, and bringing up all the options for a fun new adventure.

Just the two of us.

I couldn’t wait.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Atlas - 3 weeks

“You know, AJ,” Helen said as she took her seat at the table, “you were supposed to keep our Atlas grounded here, not go gallivanting off with him,” she teased, shaking her head at the two of us. With our sunburns and jetlag.

We honestly didn’t think we were going to be able to make it back in time for Sunday dinner this week. Until we got a picture from Helen and Charlie featuring Samson, whom they’d been spoiling for us while we were away, saying he Really misses Mommy and Daddy.

The guilt had us on the next plane. Still sandy in unmentionable places from one last tryst in the sand outside of our rental bungalow we’d been lavishing in for four days.

We had sunburns in some unmentionable areas too. But no one needed to know about that but us.

“I would apologize,” AJ said, still a little dreamy-eyed from the sun, sand, and copious amounts of sex we’d been enjoying until just a few hours before. “But I’m not sorry,” she added, getting a laugh from the table.

This wasn’t AJ’s first Sunday dinner at the Mallick home. But you would think, by the ease and comfort with which she interacted with these people, that she’d been around for years, not just a few weeks.

Maybe it helped that she’d gotten to know my brothers over the weeks that they’d been dropping over at the house to help me on my recovery journey. And, I was sure, the girls night had bonded her with the other women more than she’d even realized at the time.

I mean, they’d broken into a locked room together. That kinda shit bonded people together.

It had been a busy season, this space of time between her attack at work and now.

The holidays alone had taken up so much more time than either of us had anticipated. Her, because she hadn’t had family in so long. Me, because I’d never been such an active participant in the season as I was now.

In the past, I would likely fly in on Christmas Eve eve, crash for a few hours, then just drop over to whoever was hosting Christmas Eve or Day dinner.

The kids got gift cards because, quite frankly, I didn’t really know enough about their individual interests to shop for them, and definitely didn’t have the time or supplies to wrap.

The adults usually got things I’d picked up on my travels for them, shipping them back to the States. Their own presents likely sat in boxes in their basements for weeks or months without them knowing.

It was different this year.

Because not only was I making traditions with AJ, but I was here.

I knew which kids were into what. And when we went to the store, I found myself picking things up for them that I knew they’d like.

Then AJ and I stocked up on wrapping paper and bows and labels, and spent hours getting everything just right.

We’d gone to one Christmas play at a school and one Christmas recital at another school.

We’d gone to a movie night at Kingston’s house that was, apparently, a tradition I knew nothing about, everyone wearing PJs, eating pizza, and binging movies that had been picked out the year before.

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