Page 87 of The Summer of ’98

“Are you okay?” he panted, kissing me again. “Is this okay?”

“Yeah,” I gripped his shoulders, pulling him back in with my feet against his butt. “I just want you inside of me.”

“Mmm,” his growl was guttural and animalistic, and he tugged on my panties, pushing them aside. “I’ve got you, my beautiful girl.”

He pushed inside of me, swallowing my cry with his mouth, his tongue tasting me and moaning with pleasure as our bodies connected.

After, we lay beside each other, my head on his chest, euphoric and relaxed under the comforter. Leroy’s thumb made circles on my shoulder and he kept on kissing the top of my head. I could have fallen asleep right then and there, the release having sent waves of pleasure and satisfaction throughout my body.

“Comfortable?” Leroy asked, his voice heavy with tiredness.

“Yeah.”

“Warm enough?”

“Yep.”

“I love you, baby.”

I nuzzled his chest. “I love you too.”

In the morning, Leroy was sleeping as soundly as he always does and I wanted to leave him to it. He didn’t have long until college started, and his sleep-ins would become a thing of the past. I thought it was best to let him make the most of it.

I pulled on a sundress and a sweater before I crept out of the room and tiptoed downstairs. I’d never been one to spend all morning in bed. It felt like a waste of daylight. When I walked into the kitchen, Eleanor was at the countertop with a blender full of different ingredients. “Oh, good morning. I thought that you’d be up soon.”

She switched on the blender. The entire kitchen echoed with the loud noise and I winced as I glanced toward the entrance, almost expecting the entire household to stumble through and demand that we keep the noise down. “Don’t worry!” Eleanor shouted. “The men in this family could sleep through a wrecking ball splitting the house right down the middle.”

Laughing, I leaned against the other side of the countertop while she got a couple of glasses out and filled them up. “I noticed that you haven’t been eating a lot of red meat. But you really need to keep those iron levels up. This has some supplements and kale and a few other bits and pieces in it.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, sweetheart. We need to keep those little Laheys in good health.”

I caressed my stomach while she stuck a straw in the smoothie and pushed it across the countertop. It was a rich reddish purple and it smelled delicious. The taste was even better. We both sat at the table and talked while we drank. There was something about Eleanor that made it so easy to open up. I found that I could ask her anything without the need to feel embarrassed or ashamed. She was empathetic and answered my questions no matter what they were.

Some of the medical-related queries that I had could be kind of TMI, but it didn’t bother her. She had a vast range of knowledge and insisted that I came to her and she would do her best to help.

When Eleanor and I talked like this, a small part of me missed Momma and wished that these were the things she and I could be doing together. But whenever I spared her a minute of thought, I remembered how she’d hit me. That slap was horrific, hateful, and vehement with rage. If things were ever to repair between us, she would need to be the one to extend the olive branch first.

“There you are.” Leroy wandered into the kitchen, still in his boxer shorts but he’d pulled a T-shirt on. His hair was fluffed in all directions and I grinned as he stifled a yawn. He always made my heart flutter in the mornings. Just the state of him was adorable, sexy, and cute all at the same time.

I stood up and gathered the now-empty glasses, giving Leroy a quick peck on the cheek as I passed. It didn’t matter that we were having twins together, he still didn’t like being overly affectionate in front of his mother, and I respected that.

Eleanor cleared her throat and I glanced up from rinsing the dishes. “Now that you’re up, Leroy,” she said, wearing a knowing smile, “guess who called at seven this morning?”

We exchanged a curious look and shrugged, not sure who could have been calling at such an hour that would incite so much excitement from Eleanor. She clapped her hands together. “The owner of the apartment that you two were so set on. You got it! He wants a call back as soon as possible to arrange the details. But it’s all yours.”

Leroy jogged toward me and wrapped his arms around my waist, spinning me in a circle that threatened to make me ill. But I laughed with delight because things were falling into place. It had all seemed impossible less than a month ago, each morning beginning with a sensation of absolute dread over the unknown. Now, even the unknown didn’t seem so bad because waking up beside Leroy reminded me that whatever we faced, he was there.

“We did it, Els. We got the apartment.”

“We should celebrate.”

He agreed with enough volume that his mother heard but then he leaned in and with a hushed whisper, his voice raspy and seductive beside my ear, said, “We will, baby.”

I almost choked as he set me down. It was typical that he kept a straight face as though he hadn’t said a thing at all and left me to blush and feel flustered.

“You’ll both need to do some furniture shopping before Ellie gets too big to decorate,” Eleanor said from where she sat at the table. “You can’t put the bed and drawers on a plane.”

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