Page 118 of Tulips and Lost Time

She firms her lips and scowls deeper. “You’re being romantic and sweet when I thought we were having a fight.”

“Hormonal cycles. It happens.”

She swings her hand out of my grip and slaps my stomach until my lungs evacuate and the car swerves. “Bear!”

“Don’t mention hormonal cycles if you wish to live, jackass. I’m allowed to have feelings about things and them not be because of the time of the month.”

“Are you sure, though?” I snag her hand and force her to hold mine. “Because I’m noticing a certain pattern, that’s all.”

“Where are we going?” She squeezes my hand and growls when I turn another corner and snicker. “Pinocchio’s Restaurant is the other way, dummy. And we’re already hitting ten past seven. We don’t have time to?—”

Her words come to a sharp stop as I bring us over the train tracks and out to the edges of town. I turn into an overgrown driveway, amidst tall trees and a raggedy For Sale sign with a shiny new SOLD sticker slapped across the realtor’s face. Then she spins, her eyes alight and her cheeks bright red. “Luc!”

“What?” Parking the car and cutting the engine, I lean over and unsnap her seatbelt. “You were saying some shit about needing extra space?”

“Luc!” She pushes out of the car when I pull back and do the same, slamming the door and stepping back to study the sign out front. “Are you serious right now?”

“What?” I wander her way and take her hand in mine. Then I reach into my pocket with the other, drawing out an extra set of keys from the depths. “Why are you still shouting at me?”

“Did you buy a house?” Her voice breaks. It literally crackles and squeaks as we meander across gravel and an overgrown front yard. This place has been deserted for too many years. Renters lived here before, and the landlords lived here before that. This place belonged to a couple who are damn near a hundred at this point.

Now… it belongs to us.

“You can’t buy a whole house without talking to me about it!”

“Can’t I?” I draw her up the stairs and stop by the rickety wooden door. The sun is still out despite the hour, summer holding on once more, but inside the house, darkness prevails. I’d know—I’ve been here each night for a fucking week, sneaking around, preparing, and probably, now that I think about it, planting the seeds of the fight Kari thought we were gonna have tonight. “Do you tell me when I can or can’t buy a burger for lunch?”

She growls again. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not controlling your money.”

“And you don’t tell me when I can buy shoes, or jeans, or hell, a new guitar.”

“Trick question. You never buy jeans or shoes. I buy them for you. And you have seven trillion guitars already, which is ironic considering you prefer the drums.”

“Drums are for playing in the band. Guitars are for sitting on the couch and writing songs about you. Come on.” I slide the key into the door and turn the lock, then I push it open and reveal… well, not a lot of anything. Dirty floors. Dusty walls. A staircase straight out of a really rich motherfucker’s house. And massive picture windows that’ll someday, after a bunch of cleaning, become the focal point of our forever home. “Buying homes,” I finish with a grin, “is for proving to you that we’re forever.”

“You bought a whole friggin’ house!” With tears in her eyes, she charges ahead of me, stalking across hardwood floors so her heels clip-clip-clip and echo from wall to wall. “Luca! It’s a house. For us?”

“It’ll take a few months to fix,” I admit. “Bunches of hard work. The upstairs bedrooms have carpet we’ll have to pull out eventually. And there are a few walls with body-shaped holes in them.”

“Oh god.” Snickering, she turns and starts toward the kitchen. “I don’t even want to speculate about those holes.”

“The kitchen is original.” I follow her through the house and stop in the doorway to lean against the frame. “Like, Scottish Highlands original. So good luck with that when you’re relegated to housewife duties and I’m too busy to help.”

She snorts and runs her fingertips along the laminate countertop. “Jackass.”

“But Marc said he’ll help.”

Stunned, she yanks her hand away like she thinks the laminate will bite, then she looks at me with wide eyes. “Marcus?”

“Yeah. I mean…” I fold my arms and shrug. “He inspected the place with me a couple of times. We walked through and drew up some floor plans.”

“Marcus?” she breathes. “My brother?”

“He wants to be in charge of refinishing the stairs. In fact, his exact words were, ‘if you touch these fucking stairs and ruin them for me, I’m gonna slit your intestines out and feed them to the cow.’ Which is such a random and inaccurate threat, considering cows are herbivores. But when I went ahead and pointed that out, he assured me he would buy pigs if he must.”

“You talked to Marcus about this place?” Her eyes dance with unshed tears. Just like I knew they would. “He knows?”

“He gave his blessing. He likes homes with good bones, and he thinks this one is gonna be good for another two hundred years. According to him, it’s safe enough and, once we patch those holes in the walls, classy enough, for his baby sister.”

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