Page 36 of Falling for the Forward

We talk for the entire drive to our destination, and the tension between us from last night is forgotten. When Carter pulls up to a massive lakefront home with a modern design, I gape at him.

“Here? Is this like a bed-and-breakfast with tons of rooms?”

He makes a face. “Fuck no. This whole place is ours for the weekend.”

“No way! This is beautiful.”

“Can’t take my fake wife to Motel 6 for our fake honeymoon, can I?”

“I mean, you could. But I’m glad you went a different direction.”

When we walk into the sprawling home, I’m like an awestruck kid in a candy store. The main area is an open two stories with a gorgeous stone fireplace surround and a modern stainless kitchen. The entire back wall of the home is made of windows to maximize views of the sparkling water.

“You can pick your room first,” Carter says as he sets both our bags down.

Separate bedrooms. What a relief. I don’t have to smell his soap on my bedsheets or worry about accidentally rolling into him for the next two nights.

Itshouldbe a relief. But it’s kind of not.

“What is he doing?”I mumble to myself as Carter carries a huge satin silver pothos plant out of the Ann Arbor store we were just browsing in.

The boutique is next door to the restaurant where we had a late Saturday breakfast and I saw the beautiful plant behind the register. I admired it and told Carter a plant like that would easily go for several hundred dollars.

“Did you steal that?” I say when he opens the door to the back seat and sets the plant on the floor.

He scoffs. “No, I didn’t steal it. I bought it.”

We were on our way out to the car when he said he needed to run back in and use the bathroom. Clearly, he was actually going back for the plant.

“You bought it?” I ask as he gets into the driver’s seat.

“You wanted it, right?”

It takes me a couple of seconds to respond. “Yes, I love it. But it wasn’t for sale.”

“I asked the store owner how much she wanted for it, so it was for sale.”

My stomach does a full somersault. Plants are my love language. My apartment is a mini jungle.

“Thank you.”

The emotion in my voice gives away how unusual it is for me to get a thoughtful gift from a man. Tyler once took a fifty from his wallet and gave it to me on my birthday, saying he hadn’t had time to shop for anything.

“Yeah, no problem,” Carter says, not even looking at me.

I smile to myself. He’s like this with the girls, too. He accepts tenderness and affection about as well as a grizzly bear would.

Yesterday, I lounged around the house, enjoying the views and reading. Carter went for a long run, and a chef came and made us an amazing dinner of steak, scalloped potatoes, roasted vegetables and flan.

We talked and laughed like old friends, watching a movie before I went to bed in a room where I had a king-size bed all to myself.

This morning, Carter was already at the kitchen table when I came in, freshly showered and having a cup of coffee, the Henrietta Lacks book in hand.

“Want to go throw some axes?” he asks.

“Sure. Do you have some in the back seat we can just hurl out the car windows?”

He smiles. “I thought we’d do something more organized. There’s a local place.”

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