Page 24 of With Love

“I’m so sorry,” he says. He looks like he wants to say something else but is at a loss for words.

“Don’t be,” I respond trying to make him feel better. I am ruining this for him and I don’t want to do that. He’s been nothing but caring and supportive of me since the hospital.

“I want to see it. Please show me?” I ask.

This makes his smile come back a little. He stands and reaches his hand out to help me up off of the sofa. I expect him to release it once I am up, but he doesn’t. I want to get uncomfortable. I want to feel weird about it. I want to make him let go. But I don’t.

It feels… good.

It feels… comfortable.

It feels… right.

I let him lead me over to the massive set of stairs in the middle of his house. When we get to the landing at the top of the steps, again, I expect him to let go of my hand, but he doesn’t. My lips twitch a little as I try to keep the giddy smile off of my face. This feeling is unexpected, but it’s one that I don’t have any problem welcoming.

“Up here we have a guest bedroom, which is where I sleep,” he looks to the right as he points it out, “as well as an office.”

“You sleep in the guest room? In your own house?” I ask him, questioningly. Weird.

He smiles, but he doesn’t answer as he turns to the left and leads me down the hall that overlooks the kitchen on this side of the house. He stops when he gets to the double doors at the end of the hallway. Taking my hands in his, he moves them up so they are covering my eyes.

“You doing okay? Is this alright?” he asks.

“I’m good, thank you for asking.” I answer, appreciatively.

“Ok, stay right here, no peeking. I just need to open the door. Okay?”

I nod my head and he lets go of my wrists. I can feel him moving around me. I hear the noise of the doorknob when it’s rotated in order for him to open the door. I hear the slightest creak and a “whoosh” of air as the door opens. I feel him move behind me and place his hands back on either side of my waist. My body tightens just slightly before I am able to stop it, but Marshall doesn’t appear to have noticed. Then, he gives me a slight nudge.

“Just a few more steps... there. Okay, are you ready?” he asks.

“As ready as ever.”

“This is the real master bedroom of the house. Open your eyes,” he says as he removes his hands from my waist.

My eyes go wide. If I thought the scenery outside was breathtaking this morning, then I don’t even have a word to describe the scene in front of me right now.

What I see in here is not at all what I was expecting. I was expecting an obese wooden, log cabin style bed frame with a comforter on it covered in bears, wolves, moose, and all sorts of other mountain animal wildlife.

Instead, I feel like I’ve stepped into an enchanted fairyland. My hand flies up over my mouth in surprise, followed by a sharp intake of breath. The entire room is encased in glass making it appear as though the room is nestled in between the trees of the forest.

Situated on the wall of windows at the back of the house, evenly centered between two large sets of floor to ceiling sliders leading out to a second story porch, is a four-poster bed made out of wrought iron with a canopy on top. Each iron post is sculpted to look like a sturdy tree branch. At the top of each branch, there are more, thinner, iron branches that stem out toward the center of the canopy in an arc. Each branch has several iron twigs and leaves coming off of it.

Hanging from the center of the grouping of trees in the canopy is a matching, iron chandelier that looks like it’s made from thin, frail pieces of twig. On each twig, there are tiny, twinkling white lights that look like stars through the trees. Hanging from the ceiling, lined up with the very middle of the canopy is a large iron ring with several different panels of tulle hanging down to the floor. The tulle is tied around each bed post with satin ribbon.

I take a few more steps forward, my hand still covering my mouth in surprise.

There is an oversized, white leather chaise with a pouf in the back left corner of the room. My eyes scan to the other side of the lavishly decorated space and pause when they reach a built-in corner unit bookshelf, already stacked full of books, to the right of the bed. To my immediate left is an opening leading into a closet. I’m still rooted to the spot, in shock, but I make out a giant ottoman in the middle of the closet surrounded by a configuration of rods, shelves, and drawers. Next to the closet is a door, presumably leading to a bathroom.

“Marshall, this is…” I can’t think of words. “I mean, it’s so… I’m absolutely speechless. This is breathtaking.”

“Our first date was spent at your apartment. I showed up with dinner and prayed you would let me in. You had these gorgeous pictures of forest scenery hanging on one of your walls. I asked you if you took the photos, but you hadn’t. You had gotten them from thrift stores and yard sales. The photos got us talking about how wonderful it would be to have a nice quiet place to go when life got stressful. You joked about how, when you were a kid, you always dreamed of living in a huge treehouse. You said, if it weren’t for your work, you would find a secluded house out in the woods or mountains, surrounded by trees, to live in.”

I stand there staring at him in complete and utter disbelief.

“You decorated this room for me?”

“Adrienne,” he starts with a laugh. “I had this entirehousebuilt for you. So you could have the fairytale treehouse of your dreams.”

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