Page 38 of Menotte avec toi

“You know me, Honey Bun, I’ve never been a fan of people.”

I sighed at that and smiled across the table at him. “Yeah, I know, though I kind of always expected you to get a girlfriend once I moved out. I get why you never brought anyone around while I was living there, and I appreciate it. I don’t know how I would have handled someone poking their noses into our lives or trying to tell me what to do, but I will never understand why you stayed single all these years.”

“I think you will,” he explained. “In time. Think about the way you feel right now, sitting beside Harper. Someone would have to be a fool not to notice how much you already care from her, just from the looks you shoot her when you think she’s not looking.”

“I love her.”

“Exactly.”

“Don’t you want that too?” I asked, confused and a bit sad for him.

“Oh, Honey Bun, I had that a long time ago,” he replied. “After he passed away, I never wanted to open myself up to that kind of heartbreak again.”

“H-he?”

“Was long before you were born,” he explained.

“Is that why you didn’t blink an eye when I told you I liked women?”

“One reason, yes, but your grandparents never blinked when I came out either,” he explained. “My mom just warned me to always treat my partner right, and all my old man had to say about it was that he hoped I’d find someone who could put up with my bullshit ‘cause the bulk of his gray hairs had come from me.”

Snorting, I pressed my fingers to my lips and wrestled my laughter back under control while beside me, my Mistress snickered as a very perplexed-looking waitress stepped up to the table and eyed us like we’d lost our minds. After she’d taken our orders and walked away, I turned my attention back to my uncle.

“Did he?” I asked, suddenly very curious about this secret part of his life my uncle had kept from me. “The man you loved. Did he put up with your, um…”

“My bullshit?” he asked when I didn’t dare finish the sentence while seated at the table beside my Mistress.

“Oh yeah and hit me with a healthy dose of his own, which just made life more interesting.”

“May I ask what happened to him?” My Mistress asked.

My uncle heaved a heavy sigh at that and nodded. “Drowned helping to save a couple kids whose idiot friends had either pushed or dared them to jump off the pier into the harbor. We were down there taking a stroll, walking off a decadent meal we’d just indulged in, when we heard them hollering. He could swim, I couldn’t, so he went in after them while I raced to the nearest phone booth to dial 9-1-1. Thinking back, that’s the only time in my life when I’d have been grateful to have a cell phone. Someone else ran to a nearby hardware store, grabbed some rope, and lowered it down to them. He managed to get the first kid tied on but lost hold of the second when the current swept him out again. Dustin went back after him and managed to drag him back over by the pier, but by the time he got him secured to the rope, he was too exhausted to hang on to the pylons, and thecurrent took him. I got there just in time to see him swept away. Probably would have died that day myself if the guys who’d been helping haul up the kids hadn’t piled on me to keep me from jumping in afterwards. For a long time, I hated those bastards.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling nothing but deep, profound sadness for him and terror at the thought of anything ever happening to my beloved Mistress.

“When fate gives youthe one, you know it. I’ve always known he was the only one for me,” my uncle explained. “Made it easy to keep my life simple and uncomplicated. Then you came along, Honey Bun, and I was thankful that the fates had given me someone else to love. I’m so proud of the woman you’ve become. And now to hear that you and your Mistress are going to head out on the open road and go exploring, well that just makes me prouder. I’m glad you’re not waiting until you’re old as dust like me to go out and have adventures. You deserve to have some joy in your life. I look forward to seeing the pictures of what you two get up to.”

“I’ll share them on one condition.”

He chuckled at that, cocked his head, and studied me. “Oh yeah, what’s that?”

“You send us pictures of where you wind up and all the bands you see,” she said. “I want to hear about what the vibe in the crowd was like and if they sounded as good as they do on the radio, and I’ll expect those photos to keep on coming after we get back. I’m sure I can find plenty of places in the city to share with you, since my Mistress has rarely gone out exploring and I still haven’t had a chance to take her to the planetarium yet.”

“Shocking,” he declared. “And a fair request. I have no intention of losing track of my favorite Honey Bun.”

I giggled at that while my Mistress raised an eyebrow at me. “Okay,” she said, looking between us. “I’ve been dying to ask how she got the nickname Honey Bun.”

“Easy,” he replied. “She could eat a box of them in one sitting and always managed to find them no matter where I hid them, and let me tell you, I got damned creative too. Was worried about giving her too much sugar since those teachers up at the school kept complaining about how she’d get bored in class and couldn’t sit still. She loved them so much that I didn’t have the heart to stop buying them, ‘cause sometimes a honey bun, a bowl of fruit, and a glass of milk was all we had time for in the morning. Neither of us were morning people, and I worked the second shift, which meant we both slept through our alarms in the morning and wound up rushing around to get her to school on time. I wasn’t gonna send her on an empty stomach, either, and honey buns were easy to eat in the car, so I stocked up.”

“And I knew it too,” I admitted. “He’d get really cagey about the hiding spots too and never put more than one box in the same place. This one time he stuck them up in the ceiling. We had one in the kitchen with sections. Oh, I forget what they’re called.”

“Drop ceilings,” he explained.

“Yes, those,” I said. “He tried hiding them up there. How unfair was that?”

“And I’m still waiting to hear how you got them down.”

“Probably the same way you got them up there. I stood on a chair to get on the counter and used the back of a spatula to poke at the tiles until the honey buns fell out.”

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