Page 99 of All I Ask
“She’s off shopping for used goods?”
We used to laugh at it as kids. Buying old things with the hope of turning around and selling them is a gamble, but she’s good at it. This store has thrived over the last forty years.
“She went to a few estate sales this week down in Virginia Beach, and to visit my cousins.”
“Ahh, how is Mark?”
“The same, I’m sure. A little bit stupid and a lot unstable. He’s married now,” I tell him. I forget that he doesn’t know anything that’s happened in the last few years. Mark is a former Navy SEAL and scares the crap out of my mother and aunt.
“Is he? I never saw that coming.”
No, I didn’t either. “Yeah, her name is Charlie and she’s amazing. She kicks his ass, which makes us all smile.”
“Well, he tortured you as a kid,” Derek reminds me.
“Yeah, all of my cousins did.”
“They were fun.”
“Sure, that’s the word we’ll go with,” I scoff. They were mean and tormented me because they could. Derek would join in too, because apparently it was…fun.
“I need a half hour, surely you can spare that?”
I really want to go, but I can’t leave Nina in case my mother returns early, which she’s known to do.
“I don’t know…”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, just go,” Nina says as she comes around the aisle. So much for privacy. “I’ll handle your mother, don’t worry. Go!”
I gnaw on my lip, not sure if I should. I feel like this is the opposite of slow, but then I remember what Nina said and it’s true. We’re not a new relationship, and even with the time that’s passed, he still seems to know me. Not the things in my life that he wasn’t there for, but me at my core.
Derek extends his hand and I place mine in it because you only live once and I’m ready to begin the life I dreamed of.
***
“You brought me here?” I say as I look up at the house I love. The one I know, deep in my heart, should be mine.
I hoped when I saw it today that I wouldn’t have the same reaction because when he buys it, I’ll be sad. Sure, there might be another one—a better one—down the line, but this one is…home.
Myhome.
“I did.”
“Why?” I ask with a bit of wistfulness.
“For lunch,” he says, as though it makes perfect sense.
“You thought this was a great spot?”
Derek grabs the cooler out of the back of the car. “I did.”
“And how is that?”
“You wanted us to be secretive, well, no one but us and the Realtor know about this house. You wanted slow, andlunch is about the slowest of dates there is. Then you said this would be complicated, but”—he shrugs—“I uncomplicated it.”
This man is a mess, but he’s a cute one. “How did you uncomplicate it?”
“I brought lunch to the place we could be alone and secretive.”
