Page 79 of Love Unforgettable
“She took on me.”
“You spare a woman’s feelings tonight because she was already in pain?”
“I’m still not sure if that was the right thing to do.”
“You her best girlfriend? She gonna listen to you if you say her man is a cheater?”
“Probably not.”
“You got a good heart, Lexie. That’s all I need to know.” I pick up our hands and kiss the back of hers. Then return them to her lap.
“What if I’m a cheater?” she asks.
“Yeah, but you ain’t.”
“I could be a bad person.”
I look at her, until she looks at me and then looks away.
“You’ll find something,” she says. “Something about me that makes you leave.”
“You think so?”
She nods.
“When I prove you wrong, we name our first baby Cole, Jr.”
She laughs. “What if it’s a girl?”
“Don’t matter none to me.”
“You can’t do that to a girl,” she cries as we pull into the hospital parking lot. “That’s mean.”
“Lexie, Jr. then.”
“No,” she giggles. “That’s even worse.”
“Colette,” I say.
“Ohmigod! No.”
“That’s the terms, sweetness.” I find parking, turn off the car, and turn to look at her. “I’m gonna admit something to you that I’m sure I will probably regret.” I pause.
She nods. “Okay.”
“Members of my family believe in love at first sight.” She gasps when I say that, but I keep going anyway. “They liken it to a lightning bolt hittin’ them square in the chest. A feeling like no other, lettin’ ‘em know they’ve met their match.”
Lexie swallows, but still holds my gaze.
“I felt my lightning bolt not too long ago,” I say.
She looks away, down at her lap. Her hands fidget slightly. I have a feeling, even with everything else I’ve said, she still doesn’t realize that I’m talking about her.
“She was out to dinner with another woman, wearin’ a pale green dress that tied around her neck and left her whole back bare. There wasn’t a guy in that place who didn’t want to run his hands along her smooth skin. She had her hair up, with little bits and pieces fallin’ down around her face. The most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen. She started choking on her wine when she saw me, and I had to make sure she was okay.” Lexie finally looks back up at me. Her eyes filled with hope, surprise, tears, and something else I can’t quite identify. Gratitude?
“I touched her back, and that was it. I’d been struck by lightnin’, and I’ll be damned if nothing was ever gonna be the same again and if that didn’t just dill my pickle.”
She laughs. “Dill your pickle?”
