Page 126 of Hot Mess Express
Alright, I hang up and spare ourselves the show. Bridger and I exchange a look. “You thinkthey’lllast eight years?” I ask.
Bridger only chuckles for an answer.
Then I ask, “Do you thinkwe’lllast eight years?”
He was about to go for another sip of his smoothie, then lowers it, gazing into my eyes thoughtfully. I love how he listens to me so completely, then gives his answers some considerationbefore he delivers them.
“Well, I suppose that just might depend entirely on how many points I score with your mom and dad tonight.”
I smirk. “Really?”
“Every dinner, I try to win a little more, bit by bit.”
I don’t know why Bridger still thinks he hasn’t won over my parents. They invite us over to their house for dinner almost every Thursday, sometimes Sundays too, and it’s more than obvious that the pair of them are infatuated with him.
“My dad’s already tryin’ to get you to join his business if the ‘medical thing don’t work out’ … in his words,” I remind him. “He would never do that if he didn’t like you.”
“I want him to more than like me. I want him to trust me.”
“Trust you with what?”
“You.”
I meet his eyes, setting down my nearly-empty smoothie. He seems so different today. More confident than usual. Emboldened, like he’s sitting on top of the world. At first I just chalked it up to him having a great jog with me. But something else is going on.
It’s also possible he’s just ready to go back home and have sex.
Our sex drive hasn’t weakened at all over the past six months. Not one bit. It’s goddamned multiplied, in truth.
“I want him to trust me with you,” Bridger goes on. “With his son. I want your parents to trust me with taking care of their son, who has given my life a purpose, who has given me focus when I thought I was lost …”
“That’s whatyou’vedone forme,” I cut him off to say. “I’m the one who was lost, Bridger, drinkin’ myself to death every day … ‘til you came into my life and ruined the fun.”
Bridger chuckles, his arm around my back, his face close. “We both have done each other quite a lot of good. I just …”His eyes drop to my lips. “I just want to make sure your parents know my intentions. I want them to know I’ll be by your side. For good. And I want you by mine, right next to me, every day, no matter what happens, no matter what knocks us on our asses in life.”
“The hell’s this all comin’ from?” I blurt out, unable to help myself. “Somethin’ is gonna knock us on our asses?”
“Something always can. Can’t stop trouble from finding you. Life has a way of doing that to the best of us. But no matter what, I’m sticking by you. That’s my life’s plan.”
I guess this isn’t totally out of the blue.
Bridger has been making every effort under the sun to prove his love for me ever since moving here. He never talks over me. He never dismisses what I say. He values my opinion in every decision he makes, even in deciding to enroll at Fairview Community this semester to continue his medical studies, utilizing his experience as an Army medic trained in emergency response and care. There ain’t a damned thing he doesn’t do without including me.
I’ve got a feeling he’ll be proving himself to me forever.
The man is, and has always been, the perfect embodiment of complete and unwavering devotion. And I may never learn what in the heck I did to deserve calling this man mine.
Every day of our lives is a surprise. Sometimes, every moment is, too. I don’t know what the heck’s gonna drop on our plate next.
Even when we’re apart, we’re together. The afternoon rolls around, and Bridger shoots me texts from the clinic, often with a cute selfie that makes me laugh. I’m out at a client’s house and send him an off-putting shot of me with an impressively big wasp nest I just discovered on someone’s back patio. He sends me a pic of himself pulling on a glove with one finger sticking up, smirking suggestively—a pic I’m guessing someone else took,likely Carla or Marybeth, maybe even Trey, since I see both of Bridger’s hands—and I reply with a pouting selfie of my own while holding a spray bottle of eco-friendly insecticide like I’m about to squirt him with it. No day is a hassle. No hour stretches on forever.
With Bridger in my life, even my hardest days of work are fun.
I struck boyfriend gold with this one.
And there isn’t even a shred of a doubt in my mind about that when the pair of us are back together in the evening, seated with my parents at their house, enjoying a tasty spread with a slightly wine-happy mother and an uncharacteristically cheerful, talkative father, who seems suspiciously chummy with my boyfriend. At one point when I’m helping my mom clean up in the kitchen, the two of them even go off together, standing just outside the door, chatting away into the night about who-knows-what. My mom leans into me at one point, having spotted them herself through the front-facing kitchen window, and with her hands full of soap suds, says, “Honestly, I think your daddy loves Bridger more than he loves either of us. Can you just seal the deal already and make him my dang son-in-law?”
As if on cue, my dad and Bridger glance back at the window. A twinkle of happiness in my father’s eyes. Bridger smiling at me. I’ve got a wet rag in my hand and all I can do is just stare through the window at them, a smile trying to happen on my face, as my mom’s words echo in my brain, over and over.
