Page 48 of The Cadence
That was probably true, but it was so hard to let go.
Will took my hand and I looked up at him. “It was also on my mind how glad I am that you’re here with me. Thank you, Calla.”
I nodded and rested my head against his arm. I was glad, too.
Chapter 10
Istirred the gravy carefully and then took a smaller spoon to give it a taste. Too much salt? I pushed my knuckle against my lip and considered. No, it was good, and the roast was cooking perfectly. Luckily, the renovation crew hadn’t yet started on the kitchen so this room was still free for my use. “Maybe we should wait until after the season is over to work on that area,” I had suggested, and everyone agreed with me. Will had enough to worry about right now and didn’t need the stress of not being able to get food on top of…well, on top of everything.
That wasn’t to say that the construction had totally stopped, though. “This will be gorgeous,” Annie Whitaker-Gassman had told me cheerfully, then she’d picked up a large hammer and smashed it into the wall of the guest cottage bathroom. She had devised a few changes for the bedroom in there, too, and all that meant that I was out. I couldn’t stay with the walls torn up and with no toilet—I’d lived like that before, and I didn’t want to ever again.
It should have been the perfect time for me to settle into my own place. After all, I had some money now. I’d sold a few pieces of my painted furniture and Will had insisted on giving me a raise for the little to nothing that I was doing for his company. There was slightly more work because things were picking up with it, but there was still nothing that justified my salary.
Yeah, it should have been the perfect time for me to find an apartment and move there, but I didn’t do that. Instead, I got even closer to Will by moving myself into the main house. His house. The distance between us went from a hundred yards down to about none because I now occupied one of the bedrooms upstairs.
“Annie can find some furniture,” he’d said casually, and almost overnight, there was a bed with sheets and hangers in the closet and everything else that someone would need. Twice, Will had even carried up a cup of coffee in the morning, so I had my own room service! We had sat and talked for a while and I…I liked him. I liked the coffee and conversation, and I really liked him.
It was hard to know what to do in a situation like this. Obviously, I wasn’t going to say no to being here with him.
“Bug, say no,” Miss Mozella had told me. “Get out of there, now.” She hadn’t explained her reasoning and neither had any of the other women who had texted, until I heard from Miss Theresa.
“You’re going to end up in bed with him and it will kill you,” she’d written. She wasn’t worried about my physical well-being, and I understood her message perfectly.
Sex hadn’t happened, though. Since we’d returned from Tennessee, things had gone on mostly in the same way as before. Will had gone to practice, team meetings, and all the other things that filled his life with football. I’d been working on my furniture and taking shifts at the grocery store. I’d made decisions about the house and I’d met with Annie and Remy to get things done with as little disruption as possible. I’d gone to his games, of course, and I was learning more about the offense and also to appreciate some of the other players. They weren’t as good as Will and I had to think that they weren’t putting in as much effort, but they also didn’t have the gift of his natural talent. They were trying their best, bless their hearts.
Will was also trying his best to keep all the parts of his life going smoothly. He had put his mother’s real estate issues on the back burner for a moment because there was a lot of other stuff going on, like a football season that was packed with activity and now a dinner party, too.
That had been his idea and had come while we were working out. “Why don’t you invite that guy over?” he suggested. “What was his name? Sulky?”
“You mean Cully?” I’d asked. “Will, this is a little heavy.”
“I have it,” he’d said, and took the dumbbell from me. “Try a five-pounder instead.”
“That’s better,” I had agreed. “Why do you have five-pound weights? To tone your pinkies or your ears?” They had to be for teeny tiny muscle groups like those, because the dumbbells he used for the rest of his body were heavier than my old car.
“I got the smaller ones for you. This end of the rack is yours,” he said. “Don’t try to pick up anything past this mark.” He had drawn an actual line but he didn’t have to worry about me venturing towards his side. I didn’t want to break bones or crush myself.
“Do two more reps,” he said, and then returned to his previous topic. “Invite that Sully over for dinner.”
“It’s Cully,” I corrected. Even with fewer pounds, I found that lifting these weights with my triceps muscles still sucked a lot. “Why do you want me to invite him?” I groaned as I completed the second one and he took the little dumbbell from me.
“Aren’t you friends?” he asked, and I agreed. I liked Sully—Cully, and we had fun when we were at work together at the grocery store. We would probably have fun if he came over for dinner, too, and Will said that he would invite someone from the team so that there would be four of us at the table.
He’d also said that he would help to prepare the dinner, and he’d started out strong by ordering a delivery of more groceries than we would have normally used in a week. But then, unfortunately, he’d had to stay late at the stadium, so I was currently alone at the stove. Things were going ok but it would have been more fun to have him here with me, because I did like being with him. A lot.
Just as I checked his location and saw that he was on the road, the doorbell rang. It was either Cully or Will’s guest, the new Woodsmen center named Langston Diouf. I hoped for my coworker. It wasn’t only that I knew him better and was lookingforward to hanging out with him…I was also a little concerned about Diouf due to everything I’d seen of him off the field with his very well-publicized relationship with Kirsten. Everyone had been able to see a whole lot of him.
I hadn’t been raised with a lot of standards about nudity and public sex. For example, my mom and her boyfriend Clifford had never cared about closing the door and keeping their voices down when they were getting physical. But after living with my grandma for seven years, I’d learned to have more of an appreciation for privacy and what she called “decorum.” The videos that Diouf had posted of himself and Kirsten were not things that Grandma would have approved of, not at all. It didn’t mean that he was a bad person, but it did mean that when I looked at him across the new dinner table, I would probably think of the image of his naked butt with the crack barely covered by Kirsten’s fingers.
“Oh, hi,” I said when I opened the door to Will’s house and saw Diouf there. Yeah, my mind went right to his beautiful butt, but he was a guest. Another thing I’d learned from my grandma was how to treat people politely, so I smiled and introduced myself.
“I know,” the Woodsmen player said. “Bodine told me about you.” And it turned out that he was a very nice guy. The two of us finished preparing the meal together and then sat sipping the sun tea I’d made, which he said he’d never had as sweet before. We ended up drinking two glasses while we waited for everyone and the meat started to get a little dry in the oven.
Finally, I heard Will’s car pull into the garage and at just that moment, the bell rang again. I went to open the front door for my coworker, but I found that he wasn’t alone.
“I brought a date,” Cully proudly announced.
“Kirsten?” I said, and I heard Langston Diouf repeat the name in the same disbelieving tone.
