Page 36 of Just Like in the Movies
Micah
Ipicked Lew up at three o’clock sharp the next day. “You sure you want to go? You still look tired.”
“Why thank you, Micah. I do love the way you flatter a guy,” he snapped sarcastically at me.
I held my hands up to fend off any more attacks. “Just making sure. I mean, you worked last night. If you’d rather stay home and sleep, I’d understand.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. I’m not really that tired. Tomorrow will be bad—that’s when it’ll catch up with me.” He gave me that look, the one that usually preceded some sort of lambasting. “But that doesn’t mean I need to hear how shitty I look.”
“You don’t look shitty,” I told him with a laugh. “Just tired. You always look good to me.” I wanted to lean over and kiss him, but I stopped myself just in time. Maybe in a week, or even a couple of days. Or maybe after he was back working dayshifts. “Did you still want to go?”
“Goats! I can’t miss the goats.” He grinned and rocked on his feet. “Maybe we can sneak one into the car.”
“Not this car. The rental agency would have a fit.”
We got settled in our seats and I turned the air conditioning on to keep it comfortable. “If you want to nap on the way up, I can wake you when we get there.”
“We’ll see,” he said and stretched. I caught myself watching and wishing and the thin sliver of belly that appeared when he raised his arms made me suck in my breath as I remembered being able to touch that stretch of skin. I wanted to be able to do that again sometime.
Which meant keeping my eyes on the prize. The prize being Lew trusting me again.
Damn, I had a long way to go, didn’t I?
But speaking of going places, I put the car in gear and pointed it in the direction of the highway north.
We didn’t say much for the first part of the trip. Lew hummed along to the radio and tapped his fingers on the car door, gazing contentedly out the window as the scenery passed. It occurred to me that we’d done drives like this before and I still didn’t know what he thought about when he went all quiet and smiley like this.
So, in my determination to turn over a new leaf and be more attentive, I asked, “What do you think about when we’re in the car like this?”
“What do you mean?” He cocked his head at me, still with that half-smile on his face.
“I don’t know exactly. Just, we start driving and you’re looking at the same things I see, but it’s like it’s different for you.”
He laughed softly. “I’m not thinking much, really. I think being in the car and not driving relaxes me. I like looking at the houses as we go by them and wondering what they look like inside, how the people living there have organized their lives. What color did they paint their walls, what does their furniture look like? Does it look like a house I’d like to live in?” He shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess I’m just nosy.”
“I don’t believe that,” I told him. Now that he’d put it into my head, though, I was starting to wonder about those things too. “What do you think about that place there?” I asked, pointing to a pretty white bungalow with a garage and a stretch of green lawn in front of it.
“It’s nice.” Lew sat up and twisted in his seat to get a better look as we drove by. “The rooms look like they’d be small though. I like the yard. It would be a good place for kids to play.” He sat back down. “I can’t decide if I’d want a two story house or a one story.”
“Would it make a difference?” I asked, confused. A house was a house, right? As long as it had all the rooms you wanted, what did it matter?
He leaned back in the seat and stared out the window again. “One story keeps everything together, which is convenient for getting housework done. But you end up with people wandering all over everywhere when you have company, including the family sections of the house. And you need more land for the same size house. If you have two stories, it’s nice to have the bedrooms on a different level, kind of keeps the public and private sections separate, you know? So if the bedrooms are a mess, it doesn’t matter, because no one will go upstairs anyway. But then you have to drag everything up and down stairs all the time and if you have kids you have to worry about them falling down the stairs. And I can’t even imagine having the washer and dryer in the basement, and bringing laundry down from the second floor all the time.” He laughed. “You’re going to think I’m lazy.”
“Not at all.” If anything, he was a genius. Why hadn’t I thought of any of this stuff? Probably because I was mostly worried about headshots and camera angles. “None of that stuff would have ever occurred to me. I’d probably end up living somewhere I didn’t really like and never being able to figure out what the problem was.”
“I’m sure you’d figure it out.”
“I don’t know. None of that stuff was even on my radar. You’ll have to promise to vet any houses I start looking at and giving me your opinion before I buy them,” I said without thinking.
There was a long, awkward pause, then Lew said lightly, “Of course. I’d hate to see anyone living in a house they hated.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid.We drove for another couple of miles in uncomfortable silence, then Lew said, “There’s a good idea for a house.”
Oh, yes, thank you for smoothing that over. I love you, Lew.“Where?”
“That one. Watch as we go by. If you can without putting us off the road.”
“I can do that.” I took a couple of careful looks as we went past it. “That’s different.”
