Page 116 of Pieces of Heaven

XENIA’S EPILOGUE

Hobo and I get marriedin the Pigsty’s expansive backyard. I decide against inviting my brother and sister. I’m unashamed of my life in McMurdo Valley. I also feel confident about standing up to any of their scorn. However, I’ll never put Hobo in a position to feel judged. By keeping the wedding simple with our friends and his sister, I know he can relax and be himself.

Our honeymoon waits until Hobo is fully healed. Despite the first-class seats and his “chill pills,” he still gets edgy in the airplane. There’s no option to pop open a window and smell fresh air. My words calm him when he feels trapped. We talk about our future house and look at inspiration pictures. We discuss everything from baby names to what to buy each other for Christmas that year. When he dozes off, I hold his hand and rest my head against his shoulder.

Our two weeks in Italy are better than any of those old dreams I had. Hobo is fun to experience new things with because he doesn’t put on any airs about his feelings. If he’s excited or horrified, I see it all on his face.

While I’m focused on hitting up different restaurants and trying authentic cuisine, Hobo is fascinated by the way nature feels in a different part of the world. We take walks, breathing in lush woodlands thousands of miles from McMurdo Valley.

By the second week, Hobo is homesick yet relaxed about our hotel hopping. He laughs more by then. Hobo even asks the locals questions. When he’s calm, his aura easily charms people.

On the flight back, Hobo surprises me by asking about other countries we could visit. Each one I mention makes him uneasy because he can only imagine the big cities—Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro—but each place also offers dense forests we can explore.

“Next time, I’ll take more pills for the flight,” he says as the plane touches down, and he sighs full of relief.

“We could also drive places. That’s how I found McMurdo Valley.”

Hobo grins at the thought of us on the open road. Like mine, Hobo’s life has been very small. We refused to step out of our bubble. Italy awakens something in both of us. I’m more confident since taking charge of my reluctant traveler. Hobo seems to stand taller when we’re home after breathing the air from a world so different from the only one he’s ever known.

Returning to McMurdo Valley with a new gust of energy, we spend most of our time focused on each other, friends, and building a house.

I also take the leap and get a tattoo. Though I consider a “tramp stamp,” I don’t want something hidden from view. After getting stoned to the point where I can’t even say “okay,” I get a tattoo with two turtles swimming together and a wispy circle wrapping them together. One turtle is darker blue with the letter “H” on its back while the second is a lighter blue with the letter “X.” I ask the tattoo artist to leave a little extra space inside the wispy circle for a potential child.

With my biological clock ticking loudly, Hobo and I decide I’ll stop my birth control and let nature takes its course. I promise myself I’ll be okay with whatever happens baby-wise.

In the past, I always wanted to devise plans and then create backup plans. The old me would have spent my days tracking my cycle and timing sex.

Nowadays, I simply stop my birth control and go about my life. Not that I don’t get the urge to micromanage the situation. Fortunately, building a house takes up all my spare energy.

Hobo and I design the kitchen first and create the house to fit around it. This allows Hobo to take a back seat in the beginning of the process.

Next, we visit his friends’ houses to figure out what features he likes. I catalog them all for the architect. We decide to go with a rustic design, embracing a natural feel to help Hobo ease into a “caged lifestyle,” as he puts it sometimes.

The walls are painted pale blues, greens, and yellows. The ceilings are high, and the rooms spacious. Hobo gets his floor-to-ceiling windows in the family room. In the master bedroom, our bed faces a massive picture window, allowing us to wake up to a view of the dense woods circling our home.

The architect comes up with the idea of attached wooden atriums lining several sides of the house, complete with rock gardens and plants. I often find Hobo sitting in them during storms. He can enjoy nature without getting wet.

We keep the furniture to a minimum. There’s a single room filled with chairs and a dining room big enough for guests. Otherwise, the house possesses a minimalist design.

By the time our home is built, Rose the Cat has been fixed and grown attached to us. After a few weeks of fury over changing locations again, she mostly stays in the atriums and in her dog house out back. Yet, she knows we’re her people and will come sit with us on the back deck.

We bring two of the younger cats with us. Walla Walla claims the orange one for himself. Early on, the gray-and-black kitten attached herself to Yagger.

As the house comes together, the club buys the land my shop sits on. The locksmith moves out, and renovations start. The former pizza place becomes Wynonna’s charity headquarters. Landry and Rosemary open up a children’s used clothes store in the locksmith’s former spot. Our little stretch of nothing is never busy, but we do fine.

Most days, XYZ Coffee is open from ten to three. Just enough time for Glenn to come around, my friends to bring their kids, or the Berserkers to pick up lunch. A few locals also become regulars.

During my year living at the Pigsty, I get creative, both wowing and grossing out my new friends. For Thanksgiving, I make turkey eggrolls and sweet potato sushi. Those go over well, but the kids are mostly interested in my pumpkin cupcakes.

By the time Hobo and I move to our place, I’m certain we’ll never get pregnant.

“I got hit in the crotch a lot,” Hobo says one night as we cuddle in front of the large stone fireplace.

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