Chapter Thirty-Nine

Jesse

Things were almost perfect.

Almost.

The house was empty for the night, which took some doing. Luke and Amber went out of town to stay in a bed and breakfast, which was easy. Getting Collin out of the house was not. I ended up having to essentially bribe Logan to get him to take Collin over there and spend the night hanging out. Owen was easy, doing whatever secretive thing he was up to and deciding to spend the night there. He said he was going out of town too, but I had no idea where or why.

It didn’t matter. It just meant the house was empty.

“Hey, Jesse?”

“Yeah?”

Chef Rousey, the resident chef for the Bethel hotel in Arlington, came out of the kitchen wiping his hands with a paper towel.

“Looks like you’re good to go. I have the entrée in the oven to stay warm, and the pie is in the refrigerator. Is there anything else?”

“No, Chef, you’ve been great. Again, I appreciate you.”

“Hey, you paid me more than fairly,” he said. “Besides, she’s a great lady. I’m glad to help give her a good surprise.”

Chef Rousey left a few minutes later, and I went to work as I checked the time. She would probably be there in just a few minutes, and that didn’t leave me a lot of leeway to finish getting ready. Lighting a hundred or so candles was surprisingly time-consuming.

As far as Charlotte knew, she was coming over for dinner. She didn’t even know there wouldn’t be anyone else here. She just knew it was dinner. As far as she was concerned, some of the other boys would be here too, most likely Collin.

This wasn’t where I was going to pop the question. Not yet. But it would lay the groundwork. I wanted her to feel special, and now that I was finally feeling like I was my old self again, or rather, my new self, I wanted to show her what life would be like going forward.

I was still me. I was still going to pursue music and be a little wild and party. But my days of having women hanging on me, going days without sleeping properly or eating or in general taking care of myself were over. Now I was going to perform, just like I always had, and then, much like Kevin, I was going to go find my woman and spend the night working out all that amped-up energy showing her how special she was to me.

I couldn’t wait for the first show I got to do with her as my girlfriend. It was going to be one hell of a night. Maybe tonight might come close.

A knock on the door got my attention just as I finished putting away the long-lighter and I checked my reflection in the hallway mirror. I’d shaved for once. That alone should be a shock. I almost always had a day-old stubble at least.

“Hey—oh my God,” she said, all as one word, when I opened the door. “What is going on here?”

“You,” I said. “Any time I get a chance to have a private dinner with you, it’s special.”

“Private?” she asked, her eyes widening, sparkling in the candlelight.

“Just you and me,” I said.

“Well then,” she said, coming across the threshold and taking off her purse. “I feel wildly underdressed.”

I looked her up and down appreciatively. She was wearing a pretty blue dress I’d never seen her in before and matching flats, her long hair brushed out and hanging on both sides of her face, framing her in a dark forest of gorgeousness.

“Not at all,” I said. “Though maybe later, we can both be wildly underdressed together.”

She laughed, playfully slapping my chest as she fell into my arms for a kiss.

“You’re bad,” she said.

“I thought that was why you liked me.”

“It is,” she said. “One of the reasons, anyway.”

“And the others?”

Her cheeks reddened, and she looked over my shoulder, her nostrils flaring and confusion crossing her face.

“I thought you said we were alone,” she said.

“We are.”

“Did… did Collin cook and then leave?”

“Not Collin,” I said.

“You didn’t make whatever that smell is,” she said. “I would know if you could cook like that. I would, wouldn’t I?”

I laughed and guided her toward the kitchen.

“You would,” I said. “Unfortunately, my cooking skills are still fairly rudimentary, no matter how hard Collin tries. But this wasn’t him either. I brought in Chef Rousey to make us a meal.”

“Randy?” she said. “You got him all the way down here to cook dinner?”

“I did,” I said. “He was happy to do it. You’re one of his favorite people.”

“Wow,” she said. “You really went all out tonight.”

“You have no idea,” I said. “Come on. Sit down. I’ll get you some wine.”

I held the chair out for her, and she sat down. Pouring a glass of wine, I waited on her to tell me when to stop. When the glass was almost full, I realized she had no idea she was supposed to, and I had just poured a wildly suggestive half-bottle in her glass.

She didn’t complain though.

I took my seat across from her, pouring a matching massive glass of wine that I most likely wasn’t going to drink all of, and held it out for her to clink hers against.

“To us,” I said.

“To us.”

I took a deep pull of the dark wine and sat down the glass.

“You know, I might actually get into wine one day,” I said.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I like you being a beer and whiskey guy.”

“Good, because I was lying, and I still think this tastes like dry sour grapes.”

She giggled and took a sip of her own.

“It takes a refined palate,” she said.

“Well, that explains a lot. If dinner was up to me to make with my palate, we’d be having cheeseburgers and beer.”

She shrugged. “That wouldn’t be so bad,” she said. “I could get down with that. What’s on the menu for tonight, anyway?”

I took a breath and closed my eyes, reciting the menu as I had memorized. She laughed at my performance, but when I opened my eyes, she had that glittery smile on again. I felt my heart return it tenfold.

“Well, that sounds amazing,” she said. “I’ll have to thank Randy.”

“Hey, I was the one to choose which of the menus to do tonight,” I said playfully.

“Well, then maybe your palate is better than I thought.”

“Damn right,” I joked.

“So what is all this about?” she asked. “What are you up to? Are you buttering me up for something? Some worldwide tour where you’re going to be gone for a few months?”

“No,” I laughed. “Nothing like that. I’m surprised you don’t know, though.”

“Know what?”

“Today,” I said. “It marks two years exactly since we met at the hotel.”

“Really?” she asked. “I didn’t know what day it was, exactly.”

“I remembered,” I said. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. It was the best night of my life up to that point.”

“It was a pretty darn good night.”

“Anyway, the way I look at it, that was the night all of this started.”

“Not ten years ago?” she asked. “I thought that would have been the beginning, no?”

I shook my head. “No, that was a trial run. We were still young. We didn’t know what life was going to do to us, and we needed life to do it. I know how much I missed you, how much I wanted to find you again, but I am kind of glad I had that chance to realize what I was missing in you.”

“You really missed me that much?”

“Every day,” I said. “You see, every night, I had trouble getting to sleep. I’ve had trouble sleeping since I was little, but ever since you left that first time, it was way worse. It was like I was missing something, and my brain knew it. I couldn’t fully relax. So at night, I would lie in my bed and try to think of something to relax me, something to calm my brain down and let me sleep. You know what I ended up thinking about?”

“What?”

“You,” I said. “I would let my mind conjure an image of you beside me. Nothing dirty or anything like that. Just you, under the covers, curled up with me. Your head on my chest, my arm around your shoulders. If I really concentrated, I could remember the smell of your shampoo. I could focus on that and how at home it made me feel. How calm it made me. And I would sleep. And I would dream.”

“You would dream about me?”

“I would dream about us,” I said. “I would dream about the us that could have been. The us that I was positive never would be. The us that we actually can be now.”

“What were we like in those dreams?”

“Happy,” I said. “Blissfully happy. Just like I am right now, with you, at this dinner table.”

She smiled. “I’m happy too.”

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you too.”

“Good. Now, can I offer you an appetizer?”

“As hungry as I am,” she said, one eyebrow rising deviously, “I feel like I might be ready for the main course.”

I grinned widely. “Patience,” I said. “If I’ve learned anything over the last ten years of waiting for you, it’s that patience makes everything that much better.”