Authors: Lauren Gilley
41
I
n the darkness of every morning before the sun unfurled its brilliance across the world, before the birds rose and the crickets settled in for sleep, when the dew still lay heavy on the grass and the trees threw twisted, sinister shadows across the pavement, Jordan was lungs and legs and sweating skin. Five miles, six sometimes, seven if he’d overindulged at dinner the night before; his only company was the rush of his own pulse and the guitar chords that serenaded his ears and fueled his adrenaline.
It was a morning like so many mornings he’d had since he was fourteen. It was May and humidity was already creeping into the air, the last crisp tang of spring clinging to the atmosphere. It was the first morning of summer semester and the courses he would teach to the summer schoolers. It was another workout on another stretch of pavement with another day’s work ahead of him.
But this morning, like all the mornings since the late December day he’d watched her come down a staircase to him, he’d awakened with a beautiful, naked girl draped across his chest. He’d pushed her dark hair back off her face and watched his wedding ring catch the lamplight. When he rounded the corner at the top of the street and the house came into view, he knew he’d find her in the shower, and he knew where her soaped hands would wander and what she would taste like when he kissed her and asked her to squeeze just a little bit harder.
Jordan had spent so many years living moment to moment, anticipating nothing. Craving nothing. Reaching for nothing. It was happening slowly, and it still scared the shit out of him, but he was building this cache of goals in the back of his mind. He was starting to plan things. To want things. To reach for things.
When the house came into view he lengthened his stride. Because home was not just a pillow his head hit at the end of every day. It wasn’t just a dwelling. Home was the smell of things baking and the creak of ancient hardwood. It was Ellie’s bare feet on the bedroom floor in the morning and the smile she lifted to him with a kiss when he came downstairs. It was the smell of her lotion and perfume, the softness of her sheets. The smooth satin of her skin under his palms. The sound she made when he slipped inside her and the release he found in her that was hot and pure and none of the dark things sex had become before he met her.
He left his shoes in the foyer and went up the cool, warped wood of the staircase barefoot. The water rushed against the shower curtain in the bathroom and the mirror was clouded with steam. Ellie was humming to herself and when he pushed the curtain back, she was standing beneath the spray, spine arched as she rinsed the shampoo from her hair.
“I’ll be late for school.” She laughed as he ditched his basketball shorts and stepped in with her, pulling the curtain closed behind him.
His hands found her flared, water-slick hips and he pulled her back against him, ducking under the hot flood of water and kissing the side of her neck as his hair was soaked. “I’ll write you a note,” he offered, and she laughed again, a chuckle that turned into a deep, happy purr as his hands went roaming.
He’d been this cold shower, cold Cheerios, routine machine for as long as he could remember.
Now he had steam-filled hot showers and ate breakfast like a king.
And he had a wife who left him wondering how he’d ever been so miserable for seven whole years when there she was waiting for him on the other side.
**
“You have to be awake in ten minutes.”
Tam cracked his eyelids a fraction with a serious regret that he’d signed up for summer classes. Yes, in the long run, it was the right thing for his family to finish school as quickly as possible. But on a Friday in May, with the sight that greeted him first thing rooting him to the bed under him, he wanted nothing to do with economics and accounting.
Jo lay on her side facing him, wearing one of his older, more tattered flannel shirts, the buttons open as she nursed Willa. Her honey and hardwood hair was a shimmering puddle across the pillow, her eyes dark-ringed but glittering.
“I hate school,” he grumbled, and she smiled.
“You’re a straight-A student.”
“That doesn’t mean I enjoy it.”
“I know.”
He reached out through their rumpled sheets and stroked the backs of his fingers ever so gently against the baby’s head, the downy soft whispers of black hair that were coming in thicker and darker every day. “I wish I could stay home with you guys.”
“We’re not staying home,” she said with a sad smile. She was back to work and Jess had been keeping Will during the days. Jo had tried to hide it from him, but it killed her. More than one morning he’d caught her tearing up as she toted the car seat out and fastened it into Jessica’s Tahoe.
“I’ll get over it,”
she’d assured, but it was all the more reason for him to finish school as fast as was humanly possible.
“You need to get in the shower,” he observed. She was always up and ready before him…at least, she had been before the baby.
“Yeah.” Carefully, she disengaged Will and sat up, lifting her onto her shoulder so she could burp her. She’d taken to motherhood like a pro. Diapers and midnight screaming and breast pumps and doctor trips. All of it. She did, after all – whether it was sick dogs or him – like taking care of things. She was nurturing.
“Joey.”
She patted Will’s back and rested her cheek against the little baby head, eyes coming to him.
“It won’t always be like this,” he told her, and knew it ferociously. “I’m going to make life good for you guys.”
She swallowed and smiled. “Things are already good, sweetie. They’re so good.”
“Better then,” he amended, sitting up and pushing his hair out of his eyes. “A lot better.”
“Tam - ”
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are.” With one final caress, she shifted Willa down into her arms and then passed her to him. They were getting pretty adept when it came to baby passing. “Alright, baby,” she murmured. “Be a good girl for Daddy while I take a shower.”
Even holding a tiny being wrapped in Nike footie pajamas that were a gift from Uncle Jordie, he still marveled at being
Daddy
.
He tipped his head back when he felt Jo’s little hands framing his face. She kissed him, morning breath and all, her hair tickling against his cheeks.
“I know you’re serious,” she repeated when she pulled back. “And we love you so much.”
“You’re amazing.”
She rolled her eyes, but flushed with pleasure at the praise.
**
Ellie loved her diamond because it had been her grandmother’s. And because Jordan had slipped it onto her finger. But she loved the plain white gold band with his initials laser etched into it too. Maybe even more. Because it had been his to hers. Because it had turned them into Jordan Thomas Walker and Noelle Christina Walker. And because she liked the way the sunlight coming in through the window above the sink glinted across it.
“El!” Paige called as she thundered down the stairs. “Have you seen my…nevermind!” She came hopping into the kitchen a moment later pulling on her current favorite pair of tube socks. Ellie had left them draped over the bannister where she would find them.
“You’ve got paper?” Ellie asked her. “Pencil? Something?”
Paige patted her oversized purse. “Yep.” Which meant she might have a pen somewhere in its depths and a Post-It she would use for scribbling class notes.
It wasn’t worth having the school supplies lecture again. “Okay. Coffee. Lunch.” Ellie set a steaming travel mug and brown paper bag on the center island.
“Thanks, Mommy,” Paige said with a shit eating grin.
“Brat.”
“You wish I really was your kid, don’t you?”
“I think you already are.”
“If that’s true, then I wanna petition for a funner stepdad.”
“More fun,” Jordan corrected as he came into the room.
“See?” Paige said. “Not fun.”
“I dunno,” Ellie said. “He’s pretty fun.”
Paige blinked and then the innuendo clicked into place in her mind. “Oh,
gag
!” S
he snatched her lunch and mug off the island and stomped toward the back door. “I do not need to hear that kind of thing!”
“If she’s my stepkid,” Jordan said as she poured coffee into a travel mug for him. “I want a refund.”
She grinned. “The feeling’s mutual, I assure you.”
In truth, she was amazed how well their living situation worked. Paige spent more nights with her boyfriend than she had before, but Jordan had grown up with sisters and didn’t begrudge their chatter and late night baking and the girl world he had become a part of.
“You have class all day, right?” he asked.
“Just two classes, but that’s five hours total.” She made a face. Summer courses were two-and-a-half hours long twice a week. “And I need to clock some time at the writing center.”
“Is that professor still willing to take a look at your manuscript?”
“I think so.” She was nervous just at the thought. “He probably won’t like it.”
“Then he’s a dumbass.” Jordan had read every word, long nights propped up in bed while she chewed her lip and waited on him to tell her how much it sucked.
“You think?”
“I know.”
He pressed a fast, fierce kiss to her lips. “You wanna have lunch?”
“Yeah.” She smiled as she thought about last semester, the spring sunlight and the benches around the campus green where it had been perfectly acceptable to sit as a professor and student because they were both Walkers now.
“I’ll text you.” He gave her another kiss before he gathered up his things and headed for the door. “Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
It never got old: that morning departure ritual of
love
you
s and quick kisses and the acknowledgment that, whatever happened that day, they were coming home to each other. Whatever the world dealt, they had someone to say
I love you
when the night closed in around them.
Ellie watched the sun catch the gold streaks in her husband’s hair as he stepped out into the brilliant golden morning, and she sighed to herself with a kind of contentment she hadn’t known could exist. She was boring. In the eyes of others, her life was boring. But the novel she was bringing to reality layer by layer of detail was the adventure she’d never dared to hope for.
And Jordan Walker, gilded and dead-faced and so sweet in all the ways it counted, was her own personal fantasy come to fruition. His love was rich and textured. Humble and honest. And she still couldn’t quite believe she was living a life she’d always dreamed of.
About the Author:
Lauren Gilley grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia and has a deep love for the South. A lifelong bookworm and writing fanatic, she has always harbored a love for character-driven stories grounded in real-life detail, and always believes there’s something extraordinary to be found in even the most ordinary of circumstances. Visit her website for updates and more information:
Hoofprintpress.blogspot.com