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Deo pats me on the ass and I can’t help but jump and squeal like a stupid girl.

“And don’t you dare feel sorry for me in my chair. This baby reclines, vibrates, massages, you name it. My grandfather would sell his soul for this chair. Actually, I might feel slightly sorry for
you
. Cause that bed is amazing, but you’re not getting a massage from it. If you want one from me, on the other hand, arrangements can be made.” He plops into the thick fabric of the chair and pulls the lever that sends his feet up into the air.

This is a totally ridiculous plan and I know each second I don’t hold my ground is a second closer to complete insanity, but it doesn’t look like I’m going to get out of it. So, rather than argue, I kick off my cherry-red wedges, climb up onto the absurdly high bed, and slip under the silky, thick comforter.

The bed is heaven. The heavy fabric of the bedding weighs down on my weary body, and I feel like I’m tucked neatly into a cocoon. My head sinks deep into the soft pillows. I only wish I would’ve worn something other than this gorgeous, stupid, form-fitting dress. I consider wriggling out of it, but decide not to. No telling if Deo really did get permission to be here. It’d be bad enough if someone found us here in the morning when we weren’t allowed to be; it’d be mortifying if I was in my skivvies. Not to mention, me stripping down is either a not-so-subtle invite for Deo to come a little closer, or a form of torture for him.

The massive store is dark and quiet apart from the fountain over by the entrance. It’s a strange place, full of strange things, and yet, because Deo’s here, I feel safer than I do in my own apartment.

As much as I fought this, I know that sleep will come quickly for once.  I can’t believe how everything aches in the best way now that I’ve settled into the bed.

“Whit?” Deo whispers through the darkness. I don’t move. He doesn’t want to talk. He wants the silence from me.  He used to talk to me all the time when he thought that I was sleeping, and tonight I can go back to those perfect, tortured evenings from before. “I still love you. Obviously.”
I sort of love you too, Deo.

Only, I’m not brave enough to say it.

-Seventeen-

Deo

“Deo! Deo, wake up now! Deo!” Whit’s voice is calling from somewhere far away, and I want to answer her. Seriously, I do. I just need, like, five more minutes of sleep.

But then she starts shaking my shoulder back and forth, back and forth, and I can’t ignore the sea-sickening motion. I open one eye and her gorgeous little face is glaring at me.

“Morning, doll. You wake up like a fucking starving bear in the springtime. Anyone ever tell you that?” I reach out to take her in my arms, and she rolls away, clutching her open dress to her chest.

“I need to pee, and you need to zip me up right now. And once I pee, you can explain what you were doing in bed with me and why I wasn’t wearing anything but my underwear when I woke up.” She turns her smooth, tanned back to me and I sit up, rub the sleep out of my eyes, and pull the long zipper up, sealing both sides of the navy dress and wrestling down my disappointment over covering all that perfect skin. Her shoulder blades go all tense and straight, and she crawls across the enormous bed with as much dignity as she can.

I make things as awkward for her as possible by watching, a big grin on my face, as she flounces uncertainly in the opposite direction of the bathroom.

“Come give me a morning kiss, and I’ll tell you where it is!” I call out.

She turns her head and her eyes are hot, narrow slits. “I will find a vase and piss in that. Then you can explain what happened to your friend’s parents.”

“You used to
like
kissing me,” I remind her, but she only bounces up and down on her toes and looks at me with a mix of anguish and fury. God, she’s damn beautiful when she’s full of piss and vinegar. Literally. “Take a left at the coffee tables and go straight past the fabric samples. Second door on the left.”

She’s stomping back in a few minutes, and the image of this beautiful, romantic morning vanishes and is replaced by reality. And I’m not even remotely disappointed. I missed my angry bear.

“Deo, I thought we had boundaries set last night. You in the recliner, me on the bed?” She crosses her arms and shakes her head. “I…Don’t you get that I can’t agree…Why don’t you understand…Ugh,” she groans low in her throat. “Forget it,” she mutters.

I want her to come back to the bed with me. It’s actually my bed. Or it will be soon. I put a deposit down on it a few weeks ago, and will pay it off every month until I get into my place. She doesn’t know that. She also doesn’t know I had a secret scheme to make my sheets Whit-scented. Pathetic? Maybe. There’s that saying about desperate men. Totally applies to me in this particular scenario.

I flip the covers off and get out of the big, warm bed, and I definitely notice that Whit checks me out big time. She always did like to watch me walk around in my boxers in the morning.

I make my way to her, and put my hands on her tense little shoulders. “There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for how you and I wound up in that big, incredibly comfortable bed, spooning
like friends
all night long.” Her shoulders relax under my fingers as I massage all her pent-up tension away.

“Mmmm. Okay. What’s the reason?” She rolls her neck back on her shoulders and sighs again. I already have a raging hard-on, and all her sexy moaning isn’t helping at all.

“The reason is; you asked me.” She tries to yank away, but I pull her back and rub my thumbs along her spine. She wants to tell me to fuck off, I know it, but this girl has tension burrowed deep in her muscles, and she’s not about to end this epic backrub.

“I did
not
ask you, you damn liar,” she grits out, then her scraping, angry words tumble into another loose, sweet moan.

“Uh, yeah. You did. You said, ‘Too damn tight. Too tight. Get this snake off of me, no more eating that cheese,’” I repeat.

For a minute Whit holds perfectly still, and then I have this uncanny feeling that even my magic hands aren’t going to be able to convince her not to stomp away. She’s a little shaky, and I try to get myself ready for the blow, because I’m fairly sure she’s about to bitch me the hell out like nobody’s business.

Then I hear her tiny, strangled laugh, and my lips tug up in response. “Deo! You…assface!” she gasps between choking laughs. “You know damn well I was dreaming!” She spins around and looks at me, her eyes wide, her head shaking slowly back and forth. “The dress was tight.”

“I know. You told me. I thought you were just speaking metaphorically,” I muse, and she grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me back and forth as best she can with those scrawny arms.

“Just when I’m prepared to be so mad at you, you pull out that magic charm.” She holds her hands out in defeat, then looks from under her eyelashes, kind of sheepishly. “And thanks. For getting me out of that dress. It
was
super tight.”

“Yeah. I know. You compared it to a boa constrictor.” I take her hands in mine. “So, now that my super-human charm has wowed you out of your grizzly mood, you wanna grab some breakfast or some caffeine? Swing by and pick me up a tie? Get washed up for this shindig?”

She looks down at her small, nail-bitten hands, her fingers threaded through mine. “You don’t own a tie?”

“You’re seriously going to focus on the tie bit of my list rather than the coffee bit?” I study her dark, serious eyes for a minute, wanting to see her face relaxed and sweetly smiling again. “I have a tie, Ms. Conrad. I have many, many ties. But I don’t have one the exact color of your dress. Which is, what, again?

She tilts her head to the side. “Deo. You and I don’t have to match. It would imply that we’re…”

“Both attending a wedding? Both honored guests? Both really into…purple? Why do I have this strong feeling you’re going to be wearing purple?” I grimace. “Well, every guy needs a nice pastel tie.”

Her eyebrows raise so high, they’re practically in her dark hair. “My dress is
not
pastel purple.” She wrinkles her little tanned nose, like a adorably offended rabbit. “I’m not five. Or seventy-five. Or going to an Easter parade.”

“Salmon?” I faux-guess.

She gags.

“Puce?” I try.

“They do not make puce-colored dresses,” she insists, then presses her eyebrows together. “Do they?”

I shrug. “See how bad I am with colors? Take pity on me and help me with this tie debacle.” My smile starts her smile going, and soon we’re both grinning like fools, exiting the store, which will be cleaned top to bottom by a maid service I sprang for as an extra ‘thank you’ to the Rodriguez family, and she’s following me in the LeBaron. I wanted her in my Jeep, but so many things have been going my way, I decide not to push my luck. We whip into a local coffee shop, and her extra large caffeine fix works like a powerful drug, melting the last rough edges of her evil morning self and leaving her sweet and smiley.

Sweet and smiley enough to spin the tie display racks at our next stop, coffee in one hand, five ties in various shades of yellow draped over her arm.

“Yellow?” I flick each tie, running my finger on the underside of her forearm just for the pleasure of watching all those little goosebumps ripple on her skin. I look at her beach tan, her dark hair, longer and wavier than when I first met her, and her big brown eyes. “I bet you’re a knockout in yellow.”

She takes two ties and drapes one over my left shoulder and another over my right, takes two steps back and squints. She grabs the one on my left and smirks at me. “I’m a knockout in any color.”

“No argument about that.” I lean in close to her, and she makes herself extra busy fixing all the ties she took off the rack, still one-handed because she has an iron grip on her coffee cup. “I also happen to know that you’re a knockout when you aren’t wearing any color at all.”

Her cheeks flash a deep pink. “Go buy your tie.”

I do as I’m told, but I notice the big smile she’s trying damn hard to hide from me.

After tie shopping, she and I decide to go our separate ways to get ready for the wedding reception, and I feel this wave of panic. It’s been baby steps to get back into Whit’s good graces after my stupid idea to emotionally atom bomb her with an unexpected parental visit. Last night was a special kind of purgatory.

The minute I climbed into bed with her and helped wrangle her out of that crazy dress, I was hoping for some clear reason to not get back into that recliner. When she rolled towards me and curled her body into mine, I felt right for the first time in more weeks than I could count. I barely slept because I was so damn excited to have her in my bed, but it was weighed down by this irrational fear that maybe it was only going to last one night. Maybe that’s all I was going to get, and I should be happy about it.

Which made me crazy, because I had no intentions of being happy until she was one hundred percent mine again. So watching her LeBaron pull away bitch-slapped my heart, because I felt like maybe that was the end of me and Whit, and I’d used up all the fucking magic fairy dust I had in my romance arsenal.

And then I also realized what a raging dipshit I was becoming on so many levels, and drove to my grandfather’s house. He was already in a suit, because that old man used to rock one on a regular basis, so he’s comfortable to just lounge watching UFC fights and cracking pistachios while he’s dressed to the nines.

“You got a suit to wear?” he asks, but his guy gets pummeled in the face before I answer, and I don’t have a chance to remind him that he forced me to get one a few weeks back. Silly old man.

I had a bank-loan interview, and when my grandfather found out I was borrowing Cohen’s, he gave me this long-ass speech where he pounded his fist on the table until pistachio shells vibrated all over the floor and lamented the end of fucking Western civilization while calling me and my generation slackers who dressed like the slobs we were at heart.

That old kook kind of gets his jollies off running his blood-pressure through the roof, but I actually saw merit in this rant and decided to get suited. So, I’m ready for my mom’s wedding, looking pretty motherfucking dapper in my new gray suit and yellow tie. Fuck dress shoes though. I don’t need to be all pinch-toed. I did buy brand new Vans for the occasion.

Gramps grunts when I come out. “If you cut your damn hair and put on a pair of real shoes, you’d look halfway decent.”

“Settle down, old-timer. This town happens to be big enough for two sexy men and their styles. Don’t hate on my awesome look because you’re so damn jealous.” I lean back in my recliner and accept his gruff offering of pistachios until it’s time for us to get to my mom’s house.

“Deo.” Grandpa puts a hand on my arm suddenly, mid UFC blood-bath. “I got something for you.”

I have no clue what he’s got up his sleeve, but I follow him back into his room, spartan after my gram’s death with only a few homey touches; a a black and white picture of my gram when she was a teenager in a bikini set out in an oval gold frame, a painting of an octopus I made when I was a kid hanging on the wall, and a little hand-carved statue of a bunch of running horses my father sent from somewhere practically unknown and awesome on the dresser. I stand in his room and look at his bed, still made up for two people, and it kills me all over again that Gram isn’t hear to cluck over his tie being crooked and drink her little glass of grappa with him every night while they listen to the oldies station and hold hands.

I get a lump in my throat, the same way I always do in this little room that still smells like sweet musk and powder, Gram’s signature scent. Much as I loved her, it hurts too much to miss her right now, and I don’t want to be the jackoff guy crying at the wedding, so I hope my grandpa can hurry the hell up and I can leave this ghost-clogged room.

He turns around with a red velvet box in his hands. “This was the ring I proposed to your grandmother with.”

He doesn’t give me the details, doesn’t tell me for the thousandth time how he took her to the state fair and got her hopped up on cotton candy and root beer before he took her on the ferris wheel. When their car was at the top of the wheel, he handed her the box of Cracker Jacks he rigged, awesome romance style. There was a little paper packet in with all that caramel-covered popcorn, and when she tore it open, he got down on one knee and made the whole car tip and swing back and forth asking if she’d put the ring on her finger and agree to marry him. He’s not telling this story, which I kinda love rehearing over and over, because he’s as close to tears as I am. We’ve become two emotional motherfuckers, living in this old house without any women around to keep us tough.