Page 73 of The Write Stuff

I’d already tipped on the app, so there was no reason for him to linger. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave, though.

“This is a nice place,” he noted. “Yours?”

Was he hitting on me? Was it the shirt? If it was, I was never wearing it again. Apparently, it sent a signal that I wasn’t prepared to send. I’d purchased it to make Wylie laugh. I didn’t want to attract other people.

“My girlfriend lives here,” I said before realizing what I was going to say.

“Oh.” Disappointment rocketed over the guy’s face. “Bummer.” With that, he turned on his heel and left.

I watched him go, torn between amusement and annoyance. I closed the door finally and shifted to return to the bedroom. We were eating this meal in bed. I found Wylie watching me from the hallway. She was in her T-shirt and a pair of small panties that had my eyes crossing, they were so cute on her.

“Your girlfriend?” she asked in a chirpy voice that was about an octave too high.

I was amused despite myself. “Do you have a problem with me calling you that?” I hoped she didn’t because I liked the way it sounded.

“No, but … we still haven’t talked about what we’re going to do.”

“I know.” I looked inside the bag and was relieved to find plasticware inside. “Let’s talk about it over breakfast.”

She gave me a cute look over her shoulder before she scampered toward the bed. I had to stop myself from chasing her.

Once we were settled with our backs against the mountain of pillows, her snugly tucked in at my side, I dug into my omelet and considered the problem at hand.

“I would like some time for just us,” I started. “We’re in a unique situation.”

“You mean because your mom hates my mom?”

“I don’t think your mom likes my mom any more than my mom likes your mom.”

“True.” She drowned her pancakes in so much syrup that I got a toothache just looking at them. A memory nudged at the back of my brain, a breakfast 20 years or so before, when Wylie had gotten whipped cream and sprinkles on her nose from a hot chocolate she’d insisted on starting the day with. My mother had argued it was too much sugar. Aggie had merely shrugged and said, “you only live once.”

“I want us to be out and open about this,” I said. “As much as possible, I mean. I don’t think we should tell our mothers until …” Until what? Until I’d proposed and there was a ring on her finger? Until she was pregnant with our first child?

And, no, I didn’t think I was getting ahead of myself, wondering about things like that. Being with Wylie felt right. There was no guarantee it would work, but I’d never felt this comfortable with anybody before. I wanted this to work, and that thought was both humbling and frightening.

“Where did you just go?” she asked when my eyes landed on her.

“I was just thinking about our mothers,” I admitted.

She nodded in understanding. “They’re not going to be happy. If we make it far enough to tell them, I mean.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure I care.” It wasn’t as hard to admit as I thought it would be. “I think, for once, maybe they’re going to have to do what we want. We spent years doing what they wanted, following their schedules. Maybe we should just get them together, lay down the law, and tell them to deal with it.”

Wylie let loose a little giggle. It dissipated when my expression didn’t budge. “You can’t be serious.”

“I think I am.”

“But … they’ll freak out.”

“They’re adults,” I reminded her. “We’re not saying that they have to spend all of their free time together. I just want them to understand that their feelings on the subject aren’t going to come into play.”

“They’re not?” She took a huge bite of pancakes and watched me with curious eyes.

“They’re not,” I confirmed. “This is our relationship, Wylie. We get to make the decisions. They don’t get a say. Not this time.”

“I think I can get my mother on board with that,” she mused. “I’ll just remind her that I lived my life on her schedule for years. Your mother is the one I’m worried about.”

What she wasn’t saying was that her mother had “won” the prize. The prize being Mick. That meant Aggie was going to be more open to this situation than my mother was going to be, and for good reason.