“Yes,” I answered carefully.
I couldn’t see what there was about an infection on his hand that would make her laugh, but I was willing to bite. Anything not to think about what was currently going on outside.
She turned her gaze away from the window where we could see my dad’s body being loaded into the back of the hearse. Her eyes were smiling, though despite that, I could still see the exhaustion on her face.
“Well, last night, when we were having sex, I made him wear a sock on his hand.” She paused, waiting for the grimace that had graced my face at the mention of her and sex. I happily obliged her with the grimace. After she flashed me a quick grin, she said, “Well, he started talking in this really weird voice while we were doing it. Then he would move his hand and pantomime what he was saying, and let’s just finish by saying it was the kinkiest sock puppet show I’ve ever witnessed.”
I knew I’d regret it. I knew it, and I should’ve been quiet as hell and not said I wanted to hear why she was laughing, yet I didn’t. And now, I would be traumatized for the rest of my life and never be able to watch a puppet show again without thinking about it.
“I can’t believe you just told me that,” I grumbled.
“Well, you asked, stupid,” she huffed out.
“I did,” I confirmed. “But next time I say I want to know why you’re laughing, and it’s even remotely about yours and Bob’s sex life, I don’t want to know. So don’t tell me.”
She grinned wickedly before turning back to look outside. “He’s in.”
He was. I’d seen that from past her head as I’d kept my eyes outside, despite not wanting to see.
My dad, after a three-month battle with colon cancer, had passed away eight days ago.
For those eight days, I’d done nothing but think about what life would be like without him.
It was still so surreal to me that I couldn’t pick up my phone and ask him what he thought of the ball game the night before or whether or not he wanted to hit up a new breakfast place with me.
I’d been to see his body every night since he’d passed.
Today, after the funeral, we’d be cremating him so we could carry him with us on our travels.
Sienna, to wherever the Army was sending them next, and me to wherever I might go next.
Whether it be here, Heartsway, South Carolina, or anywhere.
“I know,” I grumbled.
“Are you ready for this?” she asked.
No.
Not only would we be saying goodbye to our best friend, but we’d be seeing our mother and, more than likely, my ex-wife. Carron never missed a chance to make a scene and make anything and everything about her.
Luckily, this would be an outside service, so there were no structures that would allow the sound to bounce off them. Carron shrieked like a falcon when she cried, and my mom was almost no better.
I still didn’t know how the hell I’d managed to marry a person exactly like my mom.
Carron, at first, had been my best friend. She’d been who I thought was my endgame.
Then she’d turned from someone I could confide in to someone that I couldn’t stand sharing anything with. I’d gone from telling her about my day and what I wanted out of life to barely wanting to talk to her about the weather.
“I’m as ready as I’m going to be,” I said as the car started to move, following behind my dad.
We sat there in silence, both of us lost in thought.
“I heard Dad talking to you the other day,” she said. “When you asked him about love.”
I felt my stomach leap.
Not because I was upset that she’d heard, but because of what my dad had said.
We’d been talking about why he never remarried at first. Then we’d gone on to him telling me about the ‘one that got away.’ And how he knew, even when he married my mom, that she wasn’t his forever.
I’d asked him how I would know if I found my forever in a person, and he’d gotten really deep, really fast.
When she is the first thing that I think about every single day. How is she? Does she miss me like I miss her? How do I get her to come back? Or, how do I go to her?
Those had been some of my dad’s last words. The next day, he’d been barely able to speak.
One day, when we’d both been drinking after his diagnosis that his cancer was terminal, I’d asked him about love. And how he’d found it with my mom.
He’d then told me everything that had happened in his life, from start to finish, and had opened a beer to hold, even if he hadn’t been able to stomach drinking it.
His final parting shot, however, had been just as deep as his opening statement.
We’d been talking about all-encompassing love and how he’d hoped for the same for me one day.
When I’d told him I hadn’t wanted that kind of love, the kind of love that made you stupid, he’d laughed and handed me his hot beer.
“That’s where they get you. They have you thinking that you have a choice. Love finds you, son. You don’t find love.”
“Have you heard from Carron?” Sienna asked, pulling me out of my morose thoughts.
I grimaced. “No. The last time I spoke with her, she asked if I could give my lasagna recipe to her new husband.”
Sienna’s mouth fell open in surprise. “She what?”
Sometimes, being a professional chef was a great thing. But then there were others, like when your ex-wife calls you to ask for your lasagna recipe to give to the man she cheated on you with.
I hadn’t been a chef my entire life.
In fact, I’d only become that after leaving the military.
I was forty-one years old, and the first ten years after I’d become an official adult in the eyes of the law, I’d dedicated my life to the US military. The Navy, to be specific.
When I’d first gone in, my scores had been extremely high. When my recruiter had asked me where I wanted to go, and I’d told him I wanted to be a cook, he’d been flabbergasted.
He’d informed me that my brain was better served somewhere affluent. Somewhere where I could make a difference.
It’d only been when I got out of the Navy that I finally followed my dream. The Navy had paid for culinary school, and ever since, I’d been cooking and doing what I loved.
Speaking of doing what I loved, my gaze caught on another thing I loved—and loved doing.
A woman.
She was sitting on a park bench.
She was wearing a long, flowy black dress, and her golden curls were in a wild riot being blown around her head.
From here, I could tell that she had a great body, but that was the only thing I could really tell. The tint of the limousine we were inside was too dark, and she was too far away to get a great view of her face.
“We’re here,” Sienna said softly.
I looked out the window on her side, not my own.
I’d been busy studying the bench across the street, the one holding the beautiful woman, and hadn’t paid attention to the fact that we’d arrived at the most dreaded location in the world.
The large garden my dad had funded in memorial of his mother, who absolutely loved her butterfly garden and the bees.
In that garden in the middle of town, it could be seen by all who lived or worked on the main block surrounding the garden.