Part 1 (2/2)

”I might join you.”

He took another deep breath of her scent. If they took a shower, it would be gone until the next time they did this.

”Stop huffing me,” she said.

”Sorry.”

They continued to lie there, both wanting to shower but wanting to be there in each other's arms even more. They had all night to shower. Today was Sat.u.r.day and tomorrow would be their only day to sleep in. Jack would be glad when he didn't have to work six day weeks anymore even though he didn't have any idea when that would be.

Four.

Jack sipped his coffee and stared at the viney plant hanging from the ceiling. Green and growing nicely, its fist-sized leaves caught the early morning sunlight. It was Sunday. His favorite day of the week. No work and he and Gina were able to lounge around the house or go out to eat and shop or, really, whatever else they wanted to do.

Gina was on the floor, on her stomach, wearing a tight black t-s.h.i.+rt and black underwear, her lower legs raised and crossed at the ankles. She lay in front of an old childlike record player, listening to a 45 by the Mailboxes. Jack looked from the plant to her back, her a.s.s, her legs. He loved everything about her. He didn't care if they never went anywhere. He was perfectly content right where he was, sitting in a recliner and staring at this girl in front of him.

But he was hungry.

His stomach grumbled.

He took a sip of coffee and put the cup down on the end table. Coffee didn't do anything to curb the hunger and, while he would much rather sit there and watch Gina manipulate the record player, he knew the refrigerator and kitchen were completely bare. Unless he wanted to eat coffee beans.

”You hungry?” he asked.

She turned her head and said over her shoulder, ”A little... you?”

”Yeah. Think I'm gonna go get some breakfast. Want anything?”

”Yeah. The usual, I guess.”

”All right. I'm gonna put on some clothes.”

”'Kay.”

He got up from the recliner, undoing the belt on his thin coffee brown robe he'd found at the thrift store a few months ago and headed into the bedroom. Stripping off the robe and his green flannel pajama bottoms, he pulled on a pair of well-worn jeans (also from the thrift store), deciding the white t-s.h.i.+rt he had on was fine.

Going back into the living room, he grabbed the keys from the same end table where his coffee cup rested and said, ”Love you. I'll be back.”

”Love you too,” Gina said, flipping the 45 to the b- side.

Stepping out into the morning suns.h.i.+ne, he walked across the lawn to his cheap j.a.panese car parked on the curb. He glanced to his left. Mr. Moran stood stiffly, his forehead pressed against an oak tree in the middle of his yard. Jack waved to him but the man paid no attention, lost, as he was, to the bark of the mammoth tree.

Jack opened the pa.s.senger side door, sliding over the middle console and positioning himself behind the wheel. The driver's side door had been inoperable for quite a while. He made decent money at The Tent. He could probably even afford a better car but it seemed like they never had time to go look for one and he didn't really have any idea how long his job at The Tent was going to last. Best not to enter into any long term financial arrangements.

The only decent thing about the car was the CD player that had, mercifully, gone unstolen since moving to Alton nearly a year ago. He cranked the ignition and Ben Folds blared from the speakers. He thought about changing the disc because he had heard it so many times but decided to let it play because it reminded him of when they had moved into this house on Stokesbury Lane. While they had painted before moving all of their stuff in, they had an ancient boom box (it had to be one of the first to play CDs), and this was the only one it would play.

The car belching exhaust, he pulled away from the curb and headed toward downtown, to Granger's, home of the Granger Ranger Breakfast Sammich.

Five.

”What'll it be, pardner?” the tinny voice came through the speaker.

”Can I get two Granger Ranger Breakfast Sammiches and two hashrowns?” Jack said, feeling stupid. He hated saying 'sammich,' but they would totally f.u.c.k up your order if you called it anything else. At first, he had thought this was just some kind of urban legend. Trying it one day, he found out it was completely true and if you went inside or back through the drive-thru, they would pretend you were never there in the first place.

”I reckon you can, pardner,” the voice said from the other end of the speaker. ”Please pull yer hoss around.”

Jesus, this place was so stupid. If their food wasn't so good he would never come here. But there weren't a lot of places to eat close to his house and even fewer had drive-thrus. He really hated to get out of the car. It was embarra.s.sing, having to crawl over the pa.s.senger seat. It was like announcing to the world that he was uneducated sc.u.m, quite possibly doomed to the packing of dirt for the rest of his life. He considered himself lucky the driver's-side window actually rolled down.

He sat in the line, hoping his car wouldn't die. There were three or four cars in front of him.

Hunger wasn't the real reason he had offered to get breakfast. His hunger pains probably wouldn't have really bothered him until early afternoon.

He had a secret in the glove compartment. It wasn't until now that he thought about how stupid it was keeping it in the glove compartment. Anyone could have come by and stolen it. But it was so small they would have probably missed it. Opening the glove compartment, he pulled out the ring. It was white gold, a single solitary diamond set in the middle. It wasn't anything fancy but it had cost him nearly two weeks of pay he'd had to sock away a little at a time so Gina didn't know he was planning anything.

He wanted his proposal to be a surprise.

He didn't want her to have to prepare to say 'yes.' He wanted to see the look in her eyes when he popped the question and he would know-just from that look- if she wanted to marry him or not.

It would be out of the blue, too.

This was the third year they were together. They had talked about it a lot the first year and then decided they shouldn't rush anything- it was just a piece of paper, right? And so they had agreed to wait two full years before bringing up the subject.

Gina had been nearly married once before. She had lived for five years with some guy named Tim Fox. Jack had seen pictures of him but he had never met the guy. It was Gina's theory that, by the end of the third year, if you still want to be with the other person, then maybe it had a chance of lasting. Tim Fox had proposed to her during their second year together and Gina had said yes because she was only twenty-one and didn't know any better. She had stayed with him for the next four years, she said, simply because they were engaged.

He supposed he could buy that but he couldn't help thinking there was something else there. Like maybe she really did care for the guy. But thinking about that made him mad. He couldn't exactly explain it. Maybe some things didn't need explaining. He just didn't like the thought of her being in love with someone else. Someone who had come before him. Jealousy, he guessed. Probably nothing more.

He pulled forward and slid the ring into his pocket.

Today was the day.

<script>