Sutton

THE AIR IS STILL THICK WITH STICKY mugginess as I pull into the driveway of the house Kelly is currently flipping, the summer heat clinging to the end of August with a tight grip. A quick glance in the mirror tells me the level of humidity without needing to check my weather app, my frizzy hair an unfortunate victim. I grab the plastic to-go bag with our food and crawl out of my car at the same time Kelly emerges from the house, his body shaded under the large porch.

Holding up the bag, I announce myself, "Got the food. Hope pasta is ok. If not, blame my hormones. They get extra bossy this time of month."

His groan carries across the yard as I make my way to him. "Pasta is fine, but I could probably do without the girlie shit, Sutton."

"Girlie shit? Do you mean ovulating? Because that's what I meant. I'm hardcore PMSing this week. I'm a woman. This 'girlie shit' happens every month. I'm normalizing periods one dude encounter at a time. Live with it."

He groans again, but I ignore it when I climb the stairs onto the porch and see the new addition. "Rocking chairs!" I squeal as I shove the food bag at Kelly and cross the porch, immediately falling into the closest wooden rocker.

I rub my hands over the armrests as I rock back and forth. "You listened to me." I smile up at him. He's standing where I left him, clutching the bag of food to his chest. "These are just like the ones at your house."

"Actually," he says, looking a bit sheepish, "I brought them over from my house."

"Wait, what? These are yours?" I inspect the chairs more closely and realize they do have a worn look to them. "Why didn't you just get new ones? Won't you miss these at your house?"

He shrugs, and I study him. The color of the day is navy blue, apparently, and it looks good on him if the way his signature plain t-shirt hugs his broad shoulders and stretches across his chest is any indication. His clothes carry a layer of dust and debris from whatever manual labor he must have done today. I only briefly glance at the snug jeans, forcing my eyes back up to his face, which is shadowed under the ever-present ball cap.

He removes said hat, brushes a hand through his wavy hair before placing it back on his head. "You hungry? Ready to eat?"

I pat the rocking chair next to me. "Let's eat here, yeah?"

"You're easy to please, baby girl. You know that, right? Just some old rockers on a porch and you're smiling like it's your birthday." He eases by me and sinks into the open chair, handing me the bag of food.

"I'm seconds away from being even happier. My ovaries apparently require carbs to do the hard work this month." I laugh when he groans, and I begin pulling out food containers. I hand one to him and I take the other. "I wasn't sure what you wanted, so I got two dishes. I like both, so you can pick between the two. Or we could share both."

Kelly opens the lid on his pasta bowl to reveal traditional spaghetti and meatballs. "Not sure I want to share this." He looks at the tin takeout bowl in my lap. "What's that one?"

I open it up, showing it to him. "Chicken tortellini alfredo. Both are my comfort foods. Plus," I say, pulling out a skinny tinfoil-lined paper bag with a flourish. "Breadsticks!"

"Fine. I might be persuaded to share," he says, already shoving a meatball into his mouth. I hand him a breadstick and he immediately dips it into the marinara sauce before tearing off a huge bite.

"Someone's hungry. Was it a long workday?"

He shakes his head, a mouthful of noodles hanging out of his mouth. After chewing a bit, he finally answers. "So-so. I can't do much here until I settle on colors. Which is where you come into play. Did you bring the swatches?"

I lean over in my chair, exposing my butt to pat the pocket of my jean shorts. "Right here, as promised."

His eyes graze over the highlighted region of my body before traveling up to my face. He nods, then digs back into his food. We're quiet for a few minutes while we eat; and I wish I could say it was a silent quiet, but I know the sounds I make while eating pasta, especially while PMSing. I notice him looking at me and I cover my face with a napkin.

"What? Am I making food noises? I am, right? Vivi tells me I make weird noises while I eat. I can't help it, ok? Good food is like sex. It's meant to be enjoyed out loud."

He chokes, and I slap a hand on his back while he coughs. "Easy," I say, laughing.

Directing a glare at me, he says, "Good food is not like sex, baby girl. At least not good sex. I'm starting to think your Tinder rejects don't know what they're doing."

It's my turn to glare at him. I yank the spaghetti bowl out of his hand and shove the tortellini one at him. "You ever thought that maybe it's you that doesn't know what you're doing? If the chicks you're with are so loud, they're probably faking it."

He sits back in the chair, eyes locked on me. He points a tortellini-spiked fork at me. "Doubtful." It's all he says before shoving the tortellini in his mouth and digging in for more.

I want to call his bluff, but I'm almost certain he's probably right. Judging by the way my body reacts to anything he does, it's a safe assumption that there would be no faking necessary. A shiver breezes through my body at the mere thought, goosebumps dimpling my skin. See, exhibit A.

I focus on spearing a meatball with my plastic fork and shove it in my mouth, self-conscience of any noises that might slip out. With apparently zero control of myself, my eyes close and I let out a low moan. "Mmmm. This one wins."

"You like my balls, baby girl?"

My eyes shoot open. "Huh? What?"

He chuckles, pointing at the bowl of spaghetti in my lap. I swat his arm. "Oh, just shut up, you ass. So I like food. A lot. And I don't indulge in the good stuff very often so I can stay on top of managing my diabetes. So, yeah, I get a little weird when I get to eat my favorite foods."

"No judgements here," he says, holding up his hands. "How is that going, by the way? You just had a checkup the other day, right? That's why you were supposed to be in Maybury anyway."

"Vivi is the actual worst. She can't stay out of my biz." I set the food aside, wiping a napkin over my mouth. "My checkup was fine. Nothing to worry about."

He assesses me and then nods. "Good. So then why don't you tell me about the other reason you were in Maybury, specifically why you ran out of the law office with tears streaming down your pretty face."

I turn away from him and begin rocking in the chair, setting a steady rhythm. "I don't want to talk about that." My voice is quiet, detached.

Kelly sets a hand on my arm, the warmth igniting the goosebumps from earlier. "Sutton." He says my name so softly, almost tenderly. When I meet his eyes, they're brimming with concern, the gold flecks standing out among the brown.

"Did I ever tell you about my mom's affair? The little I know of it anyway?"

He shakes his head. Once he removes his hand from my arm, I resume rocking.

"I think I told you she used to work in that law office and was seeing one of the lawyers. Well, at the time he wasn't a big wig. He was just starting out. The son of the big wig. My mom was the personal assistant to the dad. The dad has long since retired and the son is now a partner at the firm. From what I learned from my mom's friend, the dad found out about the relationship, and it ended badly. He outted them publicly and then fired her, humiliated her. The son basically downplayed the whole relationship, saying she was just a side piece. The dad revealed that the son was being groomed to marry the daughter of a rich family the dad wanted to use for connections, and they didn't need the town whore sullying his reputation. I'm pretty sure it's who he's currently married to, so obviously not too much damage was done to his precious reputation."

I can hear the bitterness in my voice, but I don't try to cover it up. I turn to find Kelly's gaze heavy on me. "Want to know the worst part?"

I take his blinking as an affirmative response, and I continue. "My mom's friend heard rumors about a possible pregnancy. She can't be sure since my mom pretty much cut her off during this time period. But there was one drunk night, years later, where my mom alluded to it being true. So it has me wondering if there was a pregnancy, could the birth certificate found in my Uncle Don's safety deposit box be for this child? The one where all the vital information has been blacked out."

Kelly takes my hand in his, a thumb running over the sensitive skin on the underside of my wrist. "Sutton," he says, his voice a low warning.

"No," I cut him off. "No. Don't." I extricate my hand, pointing a finger at him. "No, Kelly. Just because you saw me crying during a weak moment doesn't mean I can't handle it. I need to figure this out. What if I have a sibling out there? Where is this person? What happened to them? Are they out there living their best life? Or did they have a shitty life? What if they're looking for us?"

He grabs my hand again, trapping it with both of his. "Ok," he says, his serious eyes peering into mine. "Ok, Sutton."

"Ok?"

He nods, his eyes never leaving mine as he brings my hand up to his mouth, lightly feathering his lips on my wrist. "Ok. You need to figure it out. I'll help you."

"You will?"

"Yes. But you need to help me first." Standing up, he offers me a hand and then yanks me to my feet. "Bring these," he says, patting the pocket of my shorts, "and your fine ass inside and help me design this house already."

I follow him inside, a bit dazed by the change in conversation and, quite frankly, his confusing offer of help. Normally he would impose his protective bossiness and we'd bicker until he'd call me a brat. This new version of Kelly disrupts my equilibrium, completely upsetting our usual dynamic. I'm still trying to reconcile this change when I smack into a hard surface. Nope, not a hard surface, Kelly. His chest, to be precise.

His arms wrap around me in what I can guess is an attempt to settle me before I stumble backwards. I feel the rumble of his laughter since my face is still crushed to his chest, and I try not to, I really do, but it can't be helped. The scent is too alluring. I press my nose to his chest and inhale. I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping, praying, begging whatever higher power exists that the sounds I think I heard come from my mouth were only imagined, contained inside my brain.

At the feel of his hand brushing up and down my spine, I visibly sigh, tension leaving my body. I'm fairly certain this could probably be my happy place—nestled in Kelly's arms, my body molded to his. He gently swipes his hand along my back once more before dipping lower, and when he skims over the waist of my shorts, I suck in a breath that I don't exhale until his hand dips into the pocket, removing the paint samples.

Taking a step back, he holds the paper cards between us, thumbing through them. "White, white, white, gray, gray, blue, blue..." he begins listing the colors as he quickly shuffles through them.

I steal the cards from him, lightly bopping him on the head with them. "No, you dummy. This isn't white. See," I hold out a single card between us, "this is Chantilly Lace."

He glances at the swatch briefly and then back up to me. "Baby girl," he says, an eyebrow quirked. "That's white."

I fan out the stack like I'm holding a hand of cards. "They're different shades of white. This one has pink undertones. This one is more eggshell. This..." I trail off my hues of the color white lesson to study him. "You've flipped about, what, 300 million houses by now. How do you not know these things?"

"I have a team for this part, Sutton. And clearly that's white," he says, pointing to a card, "that's a brighter white, that's a dirty white. But they're all white. White is white."

I roll my eyes as I brush past him, crossing the large open space to the kitchen. "Do you have any tape?" I ask him over my shoulder. He roots around in a pile of discarded tools before joining me in the kitchen, holding out a roll of green painter's tape.

After I've taped all the samples on the wall, organizing them in separate sections, I stand back to look at them. "Do you have the floor sample?" I ask absently, tapping a finger to my chin as I study the colors.

A few moments later, Kelly sets the whitewashed wood sample on the floor in front of me, then stands next to me. I look at the white oak floor plank and then back up at the paint colors, doing this a few times, my head bobbing up and down.

"These," I explain to him eventually, pointing to a cluster of paint swatches, "are for the wall color. And these," I say, pointing to the other color grouping, "are for the cabinets." I turn to him to gauge his reaction to my color choices, but he isn't looking at the wall. He's staring at me. I blink a few times, the intensity of his hazel eyes briefly upsetting my equilibrium before I clear my throat. "So?"

"So?" he repeats in his deep, gruff voice.

I motion toward the wall. "So...?"

He reluctantly glances at the wall for the briefest of moments before returning his gaze to me. "I don't care what white you pick, Sutton."

"There aren't just whites, Kelly!" I step closer to the wall, waving my arm out toward the color squares like Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune. "What about the grays or the blues or greens?"

He steps closer to the wall, squinting at the tiny print, reading the paint names. "Who names these colors anyway? Newburyport Blue? It's just dark blue. Call it what it is." Skimming a finger over the section of white cards, he taps one. "This."

"White? You want white?"

"No, it's not white, Sutton. Have you forgotten your lecture already?" He taps the card again, stepping back.

With a scrunched brow, I lean in to read the small font. "Beautiful In My Eyes," I whisper the color name. It's beige with soft pink undertones.

Kelly places his warm hand on the small of my back as he maneuvers around me to look at the section of color samples I designated for the cabinets. I watch as he reads the color names, half convinced he's selecting one based solely on the names. In a mere few seconds, he points to a light olive green color. I step next to him, our arms brushing as I glance at the card. Livable Green.

"You're sure? That fast? You don't want to think about it?"

He removes all the cards off the wall, leaving only the two he chose, then he grabs me by the wrist to pull me a few feet away from the wall. We stand side by side, his hand lightly circling my wrist, as we look at the samples. I have to admit, the colors look good together.

"Yeah?" he asks, dipping his head to look down at me.

I smile up at him. "Yeah."

-

KELLY OPENS THE FRONT DOOR FOR ME, motioning with his arm for me to go first. I step onto the porch and am greeted with the song of the cicadas and the warm glow from the setting sun reflecting off the lake in the distance. The air feels slightly cooler, the breezy night disrupting the stale humidity from earlier, the night settling into a moderately comfortable setting.

"Want a drink?" his deep timbre asks from behind me. "I brought beer. We could sit a minute. Unless you need to get home?"

I twirl to face him. "What? Like a nightcap? How very old people romantic of us." My smile is big, quickly turning into a soft laugh, and I duck my head. The hair falling over my face hides the heat of my cheeks. I don't want him to see how the gesture affects me.

He remembers. The first night he showed me the house I made a comment about wanting a porch like this; I'd sit in my rockers next to my husband of 30 years and have a nightcap. Now here he is offering me a drink on the rocking chairs on the porch.

The whole night has been a bit confusing. Gone is the antagonist Kelly I've known forever; and instead, he's been more reserved, sweet, affectionate. I've lost track of how many times he's touched me unnecessarily. The count was already up to eight times before we ever even stepped foot inside the house.

He lightly knocks his foot into mine. "Beer?"

Touch count: approximately 16.

When I nod, he reaches into a small cooler off to the side, shakes the ice off the cans and offers one to me. It feels cool in my hands, the moisture wetting my skin. I swipe my hands over the back of my neck, the area always extra warm under my hair as I take the few steps to the rockers. I sink into the chair, popping open the top of the can and wait until Kelly's seated next to me to knock our beers together. Finally, I lift the can to my mouth, savoring the cold liquid as it coats my throat.

We listen to the cicadas talk, slowly rocking in our chairs in a synchronized dance. His deep voice interrupts the insects' conversation when he asks, "Have you ever talked to your dad about your mom's affair?"

The question surprises me, and my rocking stops. Looking at him, I answer, "A little. But he doesn't seem to know much. Either he and my mom instituted a Don't Ask, Don't Tell motto for that year of separation or he just doesn't want to talk about it."

"Both options make sense. Not sure I'd want to know all the details of my wife's estrangement. And not a chance I'd want to discuss that shit with my daughter years later." He takes a swig from the can, and then rests it on the armrest, absently tracing his finger around the perimeter with his eyes fixed on me.

"Yeah, true," I say, falling back into my chair and resuming my leisurely rocking.

"Do you know if your dad kept any of her stuff?"

Shrugging, I say, "Not sure. Why? Are you thinking she left stuff behind? Like clues to solve the mystery? Maybe a detailed diary of her sordid affair?" I bob my eyebrows at him, a sarcastic smile cracking the corners of my lips.

"Don't be a brat, baby girl," he says, and my stomach does a summersault. There he is. There's my Kelly. Can't go a whole night without calling me out; and I say as much out loud.

"Can't go a whole night, huh?" I ask, eyeing him over my beer as I take a drink.

"Hmm? A whole night for what?"

"From calling me a brat."

He barks out a short laugh, a few gruff rumbles from his deep voice. "You are a brat."

"Why? Because I teased you?" I fake a gasp. "How very rude of me," I say in mock offense behind my hand.

He snatches my hand away from my mouth, pinning it to the armrest of his chair, a warm weight settling over my arm as he intertwines our fingers. "Ask your dad." He's facing ahead, his eyes fixed toward the shimmering lake across the street. When he faces me again, his expression is a mixture of lingering amusement and something else I can't place. It's foreign, a new face of Kelly I've never seen before. It's almost sad. No, not sad. Resigned.

Or maybe I'm projecting my own feelings onto him. Surely, he isn't sharing in my dreaded acceptance that whatever this is between us will always remain strictly platonic. More likely, it's awkwardness leftover from the elephant in the room, a topic we've never so much as hinted at yet let alone outright discussed since the day it happened. My eyes dip to his mouth for the millionth time tonight, but instead of averting my gaze quickly like all the other times, they linger there for a few beats too long.

We may not be discussing the off-limits topic, but it definitely doesn't stray too far from my mind, especially in his overwhelming presence. Not only do I want to discuss it, I want to repeat the experience. Maybe several times. Definitely—most definitely—several times.

"Sutton?" His lips move under my examination.

"Huh?" My eyes shoot up to meet his. "What? My dad?"

"You should ask your dad if he kept any of your mom's stuff. Even if there's not anything in there to answer any of your questions, it might be nice to have some pieces of her. Have you thought maybe you're caught up in this whole thing because it's making you realize just how shortchanged you were by your mom dying when you were so young? You never got the chance to know her. It makes sense you'd cling onto any little thing connecting you to her."

Absently, my eyes wander back to his lips while he talks, the words swirling around in my head. I nod a few times, then meet his eyes. "Yeah. Maybe. Sometimes I don't even know anymore. I think my motivations may be a bit confused. Sketchy. Undefined." I hold out my free arm, my upturned hand empty. "Complicated." I realize I might have confused the topics in my head when answering his question. I was supposed to be talking about my mom, but I'm pretty sure my mind wandered off again.

The way he is looking at me makes me question whether he realizes the mix-up, especially when his gaze strays from my eyes, lowering to my mouth. I bite my lip nervously, and he clears his throat, turning away from me.

"It's late." He follows his statement with a large swig of his beer. "Should we call it a night?"

Before I have a chance to answer, he's lifting me to my feet with our conjoined hands. We stand facing each other, my head slightly upturned to meet his eyes with our height difference. He takes the beer from me, setting it on the porch railing.

"I'll walk you to your car." He tugs my hand and I follow him across the porch, down the stairs and through the yard to the driveway.

I'm busy picturing him pushing me up against my car, his body hovering over mine as he leans down to press his lips to mine that I don't realize in time that he's come to a stop. I crash into him, faceplanting into his back with a whoosh of air.

Laughing it off, I say, "Apparently I only just learned to walk today."

He turns around and I'm greeted with his sexy smirk. The sight isn't helping the cause in the least bit. Instead, my eyes are again focused on his lips. It's because of this that I note his tongue dipping out to skim across his lips as he reaches a hand out to cup my cheek. I suck in a breath as he slowly leans down, pausing for the briefest of moments before placing a soft kiss on my opposite cheek. While I'm focused on the feel of his lips against my skin, I almost miss the way his thumb ghosts over my lips and later I wonder if I imagined it.

He opens my car door, and I will my shaking body to cooperate as I climb inside. Leaning against the open door, he ducks his head to see me. "Thanks, Sutton."

"For what?" I blame my obsession with his mouth for my brain not functioning properly.

He smiles, but it's like it happens in slow motion, and I watch—utterly transfixed—as his lips gradually tip up and the smile finally reaches his eyes, wrinkling the skin at the outer corners. "For your help, baby girl. And the food."

"Oh, sure. Of course. Happy to help. Anytime. Whenever you need me."

His smile only deepens; and I distract myself by starting my car and putting on my seatbelt. When I go to close the door, he lingers in the open space. But then he taps the roof once, steps back, and ducks down to eye level.

"Night, Sutton."

He shuts the door and I stare at him through the closed window. With a little wave, I back out of the driveway and head into the darkened night, carrying with me an odd feeling of unease. The awkward goodbye follows me the whole way home.

-

ME: I talked to my dad when I got home tonight. He says there are boxes of my mom's stuff in the attic.

ME: Would you like to go through them with me some day?

KELLY: You know I would, Sutton.

ME: Night then.

KELLY: Sleep tight, baby girl.