Washed Up (Bayside Heroes)

He searches my eyes, holding up one hand between us, his fingers curling into his thumb in our secret sign.

Badass.

“Yeah. I’ve got this,” I tell my son, suddenly defensive about my age when I was just trying to use it as an excuse in the same way he was. But when I see him and Greg exchange knowing looks, I wonder if I didn’t just walk right into a trap they knew my stubborn ass couldn’t resist.

Bastards. Always ganging up on me.

“You still look scared,” Greg assesses, turning me in his arms until I’m facing him. “Tell me your worries. Let me soothe them.”

“Well, if I fall, I might break a hip, for starters.”

“Fixable.”

“It’s going to be freezing.”

“I’ll snuggle you.”

“Ew,” David cuts in, and then he stands, balancing Penelope in his arms as he makes his way through the cabin we rented into the kitchen. “I’m getting out of here before this gets any worse.”

I chuckle, but then my face is sandwiched between Greg’s strong hands, his eyes searching mine. “I mean it,” he promises. “I’ve got you. And you’re strong — plenty strong to climb a little fourteen-thousand-foot mountain.”

I lean into his touch, wondering if he can feel my heart hammering out of my chest, if he knows the true reason why it’s so loud and unsteady.

“You graduated with your bachelor’s and master’s degree after not being in school for thirty years,” he reminds me. “If you can do that? You can do anything.”

I sigh, shaking my head. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he says on a smile, kissing my nose. “And I’m so damn proud of you. Your own practice,” he marvels. “Amanda Young — LMHC.”

Those letters send a flutter of butterflies stampeding through my chest, and Greg wraps me in his arms just as a tornado blows through the front door.

“Grandma, grandma, look!” Tucker screams, running in with his cheeks a rosy pink from the cool Colorado fall weather. “Benji got a squirrel!”

On cue, the black lab Greg and I rescued a year ago bounds through the same door, a dead squirrel hanging limply in his jowls as Julia screams bloody murder and chases him back outside.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, panting as she hangs her hands on her hips. “I tried to stop him, but that damn dog is worse than a toddler.”

Greg barks out a laugh, kissing my forehead before he swings Tucker up onto his shoulders. “Come on, partner. Let’s see what else we can catch.”

“Yeehaw!” Tucker yells in his best accent, and then they gallop out the door, and I watch the two of them chase Benji around the yard before Julia closes the front door on a chuckle.

“Have I told you how much I love him?” Julia asks, pointing a thumb over her shoulder. “Because I really, really love him.”

“Oh God, please don’t tell me my wife is going to try to hook up with my best friend now,” David calls from the kitchen. “I’m still not used to my mom in that scenario, I can’t take anymore.”

“You’re the only man for me,” Julia promises, planting a smooch on his lips before they both stare at their newborn baby girl sleeping in David’s arms.

My heart fills with an unending warmth as I watch them, and then I walk to the window, watching Tucker and Greg play with Benji in the yard.

It’s funny how time seems to pass by at the speed of light when everything in life feels right.

School once seemed like an impossible task to me, but now, I’m a year out from my grad school graduation, a handful of internships under my belt and a little office in a building on the south side of Tampa secured for my first private practice. There was a time when I thought I’d never make it, and now, I look back and wonder how it all went by so fast.

Maybe I was caught up in the whirlwind of it all — selling the house, buying a new one with Greg, falling into how sweet living life was with him.

It was as easy as breathing, finding our routine, and we lived together as if we’d never known anything else. I tended the garden and forced him to help me pick out every little detail of the house, so that it wasn’t just my home, but ours. We split the cleaning and the cooking, him taking over when I had a big week of tests, and me taking over when surgeries kept him at the hospital from before the sun rose until well after it set.

And now, finally, and much to Greg’s dismay — we’re splitting the bills, too.

I know we don’t need to. I know Greg can handle our mortgage and bills with ease on his salary alone. But he also understands how important this is to me, how hard I’ve fought for the ability to pull my own weight.