“Of course he does. It is impossible not to like you,” Fenway said, moving in at my side. At the sound of his voice, Leonard whipped his head up, staring down Fenway, whispering ‘Asshole’ under his breath.
“Hey, look at that, he knows you so well already!” I declared, getting a slap on my ass from Fenway. “Have you ever had a pet?” I asked, offering Leonard my hand, feeling the surprising weight of him as he stepped up on my finger, letting me pull him out of the box.
“I have not,” Fenway told me, trying to lean closer to look at Leonard, but making the bird lunge at him, trying to grab his nose in his sharp beak.
“Me either,” I told him, feeling Leonard press his beak to my cheek, making a little kissing noise.
“Well, maybe he will be a good trial run.”
“For what?”
“Children. I mean, of course, it is utterly different. This curses and bites and uses everything as a personal bathroom.”
“Fenway, have you ever met a child? Because they like to curse, bite, and use everything as a bathroom as well.”
“Well, if it has eyes like yours, I guess I could forgive it anything,” he told me, reaching over to tug my hair, but getting chased away by the angry little guard bird. “You are enjoying this far too much,” he accused when I got another kiss from Leonard.
“I can’t help it if all the men fall in love with me,” I told him, eyes dancing.
“Yeah, I guess I can’t blame you, Leonard. But I fell for her first, so I get dibs.”
I would never get used to hearing that.
And Fenway said it often.
Maybe because he sensed a part of me was still struggling to accept it, to believe it. Not through any fault of his own. Like everything else, Fenway did love with everything he had. But I guess I was always waiting for that other shoe to drop, for him to tell me he was bored of me, that he was done with me, that I had to pack everything back in Wanda and hit the road.
This insecurity might have been the big reason I’d insisted on keeping Wanda even though we had been traveling by plane and yacht for months now. I wanted to be sure she was there for me should Fenway change his mind like he was known to do.
It was proving hard to accept that the infamous playboy billionaire fuck-up had hung up his party hat in favor of nights on the couch watching classic movies with me.
He’d used naked persuasion more than a time or two to get me to admit that I wasn’t sure if he could go from globe-trotting and all-night-partying to hanging out with me without feeling like he was giving up a lot.
He’d reached for me, got his sexy-serious voice on, and told me that he’d spent so much of his life hopping from place to place because if he stayed too long, he would realize that something was missing from his life.
“And that something was you,” he’d told me, giving me a squeeze. And I swear my heart squeezed as well.
“What did Alvy say?” I asked when Fenway’s phone dinged, making him reach for it.
“‘LOL.'”
“I think that means we are on our own with this one,” I concluded.
Since I’d become more of a permanent fixture in Fenway’s life, Alvy had taken a step back, letting me handle keeping Fenway somewhat grounded, and to make sure his suitcases got packed and his driver was given enough notice when we needed him.
Alvy and I had made amends, both of us agreeing they had always had Fenway’s best interest at heart, and that I was nobody’s gold digger.
With all that free time, Alvy had finally purchased a home to house that ten-thousand-dollar living room set in.
Last we’d seen them, Alvy and their partner were settling in nicely.
It looked like Fenway wasn’t the only one who found some stability.
And me?
I found the one man who didn’t need to be taught a lesson.
The one man who saw beneath the surface of me.
But I was going to hold onto Wanda just a little while longer.
Fenway – 1 year
She hadn’t been ready.
That was the reason I still had my grandmother’s engagement ring in a pouch in my pocket a full year later.
It was easy to believe that all women had been raised on Disney movies with their happily-ever-afters, and that they were all living their lives in search of that supposed ideal, that once they had it, they dove headfirst into it.
That was not Wasp.
She wasn’t built that way.
She had made her life and her living on the backs of failed happily-ever-afters of other women. It had made her overly cautious and jaded. It made it so that she didn’t even trust herself and her own feelings. She’d met with far too many women who’d fallen blindly into love, had devoted their lives to men, only to have them spit on everything they had built.