He laughed, wrapping his arms around me, and we began to sway, dancing to the faint music of someone butchering a classic in the bar.
“Well, you know who did that to me?” he said.
“Me,” I said, smiling. He bopped me on the nose with his fingertip.
“You,” he said. “You are the reason I can be so happy out there. You are the reason I can serve drinks and listen to this god-awful caterwauling all night and not claw my ears off with a chainsaw.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Maybe,” I said, “your real passion isn’t exactly ‘tech work.’”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe it means that your real passion is family,” I said, pulling his flannel shirt closed over his rock-hard stomach. I loved running my fingers across that stomach, either on purpose or on “accident.” “Maybe you just needed to find the perfect person.”
“You.”
“And make your own family,” I finished.
He sighed and pulled me tighter, tight enough that I could feel the bulge beginning in his pants. I had to keep calm, though. There wasn’t enough time to drag him to the car, as much as I wanted to. Plus, cops were always nearby.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said, pulling me in for a kiss. “I can’t imagine being this happy over anything else besides you and our baby.”
39
Tyler
“So, you want me to pick her up and do what with her?” Nick asked as he sat down the empty glass and I took it away.
“Go have some brother-sister time, I don’t know. You are her brother, is it that weird that you would want to hang out with her?” I asked.
“Considering she spends pretty much every waking minute with you, Melissa, or Ava these days, yeah, kind of,” he said. “Is the kitchen open? I’m starving.”
“Why don’t you take her to lunch. That’s something you could do,” I said, wiping down the now clean glass and putting it on the shelf rather than refilling it and pushing it back across the bar to him.
“Not a bad idea, but why tomorrow? I thought you were going to wait?” he asked.
“I thought I was, too, but I just can’t,” I said. “I need her to know just how much she really means to me, and that I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I don’t want her hanging around the next few months thinking that I might think it’s too hard one day and bolt, you know?”
“I get that,” Nick said. “I do. I just thought you’d want time to plan something elaborate.”
“It will be elaborate, but in the kind of way she won’t expect. If I took her off to some crazy place she would figure it out, right? And doing it at a restaurant over dinner is the least romantic thing in the world because everyone does it. But karaoke? At the bar? She will never see that coming.”
“True,” Nick said. “So, you want me to pick her up and go to lunch or something, and then what?”
“Then you keep checking in with me,” I said. “If we aren’t ready yet, you bring her to a movie or something. Again, you are her brother, you can find a way to keep her occupied so I can throw her a surprise for just a couple of hours, can’t you?”
“Fine,” he said, letting the vowel sound elongate until it was nearly its own word and rolling his eyes dramatically. “If I have to, but we’re even for me punching you now.”
“Not quite. But close,” I said and grinned. Nick laughed and stood up.
“Alright, tomorrow morning I’ll call her, and you’ll come here for the day shift when I go get her,” he said, going over the plan.
“You got it,” I said.
“Good, good. Now can I have some wings or something?”
The next day was a blur until I got to the bar. I was so nervous and jittery I was absolutely sure I gave the secret away before Nick arrived to pick Becca up. He had called her while I was in the shower, and she was excited about the prospect of her brother trying to make amends by taking her to lunch and maybe seeing a movie. The situation with him was still raw, and him reaching out to her to make it better was something she had hoped for.
Nick got there before I had to leave and did an admirable job pretending. He even goaded me about how karaoke day was ahead of me, and how he was rescuing his sister from the destruction of her delicate eardrums. I waved to them as they left and then ran back inside, changing out of the normal work clothes I had and putting on the suit I had prepared for this occasion. It was hanging in the back of the closet, inside the bag with the tux I’d worn at Mason’s wedding.