Page 89 of Falling For You

Barb walked through the front door on moving day and looked around.

"It's a beautiful home."

We threw a housewarming the first weekend our days off coincided.

Andy strung lights across the fence posts and borrowed a folding table from the station. I stood at the grill and watched the yard fill up.

"You're pressing them. You can't press the burgers. You're squeezing all the juice out."

"Travis, go sit down."

He pointed at me with his beer on the way back to the table where Knox, Greene, Carl and his wife Jill were sitting. Jill was telling a story that had Greene laughing hard enough to choke on his drink.

The Parks came with Suzie and Leon, who found Travis within five minutes and got a high five without missing a beat.

Doug and Diana came through the side gate with Julie and Katie, Rocky on Doug's lead, and Duchess the cat in a pink stroller that Katie was pushing across the grass. Andy had arranged playdates with Doug's girls last summer, and Birdie loved their cat so much she'd been begging for one ever since.

"You brought Duchess!" Birdie and Suzie ran up to Julie and Katie.

"Why don't you go show them your room, Bird?"

Julie, the elder of the two, picked up the cat and all four girls scrambled toward the back door.

"No running!" Diana shouted.

Brandon and his wife came with their three boys, who hit the backyard at full speed. Brandon grabbed a beer and sat down next to Carl.

Selena and Terrence arrived together. She set a bottle on the table and he shook my hand on his way to grab a plate. He and Jeremy ended up setting out food on the folding table.

Captain Thompson and his wife were sitting with Zeus and Barb at the far end of the table. Zeus was in a button-down and slacks, sitting with his back straight, nodding and smiling while Thompson talked. He carried himself like he was at a business dinner, not a backyard barbecue.

I looked across the yard and found Andy. She was laughing at something Diana said, a plate in one hand.

She caught me looking.

I mouthed I love you.

She smiled and mouthed it back.

The house was quiet by ten. Barb had gone to her room with a book. Birdie was asleep in hers, still in the clothes she'd worn to the barbecue because I'd lost the bedtime argument.

I heard the water running.

We'd replaced the bathtub the week before. The old one was narrow and short, built in a decade when apparently nobody over five-eight took a bath. Andy picked the new one out herself. She stood in the store looking at it for a long time, running her hand along the edge, and I knew better than to rush her. That tub meant something to her that went past the plumbing.

I gave her fifteen minutes. Then I walked into the bathroom.

Three candles on the ledge. The room smelled like vanilla. Andy was in the tub with her hair up and her shoulders under the water, her eyes closed.

She opened one eye.

"No."

"I haven't said anything yet."

"You're standing in the doorway. I know what you're thinking."

I pulled my shirt over my head.