Page 28 of Forever and Always

Andrew

Katy and I spent the entire weekend holed up in my house, avoiding everyone else. We cooked. We watched movies. We read books. And we made love. Over and over again.

Despite my reputation as a playboy, I hadn’t been with a lot of women the last five years or so. I’d lost interest in the thrill of the chase, and as I got older more and more of the women I dated seemed more interested in finding a baby daddy than a partner. While I’d never been opposed to having kids, I didn’t want it to be the sole reason I got married.

I hadn’t touched another woman since the day I first met Katy. Even though I was certain we would never be together, I simply couldn’t drum up interest in anyone else. The past eighteen months had been the longest dry spell of my life, and now that I had Katy in my bed, warm, willing, and almost completely uninhibited, I couldn’t get enough.

We had sex in the kitchen. On the couch – twice. And in the bed, of course. We even took a bath together in the jacuzzi tub.

When we weren’t having sex we talked, getting a little deeper into the personal details that we’d previously avoided. In the wee hours of Sunday morning Katy had shared the bare bones of her childhood. A mother who was neglectful. Worrying about the men who her mother brought home. Going to bed hungry many nights.

For my part I talked about growing up the middle child, the decision to go to law school, and the subsequent disillusionment with big law firms that made me decide to hang up my shingle in the town where I’d grown up even though I’d never be rich as a small town lawyer. And I told her story after story about living in a mostly self-sufficient small town full of nosy busybodies.

I also learned more about Katy’s job. The nature of her work was that she needed to be available to help in an emergency at a moment’s notice. There were long stretches of planning intersperse with brief emergency activations. And as one of the few women in the field, it was important to her to be the best at her job.

I’d heard similar stories about Steph from Christopher. When I thought about it, it was weird that we’d ended up with similar women. My brother was a cranky bastard, set in his ways, where I’d always been the more charming and sociable of the two of us. For his part, our younger brother Patrick was a perfect mixture of the two of us.

On Monday I had to go back to work. Even though I was tempted to take the day off, I had several projects pending for clients. Katy and I went for a run in the morning, then we had a quickie before I headed into the office. As I looked at my schedule for the week, I thought about how much of the work I did could be done remotely. Not all of it, of course, but quite a bit of it could be adapted, just like we’d all done during the pandemic.

A plan was gelling in my mind. I could move to Denver but keep my house in Lawson, just like Christopher did. One week being physically in the office for things that needed an in-person touch would likely be sufficient. The rest of the time I could work remotely and spend with Katy.

Her house was kind of small, so we’d need to move some place where I could have a home office to manage my law practice remotely, but that was easy enough to figure out. I had a fair amount of money in savings since my expenses in Lawson were so cheap. I opened a tab and started perusing Denver real estate listings.

Katy didn’t need to worry. I could figure this out for the both of us.

Thursday night when I came home from work Katy seemed a little off. Distracted maybe. Or sad.

“Is something wrong?” I asked as we set the table for dinner.

“My time here is almost up,” she said. “It’s gone faster than I expected.”

My breath caught in my chest. “What?”

“I have my follow up doctor’s appointment Monday and since my hand is feeling so much better, I think I’ll get released to go back to work,” she said. “I was talking to Steph today and she and Christopher are planning to come up for the weekend. I figured I’d hitch a ride back to Denver with them Sunday afternoon.”

I felt a strong sense of foreboding. “Why?”

“Because you drove me here, remember? My car is in Denver.”

“I could drive you back.”

She shook her head. “That’s ridiculous. It’s two hours round trip and they’re going anyway. Besides, you’ve done so much for me already.”

“We should talk,” I said before she could mention ‘being a bother’ again.

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?” she asked.

“No, I mean about us. What happens next.”

Despite Katy’s statement on Friday night that she thought we’d be good together, I knew she thought we wouldn’t be able to figure it out. But she was wrong. We could and we would.

“Can’t we just enjoy our last few days together and talk about the serious stuff later?” she asked, clearly trying to avoid a heavy conversation right now.

I studied her carefully. “Did you mean it? What you said on Friday about us being good together?”

The oven beeped and she went to take out a pan before answering my question.

“I meant it,” she said finally. “But the more I think about it, the more I realize that there’s no way for us to make it work when we both need to be physically at our jobs.”