He looked at my face again but I could tell it cost him. “I take you to Costa’s, you ditch the jeans skirt and wear that.”

“This is too fancy, even for Costa’s.”

“Don’t care.”

“If I eat wearin’ this outfit, I’ll explode out of it like The Hulk.”

He liked this idea, I knew it because he smiled, slow and sexy.

In order to get a move on, I decided to throw him a bone. “I bought new boots for when we go to Costa’s.”

“Don’t care about that either.”

“You’ll like them, they’re high heels and, even bein’ a girl, I think they’re sexy.”

“Costa’s, tomorrow night,” Colt said instantly and I couldn’t help but smile.

“You’ll never get a reservation at Costa’s on a Saturday night.”

“Watch me.”

My smile got wider but I prompted, “Are we gonna go?”

His head tipped down to indicate the counter. “What’s this?”

“What?” I asked.

“Looks like a pile of your mail.”

“Mom, Dad, Jessie and I got a start on me movin’ in. I grabbed my mail while I was there.”

He looked down at the counter again and seemed to slip away to a place that he didn’t like so I walked to the bar.

“Colt?”

His head came up and he said, “We haven’t touched your mail, didn’t f**kin’ think of it. He could be communicatin’ with you.”

Although the specter of Denny was ever present, I still had managed to ignore it just enough to be able deal with it and I liked it that way. I peered over the bar at the stack of mail which had a small parcel in it. I hadn’t even sifted through it because I never got any good mail. I’d set it on the counter to go through when I had a bit of time. Now it seemed I was staring at a ticking bomb with a counter closing in on zero.

I looked back at Colt and asked quietly, “Can we deal with Amy first and that later?”

I needed him to say yes. I couldn’t face Amy’s parents and her funeral if I knew something from Denny came through the post. I could barely deal with it anyway.

“Yeah, baby,” he said and relief filled me. “Let’s go.”

I nodded and we went to his truck. I had forgotten about the truck and if I hadn’t I might have chosen a different outfit, something stretchy. As I stood in the passenger side door, my mind flew through strategies of how I was going to heft my ass into the seat without ripping the skirt at the seams.

“Feb, honey, get in,” Colt said from where he was standing in the driver’s side door watching me with mild irritation at another delay.

I looked at him and said, “I can’t.”

“Baby, we gotta –”

“No,” I cut him off, “I mean, my skirt’s too tight and my heels are too high, I can’t –” I stopped talking when he shook his head and moved out of the driver’s side door.

He approached me and bent, sliding an arm behind my knees, one at my waist, and he lifted me and put me in the seat. I held my breath while he did this for two reasons. One, it would hopefully suck in my flesh so the material wouldn’t tear and two, because I didn’t hold much hope it would suck in my flesh so the material wouldn’t tear. Hope won and the material didn’t tear.

“Thanks,” I said when his arms slid away.

He was looking at me and grinning and I knew he thought I was a nut.

“Do I amuse you?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he answered and then moved away.

He’d backed out and we were on the road when my mind went to places I didn’t want it to go. Places that would torture me and places that made my pronouncement of Colt and me being solid as a rock a lie. I knew this shit with Denny, all we’d learned and all that we’d lost, would f**k with my head. I just didn’t know how to fight it.

I was looking out the window, thinking of stuff I knew I should let go when I felt Colt’s hand take mine. He laced our fingers together and pulled them to rest on his thigh.

“What’s in your head?” he asked and I looked at him.

“Nothin’,” I lied.

“Bullshit,” he replied, it wasn’t mean, it was real and I wondered if there would come a day when I was able to lie to him successfully and I doubted it.

“It’s nothin’,” I said again and his hand squeezed mine.

“Amy?” he asked.

“No.” Even though it kind of was.

“The mail?”

“No.” Even though it kind of was that too.

His hand squeezed mine again and he prompted, “Feb –”

I sighed, he wouldn’t let it go and the days where I kept myself to myself were long gone and, I realized then, they should have been long gone a long, long time ago.

So, I said, “It’s just that… this is all a lot.”

“I know it is, baby.”

“It’ll take awhile to get used to it.”

“I know.”

“And get over what we’ve lost.”

He gave me another hand squeeze and said, “Honey –”

“Colt, you don’t really know me.”

“I know you.”

“Not really.”

“I know you, Feb.”

I looked out the passenger side window and tried to pull my hand from his but his grip just got tighter so I gave up.

Then I told him, “You got a good job, a home, a life. While I was gone, I didn’t create any of that.”

“So?”

I looked back at him. “So, doesn’t say much for me.”

“How’s that?”

“It just doesn’t.”

He let my hand go but only so he could maneuver the truck into the parking lot behind the funeral home and pull into an open slot. Then he turned off the truck and turned to me.

When he did, he asked, “How do I make this better?”

Yes, he asked, straight out.

“What?”

“You’re doin’ your own head in, how do I stop that?”

I shook my head, not certain how to answer.

“I… I don’t know,” I stammered.

“You know it and you aren’t gonna like me remindin’ you of it but twice this shit happened to me. You, dealin’ with shit in your head and not sharin’ and Melanie, dealin’ with her own shit and not sharin’. Both of you let it eat you and both of you pulled away from me. Now, I’m not dickin’ around with it again, tryin’ to figure out a way in. So, I’m askin’ the only person who can tell me, how do I stop this?”