I stared at him.

Mitch allowed this for two seconds then prompted, “You with me?”

“You think I’m a Ten Point Five,” I blurted on a whisper.

His brows drew together again and he asked, “What?”

“Or, at the very least, an Eight,” I blathered on.

“Uh, baby…what?”

I stared at him some more.

I felt his arms around me while we were standing in my bedroom. A bedroom his sister helped me decorate. A bedroom where his kickass sports jackets and shirts were in my closet, his boxers and socks in my drawers and our conversation was about moving in together even though we’d semi-kinda-already moved in together.

So I let it all hang out.

“You’re a Ten Point Five,” I informed him.

“Baby…what?” he asked, slightly confused, slightly impatient, slightly annoyed because, I figured, he knew what I was saying.

“Mara’s World has zones, Ones to Threes, Fours to Sixes and Sevens to Tens,” I told him quietly, his face registered less confusion more annoyance but I powered on. “You’re a Ten Point Five.”

“Mara –”

“Mom convinced me I was a Two Point Five.”

Mitch fell silent but he did this while his face darkened ominously.

I studied his face before I felt tears stinging my nose again and I whispered, “I’m not a Two Point Five, am I?”

“No,” he stated, firmly and immediately.

My eyes went unfocused as my mouth breathed, “I’m not a Two Point Five.”

Then I felt his hand glide up my neck into my hair and I refocused to see his face super close.

“First, honey, people are people and every single one of them is different. You wanna classify them, okay, but in the real world people do what they do, each one making their own decisions which define their lives. Some are good, some are bad, some are a combination of both but every single one is different and they’re subject to change. So, second, the decisions you’ve made in your life define you and if you can’t look inside and see who you’ve created then you need to open your eyes, baby, and look around at the people who care about you and see through them who you’ve created. If I need to make my point by talking about this bullshit classification you’ve come up with then, no, you are absolutely not a Two Point Five. You are nowhere near a Two Point Five and to say it pisses me off even more that your bitch of a Mom and those ass**les in that town you grew up in twisted your head to make you think your whole life you are is putting it mildly.”

He was right. Lynette said it. Mr. Pierson acted it. Roberta did too. LaTanya, Derek, Bradon, Brent…even Billy and Billie loved me, trusted me, liked being with me and weren’t afraid to show it.

And neither was Mitch. In fact, from the minute he walked into my house to look at my faucet, he gave no indication whatsoever he thought I was a Two Point Five, just that he not only didn’t mind being there but he wanted to come back for pizza.

Oh God! I was such a dork!

Therefore, I replied, “I’m a dork.”

Mitch shook his head while looking at the ceiling, his arms going way tight then he looked at me and stated irritably, “Jesus, Mara, you are not a Two Point Five and you are also not a f**kin’ dork. Somethin’ else, it does not make me happy to hear you talk about yourself that way. And, last, you gotta look out for two kids and they gotta learn to have confidence in themselves, to make the right decisions in order to define their lives the right way and the person who needs to teach them that is you. You can’t do that, baby, if you don’t see who you are and how beautiful that woman is.”

“You’re annoyed with me,” I pointed out the obvious.

“Uh…yeah,” he confirmed the obvious. “But I’ve also had more than my fair share of experience with people and with women…”

Hmm. He could say that again, especially the latter.

Mitch kept talking.

“And I’m clued into the fact that no matter how hard I can make you come, no really good orgasm is gonna erase your perceptions of yourself and replace them with how I see you. I know what I got on my hands. I also know that most women who look like you have their heads up their asses in a different, far more annoying way. So the bright side is, what happened to you, even though you’re as beautiful as you are, you’ll never think your shit doesn’t stink. And I gotta say, sweetheart, I get your sweet, I get your attitude, I get your mouth and I get all that without conceit and you thinkin’ you can lead me around by my dick, so this is not a bad thing at all.”

“Well, it’s good you can look on the bright side,” I muttered, my eyes sliding to his shoulder and then they flew back to his face when he burst out laughing, his arms closing around me so tight the breath went out of me.

Then he quit laughing, his arms loosened (slightly) and his face got in mine. “Been seein’ a lot of the bright side for a little over a month now,” he whispered and I got a belly whoosh.

“Mitch –” I whispered back.

He cut me off saying, “We got kids to feed. So, gettin’ back to the matter at hand, me buyin’ a house, you and the kids in on that, are you with me?”

I stared into his gentle, soulful eyes, eyes I’d woken up to every morning for over a month, eyes I wanted to wake up to every day for the rest of my life and I knew I was with him. I was with him then, I’d been with him since the first time I told him I was weeks ago and if I could manage it, I would be with him until I took my last breath on that earth.

“Baby, are you with me?” he prompted.

“Yeah,” I agreed softly.

“Good,” he whispered, I smiled then he asked, “Ready?”

“Yeah,” I repeated.

“Break,” he murmured, touched his mouth to mine then let me go and walked into the bathroom.

I turned and finished rearranging my drawers but I didn’t do it crying.

I did it smiling.

* * * * *

Although things had settled down and…well, just plain settled in huge and significant ways, there was one cloud over our literal and figurative sunny days and this was Billy.

Mitch was right; Billie didn’t care where she was or what she was doing just as long as the people around her that she loved were happy. She didn’t need to blossom, her Teflon-coated delight in the world was invincible.

But something was up with Billy.

He stuck to one, the other or both of us like glue. He was often asking Mitch to toss a ball with him (and Mitch did). He asked Mitch or me to help him with his homework every night. He asked me to teach him how to do the laundry. He did the dishes. He helped make dinner. He kept his room tidy. He dragged out the vacuum and vacuumed the entire house. He inventoried the cupboards and wrote stuff on the grocery list. If you were at the store, he’d dash through the aisles to grab stuff so you wouldn’t have to push the cart down each one. If Billie started to get tired and irritable, he fawned over her. If I was tired, he offered to read her to sleep.