Ginger's Heart (a modern fairytale) (23 page)

Rolling away from her, he’d sighed, pulling off the condom and tying a knot in the end before throwing it in the trash. With his back still to her, he said, “Any idea when we might stop usin’ these, darlin’?”

It wasn’t the first time he’d asked, but she had noticed that as their wedding approached, he asked with increasing frequency.

“What? Condoms?”

He turned to her, putting his hands on his naked hips and raising his eyebrows.

She averted her eyes from his naked body. Turning onto her back, she reached under the covers for her pajama bottoms and pulled them back up to her waist. “I’m not ready to start a family.”

“Gin, you’re twenty-one. I’m twenty-four. We’re gettin’ married in two months, and between my pension and paycheck, we’re more’n comfortable.” He reached down for his boxers and pulled them on, sitting on the edge of the bed and twisting to face her. His voice was gentle. “We’ve got this sweet little house. You’re not workin’ anymore. You want kids, don’t you?”

Sure she did. In a roundabout, someday sort of way she wanted kids, but not yet. She wanted to go back to work, maybe even travel a little—have a little fun together before they were tied down forever.

“Not yet.”

Woodman sighed, lying down on the bed and pillowing his hands under his head. “Everyone expects us to start a family right away.”

She clenched her eyes shut. Everyone expected them to date. Everyone expected them to get engaged. Everyone expected her to quit her job. Everyone expected her to marry Woodman. Now kids?

Who gives a sh—
snit
what they want? It’s your life, not theirs.

Her heart clutched from the sound of Cain’s voice in her head, but she ignored it as she always did and opened her eyes. “And we will. Someday.”

“You happy, baby?” Woodman asked, turning his head to look at her. His eyes dropped to her pajama top, which had remained on while they’d had sex, and he frowned before looking back up at her. “Tell me the truth, you happy to be marryin’ me?”

“Course,” she said.

“’Cause sometimes you don’t seem . . .”

She took a deep breath and held it, knowing what was coming.

He shrugged. “You don’t seem . . .
into
it.”

“The weddin’?” she asked.

His cheeks flushed. For all that he’d spent his childhood watching horses breed, when it came to talking about sex with her, he was clumsy. “No, baby. Us.”

She hated this conversation. She hated it because the wall of cloudy glass that she’d erected was very thin, and tapping on it too much could break it, bring it down, force them to face the truth that Gran was right and they were wrong—there was a place in human life for a marriage based on friendship, but it wasn’t when you were twenty-one years old.

Her stomach turned over. “Wouldn’t have said yes if I didn’t want to marry you.”

“But are you
happy
?” he’d asked again.

“Yes. God,” she’d said softly, turning away from him to stare at the ceiling. Her voice was annoyed, but she was too tired to make it warmer. “I’m happy, okay?”

Thinking back on their conversation now made her sad, and she didn’t want to feel sad. She was a bride headed to a cake shop to taste cakes and choose one for her wedding. She’d made her choice. She’d chosen Woodman. End of story.

As for children? Well, mostly she was too tired to fight the expectations of her parents and fiancé; it was easier to acquiesce than push back. But if she didn’t hold the line, that meant she’d wake up in five years married to Woodman, with at least two kids, trapped living a good, decent life in Apple Valley. And maybe it was wedding jitters getting the best of her, but there were moments—small flashes of time—when she just wasn’t sure that’s what she wanted. Yes, it’s what she’d wanted at eighteen, when she was a girl barely out of high school. But it just didn’t feel as . . .
right
anymore. 

As a rule, she didn’t allow herself to think about Cain, and when she did, she preferred to think of him as dead. But she knew, through the very occasional news Woodman received from his cousin, that Cain had taken six months off after his first contract and ridden around Europe on his motorcycle. Many, many nights she’d dreamed of his jet-black hair blown back, his bike curving around mountain passes in the Alps and through valleys of olive trees in Italy. She could almost feel the wind through her hair too, the way her arms would wind around his torso and her hands would clasp over his heart. The word
wanderlust
would stick on her tongue, bittersweet as anything, and she could almost taste the way she wanted a little adventure of her own—something to look back on when she had a bunch of kids yelling “Momma” years and years from now.

But there was always morning. And in the light of every new day, with Woodman snoring softly beside her, she reminded herself of what she couldn’t have and what she could have. And gratitude reigned. She would be loved and cared for all the days of her life by a man who thought the sun rose and set in her eyes. It would be enough, wouldn’t it?

“It’s all you get. It
has
to be enough,” she whispered.

She turned from Main Street onto General Lee Lane, stopping in front of the adorable storefront that looked like something out of Candy Land. She straightened her pearls, ran a hand through her blonde waves, and opened the door.

The tinkling bell overhead announced her arrival, and four sets of eyes—her mother’s, Miz Sophie’s, Charm Simpkins’s, and the baker’s—looked up from a fancy photo album with pictures of wedding cakes, each a mile high.

“Why, Ginger!” said Miz Simpkins. “You’re barely late at all!”

“Hello, Miz Simpkins,” she said softly, pausing just inside the bakery door, a trifle apprehensive, uncertain of her place with so many other ladies in charge of her wedding.

“Afternoon, Ginger,” said Earline Ford, the premier baker of Apple Valley, looking up from the album and offering her a warm smile. “Almost ready to be a blushin’ bride? Just three more months!”

She felt her lips twitch into a small smile for the baker who’d been sneaking her mini cupcakes under the counter since she was four. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Come take my seat, honey. I’ll get another chair.”

With no other choice but to sit down between her mother and Miz Sophie, she took Miz Ford’s erstwhile seat. “Hi, Momma. Miz Sophie.”

“You look a picture today, Ginger. My grandmother’s pearls do complement your lovely complexion,” said her future mother-in-law, narrowing her eyes at the family heirloom that had been an engagement gift from the Woodmans. “Magnolia, I can’t keep it a secret!” She turned to Ginger. “Did Woodman tell you about the gift we’re thinkin’ about givin’ you two?”

“No, ma’am,” she said.

Miz Sophie swapped a gleeful grin with Ginger’s mother. “We’ve had Woodman’s cradle and rockin’ horse sanded down and completely repainted! They’re gleamin’ white for now, but we can add a little powder pink or robin’s-egg blue once you find out what you’re havin’! We were thinkin’ of how darlin’ they would look in the spare room at Woodman’s place. What do you think? I can have Howard bring them by tonight!”

Ginger looked down, twisting her ring uneasily as anger boiled up within her. There were so many things about this announcement that bothered her, she barely knew where to begin.

One, she didn’t like how Miz Sophie didn’t recognize that the house Woodman had purchased belonged to both of them; she always called it Woodman’s place like Ginger wasn’t his future wife.

Two, she didn’t especially like the notion of her mother-in-law decorating said house, especially when she and Woodman might like to use that extra bedroom for something else.

Three, the assumption that she and Woodman were ready to have children right away made her grind her teeth in frustration.

And four, Miz Sophie had
clearly
brought this up to Woodman who’d kept it to himself. Likely because he hoped the gift would be a nudge in the right direction. Still, she resented him for not warning her and letting her be blindsided.

“Ginger,” her mother prompted, kicking her lightly under the table. “what do you say?”

“I’m not expectin’.”

“Well, I should hope not,” said Miz Sophie. “Not
yet
, at least.”

“Umm . . .,” she stalled, looking up at Miz Sophie and hoping that her face didn’t register the anger she felt. “I’m sure we’ll need those things . . . someday.”

Miz Sophie’s excited grin faded until her lips were a grim slash of hot pink.

“I see. Well, I don’t know about you, Magnolia,” said Sophie, glancing away from Ginger with an annoyed sniff, “but I always said, the younger the mother, the happier the baby. I certainly hope your daughter’s not plannin’ to make my boy wait forever for little ones.”

Magnolia pursed her lips in shared disapproval. “Well, daughter?”

It was on the tip of her tongue to say,
I guess that’s between me and Woodman
, but there were still three months before the wedding, and she wasn’t interested in Miz Sophie playing the martyr for the duration.

“It’s a lovely gift, Miz Sophie. And you’ll be the first to know if Woodman and I have any . . . news.”

Mollified, Sophie nodded at Ginger and turned to Magnolia. “It’ll all work out like we always planned.”

Without warning, Ginger bolted up, knocking her chair back. It clattered to the floor, and the ladies gasped in surprise, looking up at her.

“I . . .,” she started, her chest so tight, she could barely breathe.

“Virginia!” her mother exclaimed, her face a strange mix of irritated and worried.

“Excuse me,” she murmured, hurrying to the powder room across the room and closing the door behind her.

Bracing her hands on the sink basin, she took a deep breath that filled her lungs and diaphragm, then exhaled slowly, opening her eyes.

Looking back at her in the mirror was such a pretty girl: blonde hair, brown eyes made up carefully with eyeliner and mascara, a little gloss on her lips and pink in the apples of her cheeks. She wore a sundress and a cardigan sweater with a double strand of pearls around her neck and large pearl studs in her ears. She looked perfect. The perfect Southern bride-to-be.

She also looked sad. So very alone. So very, very lost.

Turning on the water, she held her hands under the cold stream until they were almost numb, then she turned off the water, dried her hands, and returned to the table to apologize and help choose her wedding cake.

***

Ginger didn’t know what had come over her at the cake shop, but ironically, when she was feeling like this—freaked-out about the wedding and the future and forever—there was only one person who could truly make her feel better, so Ginger half walked, half ran to the Apple Valley Fire Department, a few blocks away, anxious to see Woodman.

“Hey, Gin!” yelled one of the guys, standing outside the firehouse with a cup of coffee, checking his phone.

“Hey, Logan. Woodman here?”

“Woodman’s always here!” he said, hooking a thumb inside.

“Lookin’ good, Ginger,” said Fred Atkins, the assistant chief, as she opened the door to the lobby.

“Thanks, Fred.”

Miss Melody Grace, the receptionist for the department, waved hello and buzzed her in, and Ginger beelined to the communications room, where she knew she would find her fiancé.

As she swung open the door, a Nerf football nailed her in the forehead, and she stumbled back a little as she heard Woodman’s voice say, “What the hell, Austin?”

Rubbing her forehead, she opened her eyes to find a sheepish Austin Wyatt to her left and Woodman crossing the room at a clip. It had been several months since Woodman stopped using his cane, and though he’d always have a pronounced limp, he moved around better than anyone had expected. His physical therapist said he’d never seen anyone work as hard as Woodman to be whole again, and Woodman laid all that progress and all that improvement at Ginger’s feet. He credited her—the way she’d welcomed him home, into her arms, into her bed, into her heart—with giving him the strength and reason to push harder, be stronger, get well, be whole.

When he’d proposed, last New Year’s Eve, he said, “You gave your heart to me. I want to give my whole life to you.”

Tears tumbled from her eyes as he said the words. He didn’t know that her heart had been shattered two years before, in an old barn, splintered into a million jagged pieces. He didn’t know that when she said her heart was his, he was accepting something broken beyond repair.

But if he wanted it, he could have it. Whatever was left of it belonged to him.

“It’s yours,” she’d whispered tearfully, and he’d slipped his grandmother’s ring on her finger.

“Austin should’ve caught that,” he said, cupping her face with his hands and looking at her forehead with concern. “You okay, darlin’?”

She took a deep breath and stepped forward, into him, letting herself be enveloped in his scent and strength. She wrapped her arms around him and closed her eyes, resting her cheek against his chest.