The Romance Novel Cure (16 page)

“No,” she whispered. It was a pledge and a promise: no. She would not let Silas be taken from her. She loved him with a depth she’d never dreamed possible, and although it frightened her, she prayed for courage for the fight ahead of her, whatever it may be. Dark siders and broken worlds were nothing compared to the strength she’d conjure to save him.

* * *

We did spend almost all of Sunday in bed together. It reminded me of when we had first fallen in love, and we spent so much time just being with one another, getting to know each other, asking each other everything. That feeling when you get closer and closer to someone, sharing your secrets… it was like that, all over again. Only better. He asked me really hard questions.

“Is it painful for you, spending time with Patrick, since he and Scott are having a difficult time adopting a baby?”

“No,” I answered simply. “I don’t know why. He and I talked about this very thing. I said how when he got his baby, I would babysit any time. He asked me if that would be hard for me, if even his talking about adoption was difficult for me. Weirdly, I have this feeling as though I were able to press this giant pause button on all of that. Probably, if you were desperate to become a dad, I wouldn’t feel this way. But… I feel
different
now. I know it’s not all over, it’s just… I’m okay. I’m just… happy with my life, the way it is, right now. I don’t want to get caught up in wanting anything else. I just want to be… me. With you.”

I asked him: “Are you mad at me? For not telling you I was the author of the
Dark Shifters
series?”

“I will be so angry…” He tried not to laugh. “If you don’t hurry up and write the final one. And then, what’s next?”

“What’s next? I don’t know! I never even dreamed I’d write three books, and I’m almost finished with the fourth and final one.”

“You don’t have any ideas?”

“Well, I was thinking about… this group of… owl shifters. And another group of… kestrel shifters!”

“And a romance between an owl shifter and a hawk, I mean, kestrel shifter?”

“How’d you guess?” I smiled.

“I’ll draw, and start painting again, and you’ll be sitting there, writing about supernatural beings getting it on.”

I covered my face, laughing. “Sorry I’m so pervy!”

“Hey, I like you that way. And if you need breaks for inspiration, I’ll be right there. Like, if you need help figuring out how something would work. Like, what goes where, or…”

“Thank you, so much, Ben,” I tried to say very seriously, “I really appreciate your support in my creative endeavors. And of course you’ll do all the book covers.”

“Anytime.”

On Monday, Alma must have been still feeling sick, because she didn’t come into work. Scott said she would be working from home for at least a couple of days. I felt bad because honestly, I hadn’t stopped to think of Alma. I was on such a high, with Greta on my mind constantly. I kept thinking about the weekend we had spent together, over and over again.

On Wednesday, Alma came to work and we all dropped what we were doing to stare at her in silence. She had gotten her hair cut to just below her ears. Her hair had been so long, all the way down her back.

“I donated it to Locks of Love,” she shrugged, not meeting our eyes. “It was finally long enough.”

On the way to yoga, I caught up to her. “You feel better, Alma?”

She looked briefly in my direction and nodded. “Sure, yeah, I’m fine,” she said quickly.

As we unrolled our mats, I said awkwardly, “If you ever need anything, you know I’m here for you.”

At that, she turned to me and looked me in the eyes. She took a breath, and blinked furiously. “Thanks, Ben,” she said softly, and then hurried to get some water before class started.

Scott was sitting peacefully, closing his eyes, when suddenly he grabbed his phone and stared at the screen intently. “Oh… my...”

“What? Is everything okay?” We froze and stared at him, hearing such an intensity in his voice. He texted furiously and then looked up, staring into space. Finally, his gaze cleared and he focused on us.

“It’s happening! It’s happening!” He stood up and looked around himself in a panic.

He stopped and looked at another incoming text, and responded quickly. He sat back down, covering his face. By this time, we had crowded around him.

“Breathe, Scott, breathe,” said Laura, patting his back.

“Just tell us,” said Alma, biting her lip.

I couldn’t say anything, didn’t take my eyes off his face. Finally he moved his hands down and smiled at us, such a wobbly smile full of disbelief and growing joy.

“During the last two private adoption fails, we started the process of becoming foster parents. Didn’t say anything about it. We felt very insecure about the possibility of becoming parents to a child with special needs, but eventually started wondering if that was where we were supposed to be heading, if it was meant to be.” He took a deep breath. We were nodding, hanging on his every word. “We
just
got approved, everything finally completed.
Just
. We thought we’d take some time, and decide if we wanted to spend some more time attempting private again, or if we would accept a child who was maybe available for a fost-adopt situation.” He looked down at his phone again, looked back at us. “This morning, we got a call. There are three kids, siblings, in need of immediate help. They’d been living with their grandmother and she had a stroke, she is in a nursing home now. They’ve been staying with an emergency foster care families while the social worker tried to find another family member to step up. Turns out these kids have nobody. Nobody. So the social worker called us this morning. This morning! I’d already left for work, Patrick has been texting me, and all of a sudden, it’s for real. He’s… he’s… Oh!”

We were freaking out, asking a million questions at that point, and then I just started grabbing Scott’s stuff and shoving it into his hands, saying, “Just go, go home!”

“I can’t drive! I’m, look at me!”

So, we all rushed into Scott’s car, then Laura jumped out and said she’d follow us in her car, so we could leave Scott at home and get back to work. Anyone watching us would have been really amused. We were rushing around, dropping things.

We got to his house, and Patrick’s car wasn’t there.

“Where…?” Scott checked his phone and looked up and down their quiet street anxiously.

Faintly, in the distance, growing louder by the moment, we heard music. We looked in the direction it was coming from, and saw Patrick’s car slowly driving down the street. The windows were down in the car, the sounds of the song, “Wheels On the Bus” becoming more audible. He pulled into the driveway. “All through the town!”

We gathered around and stared in silence as Patrick jumped out, beaming, turning to open the back door. Within moments he had a baby girl on his hip and was holding a very little boy by the hand.

“This is Jaydon,” he said, indicating the boy, “and this is Jasmine.” He went to the other side of the car and opened the back door. “Jylan, are you ready to come out? You can do it by yourself or I can help you. By yourself? Wow!” Another little boy, a bit bigger than Jaydon, hung on to Patrick’s pants as Patrick carefully closed the back door and shuffled to the passenger side door. “And this is Meemaw!”

Scott hurried over to help and within moments we were staring at Scott, Patrick, the three children, and a very small older woman with short white hair. Patrick reached in the car and held out a cane for her, which she took slowly, her hand trembling. She looked around, blinking. She sighed. “Well now it sure is good to be out of that place. I kindly feel that I can take a breath for the first time in a long time.” She smiled. I could see that her smile was lopsided, and could hear a slight slurring in her speech, and remembered Scott saying the children’s grandmother had had a stroke. At first, I thought she must be the social worker.

Before we knew it, we were all in the house, Patrick seeming to have cloned himself, he was multitasking so gracefully.

“The hands in the sink go wash, wash, wash,” he sang, helping each child, then getting them seated and handing around napkins and snacks.

“Where… where did you get these cups?” These were the first words Scott had managed.

“They’re sippy cups,” said Patrick breezily, “I got them on the way to pick up the kids and Meemaw.”

“Mee… Mee…Meemaw?” Scott coughed. The children looked around curiously, crunching graham crackers and eating banana slices, which seemed to have materialized from nowhere. Patrick supported Meemaw as she sat and handed her the same kind of cup and snack as the children had, then sat down with Jasmine on his lap. He pulled out a bag of cheerios from his shirt pocket and put a few on the table. Jasmine reached out her little hand and picked one up.

“Nom, nom!” said Patrick. “After I picked up the kids, I headed to the nursing home where I found out Meemaw was at.” He nodded, as though to say,
of course, like you do
. We nodded back. Scott’s mouth was open. “I’m sorry, but that place?” Patrick looked meaningfully at us. “She can get her therapies here, we’ll get her all set up with SSDI. So she can be home. With her family. Sweetheart, can you slice some more banana?”

“That surely does taste good,” said Meemaw slowly, with effort. “Sure is nice.”

Laura, Alma, and I looked at one another as Scott automatically sliced some bananas.

“Then I get so strong!” Jylan suddenly said.

“Ba!” Jaydon shouted.

Jasmine was silent, but she smiled so big her eyes crinkled up.

Scott stopped, holding the banana in his hand, looking at Patrick, who looked back. Then they smiled at one another.

We left with a long shopping list, and spent the rest of our very long lunch at a store that had things for kids and babies.

I looked around me in dismay, taking photographs with my phone. The beautiful mural that I had gotten Ben to paint at the old preschool where we met was covered in graffiti. I had felt nostalgic, and stopped by to see the mural. I went inside, but the director was new, and only the infant teacher was the same from when I had done my student teaching there.

“Inside, you see? Still so beautiful.” Maggie pointed to the walls inside the play area. The colors were still vibrant, the images clear. It made me smile, remembering Ben painting, looking up at me, our eyes catching.

I spoke with the director, Lola, for a while and headed home. Ben arrived at the same time as I did, and he looked exhausted and very happy. There in the parking lot, he told me all about Scott and Patrick’s new family. I couldn’t believe it. I started crying in happiness, hugging Ben.

“I’m sure they need time to settle in, but I want to get back in the car and go there right now!” I shouted. “So that’s what Patrick started to text me about. He sent me this text that he just abandoned halfway through. Something about big news and then… nothing, all day. Now I know why he didn’t reply. He was too busy becoming an insta-daddy!”

We started heading to our place, and I showed Ben the photos of the mural. “I spoke with the new director, and we’re going to connect with an at-risk youth group that works with older kids and teens in gangs. Turns out the graffiti is made up of tags from kids in a gang. So, we’re going to see if we can get support to have the mural fixed up. But, it has to come from the inside, or else the kids will just tag over it, you know?”

“You’re so bad ass,” said Ben, admiringly, but also looking worried.

“
Tikkun Olam
!” I grinned. “What do you want for dinner?”

The rest of the week went by in a blur of work, helping Patrick and Scott with the kids and Meemaw, and being together. The kids were so adorable, and the guys had them call me Auntie Greta. That made me so happy. Each little child had such a strong personality. I was already completely in love with all of them. Jylan was full of energy and spoke in loud bursts. He loved action figures and always wanted me to sit down and play with him. Jaydon was just taking his first steps, wobbling everywhere, wanting to walk all by himself at all times. Jasmine had the sweetest, calmest demeanor. I told the guys to watch out: it was babies like her who became wild two year olds, in my experience. Each child had thick brown hair and big, brown eyes. They almost looked like triplets, despite the size difference. It was amazing how quickly Patrick and Scott’s house had become home filled with family. All of Patrick’s low spirits had disappeared, and he was constantly on the go, with a deep, inner serenity that radiated outward. Scott looked frazzled and overjoyed, like any new father. Meemaw had been losing ground at the nursing home, but was now gaining some weight and strength, though she was still weak. She looked so happy, though, when she sat and followed the children with her eyes, then closed her eyes to rest, a sweet smile on her face.

Before I knew it, I was rushing to meet Ben at Mac’s. I entered the office and sat down next to Ben and across from Mac.

“I forgot my vision board, and had to go back to get it,” I said, catching my breath, pushing my hair out of my eyes. “Sorry!”

Ben kissed me and I felt everything within me settle and soar, simultaneously. I leaned into the kiss. “Hey, baby,” he said, so quietly, smiling.

After catching up a little, Mac suggested that we show each other what we made, if we felt comfortable doing that.

“Should I go first?” I asked. “Okay.” I was nervous. I pulled off the loose rubber band from the large poster paper. “Sorry about the glitter!” I held it firmly on my lap. “Okay.” I felt
really
nervous. “So, that’s a door, and you open it.” Ben pulled the door, which I had cut into the poster, open by its button knob, getting glitter on his hand in the process. “And okay, see, there’s another door. It says: The Future.” Ben pushed open that door, smiling at me as more glitter rained down. I reached onto the back of the poster board, where I had stuck an envelope, and pushed it through the door to Ben. The envelope had a question mark on it. He opened the envelope and took out a sheet of paper. He read the words and looked at me, blinking furiously. I stared back, a huge lump in my throat. Without taking his eyes off me, he handed the note to Mac.

“Just as long as we’re together,” she read out loud.

The three of us were quiet for a moment, and then Mac took a tissue and wiped her eyes. “That’s so beautiful,” she whispered.

Ben nodded, everything he felt right there in his eyes.

After another moment, Mac asked him if he’d like to share what he had. He reached into his messenger bag and got his sketchbook and flipped to the page he wanted. He turned it so that we could see. My mouth dropped open.

It looked like a paranormal romance novel cover. Front and center was
me
, with Ben slightly behind me, his arm around me. Fog and stark branches full of menace were in the background. I looked so tough, staring out as though I could take on anything. My hair was blowing back in the wind, my eyes looked smoky, and I had a little half smile. I was wearing something black and clingy, ripped in some places, my body all strong and curvy. Ben’s arm reached around me protectively and he stared out fiercely. Where the title would be, he had written Greta + Ben in a kind of gothic script. Where the author’s name would be, he had written Greta + Ben again, in a more modern type of font. I reached for it and held it, barely breathing. How he saw me, how he imagined us… I couldn’t even…

Ben cleared his throat. “You’re my hero, Greta.”

“We’ve got to frame this,” I finally said. I looked at him, amazed, then back at his drawing. I didn’t want to stop looking at it.

“I didn’t realize,” Ben said quietly. “I look like my father.”

My heart hurt, looking from the image of Ben on paper, looking at him right next to me. I wished his father were alive to see my husband come into his own like this, becoming the man he was always meant to be. Somehow, I hoped he could see Ben.

“There’s another thing, too,” said Ben, sounding uncomfortable. I handed him back the sketch book. He turned a few pages and took a breath, then turned it out so that we could see the page. There was a list, from one to ten.

“Okay, so here’s the thing,” he said, looking straight ahead. “When I found out Greta was reading romance novels, I thought she was reading the
Dark Shifters
series. Turns out, she was writing them, but more on that later. I thought I’d take advice from the main guy character, Silas, to try and get Greta back. So, I kept thinking, what would Silas do? And I came up with this list. I tried to be like Silas. I wanted to be the kind of man… the kind of man who would make you happy, Greta.” He handed me the sketchbook and I read the list to myself. I got to number ten:
Love Greta
. My eyes filled with tears and overflowed. I looked back up at Ben, so moved, I couldn’t speak.

“The romance novel cure,” I finally said, my voice scratchy.

“You wrote the novel,” he smiled at me, his eyes so big and dark.

“You asked me to read it to you,” I smiled shakily, remembering the night he asked me to read to him, how that started.

He nodded, and I could see he was remembering that too, as well as all the other nights we’d read to each other until we couldn’t keep our hands off one another.

“Ben, you didn’t have to become more like Silas to fix things between us,” I said, finally, wiping my tears.

He shrugged, looking at me curiously.

“I made Silas up… Ben, he is inspired by
you
. Think about it. His being a fox. He is so loyal and caring and protective. So strong and loving. Even his scar. Ben, you’re the one… you’re the hero in my life. The only guy for me. Always. I love you… so much.”

For a long moment we just looked at each other, until Mac softly cleared her throat.

“I have the feeling the two of you would like to end the session early,” she said, smiling gently. We glanced at her, nodding, and gathered our things, said goodbye.

“Come home with me,” said Ben. “I’ll bring you back to your car tomorrow morning. Just, come here.” He pulled me to him tightly and kissed me. His lips devoured mine. I leaned against him and nodded. I couldn’t wait to get home, to get him alone. We got in the car and he started the engine, then gripped the steering wheel. “If I kiss you one more time, I’m not going to be able to drive home. I’ll need you naked and under me, right here in the car. Then we’d probably get arrested.”

I started laughing. “Drive!”

Ben drove.

“And another thing,” I said.

“Yeah,” Ben said, darting a hot glance at me.

“I’m not always going to be
under
you,” I said.

“Under, on top, I’ll take you any way I can get you,” he growled. “And you know… you and I? We’ll never be over.”

* * *

Silas waited until he heard her breathing slow, until she stopped tossing and turning. Then, he raised himself up on his elbow, looking down at her face. She was curled away from him, her fist under her chin. A faint frown on her brow told him how troubling her dreams were. His jaw clenched and he blinked, shaking his head once.

“Keeping you safe,” he said in a whisper. “I promised once, I promise it now.”

* * *