Two Punks In Love

How Lies Continue

Trace

Ten hours pacing around my pool in the LA sunshine, composing eighty-two texts, making three dozen phone calls, activating an entire circle of concerned family and friends, smoking a pack and half of cigarettes, and yelling at a six-foot-four black man who wants to pound me in the ground but doesn't because he also wants to keep his job. All that while receiving no sight nor any word from my pregnant fiancée.

That's been my day.

So when she slides quietly out onto the pool deck with her head hung and her hair falling in her face like a guilty child, I am mute.

Mute with anger, but also relief.

She lifts her head and her expression is devastation. I move toward her but to my surprise she races across the pool deck and practically leaps into my arms, squeezing me tighter than a girl her size ought to be able to.

"Oh god, Trace. I love you so much. If something ever happened to you...I think I couldn't survive it. I love you. I love you..." she's murmuring this over and over as she plants butterfly kisses all over my face.

She feels so good and now that she's here I never want to let her go again, so I lift her on top of my shoes and silence her murmuring by kissing the bejesus out of her, my hands all up  in her hair and my tongue demanding hers to prove her love with action not words. She returns the fervor, trying to swallow my tongue at the same time she's trying to draw me toward our bedroom door.

Then I remember she's scared the hell out of me today, and I pull away. "No ma'am. You want some of this?" I gesture down my form, "How about you tell me what the hell has been going through your mind all day while you weren't returning my thirty texts?"

She smiles weakly. "I'm so sorry." She pulls her phone from her yoga pants' pocket and hands it to me. "It's dead."

I give her the look I've been giving Don all day. "That's weak, baby. Did you do this punish me? For the past? Or for staying at Bodie's last night?"

Tears spill from her caramel eyes, and she doesn't scrub them hastily away like she normally does. Instead, she shakes her head slowly as streams track down her face. She reaches for me again. "No. No, I swear, I just...I don't want to fight anymore. Today I realized how...precious life is. She squeezes my tense bicep. "Yours. Mine." She lets out a small sob and places her other hand over her belly. "Theirs. Life can be so short. Let's not spend any of it fighting, okay?"

I don't understand where all that is coming from, but Kat's distress is real. I know this woman like I know my own mind. She couldn't make crocodile tears if she tried. She's too genuine for that. I wrap her up in my embrace, kissing her temple, rocking her back and forth. "Life is long and good, Kat. I swear. This is just the beginning of our happy ever after."

She lets loose with racking sobs. "Come on," I whisper, as I swoop her up and carry her inside. I lay her on our bed and crawl in with her. She cries for sometime, and though I still have burning questions, I don't ask them. They can wait. The most important thing is Kat feels safe and secure. She's obviously had a very emotional day. Was she driving the canyons, worrying about that damn picture of me and Ashlynn? Building up some completely false narrative of the past?

Not completely false, a small voice corrects inside me. Maybe no longer relevant, but not false.

I cradle her, stroking her hair, knowing that at some point, I owe her much more explanation than I think she owes me right now. I can understand why she doesn't want to talk about why she left me in the dark today, because I don't want to talk about why I left her in the dark while I was married to her sister. I get why she just wants to hold onto me, like I'm holding onto her right now. It's easy to push the difficult shit to the back corner of this great big love we have.