For Us

32. The one.

{Cary}

As far as Cary was concerned, the biggest disappointment about their renovated house was the fact that they could not, in the end, fit a tub with jets up the stairway. He'd momentarily contemplated removing the entire bathroom wall and using a crane to move in his bubbly dream tub, but Jon had to be all reasonable and point out how many thousands more dollars that was going to cost, when this super-sized tub was surely big enough.

Easy for Jon to say, when he fit neatly into any model. Ordinary bath tubs were not made with plus-sized men in mind.

In the end Cary had installed the largest standard tub that a plus-sized man could haul up the stairs, and it was full of steaming water now, with some of the smelly oil Kurt had left sitting beside the tap. Cary scrubbed the hair on his head and body, then sank back under the water, his legs dangling over the edge to drip on the floor so his aching shoulders could be fully submerged. After a weekend of rest his body felt almost ready to take on a week of work again, but he was in no hurry to get out of this tub.

Mentally, he wiped his calendar clean. Liya had occupied most of his evenings and weekends—now those times were all open, all to himself. Time to stay home, to go to bed early and sleep as long as he wanted, or to stay up drawing the new story idea that was brewing in his imagination. Time to drop by his parents' for tea with Mel and board games with Bea.

He scratched his fingers through his chest hair, sighing contentedly. Women were complicated, and Liya had been more complicated than most. At some point he'd gotten so wrapped up in not being an asshole and making it work for her that he'd stopped checking if it was working for him.

He held his arms above his head, studying the tattoo sleeving his left, and the bare skin on his right, faintly scarred. He could do what he wanted with his body again. Time to finish the project of putting his story on his skin so his outside matched his inside. Liya had tolerated his tattoos but hadn't been thrilled by the idea of more. Probably that should have been a clue early on they weren't going to work out.

Wryly, Cary recognized that if women weren't so comforting to hug and cuddle with, he might be a very contented single man. Maybe it was time to quit trying so hard to find "the one" and just enjoy being the one and only he ever had to check with to make plans.

And get a dog to snuggle with.

*

No one could hug him quite like his mom. Somehow, Mel White's soft arms made Cary feel both big enough to handle anything, and small enough to snuggle up on her lap like he was three years old. Sometimes he daydreamed about being three years old with Mel as his mom, instead of the woman who had given him half his DNA, and half his childhood trauma, now MIA.

Instead of making him sad that he'd never been cozy in a child-sized bed with Mel's voice reading him stories and singing him to sleep, it made Cary enormously happy, because he knew if she could, Mel would go back and do exactly that. Her love for him reached back into those dark years to love the child he had been, as well as embrace the man he was now.

"How are you, Cary?" Mel asked, letting him go with a smile and patting his bearded cheek, still fluffy from his bath. "You look nice and trim—did you get a haircut?"

Cary ducked his head, laughing drily. "Did, yeah. I'm good, Mom. Good to see you."

Behind her, Jon's dad held out a casserole dish wrapped in towels, and Cary took it out of his hands. They hugged, clapping each other on the back. "Good to see you, son," Pete said.

"How're you, Dad?" Cary asked.

"Better than I deserve," Pete said, his mouth curved in a more crinkled, beard-y version of Jon's smile.