My Fate, My Sweet, for buffyspazz (Bobby/wife, R)
Title: My Fate, My Sweet
Author: montisello
Recipient: buffyspazz
Rating: R for language, drug use, sexual situations.
Pairing: Bobby/Wife
Summary: The only one left to remember was Bobby. And there was no one to tell him different.
Author's Notes: Thanks to the R. for the beta, and the title, though I tweaked it a little.
“Hide me,” says Bobby.
She tilts her head, looks at him. This little bit of a girl in a lavender twin set. Pencil skirt and a strand of pearls. Down the same hall Bobby had just traversed is the sound of hard-soled shoes hitting tile. “You’re one of those?”
He nods his head. “Yeah. Threw a rock at a cop, and they’re evicting us.” There’s a crash in the distance, a very audible curse, and Bobby winces. “Please? Hide me.”
She’s sitting primly in front of a small desk, receptionist for the Dean of Students. The office behind her is dark. She looks at him over the tops of her cat’s eye glasses, and Bobby is about to turn and run when she says, “Okay.”
Her chair scrapes back on the tile as she stands, and Bobby gets a really bad feeling when she gives him this small, enigmatic smile. “Under the desk, hippie,” she says.
Bobby stares at the tiny desk. “Are you--”
The hallway echoes voices. Footsteps coming closer. “Well?” She asks, and her smile is inscrutable.
Bobby sighs, drops to the floor and fits himself under the desk. He feels like a tortoise. A very large, sweaty tortoise shoved into a very small, flimsy desk. He sits, and waits to be discovered.
Then this girl, this fucking Mona Lisa with her cat’s eye glasses, sits in her chair and primly pulls herself up to the desk. Her knees, clamped together, just in front of Bobby’s nose.
Her knees smell like cocoa butter lotion.
Hard soles on the tile, walking toward the desk. “Hey, you see some ratty hippie run through here?” Bobby recognizes the security guard’s voice, now slightly hoarse from yelling.
“No, sir, sorry.” Her voice carries a hint of drawl. She shifts her knees, and Bobby has to shift too, and he finds himself with his nose more between her knees. His view suddenly becomes that much more interesting.
“Damn hippies. ‘Scuse my language. But, good men out there fighting and we got these ingrates protesting at home.” Bobby turns his head slightly, can see black shoes just below the line of the desk.
“Shame they hate America so,” his girl says, and her drawl is more pronounced. Her knees relax slightly, and Bobby catches a glimpse of white panties. He has to shift again, and not because of his cramped position.
“I did my tour,” says the security guard, and Bobby suddenly hates him. “Came home with a Purple Heart.”
“Oh, really?” says his girl, and Bobby smiles, can hear the fake admiration in her voice. He turns his head slightly, rubs his bottom lip on the smooth skin just to the side of her knee cap. “When--” Her voice hitches a bit. “When did you do your tour?”
“Just got home couple of months ago.” Black shoes shuffle on the tile, but Bobby ignores them, uses his chin to widen the space between her knees. Licks his lips and kisses the inside of her thigh. The scent of cocoa butter fills his nose.
“Got hired here, and I plan on going into the police academy.” The security guard was still talking. Bobby would have glared but is distracted by the smooth expanse of his girl’s inner thigh. Moves his head and kisses the other leg. Swipes his tongue in a small circle beside her knee.
“Oh!” His girl’s voice is slightly breathless. Bobby grins and licks her leg again, ventures a little further in. “I think I saw--” Her leg starts a little under his mouth. “I think I saw one of those miscreants. Right outside the door.”
“Don’t panic,” says the security guard, and Bobby would laugh but his mouth is kinda busy and he can smell cocoa butter and something like the ocean tide. “We’ll get him. Thanks for your help.” The black shoes smack the tile and he’s gone.
Bobby comes out from under the desk grinning and she decks him, slaps at his raised arms and shoulders. “You bastard,” she shouts, but she’s smiling despite the red coloring her cheeks. “You better run,” she threatens and he stares at her.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Her eyes narrow. “Try me.”
He takes a step toward her. She takes a deep breath, and yells, “SECURITY!”
Bobby turns and hightails it down the hallway. Half way down he turns again, taking backwards leaps down the hall. “What’s your name?”
She is silhouetted by the sun outside, a dark slender form with a touch of color to her. “June,” she yells.
Bobby grins, and from outside he hears raised voices, the high whine of a siren. “See ya soon, June!” He yells back, hits the bar to the door, and stumbles out into the summer heat.
At least that’s how Bobby remembers it. The first time they had met. And there’s no one left who could say otherwise.
“Trust me,” says Bobby.
June freezes, looks up from digging in her purse to meet his gaze. Bobby sees her shoulders relax when she recognizes him, a slight blush of color over her cheeks. “You again,” she says, continues her walk down to the parking lot.
“Me, again,” agrees Bobby, watching the sway of her hips as he falls into step behind her.
“What do you want?” She asks casually, finally pulling a key ring from her purse, but Bobby catches the quick glance she sends him, out of the corner of her eye.
“I just thought we could continue getting to know each other.” He grins. “I liked the way we started out.”
She stops next to a gleaming black car, bends and wipes an unseen fingerprint from the chrome on the side mirror. “You weren’t any kind of gentleman,” she says, without looking at him.
Bobby nods. “I’d have to agree with you there.” He watches the way she pats the car, puts her back to it to face him like it will protect her.
“I only date gentlemen,” she says primly, but the dimple in her cheek seems sympathetic to Bobby’s cause.
Bobby shoves his hands in his pockets and pokes a sneaker into the tar, warm and sticky from the sun. “Perhaps I could be an exception.”
June folds her arms over her chest, narrows her eyes at him. “Why aren’t you in Nam?”
“Medical discharge.”
“Going to school?”
“Yeah, philosophy.”
“How old are you?”
He’s grinning. “Nearly twenty-three.”
June leans back against the car, looks up into the sky. “Final question. Quote me a poem.”
“What?”
“C’mon, hippie.”
Bobby thinks of his mother, the way she always kept the seams in her stockings straight, never left the house without a girdle. “Fine.” He draws breath. “I fear no fate, for you are my fate, my sweet. I want no world, for beautiful you are my world, my true and it’s you…” He trails off, the words escaping him, but plows ahead. “Whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you. I carry your heart; I carry it in my heart.”
June’s looking at him and his heart stops.
Then she turns away, fumbles into her purse again. When she turns back she’s holding out a small piece of paper, loopy handwriting scrawled across it. “Here’s my address. I’ll see you tomorrow night at eight. Wear a tie.” She climbs into the car, brings it to life with a growl, and is gone.
Bobby finally looks at the paper. Her address is on the back of a receipt for cocoa butter lotion.
At least, that’s how Bobby remembers it. The second time they’d met, and the first time he loved her. And there’s no one left who could say otherwise.
“Stay with me,” says Bobby.
June tenses, keeps her back to Bobby. She’s leaning in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. Over her shoulder Bobby can see lightning out the window as a summer thunderstorm begins to roll in.
“Don’t ask me right now, Bobby Singer. Not with you high as a kite again.”
“I’m not high,” says Bobby, even though he is. He had to pick June up at her parents, and the thought of it had sent him straight to his stash when he’d gotten home from work. June’s dad all day over his shoulder is hard enough to take, having to see him in the evening pushed him over.
They’d tried a movie. June had walked out when Bobby couldn’t stop giggling at Charlton Heston’s overacting. Damn dirty apes. It was hilarious. In the car, even with June’s anger like a weight against his chest, he couldn’t stop.
He stands now, awkwardly, in the middle of June’s parents’ living room and tries not to look at all the tchochkes Mrs. Walton has collected. The shepherdess is starting to really creep him out. June isn’t talking to him. Bobby feels vaguely unsettled by this. “I’m sorry,” he says.
June turns on him. Her eyes glitter with unshed tears. “Shut up. Just shut up. You’re not sorry. If you were sorry you’d have stopped that first time.”
That first time being his first day of work at Mr. Walton’s garage. Bobby smelling like bong water and trying to figure out how to strip some wreck of valuable parts. Mr. Walton giving him the hairy eyeball and Bobby had thought he was going to lose it right there, until he popped a tiny bit of shroom and was able to get through the rest of the day. It was fun seeing what color Mr. Walton’s words were.
He rubs his face, scowls at his trembling fingers. He’s coming down. June is glaring at him with all the rage of a cat tossed in a lake. “Bug,” he tries, and she turns away, steps into the darkness of the kitchen.
“I wanted the Marines,” he says, and her steps on the tile of the kitchen stop. “I wanted them so bad. “ Bobby puts his hand on his chest, trying to feel the arrhythmia the doctor had detected. “But they wouldn’t let me. Don’t blame me for that.”
Her steps come back, and she’s highlighted by silent lightning before she steps in the light again. “That,” and her stress on the word is light and delicate like she’s pointing out a dead rat, “is not your fault. Anyone’s fault. This,” again the delicate disgust, “is one hundred percent your fault. Clean it up, Singer.”
He jerks to the door, mad and angry and hurt because he just told her how his heart had got broke and she ignores it. “Yes, ma’am,” he says.
She’s quicker than he imagines, her hand on his shoulder. Bobby turns, and she’s on tiptoes, her mouth firm and warm on his. She kisses him with gusto, a swipe of tongue at the corner of his mouth. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs, “but I need you. All of you.” Another kiss, and Bobby damn near drops to the floor due to the strength and promise and desire in it, and then she’s gone.
At least, that’s how Bobby remembers it. The first time she had made him a promise. And there’s no one left who could say otherwise.
“Marry me,” says Bobby.
June laughs. Rain on the rooftop of the GTO, and Bobby worries that somehow Mr. Walton will know his baby took a walk without permission. The car, not June. June is now, forever and always, Bobby’s baby. She is snuggled beneath his arm, and her laugh fogs the driver’s side window. Outside is nothing but dark and rain and the scent of wet dust.
“Serious, Singer? You expect me to marry some hippie who can’t tell a carburetor from a manifold?
Bobby’s been sober for half a year now, and he’s surprised at how easy it is to let those words drop into the peace between. A year ago he’d have sworn it would have taken a bowl and a tab to say those words to June. June and her cat’s eye glasses and mysterious smile and the way she always smells like cinnamon.
“Serious as sin, June bug.” Bobby’s looking out the window, marking the way the rain flows down the GTO’s windshield. One hand is drawing small circles on June’s upper arm.
He feels her head turn, the tickle of her breath on his neck as she looks at him. “Now why would I want to marry you?”
He shifts, turns his body more towards June, draws her closer so she’s half-sitting his lap. “I’ll show you why,” he growls, and takes her mouth, kisses the breath from her lungs. “Why, she asks,” he says, when he finally lets her up for air.
June draws breath to speak and Bobby pushes her back against the passenger side door, kisses her again, hard. She hums with pleasure against his lips, and Bobby goes south, chases the elusive scent that is pure June down the curves of her body. She arches her back, pushes into the warmth of his mouth, and Bobby stops, has to grin at her.
She half-opens her eyes, sees him grinning. “What?”
“You asked why.” His heart beats loud, and he ignores it.
“You’re impossible,” she says, exasperated, and raises her knee, nudges him gently. Her dress slips down her raised thigh, and Bobby’s grin goes wider.
“Now you’ve done it.” He kisses creamy white thigh. She makes a noise, and Bobby’s hand fumbles under her dress, finds the smooth skin underneath her knee.
Outside the rain falls faster, the sound on the roof of the car louder. Using hands and tongue and teeth, Bobby works his way up June’s body, and by the time he shows her exactly why she should marry him, the windows are completely fogged and its past midnight. Bobby goes home smelling like cocoa butter lotion and looking forward to autumn.
At least, that’s the way Bobby remembers it. The first and last time he’s able to render June speechless. And there’s no one left to say otherwise.
“Forgive me,” says Bobby.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” June answers. She’s laying in bed in the dark, the quilt her mother had made for their wedding pulled to her chin.
Bobby can’t answer, because she’s right, but also terribly wrong. He wants to fix it, that spot in her body that won’t let a baby grow, the same way he can tune the GTO into perfection. Somehow it’s on him.
He’s standing in the doorway and she’s got her back to him, and Bobby touches that ache in his heart gingerly. Ache for June and for the three little ones lost in the last two years. He enters the room carefully, sits on the bed carefully, slowly takes off shoes, socks and jeans before carefully settling into bed.
He listens to her breathe. She’s still awake. In the darkness, clutching her mother’s quilt.
“June?”
“What?”
“If I could I’d fix it.”
There’s no answer for a long moment, and the winter wind moans under the eaves of the house. It’s a lonely sound, and Bobby shivers.
“I know,” June says finally, her voice small. “I’d do anything, Bobby, for this.” She turns under the quilt, and Bobby can see her profile against the window for a brief moment. She moves her arm out from under the linens, and Bobby holds his hand out for her offering.
Something soft and tiny and carefully made. In the blue light from the winter moon outside, Bobby looks at the yellow and satin baby bonnet. He shivers again. “Don’t say that, Bug, please,” he whispers. The shadows around them seem to be listening.
June is facing him in the darkness, and Bobby can’t quite focus on his wife’s face, her warm brown eyes. She’s shrouded in black. “I would, Robert Singer.” Her voice is flat with conviction. “I would do anything for that.”
At least, that’s how Bobby remembers it. The last time his wife spoke to him, the last time it was June behind the brown eyes. And there’s no one left who could say otherwise.
Author: montisello
Recipient: buffyspazz
Rating: R for language, drug use, sexual situations.
Pairing: Bobby/Wife
Summary: The only one left to remember was Bobby. And there was no one to tell him different.
Author's Notes: Thanks to the R. for the beta, and the title, though I tweaked it a little.
“Hide me,” says Bobby.
She tilts her head, looks at him. This little bit of a girl in a lavender twin set. Pencil skirt and a strand of pearls. Down the same hall Bobby had just traversed is the sound of hard-soled shoes hitting tile. “You’re one of those?”
He nods his head. “Yeah. Threw a rock at a cop, and they’re evicting us.” There’s a crash in the distance, a very audible curse, and Bobby winces. “Please? Hide me.”
She’s sitting primly in front of a small desk, receptionist for the Dean of Students. The office behind her is dark. She looks at him over the tops of her cat’s eye glasses, and Bobby is about to turn and run when she says, “Okay.”
Her chair scrapes back on the tile as she stands, and Bobby gets a really bad feeling when she gives him this small, enigmatic smile. “Under the desk, hippie,” she says.
Bobby stares at the tiny desk. “Are you--”
The hallway echoes voices. Footsteps coming closer. “Well?” She asks, and her smile is inscrutable.
Bobby sighs, drops to the floor and fits himself under the desk. He feels like a tortoise. A very large, sweaty tortoise shoved into a very small, flimsy desk. He sits, and waits to be discovered.
Then this girl, this fucking Mona Lisa with her cat’s eye glasses, sits in her chair and primly pulls herself up to the desk. Her knees, clamped together, just in front of Bobby’s nose.
Her knees smell like cocoa butter lotion.
Hard soles on the tile, walking toward the desk. “Hey, you see some ratty hippie run through here?” Bobby recognizes the security guard’s voice, now slightly hoarse from yelling.
“No, sir, sorry.” Her voice carries a hint of drawl. She shifts her knees, and Bobby has to shift too, and he finds himself with his nose more between her knees. His view suddenly becomes that much more interesting.
“Damn hippies. ‘Scuse my language. But, good men out there fighting and we got these ingrates protesting at home.” Bobby turns his head slightly, can see black shoes just below the line of the desk.
“Shame they hate America so,” his girl says, and her drawl is more pronounced. Her knees relax slightly, and Bobby catches a glimpse of white panties. He has to shift again, and not because of his cramped position.
“I did my tour,” says the security guard, and Bobby suddenly hates him. “Came home with a Purple Heart.”
“Oh, really?” says his girl, and Bobby smiles, can hear the fake admiration in her voice. He turns his head slightly, rubs his bottom lip on the smooth skin just to the side of her knee cap. “When--” Her voice hitches a bit. “When did you do your tour?”
“Just got home couple of months ago.” Black shoes shuffle on the tile, but Bobby ignores them, uses his chin to widen the space between her knees. Licks his lips and kisses the inside of her thigh. The scent of cocoa butter fills his nose.
“Got hired here, and I plan on going into the police academy.” The security guard was still talking. Bobby would have glared but is distracted by the smooth expanse of his girl’s inner thigh. Moves his head and kisses the other leg. Swipes his tongue in a small circle beside her knee.
“Oh!” His girl’s voice is slightly breathless. Bobby grins and licks her leg again, ventures a little further in. “I think I saw--” Her leg starts a little under his mouth. “I think I saw one of those miscreants. Right outside the door.”
“Don’t panic,” says the security guard, and Bobby would laugh but his mouth is kinda busy and he can smell cocoa butter and something like the ocean tide. “We’ll get him. Thanks for your help.” The black shoes smack the tile and he’s gone.
Bobby comes out from under the desk grinning and she decks him, slaps at his raised arms and shoulders. “You bastard,” she shouts, but she’s smiling despite the red coloring her cheeks. “You better run,” she threatens and he stares at her.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Her eyes narrow. “Try me.”
He takes a step toward her. She takes a deep breath, and yells, “SECURITY!”
Bobby turns and hightails it down the hallway. Half way down he turns again, taking backwards leaps down the hall. “What’s your name?”
She is silhouetted by the sun outside, a dark slender form with a touch of color to her. “June,” she yells.
Bobby grins, and from outside he hears raised voices, the high whine of a siren. “See ya soon, June!” He yells back, hits the bar to the door, and stumbles out into the summer heat.
At least that’s how Bobby remembers it. The first time they had met. And there’s no one left who could say otherwise.
“Trust me,” says Bobby.
June freezes, looks up from digging in her purse to meet his gaze. Bobby sees her shoulders relax when she recognizes him, a slight blush of color over her cheeks. “You again,” she says, continues her walk down to the parking lot.
“Me, again,” agrees Bobby, watching the sway of her hips as he falls into step behind her.
“What do you want?” She asks casually, finally pulling a key ring from her purse, but Bobby catches the quick glance she sends him, out of the corner of her eye.
“I just thought we could continue getting to know each other.” He grins. “I liked the way we started out.”
She stops next to a gleaming black car, bends and wipes an unseen fingerprint from the chrome on the side mirror. “You weren’t any kind of gentleman,” she says, without looking at him.
Bobby nods. “I’d have to agree with you there.” He watches the way she pats the car, puts her back to it to face him like it will protect her.
“I only date gentlemen,” she says primly, but the dimple in her cheek seems sympathetic to Bobby’s cause.
Bobby shoves his hands in his pockets and pokes a sneaker into the tar, warm and sticky from the sun. “Perhaps I could be an exception.”
June folds her arms over her chest, narrows her eyes at him. “Why aren’t you in Nam?”
“Medical discharge.”
“Going to school?”
“Yeah, philosophy.”
“How old are you?”
He’s grinning. “Nearly twenty-three.”
June leans back against the car, looks up into the sky. “Final question. Quote me a poem.”
“What?”
“C’mon, hippie.”
Bobby thinks of his mother, the way she always kept the seams in her stockings straight, never left the house without a girdle. “Fine.” He draws breath. “I fear no fate, for you are my fate, my sweet. I want no world, for beautiful you are my world, my true and it’s you…” He trails off, the words escaping him, but plows ahead. “Whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you. I carry your heart; I carry it in my heart.”
June’s looking at him and his heart stops.
Then she turns away, fumbles into her purse again. When she turns back she’s holding out a small piece of paper, loopy handwriting scrawled across it. “Here’s my address. I’ll see you tomorrow night at eight. Wear a tie.” She climbs into the car, brings it to life with a growl, and is gone.
Bobby finally looks at the paper. Her address is on the back of a receipt for cocoa butter lotion.
At least, that’s how Bobby remembers it. The second time they’d met, and the first time he loved her. And there’s no one left who could say otherwise.
“Stay with me,” says Bobby.
June tenses, keeps her back to Bobby. She’s leaning in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. Over her shoulder Bobby can see lightning out the window as a summer thunderstorm begins to roll in.
“Don’t ask me right now, Bobby Singer. Not with you high as a kite again.”
“I’m not high,” says Bobby, even though he is. He had to pick June up at her parents, and the thought of it had sent him straight to his stash when he’d gotten home from work. June’s dad all day over his shoulder is hard enough to take, having to see him in the evening pushed him over.
They’d tried a movie. June had walked out when Bobby couldn’t stop giggling at Charlton Heston’s overacting. Damn dirty apes. It was hilarious. In the car, even with June’s anger like a weight against his chest, he couldn’t stop.
He stands now, awkwardly, in the middle of June’s parents’ living room and tries not to look at all the tchochkes Mrs. Walton has collected. The shepherdess is starting to really creep him out. June isn’t talking to him. Bobby feels vaguely unsettled by this. “I’m sorry,” he says.
June turns on him. Her eyes glitter with unshed tears. “Shut up. Just shut up. You’re not sorry. If you were sorry you’d have stopped that first time.”
That first time being his first day of work at Mr. Walton’s garage. Bobby smelling like bong water and trying to figure out how to strip some wreck of valuable parts. Mr. Walton giving him the hairy eyeball and Bobby had thought he was going to lose it right there, until he popped a tiny bit of shroom and was able to get through the rest of the day. It was fun seeing what color Mr. Walton’s words were.
He rubs his face, scowls at his trembling fingers. He’s coming down. June is glaring at him with all the rage of a cat tossed in a lake. “Bug,” he tries, and she turns away, steps into the darkness of the kitchen.
“I wanted the Marines,” he says, and her steps on the tile of the kitchen stop. “I wanted them so bad. “ Bobby puts his hand on his chest, trying to feel the arrhythmia the doctor had detected. “But they wouldn’t let me. Don’t blame me for that.”
Her steps come back, and she’s highlighted by silent lightning before she steps in the light again. “That,” and her stress on the word is light and delicate like she’s pointing out a dead rat, “is not your fault. Anyone’s fault. This,” again the delicate disgust, “is one hundred percent your fault. Clean it up, Singer.”
He jerks to the door, mad and angry and hurt because he just told her how his heart had got broke and she ignores it. “Yes, ma’am,” he says.
She’s quicker than he imagines, her hand on his shoulder. Bobby turns, and she’s on tiptoes, her mouth firm and warm on his. She kisses him with gusto, a swipe of tongue at the corner of his mouth. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs, “but I need you. All of you.” Another kiss, and Bobby damn near drops to the floor due to the strength and promise and desire in it, and then she’s gone.
At least, that’s how Bobby remembers it. The first time she had made him a promise. And there’s no one left who could say otherwise.
“Marry me,” says Bobby.
June laughs. Rain on the rooftop of the GTO, and Bobby worries that somehow Mr. Walton will know his baby took a walk without permission. The car, not June. June is now, forever and always, Bobby’s baby. She is snuggled beneath his arm, and her laugh fogs the driver’s side window. Outside is nothing but dark and rain and the scent of wet dust.
“Serious, Singer? You expect me to marry some hippie who can’t tell a carburetor from a manifold?
Bobby’s been sober for half a year now, and he’s surprised at how easy it is to let those words drop into the peace between. A year ago he’d have sworn it would have taken a bowl and a tab to say those words to June. June and her cat’s eye glasses and mysterious smile and the way she always smells like cinnamon.
“Serious as sin, June bug.” Bobby’s looking out the window, marking the way the rain flows down the GTO’s windshield. One hand is drawing small circles on June’s upper arm.
He feels her head turn, the tickle of her breath on his neck as she looks at him. “Now why would I want to marry you?”
He shifts, turns his body more towards June, draws her closer so she’s half-sitting his lap. “I’ll show you why,” he growls, and takes her mouth, kisses the breath from her lungs. “Why, she asks,” he says, when he finally lets her up for air.
June draws breath to speak and Bobby pushes her back against the passenger side door, kisses her again, hard. She hums with pleasure against his lips, and Bobby goes south, chases the elusive scent that is pure June down the curves of her body. She arches her back, pushes into the warmth of his mouth, and Bobby stops, has to grin at her.
She half-opens her eyes, sees him grinning. “What?”
“You asked why.” His heart beats loud, and he ignores it.
“You’re impossible,” she says, exasperated, and raises her knee, nudges him gently. Her dress slips down her raised thigh, and Bobby’s grin goes wider.
“Now you’ve done it.” He kisses creamy white thigh. She makes a noise, and Bobby’s hand fumbles under her dress, finds the smooth skin underneath her knee.
Outside the rain falls faster, the sound on the roof of the car louder. Using hands and tongue and teeth, Bobby works his way up June’s body, and by the time he shows her exactly why she should marry him, the windows are completely fogged and its past midnight. Bobby goes home smelling like cocoa butter lotion and looking forward to autumn.
At least, that’s the way Bobby remembers it. The first and last time he’s able to render June speechless. And there’s no one left to say otherwise.
“Forgive me,” says Bobby.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” June answers. She’s laying in bed in the dark, the quilt her mother had made for their wedding pulled to her chin.
Bobby can’t answer, because she’s right, but also terribly wrong. He wants to fix it, that spot in her body that won’t let a baby grow, the same way he can tune the GTO into perfection. Somehow it’s on him.
He’s standing in the doorway and she’s got her back to him, and Bobby touches that ache in his heart gingerly. Ache for June and for the three little ones lost in the last two years. He enters the room carefully, sits on the bed carefully, slowly takes off shoes, socks and jeans before carefully settling into bed.
He listens to her breathe. She’s still awake. In the darkness, clutching her mother’s quilt.
“June?”
“What?”
“If I could I’d fix it.”
There’s no answer for a long moment, and the winter wind moans under the eaves of the house. It’s a lonely sound, and Bobby shivers.
“I know,” June says finally, her voice small. “I’d do anything, Bobby, for this.” She turns under the quilt, and Bobby can see her profile against the window for a brief moment. She moves her arm out from under the linens, and Bobby holds his hand out for her offering.
Something soft and tiny and carefully made. In the blue light from the winter moon outside, Bobby looks at the yellow and satin baby bonnet. He shivers again. “Don’t say that, Bug, please,” he whispers. The shadows around them seem to be listening.
June is facing him in the darkness, and Bobby can’t quite focus on his wife’s face, her warm brown eyes. She’s shrouded in black. “I would, Robert Singer.” Her voice is flat with conviction. “I would do anything for that.”
At least, that’s how Bobby remembers it. The last time his wife spoke to him, the last time it was June behind the brown eyes. And there’s no one left who could say otherwise.