The Co-op

Chapter Fifty

CHAPTER FIFTY

October 31

L A RYNN

Turns out, Cheryl Gold got to be a hero in our story.

And now Deacon is beholden to her every summer for the foreseeable future.

Still worth it.

She coached us through writing a letter that she took to the other agent for us. In that letter, we wrote about our grandmothers’ history here, and even shared what happened with us, explaining why we were changing our minds and hoping to pull out.

They agreed to dissolve the contract without penalty.

We were able to turn around and enter into an agreement with Sal, which we will close on in mid-November, just in time to renew the lease at the café and pay the deposit to hold the shop next door.

Today, though. Today there’s a candied apple candle blazing on the tray that sits on our freestanding tub, a decorative skeleton hand holding up a peace sign next to the sink. “Witchcraft” by Frank Sinatra floats through the room.

“How long has it been since we’ve waltzed?” I hear Deacon say to me from outside the bathroom door.

I fling it open to find him in a perfectly cut suit, the shirt left partially unbuttoned, a rose dangling from his teeth. Pieces of his hair are already escaping its slicked-back style, one curl tickling his eyebrow.

I laugh before I smooth it over and intone the next line back to him with the appropriate amount of drama. “Oh, Gomez… hours. ”

He’s taking this whole Halloween thing much more seriously than I anticipated. Borderline out of hand, really. Once we landed on Gomez and Morticia, the man immediately committed to growing out a mustache and started slipping into character around the house at random times.

He wags his brows. “Cara mia.”

“Mon sauvage,” I reply.

He lifts my hand and begins kissing a path up my arm. “You almost ready, birthday girl?”

“Yes, yes. Don’t rush me.” Especially since it was his idea to “take the mustache for a test drive” for an hour, thus causing my (very happy, five stars, totally worth it) delay. He delicately brushes my hair from my shoulder before he nips at a spot on my neck that makes my breath hitch. “Deacon,” I breathe.

“I’m in character. Can’t be helped,” he murmurs beneath my ear. One palm comes to slowly wrap around my throat and squeeze while the other slips inside the top of my dress. He tips my head back against his shoulder and kisses me deeply.

A frustrated growl rips out of him before he pops away, hands in the air like I’ve burned him. “I told you, love, we can’t. We gotta go.”

“Oh, you told me , huh?” I laugh at his retreating form.

I touch up the red lipstick he’s just smeared and check my reflection.

Sometimes I have these moments where I boomerang out of my own body and back. The kind of moments that make my reflection feel a bit like déjà vu, both unrecognizable and yet familiar, like this is what I was meant to have, meant to feel. And yet I wonder if this is sustainable. If one body can really contain so much love. Happiness. Hope.

Having Deacon on my side has made me feel invincible, which has made me feel brave enough to be vulnerable, too. To other relationships in my life, and to betting on myself.

I don’t know if we’ll always get what we wish for. I know that life is going to come with its battles. I know that love will, too. But I’m starting to think that’s the whole point—finding the person, or people, who’ll fight and dream with you. I think we’ve had some great practice when it comes to juggling the hard things.

I pass the flowers and the birthday card from my mom on the way to the living room, where I’m warmly surprised to see that he’s divested the kitchen of the beignet mess from this morning. He woke me up with breakfast in bed before he brought me onto the balcony to show me my gift. I’d laughed until tears leaked from the corners of my eyes.

A cactus garden. New planter boxes, full of all kinds. Some are shaped like flowers, others are spiked and untouchable. A mosaic of sharp and soft.

I see him waiting for me at the landing now. My beautiful, brave, generous husband. Past him, alone in my old room-that-was-not-a-room, sits Helena’s wheel and kiln. Since we’ve already made ourselves cozy in the spaces we’ve been using, we plan to make that a project area. When we close on Sal’s unit and have the spare change, I’m hoping to talk him into building me some big shelves in there, too. Things I can stuff full of albums and art and pictures. Eventually I’ll get good enough at throwing clay to make some vases and knickknacks.

“Ah!” I squeal when Deacon takes my hand and spins me into a low dip.

“I love you,” he tells me, suspending me in air.

“I love you, too.”

We make our way down the stairs, out onto the patio. Past the pumpkins we carved three nights ago because I told him I never had before. Instead of regular carving knives he insisted we use electric drills and tools, so we were still finding pumpkin guts in our hair two days later.

“Oh, shit. I need my tie,” he says suddenly. “I don’t know where I left it.”

I spare him a vaguely annoyed look. “Do you need help finding it?”

“Probably will make it faster,” he says, wincing, and I have to laugh. The man will walk past his own keys (in the spot I told him they were in) five times before he registers them.

I head back up after him and start looking around the living area while he checks the bedroom. “Look under the bed!” I call. “Did you hang it up somewhere after the other night?!” When I wore nothing but it.

“Check the house nipples!”

I scoff. “ Stop calling them that or I’ll take them down!” I yell back. The first thing I successfully made on the kiln. My attempt at new key hooks. To be fair, they do look a little bit like nipples, but they work.

Sure enough, I see his tie. “Found it!” I call.

When I slip it off, something clatters to the ground with it.

I pick it up and nearly drop it again. A ring. Three stones, an oval in the middle with little trapezoids on the sides. I whirl around and find Deacon down on one knee, tears in his eyes. More of his hair has escaped the confines of its gel.

“I know I’m in a costume right now, and that I have a very distracting mustache—which I think we’re both growing fond of—but I’m still open to discussion as far as that’s concerned… and I know you said you don’t care about a wedding or any of that. I know it’s your birthday and Halloween and I know you always said you never got to feel special because everyone was always celebrating something else.” He takes a shaky breath. “I also know that you’re already my wife, but… I wanted to maybe give you something extra today, too. I wanted to propose to you properly, at least.” He takes the ring and my hand and tries to clear his throat. “Be my wife. Stay my wife. Forever, LaRynn. I don’t care where we end up or what we do as long as I have you.”

He’s a blur in front of me, until my smile spills the tears from my eyes. “Yes,” I tell him, giving myself over to this crushing wave of happy. “Yes. I’m yours, forever.”

We do end up making it to the Halloween-slash-birthday party over at Santa Sea, eventually. Sal was waiting for us downstairs, dressed as a nun of all things, with tears already trailing down her face.

We hang out by a fire and watch kids buzz around the decorated sites in their costumes, knocking on trailer doors for tricks and treats.

Macy gifts me Helena’s old recipe book and I cry.

That night, when Deacon strips off my dress and proceeds to kiss every inch of me, I tell him, “I thought of one more thing I want for my birthday.”

He laughs into a particularly sensitive spot. “Yes, love?”

“Your name.”