“Of course I do.”
“Maribel was the third girl I told my friends I was going to marry that summer. She was just the first one who said yes to a date.”
Felix laughed so loudly he startled the birds. “You little shit!” he cried in English, giving Tito’s shoulder a gentle shove. “All this time, you made me believe it was love at first sight with you and Lita.”
Tito shrugged, grinning unapologetically. “Maybe it was. It felt like it. But love is about the choices we make, Felix. Not only the way we feel. You must know that.”
“I do,” he said. He plucked a long blade of grass and absently wound it around his fingers. “It’s good to be reminded, though.”
“So,” Tito said, nudging his knee, “was fast really the problem?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve never fallen in love so quickly, Tito. Maybe I haven’t given Jo enough time to trust me. Maybe I’m putting too much on her too soon.”
Tito was quiet, letting him stew on that. Felix couldn’t deny that he was the one who had moved things along so quickly. He’d only wanted to be honest with Jo about his feelings, but he hadn’t fully understood what her ex had been like.
Ten years. Ten fucking years of Jo being treated poorly by the person who claimed to love her. He was sick to his stomach thinking about it. She’d only been away from him for a few months. Three weeks with Felix wasn’t nearly enough time to heal from such prolonged hurt.
It wasn’t always easy, supporting her and caring for her through that kind of healing. He’d never done that for anyone before, unless he counted helping Tito through the grief of losing Lita. But grief and trauma weren’t the same, and Felix had no idea if he was helping Jo or hurting her. If he was going to do this, if he was going to make the choice to love her and walk alongside her through this, he needed to learn how to do it right.
The blade of grass was shredded into pieces, and his fingertips were stained green. An image flashed through his mind: Jo, driving her car, gesturing at the landscape around them on I-35, adamantly declaring, “Look how green it is! The air out here is so clean you can see forever.”
Felix smiled to himself, brushed off his hands, and rested his elbows on his knees. “Tito?”
“Mm?”
“When did you actually know you wanted to marry Lita?”
Tito’s bony elbow poked him in the ribs. “Marriage already, eh? You going to go propose?”
“No,” he chuckled. “I was just curious, since apparently it wasn’t when you first saw her smile.” He poked his grandpa in return.
Tito swore in Spanish and rubbed his side theatrically. Felix rolled his eyes, but he grew serious when Tito took a moment to respond. His eyes got that faraway look again, as if he were seeing a plaza in Cáceres rather than a pond in Kansas. His brow wrinkled, and tears lined his eyes.
“When I realized that the days without her were unbearable compared to the days with her. Being apart from Maribel was like being without my own arm. I almost lost her when your father was born. That would have killed me too. I never took another day with her for granted. Even seventy-one years was not enough time.” Tito paused and looked at Felix. “She really was mi vida.”
Felix gathered him into an embrace. “Te quiero, Tito.”
“Te quiero, Felix.”
Neither of them moved for a long time. Finally, Tito clapped Felix on the back, and they broke apart. Tito sniffed and dug his knuckles into his red eyes. Felix squeezed his shoulder.
“I’ll give you and Lita a minute,” he murmured and stood to take a stroll around the cemetery. He always gave his grandparents some time alone on these visits.
As he ambled among the graves, his gaze kept returning to the grass-stained tips of his fingers. He ran his thumbs over them, remembering that moment in the car again—the moment he had let himself see Kansas the way Jo did. He raised his eyes, past the headstones and the pond where Tito sat, and turned toward Ashville. The cemetery was on the outskirts of town, on a low rise. From here, he could see almost the entire town laid out before him under the brilliant blue sky.
For the past year, Felix had been sleeping in a guest bedroom in a house that was not his, using his dead grandmother’s mugs for his coffee. The only place he’d considered his own was the dingy basement where he boxed. He’d plodded along, somewhere between happy and unhappy, getting the work experience he needed and making sure Tito survived from day to day.
Ashville wasn’t a home. It was an obligation.
Until Jo.
These last few days without her had been miserable. Felix dreamed about her at night and woke up cold and lonely. He scrolled back through their texts and the sexy pictures they’d exchanged, aching to touch her and feel her touch in return. He couldn’t even listen to his favorite workout playlist without being reminded of her.
But it was more than that.
It wasn’t only Jo’s presence that he missed. It was the way she’d opened his eyes to everything he had right in front of him. Jo had embraced this town—its places and its people—with open arms, while he had held everyone at arm’s length. She’d created a community out of thin air and brought him along for the ride. And now, for the first time, he was starting to picture what it might look like to build a life here.
Felix looked out over Ashville. He could see White Hills and the library, Stan’s and the Old Bell Diner, the community college and The Gandy Dancer. He even spotted the damn grocery store where he’d bought her a carton of milk. This town had her fingerprints all over it.
He wanted to fall in love with it, to be truly happy here. He wanted to make it his home. And, if Jo would have him, if he could learn to love her how she needed to be loved, he wanted her there beside him every step of the way.
Jo rapped on the open door of an office she’d never had cause to visit before. The middle-aged white woman inside peered at her over reading glasses, her hands coming to rest on her keyboard. She wore a sunshine yellow cardigan over a black blouse with white polka dots. She was one of the few doctors on staff at White Hills who didn’t wear a white coat.
“Yes?” she asked. “Do we have an appointment?”
“Um, no,” Jo said, clasping her hands in front of her. “Dr. Andrews, I was hoping to speak with you personally, if you have a minute.”
Dr. Andrews glanced at the clock on her wall. “I have about ten minutes. Have a seat while I finish this email.”
Jo thanked her and went inside, closing the door behind her. She folded her hands in her lap so she wouldn’t wring them. Her heart was beating so frantically she was sure Dr. Andrews could hear it despite that being medically impossible.
“Okay, thank you for waiting,” Dr. Andrews said momentarily. “What can I help you with”—her eyes darted to the badge clipped to Jo’s breast pocket—“Jolene?”
“It’s just Jo,” she muttered.
“Jo, then.” She leaned back in her cushy desk chair and crossed one knee over the other.
