Love Me to Death (20 page)

“Wow.”

“Exactly, so stop rushing me.”

“Do you have a list?”

“Yes,” she groans.

“Let me see?” I ask.

She grabs a sheet of paper from her bed and hands it to me.

“Ok, so most of it is checked off. All you have left is makeup, shampoo, toothbrush, and underwear.” I smile. “I will sort out your underwear,” I announce proudly.

“Of course, you will,” she says rolling her eyes. It earns her a smile. I jump to my feet and head over to my favorite drawer in her room. I pull it open and smile in excitement.

“Right, I think the red ones definitely need to come,” I say holding up a pair of her floss panties in my hand. I throw them into the suitcase.

“Hey, you can’t just throw them in like that; they need to be organized properly.”

“Babe, if I start organizing your underwear
properly
then I promise you that we will get
no
packing done tonight. Your choice?”

“Just throw them onto the bed and I’ll organize them myself.”

“Smart choice.” I wink.

I pick out four more sets of her panties and throw them on the bed. I open the drawer underneath and discover her bras.

“Who’d have thought packing a suitcase could be so much fun,” I say smiling at the drawer. Ned ignores me. I search through the drawer until I find bras that match each of the panties I just threw on the bed. Once I’m satisfied I place them all on the bed and sit next to them.

“Right, I’m almost done,” she says before starting to organize the underwear I picked out.

“You know, there is more than enough time for you to try all of these on for me,” I say dangling one of her panties on the edge of my finger.

She snatches it out of my hand and places it in the suitcase with the others. She grabs her list and I watch her in amusement as she bites her lip, looking back and forth between the list and the suitcase. Once she is finally satisfied that everything is sorted, she zips up her suitcase and places it on the floor. She opens one of the drawers in her dresser, pulls something out and then disappears into her bathroom. While she is gone I strip down into just my boxers and slip comfortably into her bed.

When she emerges she is wearing nothing but short shorts and a tank top. This girl is going to be the death of me.

“What are you doing?” she asks perplexed.

“Lying down.”

“I mean in my bed, Cole.”

“Waiting for you to come to bed, what else would I be doing?”

“No way. You’re sleeping in the guest room.”

“Oh come on, it’s not as if we haven’t slept in the same bed before.”

“That was an accident, I fell asleep.”

“Seriously?” I ask.

“
Seriously
.”

“Come on big guy,” I say looking down at my boxers, “she’s not interested in us tonight.”

I see the corners of her mouth twitch as she watches me stand to my feet. I walk past her slowly before mumbling the word
meanie.
I hear her laugh and as always the sound is beautiful.

“You sure you don’t want me t—”

“Goodnight, Cole,” she interrupts.

“Goodnight, Ned,” I say before heading toward the guest room to have a long and lonely night.

I have been staring at the ceiling for the past two hours. I just cannot get to sleep. I finally give in and get out of bed. I walk down the hall toward the kitchen and decide to see if a late night snack might do the trick.

“Can’t sleep either?” The voice makes me jump.

“Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” I ask Ned as she sits smiling at me.

“Well, I think we’d make a terrible couple if we were both sporting heart conditions so I’ll say no.”

I smile. I slip onto one of the stools around her island. I’m sitting opposite her, looking at her before she pushes a bowl of popcorn toward me.

“You’re eating popcorn at this time?” She nods.

“Sweet or salted?”

“Sweet.”

“Girl of my dreams,” I joke, making her laugh. I grab a handful and throw them into my mouth.

“And you say that I eat like a guy.”

“I am a guy.”

“Well then you eat like a pig,” she scoffs.

“Interestingly I take no offense to that,” I say, grabbing some more.

“So what’s stopping you from sleeping?” she asks curiously.

“I have no idea. Maybe it’s the anticipation of flying tomorrow. I never have been great with airplanes.”

“Is
the
Brennan Cole afraid of flying?” She teases.

“Hell yes, I’ll be thousands of feet above the ground, that thing goes down and it’s all over.”

She laughs. “You’re not afraid of flying, Cole. You’re afraid of dying. You should be focused on living; if you were then you wouldn’t even think about the fact that you were that high up. Everyone dies, it’s inevitable. Why fear something you can’t stop?”

“You make a good point. You should have been an attorney.”

She smiles at me and something moves around in my stomach. “Maybe I should have.”

“Mmm. Now, tell me what’s stopping
you
from sleeping?”

She takes a deep breath and then looks up at me. Her eyes look sad.
I hate that.
“This could be the last time I see them,” she whispers. I love that she is so honest.

“You’re right, it could be but then again … it could be the first of many. And I thought that death didn’t scare you?” I say questioningly.

“It doesn’t. Wasting time does.”

“Why do you think that you’re going to waste time?”

“I don’t know; there’s just so much I want to do before … I just don’t want to run out of time.” I sit and stare at her for a minute. Then I make a decision. I’m not allowing her to waste even a moment while she is still here.

“Wait here a minute.”

“Where are you going?” she calls as I jump off the stool and run toward her room.

“Don’t move,” I say before pushing the door to her room open. I search until I find the pen I spotted on her dresser earlier. Then I try and find some paper. I look through a few drawers until I discover a notepad full of the same paper that she wrote her list on earlier.

I run back out to the kitchen, sit back down and place the pen and pad on the island between us.

“What is all this?” she asks curiously.

“We’re going to create a bucket list,” I say confidently even though a part of me hates that this list even needs to exist.

“A what?”

“A bucket list, don’t tell me that you don’t know what one is?”

“Should I?”

“Oh my gosh. How can someone in your position not know what a bucket list is? Babe, you really need to get out more.” She throws a piece of popcorn at my head. It bounces onto the island. I pick it up and eat it. She shakes her head at me and laughs. I smile before picking up the pen and pad.

“Come on then, Einstein, tell me all about this list.”

“It’s a list of things that you want to do before … before you don’t have the chance to ever do them. You make a list and then go through it so that you can experience all of the things you’ve ever wanted to.”

She watches me for a moment as if she’s trying to decipher my words. “I love it,” she breathes.

“Good, then let’s get started. And I want you to get creative, Ned. No half-ass answers, we’re going all out. This is going to be the list of all freaking bucket lists.”

She’s smiling.
This girl is definitely going to be the death of me.
“Ok but you have to make me a promise first,” she says seriously.

“Anything.”

“You have to help me to complete it, even if I don’t make it … I want you to finish it for me. I need you to promise, Cole.”

“I promise.”

“Thank you,” she says taking a deep breath. “Ok, the first thing I want to do is go skydiving.”

“What?” I ask in shock.

“Come on, Cole, it’ll be fun.”

“I am not going skydiving with you.”

“You made a promise.”

“Yeah, that’s when I thought you were doing things on the ground.”

She laughs.

“You’re really going to say no to helping me fulfill the things on my bucket list?”

“Babe, you didn’t even know what a bucket list was until five minutes ago.”

“Well I know now and you promised.”

“Fine but I’m sleeping in your bed tonight.”

“No.”

“I’ve just said that I will jump out of a plane for you, I am sleeping in that bed tonight and I will not take no for an answer.”

She’s smirking.

“Ok,” she says simply.

“Ok, and wipe the smug look off your face, we both got our way.” She bursts out laughing and I roll my eyes. “What’s next? And it better not be anything to do with jumping out of a plane.”

“Nope. The second thing is to visit an art gallery.”

“You couldn’t have led with that one?”

“Stop complaining, this was your idea.”

“Again … when I thought that we were doing things on the ground. Why an art gallery?”

“I’ve always wanted to visit one but I just never got around to it. I want to change that.”

“Number two, visit an art gallery. Next?”

She looks at me hesitantly before saying the next point. “Learn to swim,” she says shyly.

“You can’t swim?” I ask surprised.

“I have never learned. I didn’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” she says softly. I see vulnerable Ned before me and I know that she’ll talk to me when she is ready and so I let it go.

“Ok, number three, learn to swim, got it. What else you got for me?”

She doesn’t answer immediately and so I look up into her face. She is looking past me with a strange look on hers. Her expression is somewhere between sad and happy.

“Ned?” I call gently.

“Sorry,” she whispers as if I just pulled her from somewhere inside her mind.

“Number four?”

“Yeah. I would like to hold a baby in my arms.” She says the words slowly. I don’t write a word, I just stare up at her in confusion.

“Why?”

She smiles at me. It’s small and sad.

“I’ll never get the chance to have a baby now. I never really thought about that before. I wasn’t ready to have one but it’s different when the choice is taken away. I know that I’ll never get the opportunity to hold my own baby in my arms or to hear it cry for the first time but it’d be nice to imagine what it would have felt like, even if for just a minute. I’d like that.” She’s talking more to herself than me.

I have to take a deep breath and pull myself together. Why do her words feel like they are ripping my heart apart? Why do I feel like if I could I would take her next door and make love to her until she got as many damn babies as she wanted? I would do that for her and at this moment, it doesn’t scare me at all. What scares me is that it’s one thing I’ll never be able to do for her.

“You sure, babe?” I whisper.

She nods with a strained smile on her face.

“Ok,” I say as I write the words down. I take a couple of minutes to shut down the thoughts in my head and then look up at her again. And there she is, the brave Ned. Her mask is back on.

“Right, anything else?”

“Yes, I have one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I want to go skiing.” The words almost knock me off my stool. “I want
us
to go skiing. In honor of your mom. That’s what I want. That’s my final point.”

I look up at Ned and I know that something is changing between us but I don’t care. In this moment right now nothing else matters.

“Ok,” I smile before steadying my hand so I can write the words down. I rip the piece of paper off the pad and fold it in half.