Chapter 15

“Wakey, wakey! Eggs and Bacey!” came a chipper voice next to my ear, making me jump. Sunlight streamed through the window, bathing the room in golden light. I raised my head reluctantly, ready to strangle the owner of that cheery voice. Lori was still sleeping contentedly, spooned against my chest, so that woke me up in a hurry. I pulled away from her gently and she whimpered in complaint, but never woke as I slipped out of bed and looked around for the source of my rude awakening.

Sabrina grinned at me and glanced at Lori. “Took you long enough,” she said with a giggle. “Come on. Let’s go talk. She’s not ready to wake up yet.”

I followed her out to the kitchen. She took in the clothes strewn all over the apartment and shook her head. “What if your mother dropped by unannounced?” she asked, clicking her tongue in mock-disappointment.

“She’d probably be thrilled that I wasn’t alone and she’d start making plans for more grandchildren,” I said dryly.

She thought about that and nodded. “Probably,” she agreed. “So would my parents, at this point. Tell them I said hi.”

“I always do,” I smiled and took a seat. She came to sit across from me, Lori’s dress draped between us across the table.

“Good. Sooooo...” she said, smiling. “TELL me about her!”

I nodded and told her about Lori. I told her about her brother and my resemblance to him, how he’d died and how we’d fallen in love at first sight. I told her that I’d shared everything with her and that she’d done the same with me.

“Does she make you happy?” she asked, her head cocked to one side as she looked at me.

“You know she does,” I said. “You wouldn’t be here if she was just a fling.”

She nodded. “You know me so well,” she shrugged. “Now you get the chance to know her that well. You wanna know a secret? You make her the same kinds of happy.”

“Any you know this how?” I asked, amused.

“A lot of little things,” she said. “She’s marking her territory, flinging clothes all over the place. She also looks at you like you’re the second coming. I guess with her brother looking like you, maybe she thinks you are. I get the sense that she hasn’t been moving on from that, sort of like a certain someone I know,” she looked at me pointedly. “You two have the chance to be best friends, lovers, soul-mates and live the kind of life you always wanted. I may also have an inside source that tells me about her.”

I nodded, remembering Sabrina’s declaration that she couldn’t make me happy, only hurt me now that she was gone. “I love her,” I said simply. “I feel like I’m starting to live life again.”

“Go with that feeling,” she said firmly. “Come see me when you’re in Denver. I know you’ll be there eventually. You’ve got a couple of options for a place to stay between Linda and your brother, your parents and my folks. They worry about you, you know?”

“I know. They came to see me after the accident. Turns out that I ended up not dead after all. You told me so.”

She shrugged dismissively. “An educated guess,” she smiled a little. “How’re you doing since the crash?”

“My hip bothers me some,” I admitted. “They tell me that I’ll have difficulty sitting in one position for long. That’s sort of killed my job prospects for the future, but we’ll see. I’m okay financially and Lori gives me something to look forward to every day.”

She nodded. “You never made me breakfast,” she pouted a little.

“That day was coming,” I assured her. “If we’d been driving a bigger vehicle, I might have gotten my chance.”

“You might,” she agreed and looked around. “You know this is goodbye for us, right?” she asked.

“The Hell, it is,” I shook my head. “There’s times that I’ll want to talk to my guardian angel. When I get married, when I have kids, when we buy our first house.”

She smiled. “No, you’ll be fine. You’ve needed me until now, but I think I have something else that I need to do.”

“Oh?” I asked. “What’s new in your life?”

She smiled. “I don’t have a life, Peter,” she reminded me. “You’ll understand, but I won’t be back. This isn’t to push you to live life. That’s done. You’re where you’re supposed to be. It’s for me.” She smirked and reached under the table. “I’ll return this to you now,” she told me, putting a very familiar bottle on the table on top of Lori’s dress. “Lori will definitely keep you from going too crazy with it.”

She stood up and I stood with her. “I still haven’t heard what’s taking you away,” I reminded her. I glanced down the hall and there was someone coming out of my bedroom. It was like looking into a mirror. He was broader in the shoulders than I was and had a more serious look to his face. “Jeff?” I asked, taking in the dress uniform.

He nodded and came to join us, offering me his hand. “Take care of Lori for me?” he asked.

“No,” I told him, taking his hand. “I’ll take care of her for me. Just like she’ll take care of me for her, not for Sabrina.”

He nodded and told me that was fair. Then he took Sabrina’s hand and I understood why she wouldn’t be back. “Make each other happy,” I told them both, smiling and settling into a sense of peace with how things had happened. “And come see the kids when they’re born. They’ll be your nieces and nephews.”

Sabrina laughed and pulled the beret from Jeff’s head. She tossed it on the table. “We’ll see you again,” she said. “Not for a long time though. You’ve got a lot of years before we can double-date.”

I chuckled and then they were gone. I looked at the door after they’d left and shook my head. I walked back to the bedroom and climbed into bed with Lori.

I closed my eyes and wrapped her up in my arms. Was it real? Had it happened? Was it just my mind connecting events and telling my conscious self what I needed to hear? Did it matter? I drifted off to sleep contentedly and wondered as I was going under whether I was actually awake or just dreaming I was falling asleep.

I woke up when Lori shifted to get up. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her back down, making her squeak. “I need to pee!” she told me urgently. “I’ll cuddle all you want, but I really have to go!” I let her go and decided that I needed to go too. I got up and followed her to the bathroom. “Coming to watch?” she asked me with a look on her face.

“I’ve never watched a girl go,” I admitted. “I need to pee too.”

She nodded and pulled me inside, dropping onto the seat and parting her thighs so that I could watch. It didn’t look like much, but I supposed that there’d be more to it if I was down at thigh-level. I wasn’t sure I needed to see it that closely, but you never knew. I was a little surprised that she was so willing to share, but I supposed that she didn’t have a lot of the same hang-ups about body image that other women had. She was incredibly beautiful and had learned about sex at an early enough age that she’d been hooked before insecurity could make her ashamed of her body.

She wiped and got up, washing her hands while I went. I had no performance anxiety, having shared a bathroom with two brothers growing up, but she watched with interest as I trained the stream into the water below with the tell-tale gurgling sound of water splashing into water.

I shook it off and used a piece of toilet paper to wipe the last drop off before I flushed and took her place at the sink. “I’ve never watched a guy pee before,” she admitted.

“Not even on the long hikes with Jeff?” I asked her, surprised.

“No, he couldn’t go if someone was watching,” she giggled a little.

I nodded. “Most guys are like that. I had to share a bathroom with two brothers, so it was never a big deal.”

I got cleaned up and we decided that we were done sleeping for the day. We went out to the kitchen and Lori stopped, the smile fading from her face as she looked at the table. Sitting in the middle of the table, on top of her dress was a half-empty bottle of tequila and an army beret. I’d half expected them to be here, but their appearance answered all my questions.

“We had some visitors through the night,” I explained. “Remember me telling you about Sabrina taking the bottle from me when she first came to visit? That’s the bottle.”

“And the beret?” she asked, not moving.

“Your brother looked in on you while I talked to Sabrina. You didn’t dream of him?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, but I thought it was just a dream. He was walking. He normally has the chair in my dreams.”

I nodded. “They won’t be back,” I told her. “Last night was goodbye.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because we’ve found each other,” I told her, “and because they found each other. Whatever comes after this life, they’re spending it together. They’ll see us when we’re ready to become permanent residents, but they trust that we’ll take care of each other until then.”

She nodded slowly and then went to the table and picked up the beret, holding it in her hands. She lifted it to her nose and smelled it with her eyes closed. She looked at me in wonder. “It’s his,” she confirmed. “It smells like him. She looked inside and found his name stenciled on the inside and put it down on the table to come and hug me.

I held her and noticed that she was trembling slightly. She’d heard the stories, but this was the first time that she’d been certain that life didn’t stop when our heart did. It was a powerful moment for her. She was given the certainty that not only was her brother in some afterlife, but that he wasn’t damned for his suicide, like some faiths believed. He was happy and whole and at peace. She cried a little and I cried with her. I was past any sorrow for Sabrina. My tears were happiness for her and Jeff, my own happiness and sympathy for Lori’s moment of release.

When she was calm again, I sat her down and started breakfast. Today, I was going for something special. I chopped up strawberries into the batter for waffles and then took the rest of the package and crushed them in a bowl, mashing them with a fork and adding some sugar to sweeten them a little more. I made her waffle first and when it was done, I put it on a plate and covered it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and drizzled the crushed strawberries over the top before dusting it with powdered sugar. I brought it to the table and she looked at it like I was crazy.

“Is this breakfast or dessert?” she blurted.

I handed her a fork and shrugged. “Why choose?” I challenged her and kissed her. I brought her coffee to her and she started to eat skeptically while I prepared my own.

She got two bites in and was hooked. “Oh my God!” she moaned with pleasure as she devoured the whole thing. I smiled at her and noticed that she was eyeing my plate with interest. I traded with her and went to make a third waffle with an amused chuckle. I got to eat that one, but she was loud in her praise of the whole thing. “I’m destined to be fat if you don’t stop feeding me like this!” she complained, holding her stomach and trying to determine if she was already putting on weight.

“They’re not all that bad,” I said. “How about I promise to only feed you one per day?”

“I couldn’t handle this kind of breakfast every day,” she shook her head. “Maybe on my day off for a treat,” she suggested and that’s what we did. I’d make them with every kind of fruit I could think of, but sometimes I only topped the waffle with it instead of mixing it into the batter.

“I think I have a lot of phone calls to make today,” I told her. “A fair few people know the story of that tequila bottle. They’ll want to know how it turned out.”

“Have you told them about me?” she asked.

“Another good reason to make some calls,” I said. “I wasn’t telling anyone until I was sure we were serious.”

She nodded. “I have to talk to my parents to let them know. They may have a heart attack when they see you.” She was dreading those questions.

“I know what you mean,” I told her. “Everyone I know is going to have a heart attack when they see you.”

“Why? Do I look like Sabrina?” she asked.

“No, you look like you should be a super-model,” I told her. “Sabrina was beautiful, but you’re stunning. You’re sitting here with no makeup on and you look like you could be on the cover of a magazine.”

“Yeah, Penthouse,” she joked, looking down at her naked body.

“I’ve seen worse looking women on the cover,” I told her seriously. “I’ve never seen a better looking one though.”

“Flatterer,” she said with a smile. “There are plenty of better looking women on magazine covers.”

I shrugged. “I think you’re crazy, but then again, I’m admittedly biased.”

We bantered like that back and forth for a little while and then I decided that it was late enough for me to make the first of my phone calls to spread the news. I called Rosa first.

“Ham!” she said when she answered the phone. I had her on speaker and Lori mouthed the word questioningly at me.

“How’s my Texas mom?” I asked, in good spirits.

“I’m just sitting down after the breakfast dishes,” she said. “What’s on your mind? You don’t normally call this early.”

“Something happened that prompted me to start making calls,” I told her. “When I got up this morning, there was a half-empty bottle of tequila on my kitchen table.”

“I thought you stopped drinking the hard...” she trailed off and gasped. “The bottle she took?!!?”

“The very same,” I told her. “She decided that it was time to return it.”

“Why now?” she asked. “You said she was holding onto it because she didn’t want you drinking like you were.”

“She didn’t want me holding onto the past anymore,” I reminded her. “She wanted me to find someone to move forward with.”

“Have you?!” she asked excitedly.

“I have,” I told her. “Her name is Lori. She’s amazing. She’s here with me.”

She screamed in excitement and I was struck by how badly she’d wanted this for me. “That’s such good news, Ham!” she gushed. “Can I talk to her?”

“We’re on speaker,” I told her. The two of us had gone back to bed and were curled up together with the phone in my lap.

“Hi,” Lori said shyly. “Peter’s told me a lot about you,” she said.

“Oh, sweetie!” Rosa said. “I’m so happy to meet you. I can’t wait to see the two of you face to face. I’ve been hoping some lucky girl would sweep him off his feet.”

“He was actually in a hospital bed when we met,” she confided. “I’m a nurse where he had his last surgery.”

They gushed like that for half an hour, Rosa telling her stories of my time in Austin and Lori telling her about herself and about the things we do together. No, not THOSE things. That did come up, but in general terms and I got rave reviews from Lori and a promise to make me perform again and again.

Rosa was thrilled to death and told me that she was planning on coming up to see us in a few weeks once her new students were settled in. “Lizzy’s gonna be beside herself!” she said.

“Just let her know to keep it to herself,” I cautioned. “We have a lot of people to tell and she knows a few of the same people.”

“I will,” she promised and then we hung up.

“So she was your land-lady?” she asked skeptically, smirking at me.

I nodded. “We became very close,” I said solemnly. “She’s also the woman that I slept with, but didn’t have sex.”

She nodded. “That’s gotta be a story,” she prompted me. I told her about the last night I’d had in Austin and putting her to bed. “You didn’t take advantage?” she asked with a smirk.

“Nah,” I said. “Don’t get me wrong, Rosa is a hot woman, but she’d drawn the line and if she wouldn’t cross it sober, I wouldn’t cross it drunk.”

She nodded and patted my cock through the sheet. “Good soldier,” she commented with a giggle.

After that, we called my mother, who was overjoyed, but I think she was overjoyed just to be hearing from me. Hope Pierce was similarly elated when I told her. I delivered Sabrina’s message to her and told her that she was moving on too. “I’m sure she’ll keep an eye on us all, but she feels like it’s time for her to enjoy her rest.”

Hope had always delighted in my visits from her daughter and her sharply honed attention caught that I was being delicate about something. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” she said. “Spill it.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Lori had a brother. He died some time ago. He looks a lot like me. Two people with guardian angels meet and fall in love. What do their angels do when they suddenly find themselves not having to worry about the living?”

“So they just walk off into the sunset together?” she asked, considering that possibility.

“They do and they have,” I told her. Lori was holding onto me tightly. We were both feeling remarkably calm. We’d been watched over by these two people that had been the center of our worlds for so long that it was a big change, yet I didn’t feel adrift, like I had when she’d died and again after she’d taken the bottle and left. She’d passed her burden back to the living and it was beautiful, touching, humbling and perfect. We’d talked about it between phone calls and Lori and I felt the same. It was almost like having a father give her away on her wedding day. We were in each other’s hands now.