Page 52 of Lessons in Balance
“You good, Big Guy?”Finch poked his head around the kitchen island.
“Er, aye?”
He narrowed his gaze.“I don’t know, you seem weird.”Then his eyebrows shot up.“Oh dang, I think you’rehappy.”
“Titch.”I honestly did my best to scowl but couldn’t stop smiling.
“No, ew, stop it.”He waved his arms at me theatrically.“It’s horrible,ugh.”
“Shut it and fetch more boxes, you doughnut.”
He was about to sass something in turn, when Skyler and Lucas came out of the dining room, mid-discussion of Skyler being a major subject of Lucas’s next photography exhibition.
“I mean, wouldn’t it be really boring staring at pictures of the same person?”Skyler asked sheepishly, fanning out the bottom of his sweatshirt.It was February, but still California.
“For you?Yes.For other people?That’s for me to worry about.”Lucas gave a self-deprecating little laugh.“But I definitely think I want to focus on portraiture.Maybe you’d let me shoot you too?”he asked Finch, who took a moment to respond because Skyler had stripped off his sweatshirt.
I cleared my throat and Finch jumped, coloring.“What?Shoot— Oh,me?Hell no, I bet people would pay moneynotto look at me.”He tried to play the blush off as humility.And everyone who was Skyler bought it.
“Robin, you know perfectly well that you have a compelling air of drama.”Lucas waved Skyler toward the door.“Before you guys leave, let’s you and me tackle that coffee table.”
Once they were gone, I said, “You’re right, Titch.”
“Huh?I am?”
I shrugged.“I am happy.”
He let his head roll on his neck and gave a performative full body shiver.“That’s sowrong.”
“I have dimension, you little shite.”I let my smile spread into a grin and leaned toward him across the kitchen island.“I won’t be flattened by your simplistic worldview.People can be more than one thing, contradictory things, even, and they don’t cancel each other out.”
“Uh-huh, sure.You’re balancing being a miserable bastard with also being a big happy dweeb?”
“Aye.And you’re balancing being a good friend with being in love.”
He stared at me with his mouth open, then shut it with a snap.“I’m taking your class next semester,” he said, then ran out the door.
Like hell he was.
I lumbered in pursuit, out into the bloody California bloody winter sunshine, when Lucas met me round the blind corner.I was about to start complaining at him when he indecorously but quite tenderly pushed me up against the wall and kissed me until I was a gasping mound of jelly.
“Sorry,” he whispered against my lips.“I know I said no flirting, but you’rereallycute.”
I had to marry this man or I was going to die.I hooked my thumbs in the belt loops of his blue jeans—which he only ever wore for work or if I asked nicely—and pulled him close.“I’m not bothered.Love a hypocrite, me.”
And we kissed a bit longer.
I could imagine one day being the type of person who had both a dining and living room, who consistently workedata desk rather than under one, who was happy and dweeby more often than he was miserable.So long as Lucas kept wanting to kiss me, anything was possible.
We were so different.Contradictory.But between his fire and my ice we might end up with something rather cozy.A life that quietly drove us off our rockers but always swung us back onto them again.Something infuriating, delightful, safe, and ours.
Perfect, on balance.