Tanner and Esme

Chapter 11 (Tanner): Where I Should Have Been

"I can't believe he's already one," Esme said to me as we watched our son smash his little birthday cake on his highchair tray. My mother was standing right beside Jude, laughing and egging him on as she took picture after picture of the little man.

Esme was tucked into my side, my arm draped over her shoulder, an increasingly common happening. I liked the feel of her body pressed against me, her softness making me want to ditch the party and start practicing for another baby. Immediately.

Turning to face her, I pressed my forehead to hers, my smile wide. "It's been a good year, Ez. Wouldn't you say?"

I'd graduated and was now working full time at the company. Dad had started me out in Sales and Trent was complaining about having been moved to Marketing.

Esme and I had bought a little starter home that Esme fell in love with when she was looking for places online. She'd shown it to me with so much enthusiasm that I would have said yes to buying it even if it'd been horrible. Even though it was small, it was homey. Cozy. Five of our homes would fit into the house I'd grown up in, but Esme had fallen in love with it and I couldn't say no to her.

Since we'd been married, Ez had been really quiet about her preferences unless it was Jude-related. But the house had flipped a switch in her and as we'd toured home after home, she hadn't seemed comfortable with the houses we were being shown.

"I don't know what we'd do with all this space, Tanner."

"It's just so...cold. It lacks personality."

"Maybe something with less square footage?"

Our house was smaller than anything I'd ever imagined living in, and I sometimes had the random thought that there was no way Mindy would ever live in house this small. She'd have wanted something bigger. But Esme danced around our house, happy with everything about our home. Lighter than I'd ever seen her. Once she went so far as to hug me and immediately tried to pull back, but I locked my arms around her and wouldn't let her go until she danced around our living room with me.

That was the first and only time she'd ever initiated anything remotely physical with me. She always responded when I initiated a hug, a kiss, an arm around her waist or sex, but other than that one time, she waited for me to make the moves. Not that she had long to wait. I couldn't keep my hands and mouth off her, and no matter how often I told her she should feel free to touch me or kiss me or whatever me, she wouldn't.

I would have bought more homes for her if it resulted in spontaneous affection from her. My parents had told us they were giving us a hundred fifty thousand to use toward our home, so we were left with an unbelievably small mortgage.

"So now you can see how the other half lives," Trent had said to me once when we'd had a house-warming barbecue. It was the first time he'd seen our home, and I could tell he wasn't impressed. But Esme was and that's all that mattered to me. She'd been so excited to play hostess, she didn't sleep the night before.

"A party at our house, Tanner! I never thought I'd have my own house."

"Don't say that," I told Trent sharply. "And definitely don't let Ez hear you say that. I don't want you to be an ass about this and wreck this for her."

"Mindy's closet would have been as big as your house."

"Why the hell are you bringing her up?"

"You never talk about her. Never even mention her name."

"That part of my life is over."