Archive of Our Own ^beta

Her office is dark, but for the glow of the laptop screen and it’s reflection in the window, where streaks of spring rain trail electric blue down the glass pane. Rebecca’s fully aware she shouldn’t be watching this, but she’s taken to self-flagellation like a duck to water over the last few horrible days. One more cut to her soul among hundreds couldn’t possibly make too much difference; one more raindrop in an endless storm.

If Anonymous Sources had been a total bitch when they came for Ted, then Anonymous Sources providing pictures of her innocently leaving Sam’s house far too late at night, combined with crushingly intimate details of their breakup, made them dickhole supreme- at least according to Nora’s sweetly supportive texts. 

Utter betrayal, her decades old companion, back again, it seemed.

Rebecca wouldn't normally be in the office at this point- a week and change into the off-season; nobody would. She'd be halfway to the sunny ports of northern Spain on a yacht by now if it weren’t for her own poor choices. She wishes she could celebrate more; as all the boys so deservedly were- based on the varied social media posts Keeley kept texting her to cheer her up. Well, all the boys except one, she supposes, as her eyes refocus on the livestream in front of her.

Sam was doing remarkably well with this surprise press conference of his. He’s everything charming and sweet; choosing reporters who will ask him questions that help him on his way to explaining how all this had happened- how she, his boss, had allowed this to go so far. Ever wise, Sam sounds older than his years as he speaks, yet it doesn’t help even one iota. He just looks so, so crushingly young, sitting there under the lights in his Richmond primary colors. He’s admirably trying to take some of the heat for her, but the rush of gratitude she feels at the gesture just ends up settled like slick river silt in the pit of her stomach. What a lovely mistake to make, she thinks, staring at his smile on the screen; two devastatingly nice weeks to keep as a memory while the entire country snickers and roars at her back.

Sam had, mostly, gotten off with possibly well meaning ‘atta boy’ jokes and somewhat bizarre pitying reactions- the press’ tendency to not be awful to men coming as a welcome relief in this single instance. As for Old Rebecca? Well, Rupert’s clever innuendos had been fucking tame in comparison. No one ever said the British press wasn’t creative when the opportunity arose. And now that they had confirmation? She shudders to think what tomorrow will bring, and swallows heavily, wishing she had saved one of this morning’s biscuits for her premature descent into hell. 

As if the very thought of biscuits could summon him, Ted walks in without knocking, flipping on the lights, illuminating her horrid posture over the desk. A latter-day Marie Antionette in her cell, awaiting the guillotine. He sizes up the situation as he crosses the room and snaps her laptop firmly shut with a shake of his head the second he’s within reach of it. Rebecca narrows her eyes up at him and then sighs in resignation. He’s right.

“Don’t do that, Boss. Not gonna help.”

Her expression crumples before she catches herself.

“Please don’t call me that. Not today.” She chokes out, suddenly barely able to speak. It’s all too much right now.

“Rebecca...” He begins, and there are a thousand things he wants to say, but he can’t make even one of them take the journey from his brain to his mouth. He’d been about to do his ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ bit, but her tone just then had stopped him on a dime.

“You’re already leaving, so just go.” Rebecca bites out in the lingering silence, ragged and pained, on the edge of tears she simply cannot hide today. 

Ted’s leave of absence- indeterminate in length, sadly and soberly requested just two days after winning promotion, began tomorrow morning, and Rebecca felt like she was standing back at her father’s funeral- frustrated, angry, but grieving just the same. Bereft. When was it that she’d forgotten how to live her life without this ridiculous, kind, infuriating man? And why was she being so harsh? He would come back; he had promised.

“Sorry, Ted. I’m- just- I’m sorry.” 

The guilt for making him feel worse about a decision he has clearly agonized over twists inside her. She just wants to say she’ll miss him, but then he’ll leave, taking with him what felt like the only unbroken part of her left. 

Ted takes in her anguish with his standard brand of simple compassion and three words loosen inside him.

“Come with me.”

“What?” Rebecca looks as if he’s just slapped her across the face- quite similar to the shock she wore the moment he forgave her last year.

He shrugs, but remains confident. “You’re gonna run, I can tell. We might as well go together. Take this Bonnie and Clyde show on the road.”

“You’re serious.”

“As a deep fried heart attack.” He holds her gaze. “Come with me.” 

She takes a deep breath in, registering how deadly sincere he looks as he makes the offer a second time. A way out is just what she needs, and if the way out happens to not include having to let him go- so much the better. 

“Alright.” Rebecca breathes, and feels her shoulders drop from around her ears for the first time in at least seventy-two hours. She’s never really been able to resist him, not even a little. 

A smile of victory quirks the side of his lips and moustache momentarily as he moves into the sacred space behind her desk and leans over her shoulder to open her laptop and pull up his flight numbers. Rebecca scoffs at him when he complains that he’s fine in business class and she can’t just buy him a whole new first class ticket because she wants someone’s hand to hold for takeoff. A few thousand pounds is the least she can do, she counters, for someone offering her shelter and company at a time like this.

He doesn’t leave her side until the next morning, though it’s not something they really discuss. It’s seemingly understood between them- the early flight time, and the fact that she has a driver to take them, makes it all rather simple. They pick up his suitcase and lock up his flat after grabbing a last pint and some dinner at the pub. When Rebecca shakes Mae’s hand, after Mae hurries around the bar to wrap Ted in a motherly goodbye hug, she thinks maybe Mae can tell this is a longer farewell than Rebecca is feigning. The older woman touches her forearm gently and adds- “Time takes time, Ms. Welton. Be well, alright?” 

Rebecca’s ears ring with the weight of those well wishes the whole dark rainy walk around Richmond Green. Ted balances his umbrella over the rolling suitcase behind them and huddles under hers, and she finds herself uncommonly grateful that he respects her silence as she mulls over Mae’s words, because she can tell he’s dying to say something goofy about the rain and his umbrella trick. Instead, he rests his hand above hers on the curved wooden umbrella handle, setting the warm edge of his palm against her thumb in the smallest and somehow most reassuring touch anyone’s ever offered her.

Later, Ted lounges on the foot of her bed as she packs- making little jokes about her expensive luggage- and then loiters in her kitchen, helping clean out the fridge as she makes a late night call to her lawyer while writing a note and a generous check for her cleaner to leave on the counter. He helps her word a properly heartfelt email to Higgins, and Ted knows the man will be touched by Rebecca’s complete confidence in him as her stand-in. 

Ted sleeps in the guest room closest to her, and they both leave their doors half open. Rebecca can hear his rustling and light snores from across the hall when she wakes hours before any hint of dawn, and she falls back asleep to the thought that it’s nice to have him around, his energy; his unwavering support. 

This decision doesn’t make any more or less sense than the others she’s made recently. Most of all she feels safe- safe with him- safer leaving together and not alone. It’s probably selfish of her to simply disappear, but Rebecca struggles to think of what else she could do- given the circumstances.

Very early the next morning, an hour before even the most assiduous of paparazzi would be awake, Ted gives her a moment as she locks up her front door. He watches her shoulders loosen further as she turns toward him and he takes in her smile of reserved excitement with a matching one of his own. They’re doing the craziest right thing they know how, he’s relatively sure, as he glances out the car window at the fog hanging low over the wide tree-lined green. He wonders what will have changed before he sees this sight again.

A layover in Chicago- that Ted spends most of nodding off against Rebecca’s shoulder in the First-Class lounge- has them landing in Kansas City just after dinnertime. Ted rents a mid-size suv and piles their luggage in the back as Rebecca yawns extravagantly.

“Yeah, Yeah. Long day. We gotta feed you first before we head out to the house though, or you’ll turn back into a pumpkin at midnight, Sleeping Beauty, and I don’t have any magic biscuits on me.” 

She grins. “I suppose there must be some barbecue sauce around here somewhere.”

Ted shakes his head. “We’re gonna save barbecue anything until you’re awake enough to really appreciate it. Call that blasphemy here, eating nice barbecue half-asleep. Wouldn’t be fair to the cow, neither. Tonight I say- tacos. Ain’t Tuesday but how ‘bout it? Place one-a Beard’s old lady friends runs isn’ far.”

Rebecca nods through another yawn, fascinated by the way his accent has thickened noticeably in the last half hour, and waves him towards the drivers side door.

“Lead on, Macduff.” 

Rebecca is intrigued by this house he’s mentioned, intrigued by the life he lived before she knew him. His childhood opens to her slowly as they drive down the darkening country roads. Ted shares bits of trivia as she takes in the small town sights- ones that fade quickly into the darkness of the fields and woods surrounding them as they pass. It's easy to forget how dark the night really is when you live in the perpetual twilight of a large city. Eventually, he points out the lights of his mothers cottage as they turn a corner past two mailboxes. Ted stops and leans out of the car window with practiced ease, and retreiving a set of keys from one before beginning the drive up the hill. 

“Mom’s gonna come up tomorrow mornin’ with breakfast. Says she cleaned up two of the rooms for us and left us some snacks and turned on the water this afternoon, but the old fridge won’t be cold enough for real groceries until then. Said she woulda come up tonight but she’s down at some church thing. She’s real excited to meet ya.”

The wide porch creaks underfoot and the screen door springs protest their lack of recent use as Ted unlocks the door under the wavy amber porchlight and ushers her inside. 

“Welcome to the noble and ancient Lasso homestead.” 

He reaches for the light switch inside by muscle memory and, though it's a bit dusty, Rebecca can tell it’s a fine old house. It reminds her of American movies she’s seen- a quintessential farmhouse. There’s a swing on the porch and sheets over the furniture, an old stand radio in the corner of the parlor. It smells faintly of lavender and tobacco.

“My great-grandparents lived here, and my grandparents, and then we did- but when I went off to college after my Dad- well, Mom didn’t want to live up here alone with all the memories. She and my Uncle and Aunt sorta switched houses. Mom lives in the cottage he built down the drive and they lived up here until they passed- ‘bout five and then three years ago now. Now it’s just- here- I s’pose.”

“It’s lovely Ted, it feels- like you. If that makes any sense.”

Ted smiles, and there's a sadness to it that somehow does make perfect sense to Rebecca.

“Mom rents it out occasionally, and sometimes the Church’s visiting missionaries live here or the youth group will do a sleepover weekend; think she mentioned a wedding up here last fall sometime. I mean, I had ideas when my marriage started to fall apart that I’d move up here and stay if we got divorced. But then Richmond happened- you happened- and I’d forgotten until Doc Sharon and I started discussing how I could best finish all my unfinished business.”

He shows her up the stairs to his parent’s old room, it’s the biggest- with the best view, and she wouldn’t have any memories to fight with in there. He notices fondly that his Mom set up the room that his grandparents had always slept in, when they had lived there, for him- just across the hall from Rebecca- sensitive to the fact that he might not want to sleep in what had been his teenage bedroom anymore.

Their doors remain open again that night; the beginning of a pattern they don’t yet know they’ve fallen into.

Rebecca doesn’t get a real good look at the house or the land until the next morning. She walks out onto the porch with her tea, still a bit bleary from sleep and jet-lag, and gasps when she looks out over the landscape under the bright risen sun.

“Wow.” She can see all the way down and across the river from here, and she very much hadn’t thought Kansas had any hills, even low, rolling ones like these.

“That’s the Missouri, my dear.” says a kindly voice from the porch swing. 

Rebecca takes one look at the woman and knows exactly who she is. Ted looks just like her.

“Deirdre?”

“Dee, please. And you’re Rebecca.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve heard quite a bit about you from my son- and a bit more from my grandson.”

Rebecca doesn’t bother asking if it's all good things. The Lasso boys don’t bother with spreading bad news.

“Speaking of your son- Where’s he gone off to?”

“Oh, around. Exploring probably- he hasn’t been up here since his Uncle Matthew passed.” Dee pats the seat next to her on the swing. “Now come sit down and tell me about yourself. How about we start with where you grew up and what you got in trouble for most as a youngster- that’s always a good tell about people. And have a muffin from the table there before Teddy comes back and eats them all.”

Rebecca smiles into her mug of tea as her brain suggests to her the phrase ‘Muffins with my Mom’ in Ted’s voice.

Ted fixes things. The first week he sets about getting his mom’s old truck running- the one she never drives anymore. He bakes; Rebecca’s morning biscuits, and also some heavenly tasting, rustic sort of bread- in a stove that was probably manufactured before either of them were born, maybe even before their parents were, but works just as well as if it were new. 

There are no more pink boxes, just a little covered dish on the kitchen shelf; giving her the luxury of a biscuit any time she wants. Rebecca finds, to her surprise, that she doesn’t eat as many this way; knowing that they’re always there keeps the craving to a minimum.

Ted cleans tirelessly too, obviously wanting to have something to occupy his mind and his hands. Rebecca helps sometimes, sweeping cobwebs from corners and sneezing profusely while helping him beat old rag rugs over the washline in the yard with some ancient, badly strung tennis rackets he’d scrounged up down in the cellar. 

They laugh together some evenings, watching old movies on Rebecca’s laptop with over buttered, stove popped popcorn- after replacing the long-dead wifi router, that is. She tosses popcorn at his open mouth and keels over in hysterics, spilling half her bowl onto the floor, when a puffy kernel gets stuck in his moustache and he tries in vain to retrieve it with his tongue. 

Many nights are still and quiet at the beginning of their time in Kansas though, each of them wrapped up in their own thoughts and tightly held tragedies. The bedroom doors are closed more times than they are open, and sometimes they miss one another- still not graduated completely out of their months of avoidance. It’s becoming a silent language between them- her door closed for a few hours is no worry- all evening and Ted thinks maybe he’ll give her some space until lunch the next day.

Sunday of the second week is as far as Ted makes it without speaking up. They’re washing the dishes that piled up from Henry staying for two days in a row; they don’t have to look at one another, so it feels safe enough.

“It okay for me to-? I mean, would you mind me asking?”

She does look at him, at the faint reflection in the glass of the window above the sink as a late May thundershower pours off the eaves outside. She knows exactly what he’s after- with his tone of pure, Ted-like curiosity.

She tries to keep her voice neutral as she answers. “What would you like to know?” 

Ted hands over a small saucepan to be rinsed and dried.

“Guess I’d wanna fill in your side, Sally Ride. Been watching you process for a while now. You must have your own whys and hows.”

“I’m not sure I do, Ted.” She stops herself short. “God, that's obviously a lie. Of course I do.” She pauses to think for a moment, and then sighs. 

“He- Sam- just made everything feel so simple. As if him liking me, and me liking him was all that mattered. Even after I shouted every possible ramification at him across a very fancy restaurant bar when I realized it was actually him I was there to meet.” She chuffs ruefully. “And then, for that little while, he made it so possible for me to believe he was right- that someone so kind, and wonderful, could be someone for me- That the rather risky course I had chosen wasn’t doomed to crash and burn my whole-“ Rebecca shakes her head, no use hashing that bit out again. 

“There was- there was this glimmer in it, of something. It was easy between us. Nice. I wanted that part- and I just shoved the rest away, until- It just- all became clear. That I had crossed so many lines without even thinking, and with a relationship I wasn’t overly confident in...”

Rebecca frowns, then smiles a little mysteriously over at Ted after a moment. “I’m such an unholy mess of a girl.” A quote from their most recent movie night. 

Ted offers her a sympathetic smile back, but says nothing, drawing out the silence, letting her work this out. Rebecca rinses the last two mugs and places them to drain, and then seems to lose her patience.

“Christ, I fucking- I knew better! Way better. Light years! And I still did it!” She says vehemently, drying her hands, fighting within herself. Ted can hear her distress as she turns away, back toward the window, and tosses the towel onto the counter.

“That’s the worst part. I could see the end- this end- from the moment he tried to kiss me.” She shrugs, denying the pain written all over her face, ignoring the single tear rolling down her cheek.

“I think I broke his heart, Ted. And no one made me. Ask me why I did that.” 

Ted breaks in gently, and lightly taps at the back of the hand she is resting on the sink edge. “Hey, okay. Let’s stop here for now. It’s gonna be alright, Rebecca. You’re both alright. If it was all a mistake- which I’m not sure we could really say- You’re allowed to make mistakes. The big ones just take a little longer to work out. And you do deserve someone kind- Not gonna let that stay up for debate.”

“I hope so.” She replies softly, finally wiping the tear from her face and turning back to face him. “I don’t feel as if I deserve much of anything right now.”

Ted rests his hand on hers, fingers brushing the side of her wrist. “You deserve kindness always, Rebecca. Even if you need a hard truth once in a while, it can come along with kindness. And it wasn’t just Sam’s heart in this, remember.” He reassures her firmly, and then his eyes flick away from hers, a little vulnerable, maybe, as he goes on. “l appreciate you telling me all that. You’re always checking in on me in hard times, like my personal guardian angel. ‘M sorry it took me this long to return the favor.”

She flips her hand under his and squeezes his palm. “You’ve already returned that favor a hundred times over, Ted. Every morning. It’s mad that it took me so long to figure out what you were really doing with all those biscuits and ridiculous questions.”

Ted smirks. “Maybe I just like bothering you before you’ve had your third cup of tea. I live on the edge.”

Rebecca snorts. “So says the man with ten pairs of khaki trousers.”

“It’s a disguise. I’m like a spy. Blending ins’ good for surprising people.”

She shakes her head fondly. “You certainly surprised me.” 

Rebecca plants a garden, like they’re going to be here a while, long enough to watch things grow. Ted had nodded when she pointed out the seed packets at the store, and she had taken it as permission. 

He brings her the garden tools the next day, and helps her clear out the overgrown garden boxes and till the soil up, cracking jokes about seeing her in overalls the entire time. They collapse in the grass together when it’s finished, sweaty and pink from the sun. He pokes at her with a dirty garden trowel, wiping it on the leg of her overalls, commenting that they still look too new and the plants are gonna know she’s a rookie. Rebecca pulls off the straw hat she found in the stillroom and swats at him, laughing, feeling completely free for the first time in what feels like a decade but was probably even longer. She gets him back when the garden hose comes out, spraying him in a shower of prismed droplets, scattering a rainbow as she calls her thanks across the yard.

“Did I get you, Ted?”

To his credit, he gets the joke and doesn’t run from the spray, just salutes her as he takes off his faded red baseball cap, letting the cool water soak his grimy, sweaty skin.

There’s something about working with your hands, using your own strength, out under the blooming heat of the early morning sun that makes a body feel alive. Rebecca faintly remembers gardening with her grandmother as a child, but it was never like this- her nails were never caked with dirt and the skin of her palms had never been green from cutting weeds. The joy she feels when everything takes root and fragile green leaves begin to climb out of the dirt into the sunshine is incomparable. It’s little and nothing, a common garden, but it’s everything to Rebecca, because as her seedlings grow, a delicate hope begins to unfurl in her chest- a hope that she too can grow, here in this sunny place.

She reads voraciously- on the porch swing, on the old sofa in the living room, even out under the stand of blossoming apple trees on cooler days. When she’s finished the books she brought with her she orders more, books she’s had on her mental list for ages and had never gotten to. There’s so much space here, both physical and mental, and she can take up as much as she wants.

A chapter of Bleak House in the mornings with her tea- the moody scenes and dry humor keeping her close to her London home from far away. The evenings she begins to devote herself to some of the books on the overfilled shelves scattered around the house. American authors mostly; Willa Cather quickly becomes one of her favorites. She even picks up and reads those damn Brené Brown books that her mother had tried to push on her over the years and is almost dismayed when she finds herself dripping tears onto the pages at the deeply true things she feels in response to the author's words and stories. Shame and Rebecca have been steady bedfellows since her early teens; true vulnerability became almost impossible in the wake of her father’s betrayal and then her mother’s distance. She hadn’t come to realize that she had denied herself every chance to grow, by boxing herself into the convenient compartments the world had provided her with, until it was far too late. That she’d spent her adult life reacting to things that others did- desperate to please them and keep them at arm's length; it can’t hurt to be rejected if no one knows who you really are- wherein lies the monkey’s paw- if no one knows you, you will forever feel alone.

Ted has continued seeing Sharon remotely, now he trusts her with his secrets. They’ve both moved on in locale, but she’s kindly agreed to virtual sessions for a bit longer. Rebecca tries to be out in the garden on Wednesday mornings during his sessions- wanting him to have as much space as possible to sort out his feelings. Sometimes he goes up to his room and closes his door for a few hours afterwards, and Rebecca doesn’t pry- just makes her own lunch or walks down the hill to get the mail and inevitably visit with Dee, who often sees her out the window and beckons her in with tea and some biscuits that taste awfully familiar.  

After a few weeks, Rebecca tentatively begins to see an American therapist- a kindly woman only a few years older than her, with a sensitive yet grave disposition that Rebecca finds soothing and competent. Ted drives her an hour to Kansas City and an hour back twice a week- She says it’s too much, that she can see someone online, but he sets her straight on American driving distances versus English ones and tells her it’s nice to get out of the house. He adds that he’d drive her “Three hours both ways in a snowstorm-” if it got her to actually talk through all this with someone.

After her sessions, they sometimes have lunch- Ted seems to know every restaurant proprietor in the entire city somehow or other- and occasionally they spend afternoons doing tourist type things: art museums and the like. Ted revels in showing her his hometown- the way she now regrets never having done for him with London. Rebecca watches him search her face each time she climbs into the old truck, determining whether she’s up for anything before he even asks. The day her therapist encourages her to call what happened to her in her marriage abuse she’s barely holding back frustrated tears as she wrenches open the door. Ted has the grace to say nothing as he turns onto the highway, and changes the radio to the local bluegrass station, to keep her mind occupied and calm and far from anything English. She doesn’t say a word, but her kicked off heels, drawn up knees, and fingers twisting at her rings speak volumes. After a while, he tells her a few old family stories, filling up the cab with his comfortable chatter.

When they get back to the house she thanks him quietly for driving her and then goes upstairs and shuts herself away. He doesn’t shout as he usually does when dinner is ready, just sends her a text that says she should eat something and it’s ready.

She appears in the kitchen, much more in sorts than she had been, soft fuzzy socks on her feet, and he hands her a plate. 

“Thank you.” He knows she doesn’t just mean the food.

“Anytime, Becca.” She knows he means he would do anything she asked. 

💜

It takes over a month for them to really have it out. It rains for days straight in June, nothing at all like London’s drizzle, and incomparable to the power of the real summer thunderstorms she’d witnessed since coming to Kansas. In fact, Rebecca would rather it have been the latter- at least that would be somewhat exciting- the thunder and lighting shaking the house, the sheer force of the winds whistling shrill past the pointed eaves like an admonition from Mother Nature herself. 

By the fourth day of it pouring wretchedly at least twenty hours of the day, Ted has gone absolutely bonkers and Rebecca feels like a caged tiger who’s been rather unhelpfully put next to a cage of chattering monkeys. She hadn’t realized how much time they’d been spending outside.

“Ted!” She interrupts another rambling story and puts the book she’s reading over her entire face. “Please. You’re going to wear a hole in the floor and in my fucking eardrums. Can you just? Go and bake something?”

“We’re out of flour. Used it yesterday for the cookies.”

Rebecca groans. He’s had a bad day and so has she. Henry had a change of plans this weekend, taking him to a birthday party sleepover and Ted and Michelle had disagreed about something else on the phone earlier that Rebecca hadn’t felt comfortable prying into. So Ted is jumping out of his skin to connect with someone, namely her, like a puppy wanting to play, and she’s been denying him, pulling away, burying herself in books and shutting her door when she napped and, obviously, when she took a long bath. She’s wrung out from starting therapy, so fucking tired of being inside and, ever since their short talk about Sam, she’s been feeling the weight of strangers’ phantom eyes from four thousand miles away every time Ted looks at her for too long. She’d like nothing more than to really talk with him, but she can’t make the words come out, not right now. And she can’t think straight regardless.

He sits down next to her feet and looks over her knees. “New book? It any good?”

Rebecca frowns, frustration roiling low in her chest. “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been able to concentrate since you followed me in here.”

“Anybody get murdered? Looks like one-na those kind.”

“Someone’s about to.” She says dryly.

“Come on, Rebecca.”

“Come on what, Ted?”

“Stop doing the thing.”

“What thing?”

“The- I dunno, the disappearing lady bit. You’ve been all shy and strange the last couple days- Did I do something?”

“Not everything is about you, Coach.” The title comes out almost like an insult, and she regrets it the second she hears her own voice.

Ted flinches. “Don’t-”

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have,” she apologizes genuinely before he can finish.

His head falls back to the cushion, and his fingers won’t stop fidgeting on his bouncing knee. The sound of the rain tipping down accompanies his restlessness, adding a layer to Rebecca’s anxiety. He opens his mouth like he’s about to start a new story, and with the words “You know, this one-“ Rebecca goes cross-eyed with frustration and jumps up from the couch.

“Christ, Ted! I swear to God, if you don’t leave it out I’m going back to London even if I have to paddle a fucking rowboat!”

She doesn’t look at him. She doesn’t want to see. It’s not going to stop raining, he’s not going to stop trying, so she stalks her way upstairs, shuts the door firmly and presses her palms to her eyes in an attempt not to go completely insane.

It only takes her a few minutes to calm down and have a little rest. And to start to feel incredibly guilty. She shouldn’t have threatened to leave; that had been low- considering everything. It wasn’t Ted’s fault they were sort of stuck or that Henry had new friends. As Rebecca retrieves a soft jumper from her closet, her eyes light upon a few boxes of puzzles stacked up near the ceiling. She pulls them down, and chooses one- a complex scene of summer produce at a farmer’s market, five hundred tiny pieces for her and Ted to turn their attention to while they wait for the end of her first American monsoon.

She peeks out of her room and hears nothing.

“Ted?” She calls lightly as she looks for him over the banister, holding the taped corners of the slightly fragile box against her chest as she descends. He must be in the kitchen. She’s correct, spotting his familiar curved back as he leans over the wooden table.

“Oh, here you are. I’m sorry. I was being a right old-“ she begins, but her words fly away from her when she realizes that something is very wrong.

One of Ted’s fists is pressed against his forehead and the other is gripping the edge of the table so hard his entire hand is turning white. It doesn’t even look like he’s breathing- Rebecca has never seen him so still. The side of his face is red with exertion and she instantly knows what he’s doing. He’s holding it in- trying incredibly hard not to panic- and with her entrance, she’s unintentionally blown against his house of cards. Ted collapses into the chair next to him with a strangled- “Damn it.” -unable to hold back the tide. 

His shoulders heave over, trying to make himself smaller, and the puzzle box falls from her arm, forgotten, scattering hundreds of tiny pieces across the wood floor. In two steps Rebecca has her hands on his shoulders, then on either side of his face as she kneels at his side and pushes his hair back from his clammy brow. 

Her gentlest voice placates him, “Breathe, Ted. Just breathe. I’m here. You’re alright.” though she mutters to herself- “Shit, shit, I’m so sorry. God, what is wrong with me?” -interspersed in between her calming words and touches.

He seems to be trying to tell her something as he gulps for breath and presses his fist over her hand on his cheek. “No, Becca, It’s not- Stay- Don’t.”

She shushes him. “Whatever it is, you can tell me in a moment. I’m not going anywhere. Breathe now, Ted. Count with me, okay?”

She tethers him as he recovers, her low encouragements and rubbing thumbs help re-connect him with his surroundings. They’re holding hands, heads bent low together when he finally speaks.

“Are those? Puzzle pieces?”

A small huff of happy relief escapes her, and she leans her forehead against his shoulder for a few seconds, regaining her own equilibrium, now that he’s truly alright.

“I thought we could use something to distract us.”

“New way to build a puzzle, hmm, throwin’ it all over the floor. ‘S like expert mode.”

Rebecca can’t help but hug him tightly before she stands up and surveys the mess and the broken box. “I think we have to build it now. Otherwise we’ll never know if we found all the pieces.”

They set their hands and minds to work together. She scoops the pieces off the floor and he slides them around on the table, flipping their right sides over with still-unsteady fingers. It’s smooth sailing between them once more; it’s how they’ve always been, really, connecting without effort on most everything. She apologizes to him again, feeling responsible for his panic, and he waves her off.

“It wasn’t you. Promise. Bad day, lotta feelings. Think it was the bedroom door shutting that specific way. The sound of it. Bad memory, like a ghost- and suddenly I was up in here.” He taps a finger against his temple.

Her heart clenches with care for him. “I’m still sorry, Ted.” 

“Well I’m sorry too, for buggin’ you when I knew you weren’t feelin’ great- and I appreciate you holding me together- again. You and I gotta stop meeting like that.” 

“It’d be nice to worry less about you, but I don’t mind- if it helps- not at all.”

His eyes catch hers over the table. “Guess that’s good to know. ‘S over much quicker when you’re here. Or maybe it just feels quicker.”

She doesn’t know how to take that, or what to say, and hopes the small smile she offers him will be understood. The puzzle is starting to take shape when she speaks up again. “You know Ted, you can tell me things without me asking. Anything. I’m here to listen- if you want.”

He sends her a look of gentle irony.

Rebecca rolls her eyes. “Yes, yes. I should take my own advice. I know.”

“Well maybe just more than once a year, Rebecca.”

They’re putting together the puzzle with growing speed, handing necessary pieces over the table to each other without really needing words. Rebecca gravitates naturally to building the edges, while Ted uses color and shape to fit together the main features of the image. 

Rebecca takes the opportunity to talk without having to look directly at him- like he’d done when they spoke about Sam.

“The distance recently- I know you asked earlier if you had done something- You haven’t, and you didn’t. It just got- difficult to tell you things for a while. To tell anyone. I got a bit lost in myself, I think. I wanted to talk to you, I just- didn’t.” She makes a little face at her own halting voice, but can see Ted nodding in her periphery. 

“I know what you mean. We passed by each other a lot this spring. Ships in the night and all.”

Rebecca takes a deep breath and fits another cardboard piece into place, worrying over it with her index finger. “After the Tottenham game, I couldn’t find you- and it scared me. But then you seemed fine, so I let it be, and I wonder now if that was where I went wrong.”

Ted is quiet for a long moment. “Still have that voicemail.”

She looks up, full surprise written in the lines of her forehead. “You do?”

Ted shrugs. “Mhmm. Listen to it a lot actually. Reminds me I have people who look for me, and need me for pep talks- who need me in general.”

“Oh. That’s- really- very sweet.”

Rebecca is touched, and her heart turns over in her chest- an unfamiliar but comforting warmth settling inside her, a little hearth fire ignited by the intimacy of his admission.

Ted clears his throat and breaks their gaze, looking down to admire the half-finished puzzle. “Well, would ya look at this? Even if we don't talk to each other sometimes- we can always communicate through the language of puzzles. Think we’ve found our hobby.”

Rebecca shrugs. “We make a good team. Don’t know if there’s a trophy for speed building puzzles of giant vegetables after managing a panic attack, but we’ll definitely win if there is.”

“Well, I did promise you a trophy. Kinda thought it’d be a football trophy, though.”

Rebecca stills his hand over the table. “It will be, Ted.” She sounds utterly faithful.

Ted smiles, his moustache twitching, and shakes his head a little. “Have I mentioned I’m glad you’re here? Because I am.”

“Several times.” Rebecca returns his smile softly as she pulls her hand back- taking a puzzle piece from between his fingers, one he’d been puzzling over for the last few minutes, with her- and fitting it in with a little triumphant flourish. “It’s a good job I am here too, because clearly you’d never finish the edges of this puzzle if I weren’t.” She says cheekily, and Ted can’t help chuckle.

He was gonna have to buy her more puzzles.

Ted leans his head in her open door long after dark the next night, after it’s finally, blessedly stopped raining, with an almost sheepish look about him. “Did you bring a coat?”

She’d been thinking of going to sleep soon, and yawns as she sets aside her phone. “Not a heavy one.”

“Should be fine.” He goes to her closet and pulls a heavy blanket from the very top shelf, above the puzzles. 

“No moon tonight- Wanna go see the stars? They’re really somethin’ out here.” He pauses, a little- unsure, shuffling his feet. She suddenly realizes he’s trying to fix what happened. 

“Ted it’s not your fault I got weary yesterday. You don’t have to-”

“M’not.” He lies, and she decides to let him have it.

Rebecca trips as they step over a low wall and he catches her by the elbow.

“What were the stones, Ted?”

“Oh, the barn burned down in the 60’s. Took my Grandpa’s prized convertible with it. Nana Lasso hated that car. Whoo-ee, she did. She said that lightning strike musta’ been sent straight from the Lord himself to save her worrying about Grandpa rolling himself into an early grave.” She can tell Ted is grinning, even though his flashlight is pointed down. 

“Though Uncle Matty told me once he thought maybe my Pop did it on accident, smoking in the hayloft.”

It’s later, when they’ve situated themselves on the heavy woolen blanket Ted brought and begun looking up at the pinhole tapestry of the sky, eyes adjusting, that she almost whispers a question that’s been quietly tucked in the back of her mind since the day of the darts match.

“What was he like?”

Ted shifts his shoulders, adjusting his back. “My dad?”

“Mhmm.” 

“Well, he was chatty- until he wasn’t, and I barely remember a time he ever raised his voice to me. He loved my mom so much, and me- sometimes it seemed like we were the thing that made him happiest, and then, sometimes it didn’t. He was never sad with his friends though, and it kinda made me jealous. I remember him best at that bar, he really came alive- hustlin’ new people at darts. He was a great teacher- very patient with me, a good coach, making sure I knew every trick. Sometimes, when I look back, it almost feels like he was preparing me. Teachin’ me how to be the big man- how to command the room if I needed to. Getting me ready to be the guy in charge without him. He was kind, and he had a moustache. And this is his chin right here.”

She can’t see it, but the rustling tells her he’s put his fingers to his own chin, lightly scratching at his stubble.

“I really loved that bar, it’s really a shame I never wanna go back.”

Reaching over the few inches between them, Rebecca slips her hand into his and squeezes it. He turns to look at her, though it's so dark he can only barely make out her silhouette.

“What about yours? What was he like for you?”

Rebecca sighs. “Everything you’d think when you met him- but different- because he was also just my Dad. It's odd, learning so much more about your parents after you grow up than you knew as a child. When I was little I barely understood what he did for a living- and he was rarely home. But when he was, he was the greatest fun- unless I did something he didn’t think was quite proper. He took me all over; he even took me to France once, by myself, when I was eight, just to take me to see Versailles when I was in a queens and kings phase. He seemed to know everyone, and how everything worked. He loved when I sang for him, musicals were his favourite. But that all ended, sort of. I still don’t know how I feel about him to be honest, Ted. I loved him very much, and then I hated him even more. I often- I worry that he never really knew me at all and only loved the little giggly Rebecca in his head, the songbird, and not the sullen teenager or, you know, this me.” She breathed out a shaky breath. “He hated Rupert, so there’s at least one tick in his favor. Told me on my wedding day he wouldn’t care if I wanted to run. Even said he’d go with me. It made me so mad then, but now it makes me wonder if maybe we should have talked more.”

Ted squeezes her hand back, comforting, understanding. “Think they’re up there? Talkin’ about us?”

“My father was a bit snobby. I bet he’s avoiding the conversation, despite the Lasso charm.”

“If they've got a dart board I bet it’s not long before they’re chatting up a storm.”

She can hear the smile in Ted’s voice. The stars are fully visible now, and Rebecca can’t actually remember the last time she’d really looked at the Milky Way, if she ever had. The absolute darkness aside from a few fireflies makes it feel as if the stars are close enough to touch, hanging just out of reach above them, swirling balls of fire and light, like a length of black velvet scattered with a million tiny diamonds. Rebecca reaches into the air, tracing imaginary constellation lines with her graceful fingers.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

There’s absolute silence for a while, save for the cicadas in the very tops of far-away trees. 

“Rebecca?”

“Yes?”

“I want to- I mean- I don’t know if this is the right- but there’s- something I'd like to tell you.” He speaks more quietly and carefully than she’s ever heard him speak before. “Sharon, she asked me to consider choosing someone to share it with- a friend- and I’d like it to be you. First, anyways. But it’s a hard thing, and I’d understand if you didn’t want to hear it. Or if you’d rather I tried it out on Beard first, or maybe-”

“About your Dad? About- losing him?” She interrupts breathlessly, guessing. 

Ted stops short and inhales slowly. She knew him almost too well, now. “Yeah, about that.”

“Oh, Ted.” She rolls onto her elbow to face him in the dark, and feels along his arm with her other hand gently, until her fingers rest gently on his shoulder. “I’m here. You can tell me.”

He tells her the story in the same way, finding it easier in the dark when his tears begin to well up. Rebecca doesn’t say a word until the end, but keeps her hand moving up and down his arm, making sure he knows she’s listening.

He ends this time with the bit about when it happened, the day his friends were due to come over, and Rebecca chokes on nothing and pulls away from him, sitting up, needing as much air as she can possibly force into her lungs to keep from getting dizzier than she already felt.

He places a gentle hand on her back. She shivers. “Rebecca? What’s wrong? I know it’s a rough thing to hear about.”

“No. It’s not- I’m so sorry. It’s-” She interrupts herself with a sudden sob, her mind unable to process what has just occurred to her- unable to fathom the meaning of it. Ted sits up next to her, moving his hand around her shaking shoulders.

“Hey, Becca, it’s okay.”

“It isn’t. I’m- sorry that happened to you. To your Mom. So, so sorry, Ted. I can’t imagine- how hard it's been for you to- hold that inside you all this time. I- I think I need to tell you something also. About me. About that same day.”

Something shifts that night, on the back of their revelations, marking a small but clear before and after, the path from here straight on, as if there’s no other way forward, not anymore.

Ted holds her firmly to his side, close under his arm, as they walk quietly back to the house through the dew-damp grass, under the blanket of stars. She tells herself it’s because of the dark, because he doesn’t want her to trip again, and it’s not remotely the truth, but it’s enough for now. 

Rebecca gets to know Henry very well as Ted re-learns his son once again. He’s grown taller, sure, but he also takes up more space now- in the house, in conversations. He’s inventive and inattentive and really quite funny. He has Michelle’s sense of gravity with Ted’s emotional range and sense of humor. Henry feels things more deeply than he will always say, but it’s written right there on his face, just like his father. Rebecca loves him easily, and it's no surprise.

Michelle, meanwhile, has started dating, and is glad she has somewhere completely non-judgemental to leave Henry overnight. Ted is mostly silent about the dating thing, but effusively excited when he gets to spend more time with his boy and make him waffles in the mornings.

Rebecca finally learns what Ted meant when he complained that the players never took him up on his offer for pillow fights when she’s drawn in from reading on the porch one evening by sounds of shouting and boyish laughter.

Henry rushes behind her, hair sticking up at all angles, pillow clutched in his hand, as she closes the door, and she sees Ted round the corner in hot pursuit. She eyes his similarly wild hairstyle with a wry smile.

“Hey, Rebecca. Would you mind awfully taking a few steps forward?” Ted requests in his most gentlemanly tone.

“No! Don’t!” Henry cries from behind her. “He’ll get me! He can’t get you unless you have a pillow!”

Rebecca looks around and hatches a little plan.

“Henry, we’re going to take three big steps over this way alright?” She waves her right arm.

“Ready?” She counts out the steps and they move just over the threshold into the living room.

She turns and leans down to whisper something, and then straightens back up. Ted catches on just one second too late.

Rebecca holds her hand behind her a little- Henry yells “Go!” and passes Rebecca his weapon as he runs for the safety of the sofa and it’s many throw pillows.

Ted cries “Betrayal!” dramatically as Rebecca rushes forward and takes an unexpected swing at him, catching him between the shoulder and neck.

Turnabout’s fair play, so he whacks her on the side and then lunges away. She anticipates him and turns the opposite way, catching him across the stomach as his pillow makes contact directly across her face.

She gasps, and he takes a step back, making sure he hasn’t hurt her. It’s his second mistake, because Rebecca takes the pause to her advantage, and whacks him over the head once more.

“Playing dirty is a bold move for a first timer, Rebecca.”

She grins toothily at him. “What makes you think this is my first time?”

Her hair has been thoroughly mussed in the assault and her cheeks and forehead are blooming pink with laughter and exertion, her green eyes sparkling as she hits out at him again, and it occurs to Ted that she’s quite literally never been more beautiful than right this moment. Rebecca swats at him again, halfheartedly, as he stares at her, utterly poleaxed by the thought that he’d like to lean in and press his lips to her heated cheeks. It’s mercifully cut short by Henry launching himself across the room with a medieval battle cry and swinging his newly acquired sofa pillow up and into the side of Ted's face, knocking both some feathers and some sense into him.

“SNEAK ATTACK DAD!”

Henry runs away again, up the staircase, hiding behind his fluffy weapon.

Rebecca grins after him as they hear a familiar door creak. “Well, I believe he’s in the airing cupboard or whatever Americans call that.”

Ted smiles broadly at her. “Should we get’im?”

“You get him, I’ll make cocoa for whoever survives.”

Ted holds out his hand for her pillow and she shakes her head, clutching it tightly.

“No way. Henry and I have an alliance now. Have to watch his back.”

Ted chuckles, eyes shining. “Never thought Henry would desert me so quick, but I gotta say, I get it. That Welton loyalty, it sucks ya in. Guess I’ll hafta take him on as my squire when me n’ Keeley invade France.”

Ted whistles a military tune as he creeps up the stairs, tossing a conspiratorial look back at her; Rebecca hugs the pillow tightly, rolling her eyes against the little wave of glee rising within her as she walks away into the kitchen.

One afternoon, about midsummer's day, Rebecca freshens up some of Ted’s old childhood linens with Dee, hanging them in blue striped rows to air out in the sunshine. She’s decided to make up a more permanent room for Henry in the house, as Michelle’s recent beau, Dan, has turned into a two to three nights a week thing, in addition to Ted’s usual Saturday nights. Dee seems quite keen on helping, though It’s nothing too intense; Rebecca’s just planning on putting up a new poster or two in the room next to Ted’s, ordering a little set of speakers for his music and emptying out and moving an old desk so that Hen has somewhere to do his drawings or maybe even his schoolwork come September. Dee Lasso is a master of the casual chat; has a way of getting you to open up without you realizing you have. It’s eerily similar to her son. All the Lassos seem to have that in common.

As they shake out the pillowcases and sheets, Dee chats about her beehives- about the new quilt she’s planning for a neighbor’s baby- a few pieces of choice church gossip- any little thing she thinks Rebecca might find interesting, filling up the quiet with her comfortable disarming manner, long enough that Rebecca answers her first real question without really thinking.

“You’ve been mighty quiet going on quite a stretch now Missy, something weighing you down?”

“A lot of things- too many really.”

“More guilt or more anger?”

Rebecca, surprised by the sharp turn in the conversation, considers this. “Both, maybe more anger today.”

“Anger’s okay, anger means you’ve got fight left in ya’, Honey. Means you know there’s something that needs fixing.”

“What about the guilt?”

“Now, guilt’s only helpful so far as you can make amends- after that it’s just you hurtin’ yourself on purpose- and that’s neither use nor ornament to anyone who loves you.” 

“Ah,” Rebecca realizes, reaching into the basket to unfold another pillowcase. “Those are your Brené Brown books.”

“Smart cookie. Teddy said something about you rejecting them on account of your mother- and well, that just didn’t sound like a good enough reason to me.”

“Thank you.”

“Not necessary, my dear, just passing along good words. Now, that stubbornness of yours? Can be a great weapon if you use it for yourself, ‘stead of against others.”

“I never really thought of myself as stubborn, though I suppose I do have a tendency to dig in.”

Dee stares at her with steady eyes. “You got yourself outta that marriage, Rebecca. Takes a strong will to do something like that.”

Rebecca looks away, shy of being seen, and resets a clothespin that has come loose above her.

“He didn’t tell me much, he didn’t have to.” Dee says, gently now. “I’ve lived a long time. Heard that story with many different faces, different names down the years. And yet, here you are, safe now, and working your way back to sound.” The older woman leaves a comfortable pause before moving on, squinting into the distance at Ted fixing shingles on the porch roof. “I’m glad Teddy has you around. He needs a firm and gentle hand about the collar when he gets himself all worked up.”

Rebecca smiles, watching Ted look over at them and wave. “He does, doesn’t he? He’s an odd one, wonderfully odd. I’ve never known anyone quite like him.”

“I can’t take much credit. That boy came out that way.”

“Oh, not at all.” Rebecca contradicts, folding the last corner over the line and pinning it. “It’s not difficult to see where he gets it at all. There’s so much of you in him, Dee. His lightness comes from you, and his determination. His ludicrous optimism and sharp eyes? The way he draws people in by appreciating them, all their messy details? Throwing love around, not exactly caring how it lands or where? Because who couldn’t use more love and joy in their life? That’s very much you. And it’s lovely to see where it comes from. Where he comes from. The way you two are, after going through such sorrow together? It gives tragic little me so much hope. You’re a goddamn inspiration, the pair of you.” 

Dee looks surprised by her effusiveness, by the sincerity shining in her eyes, but only for a second. Her face settles into a fond, impish look that Rebecca is familiar with, having seen it on her son’s face many times. 

“There you are now. Nice to finally meet you, Rebecca.”

☀️

Beard materializes just before the Fourth of July, apparently taking a couple weeks to visit family, though he stays with them up at the farm house, and neither Ted nor Rebecca feel the need to question that. Families can be weird and hard; they both know that.

He’s a perfect guest, and adds a nice variety to just the two of them and routinely Henry. Beard takes Ted out late one afternoon and Rebecca demurs her invitation, giving them some time to talk, instead taking the opportunity to catch up with Keeley and Sassy with some late night (for them) Facetimes, something she’s been avoiding a bit lately and has begun to feel guilt creeping in over. Sass even takes the phone in to wake Nora, who’s instantly chirpy and excited the moment she sees her Aunt Stinky on the screen. Rebecca is glowing with happy social energy when the boys return long after dusk and Ted smiles tipsily at her as she follows them up the stairs, Ted announcing drunkenly to the house that nobody else is as pretty at midnight as their Becca. She scoffs at him and directs him into his room, then heads back down to get Ted a glass of water, rolling her eyes significantly at Beard’s raised eyebrows.

Ted and Beard conspire to host a little barbecue for Rebecca’s first Independence day, though she’s also been reassured that it's a Lasso family tradition that just hasn’t happened for a few years. It’s not a large group, which also puts her at ease: Dee, Henry, Michelle and Dan, and a few of Ted’s cousins, their spouses and kids. Dee’s sister Judy brings something called ‘Delicious Salad’; a vintage concoction of marshmallows, fruit, sour cream and maraschino cherries, which is both inexplicable, the absolute tackiest thing Rebecca has ever laid eyes on and yet, somehow, tastes fantastic.

There are endearingly passionate arguments over grilling practices, and fierce competition over the best barbecue sauce for each type of meat, and, of course, someone breaks out the- technically illegal- fireworks after dark. Rebecca wouldn’t have expected anything else from this clan. It’s so familial and lovely it makes her heart overfull, to know that this is how Ted would have spent so many holidays throughout his life. She keeps to the fringes at first, but Ted simply won’t have that, and introduces her to everyone- down to the last baby, giggly Charlie, whom he plops into Rebecca’s arms without preamble, when his cousin Andy walks by with the baby and tells him that the grill is finally ready.

Rebecca watches Henry play with his cousins- some younger, one clearly older- and wanders around for a while, bouncing her little happiness magnet, giggling loudly herself when Charlie tries to launch himself out of her arms at Dee when she approaches across the grass. Dee smiles widely as the little one looks up at Rebecca and babbles his great aunt’s name excitedly.

“Baby knows what side his bread is buttered on,” she says with a wink. “Auntie Dee is known to supply him with cookies.”

Rebecca hands the boy over, grinning. “You have a wonderful family, Dee.”

“Well you’re in with us now, Rebecca. Consider yourself Lasso-ed. Right, Charlie-barley?”

Charlie babbles in agreement and Dee carries him off towards her sister with a soft “Let’s go see Gramma.”

Ted surprises her a moment later, walking up behind her and bumping a cold green bottle against her arm. She takes it silently, with a small nod, and clinks it against the one he holds in his other hand. It’s the first alcohol she’s had in nearly two months; Beard’s excursions with Ted earlier that week had been his first drinks since London. It was another of their little unspoken agreements- to go through their exile sober, so as not to dull their emotions, and instead to work on accepting them and healing. The odd special occasion was apparently alright, though. And it was nice to know she didn’t need it, in fact, she noticed later that neither of them drank more than one or two the whole evening.

After dinner and fireworks, when the bonfire blazes high in the circle of logs and stones, Ted’s cousin Jonah breaks out his fiddle and Dee reappears with Ted’s old guitar from Henry’s room upstairs. Rebecca has heard him play it a little, but only really when Henry asks before bed- so she hasn’t heard much of his playing, not having wanted to interrupt their father and son time.

Ted scoffs at his mother and says he’s no match for Jonah, who actually plays in the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra, but takes the instrument and strums it to check that it’s in tune anyway.

He turns to his cousin and says something low. Jonah chuckles and starts a song that Rebecca doesn’t recognize. Ted leans out and calls to his ex-wife as he begins to play. 

“Alright, ‘Chelle you know this one. Have at it.”

Michelle grins from across the fire circle and chimes in on the duet from her perch on Dan’s lap. She sings out clearly, matching Ted with her church-kid honed voice, an alto shot through with a current of sugar sweetness. 

…She said, "it's hard for me to see

How one little boy got so ugly"

Yes, my little girly, that might be

But there ain't nobody that can sing like me

Ain't nobody that can sing like me

Way over yonder in the minor key

Way over yonder in the minor key…

Jonah transitions from the silly, rollicking Wilco tune into a stirring, lonesome rendition of Oh, Shenandoah and the entire family chimes in to sing the old folk song as he gets to the lyric “across the wide Missouri .” It’s a song that they all seem to know by heart; a hymn for anyone who has spent the majority of their life within sight of the mighty rolling river. Rebecca sings too, next to Ted, having looked up the song after it had come on the radio in the truck several weeks ago and the plaintive lyrics had captivated her. She sees Ted eye her as she joins in, at first in confusion and then he smiles at her, wildly genuine, as his hands measure time for his cousin against the body of the guitar.

After the adults have all wiped their eyes, Beard especially, Henry pipes up from the small band of stick-wielding children burning marshmallows in the fire- under the guise of making smores.

“Dad, play the new one for everybody! The Green Eyes song!”

Rebecca notices Ted’s face drop for less than a second, and his eyes flicker in her direction. If they hadn’t been so close in around the fire she would swear he was blushing before he shakes his head and launches into, what she could only term, a deeply affectionate rendition of the Coldplay song.

Honey you are a rock, upon which I stand,

And I come here to talk, I hope you understand

The green eyes, yeah, the spotlight,

shines upon you,

and how could anybody deny you?

I came here with a load, and it seems so much lighter now I’ve met you,

She doesn’t have to wonder why he’s learned it. As he approaches the first chorus, Rebecca senses Beard looking at her, apparently having come to the same conclusion, and she’s suddenly glad of the fire, as her face begins to burn with awareness.

Ted doesn’t look in her direction at all, but the absence of his gaze is as piercing as it’s presence. He might as well have performed the whole song staring into her eyes, because she feels each lyric flow into her and spread like honey all through her veins, heavy and golden, his tentative bass rising in confidence as a few of his family join in, but all Rebecca can hear is Ted.

It’s a little harder to look Michelle in the eye after that. Michelle knows this man at least as well as anyone else in the world- and she’s seen him fall in love before. Which can’t be what’s happening here. It can’t. Not yet. 

She watches Michelle lean in to whisper something in her boyfriend’s ear with a soft, infatuated smile, and Rebecca’s heart twists with jealousy at the ease of their intimacy. She looks to the ground sharply when Dan glances over at her with a friendly, slightly knowing, eye, and tucks the memory of Ted singing “ Honey, you should know, I could never go on without you... ” into a small, close corner of her heart before turning her attention back to the group.

The boys play on for the better part of an hour, various well known songs, with Jonah’s wife Rachel taking over the guitar from Ted somewhere in the middle. Dee and Judy sing a heart-wrenching version of John Denver’s ‘Matthew’ to close it all out, in honor of Dee’s late brother-in-law, whom everyone had loved dearly. 

...Joy was just a thing that he was raised on,

Love was just a way to live and die,

Gold was just a windy Kansas wheat field,

Blue was just a Kansas summer sky. 

Rebecca gives in to the overwhelming impulse to wrap her arm around Ted’s elbow when she sees him wipe at his tears. As he leans into her shoulder a little, she begins to think about how their friendship really has markedly changed- how her comforting gesture and it’s reciprocation would have been nigh unthinkable three months ago. She’s pleased to note her own little twinge of excitement when she thinks of where they could get to in another three. When was the last time she had felt that with anyone other than Keeley? Anticipation of getting closer to someone, instead of terror at the very thought? She couldn’t remember. 

Long after most everyone has gone, promising visits and recipes and internet links, and Beard has disappeared for the evening, to do whatever a Beard does solo in Kansas- Ted lingers on the porch picking at the guitar. Half of one song blends into the chorus of another as he sits on the sturdy wooden fireworks crate, smiling at his son and his mother out by the dying fire. Henry’s head rests in Dee’s lap as they look up, talking about stars and worlds beyond this one, and whether monsters dwell there, or gods, or friendly people who might look just like you and me. 

Rebecca appears from inside and says goodbye to Andy and Jenna, who had been helping her wash up inside. Ted calls an inside joke after his cousin as Andy gathers up and herds his children across the dark yard, something about garbage bag ghosts, and his eyes sparkle in that exuberant charming way they often do when Rebecca lays down on the swing nearby and rests her feet up over it’s wooden arm.

“Whaddya think of us then?”

Rebecca turns her head to look at him. “Your family?”

“Yep.”

“They’re lovely. And weird, and wonderful. Like you.”

He chuckles. “I guess that’s fair. They’re good people.” He leans over the guitar a little and looks at her with a humorous conspiratorial air about him. “Now, Miss Rebecca, you’ve been holding out on me. I’ve got two questions for you. When ‘xactly did you go and learn the Missouri River song? And two, will you sing it again? Just for me? Hmm?”

Rebecca rolls her eyes up at the ceiling and sits up, smiling gamely as he begins to pick out the tune. She waits for the note to come in on, and the proud, tenderhearted look on his face as she sings a song so dear to him is something she won’t forget, not anytime soon, not ever. 

Dee’s second honey harvest of the year comes mid-July, and she drafts her son into helping, saying that Suzanne from the quilting bee who usually helps her is in New Mexico with her son and surely he remembers how it all goes.

Rebecca watches from a distance and laughs at Ted’s antics under the silly hat as he waves the smoke pot around and his mother tsks at him fondly and hisses his childhood nickname as she points out what he’s meant to be doing.

“Stop flirting Teddy, that honey’s not gonna go anywhere.”

He scowls at her. 

“S’ not like that Momma.”

“Sure it isn’t. Eyesight’s still pretty keen for my age, you know.”

Ted takes Henry to his community pool one afternoon a week. He invites Rebecca consistently, but she’s declined each time- feeling a marked difference between trips to her therapist or the store and something social, somewhere she might run into someone who knows her face or her name. She’s sure Michelle’s friends have googled her- knowing she would do exactly the same if Sassy’s ex brought anyone around somewhere with Nora. Rebecca reaches the point of deciding not to care around the same time that she grows a little desperate for someone outside the Lasso clan to interact with. 

And she’s pleasantly surprised by the other mums; all people being different people, after all. A few of them clearly know everything about her, but they seem interested in her life- rather than judgemental. It’s so different from their own settled, homey suburban lives; it’s almost like Rebecca lives in another world entirely. The glamour of it excites them and they don’t seem to care much about the rest. There’s a Melissa and a Jennifer and a Stephanie- all bright eyed Midwestern mom types about her age with different sized passels of children to wrangle. There's another Rebecca too, though this one goes only by Becky. 

Rebecca has gotten the distinct impression that Ted wouldn’t have had any problems finding a wife if Michelle had turned him down. Every woman she meets in Kansas, married, divorced or single, seems perfectly happy to tell her that Ted is a catch; it’s no different with this little group. They share knowing glances when Rebecca stumbles over her words, explaining that she and Ted are merely good friends, but that’s all.

“You’re up there all alone in that beautiful old house most of the week and you’re not together?” Jen questions, looking surprised.

“Wow, the tension must be thick enough to cut with a knife.” Steph jokes, fanning herself.

“You’re living in the first half of a romance novel. Seriously. A Nicholas Sparks romance novel. Oh, I bet its that one where they have sex in the shower.” Becky determines, then giggles, blushing a little.

Rebecca laughs too, a little, pulling her hat down low over her face at the suggestive image and wonders if maybe this is how Rachel Weisz feels when people do this to her. She fairly leaps off the vinyl lounger when Henry wanders by and asks her if she wants to swim or if she even knows how, and she sheds her sandals and coverup gladly, in favor of the indigo one-piece suit she’d thought the most appropriate for being around children. He takes her hand and pulls her along, saying he wants her to watch him do a dive. 

Henry turns out to be quite a good diver, and Rebecca applauds him and tells him he’s done very well indeed when he climbs up the ladder afterwards. Ted moves up behind her with a glancing yet affectionate touch to her back and more praise for Henry. He then grabs his son up off of his feet and they jump back into the pool together with a huge splash that makes Rebecca grin.

Ted’s an excellent swimmer, and Rebecca is content to sit on the cement edge by herself and watch him stand Henry up on his shoulders, joking around with the other dads and children as they swim about, playing games. Henry tries to duck his father, and fails miserably, but Ted lowers himself under the water anyways, and by the sound of Henry’s next squeals, must be underneath him, pulling on his toes. Ted appears from the depths at her feet and folds his tanned arms over the side of the pool, pushing his wet hair to one side, wiping off his moustache and squinting up at her in the sunshine.

“You swim?”

“Of course I do.” 

Henry swims up behind and folds his elbows over the edge just like his dad, and shields his eyes as he looks between the adults.

“Your bathing suit’s cool Rebecca. It’s all shiny. What’s the word for that again, Dad? ”

Ted agrees with his son, nodding. “Hmm. Iridescent, like butterfly wings. Real pretty.”

Rebecca cheeks pink as she looks down at them both. “Thank you, boys.”

Ted reaches out and pokes a few fingers at her knee, almost tickling her, then holds out his hand for her to take. “Get in here, Welton. We’re gonna play chicken next. Need those long legs of yours.”

Her arms grow brown under the heat of the sun, her legs too- no matter how much sunscreen she wears. The kiss of the sun on Ted’s skin has brought out freckles and a deep tanned color she didn’t realize he could achieve. They’re both getting stronger too, with Ted remarking that his arms and back haven’t been this built up since college, and he’s tightened his belt a whole notch as August middles out. He’s been cutting back the neglected treeline since he finished fixing up the house and whitewashing the sheds in mid-July. Dutifully sharpening up the old axe, he applies himself to it the old fashioned way- except with podcasts to listen to. Keeley suggests, with a sassy grin in her voice Rebecca can hear from thousands of miles away, that Becky from the pool had been exactly right. That Rebecca is definitely living in a Nicholas Sparks romance novel and she should take full advantage of the tanned, occasionally shirtless man cutting wood out in the summer heat. Rebecca laughs and tells her off, but cannot deny that she sometimes looks. 

When Ted overdoes it one day, and lies out on the threadbare rug in the living room all evening with his back screaming at him- sinuses terribly stuffed because he’s also forgotten his antihistamines for two straight days- Rebecca keeps him company, lying on the sofa just above him, reading aloud to him from a book of P.G. Wodehouse stories that she found in the attic. She does all the voices, like she did when Henry had asked her to read with him the weekend before, and Ted makes the same exact delighted face as his son had- which makes Rebecca's insides turn to absolute mush as she fights the impulse to lean over the side of the couch and brush the tendrils of his hair back from his forehead. 

Thunder rolls in the distance, and Rebecca thinks she’ll need to remember to shut the windows in his bedroom if he falls asleep on the floor.

Rebecca’s gardening and youtube yoga habits have kept her more in shape than her expensive trainer ever had; and as late summer emerges from the doldrums of July and August, the two of them also take to long meandering hikes up and down the hills by the river, on old trails Ted still remembers by heart. 

Once, he makes her scrunch up her leggings and stand in the creek in her bare feet with him. His childish laughter when she shrieks at the shock of the frigid water makes her suddenly feel younger than she ever did at sixteen; alone in the woods with a boy who just wanted to watch her experience new things. 

“S’ good for ya. Gotta touch all the elements. Keeps your brain happy.”

She kicks water in his direction, enchanted by the way the glittering droplets sparkle out of the sun dappled stream. “Just so long as one of the elements isn’t something biting off my toes.”

Ted chuckles. “I’ll fight any crawdads that try ya. You know we used to eat ‘em. Still could. Use your toes as bait. Though I don’t think they like blue nail polish. Might have to use my toes instead.”

She giggles and steps onto a sun-warmed rock nearby. “I am not eating anything we catch using your toes, Ted.”

She loses track of him a moment as they are coming up the hill from the creek. Then, he’s there again, grabbing her by the wrist and enthusiastically pulling her a few steps into the woods. She clutches at his elbow, almost tripping.

“Ted- What?”
“Come look.”

He places her under the branch of a tree, maneuvering her by the shoulders, and points up to a small movement among the leaves. It’s a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.

“Oh.” She breathes out, watching the unique moment unfold, the ordinariness and the fragility. Her fingers itch to reach out to the little creature and help, but she knows to her own cost that it must do this by itself, unaided, this critical moment determining how it will fly.

He murmurs in her ear. “That’s a swallowtail. She’s gonna be even more gorgeous when she sorts herself out up there.”

Ted’s eyes are full of curiosity and innocence as she turns to look at him, and the urge to kiss him flutters through her, not for the first time. Rebecca blinks, letting the moment pass, and smiles softly instead.

“Thank you. For seeing her.”

Ted squeezes her shoulder, understanding, and lets go.

She wasn’t technically lying to anyone when she told them nothing was going on. There was nothing spoken, nothing overt. She and Ted rarely touched in any way that could be considered sensual. Hugs were frequent, but mostly short, unless one of them was upset.

The closest they had gotten physically was sharing a bed; it had happened a few times. The first was after her first call to Keeley- the first call she made to anyone- six or so days in- a call with such breathtaking honesty on the other end of the line that Rebecca couldn’t keep physically still. She walked up and down the front porch and around the yard for an hour, knowing he could probably hear most of her side of the conversation through the open windows. 

Ted simply came into her room through the door she’d left half open, not knowing any other way to ask for consolation, and gathered her into his arms as she sobbed into the pillow. He barely said a word, gently rubbing her back until they both drifted off. It was only mid afternoon, but they slept until dusk, wound together on top of the handsewn traveler’s star pattern quilt.

The second was a return of that favor, many weeks later. Ted went alone down to his mother’s- lasagna in his arms- to have dinner with Dee on his parent’s wedding anniversary. A bittersweet occasion if ever there was one. Rebecca was reading on the porch swing when he returned and looked up as she heard him approach. His eyes were red and full of pain and his shoulders slumped, and Rebecca’s heart fairly cracked in half at the sight. 

“Night.” Ted had managed to say as he crossed the porch to the door; the thwack of the screen door as the wooden trim met the wooden frame sounding hollow instead of inviting as it reverberated through the still humid night air.

She debated with herself for five minutes, reading and re-reading the same page and understanding none of it, until she couldn't anymore. She had peered up the stairs and her pounding heart had settled when she saw he’d left his bedroom door cracked. When she entered, it was so dark she could barely see his outline under the quilt. He was faced away from her, but she could hear him sniffle. She climbed into his bed and fit herself to his back, wrapping her arm under his own around his waist and breathing with him, against the back of his neck, slow and steady until they both fell asleep. He’d been gone when she woke up.

The third time is the most obvious, she knows because she’d struggle to explain it if anyone had asked. There hadn’t really been a reason for it. One night, her bedroom door left open as usual, after a long conversation between them about their former spouses had turned emotional- each of them regretting and admitting how much they had actually loved being married- being someone’s partner and teammate, despite all the problems in the actual relationships. She’d had her bedside lamp on and was propped up, reading, when he came in and laid down beside her, playing something chirpy on the little game console Henry had left a few days earlier. She shared a smile with him and returned to her chapter.

Later, when she flipped off her bedside lamp, he shut off the toy and leaned over towards her. “It okay if I stay?” He sounded a little raw, still vulnerable from their earlier conversation.

She heard herself softly say, “Of course.” before she gave it any thought at all.

They woke the next morning tangled up in one another, warm in the peeking rays of the morning sun, his fingers on her bare back under her shirt, her head tucked into his chest, their legs entwined. She had laid still, eyes shut, waiting, as she felt him awaken. He drew her into him by her hip at first, and Rebecca felt her stomach flutter wildly and her heart leap into overdrive, until she heard and felt him take a great deep breath of recognition and then, carefully, he slid his leg from under hers and removed his hand, though he dragged his fingers over her hip lingeringly as he did so. She had fallen back against the pillow when he closed the door- her heart beating like a drum in her chest and her breath shallow. 

He wasn’t awkward about it at breakfast, and so neither was she. They’re a little quieter for the next few days, and a little less circumspect with each other’s personal space. They’re testing the boundaries now- and finding that, indeed, there is something there- something big- as they’ve apparently both suspected.

⛈

Ted drives her to the city and drives her back three more times. One of those times, with Henry along for the ride- and apparently some doughnuts while she’s in her session, if the powdered sugar she wipes off Henry’s face is anything to go by- Ted takes a long detour on the ride home. His mouth quirks enigmatically under his moustache when both Henry and Rebecca question where they are headed. Henry figures it out first, being the Kansas expert between the two of them.

“Sunflowers!” Henry shouts as they appear in the distance and reaches over Rebecca’s lap to roll down the window.

Rebecca gasps as she looks out over the towering sea of golden yellow petals. She has never seen so many flowers all in one place. Well maybe by sheer numbers she had; tulips in the Netherlands, lavender in France, but sunflowers certainly felt different. Ted pulls over into the make-shift parking area, grinning at how well his little plan is already going.

“We’re getting out?” Rebecca questions, though it's unnecessary, because Henry has his seatbelt off and has clambered over Rebecca and out the door before Ted can even answer.

He smiles happily after his son.

Ted puts a tip into the farmer’s jar as they pass a bored looking teen in charge of the produce stand, with a friendly “Good year this year, huh? Never seen ‘em quite this tall.” The teen girl looks up from her phone and shrugs.

“Maybe. Rain, I guess.”

Ted then offers Rebecca his arm. 

“Shall we?”

They walk under the tall stalks, down the rows after Henry’s running footsteps and shouts of “Look Dad! Look at this one!’ and “Rebecca! This one is as tall as you when you have your high shoes on!”

Rebecca hands Henry her phone, set on the camera app, and tells him to take as many pictures as he likes. He zips in and out of the rows, pointing the phone all over, at bugs as well as flowers, asking his Dad to smile ‘for real’ several times, and Rebecca to raise her arms up to touch the tops of the flowers. They take a few selfies of the three of them together, Henry perched up on Ted’s shoulders and leaning down into frame. Ted walks Henry around for a while like that after Henry tells them how cool the flowers look from above. Rebecca smiles and hands him up her phone again, so he can take a video. 

“Henry Lasso, reporting live from his Dad’s shoulders-“ Ted’s newscaster voice a strangely perfect fit for his moustache- “What’s the scene look like from the chopper, Henry? Tell our viewers what all you can see from up there.”

Henry giggles. “I see the sun! And all the sunflowers! And our truck. And Rebecca! But she should count as a flower anyway because she’s so tall and pretty like them!”

Ted raises his eyebrows at Rebecca and she breathes out a pleased half-laugh. 

“That’s miles better than the Michelle Obama arm-wrestling line, Henry. Thank you.”

When Ted’s shoulders get a little tired, Rebecca helps Henry down, and soon the boy has disappeared again, chasing a butterfly. Ted looks over at her after a quiet moment. “I hadn’t really seen the resemblance before, but you blend in real well in this field, tall and strong and beautiful. A real Kansas sunflower among all those English roses. Guess that's why I liked ya’ from the beginning. Reminded me of…” Ted trails off.

“Home?” Rebecca asks, more than a little flattered. 

Ted smiles. “Home isn’t a place for me anymore, as hard as that might be to believe after the past few months.”

Rebecca draws Ted into a hug then, because the look on his face tells her he needs one, even if she’s not entirely sure why. Henry throws himself against their hips, joining their hug with another shout.

“You gotta see the picture I got of the big spider over there!”

When Rebecca goes through the pictures that evening after Henry has gone up to do the last of his summer reading, she finds one she wasn’t expecting. Near the end is a picture Henry had taken of the two of them as Rebecca was hugging Ted. It looked intimate and comfortable; Ted’s hands resting on her back, among the broad leaves, and her bright hair in the afternoon sun next to the round sunflower blooms, tucked into Ted’s shoulder. She texts several of the best ones Henry took to Michelle, but not the last one. That one she sends to Ted- no message, just a small yellow sunflower next to a purple heart.

A complicated puzzle featuring a field of sunflowers arrives a few days later, addressed to Rebecca.

Ted picks more at the guitar now, even without Henry around, and she hears him do an unfamiliar plain sung tune on the porch one night. She puts aside her book to listen through the open windows; she never would have imagined music coming back to her in this way, by such an unexpected route- Karaoke, Christmas buskers and then Ted himself, but she was so glad it had. 

...I don’t know how you house the sin

But you’re free now

I was never sure how much of you I could let in

Am I free now

Won’t you settle down baby here your love has been.

Heavenly Father...

He taps his hands on the guitar to keep rhythm and the fragile emotion in his voice brings tears to her eyes; she thinks of their fathers, of them, of how these frequent thoughts have all come to intertwine, to the point where Rebecca can’t always separate her pain from Ted’s, because so much of it is now shared. She’ll have to ask him what song it is- with such powerful words the music is barely necessary- maybe they can learn it as a duet.

They sit together on the porch swing sometimes at night now, facing each other, legs propped up in between them, and he makes her laugh by pretending to flip them both onto the floor- she kicks out at him one time he does it and he catches her bare foot, massaging it a little as he teases her for worrying.

“Not gonna tip us over, Becca. Think of the back pain I could give myself. I’d be laid out for a week straight on the hardwood floor. Then who would make you dinner?”

She grunts at him, and then sighs as he pushes his thumbs into the arch of her right foot. “You know you’re going to have to do the other one now?”

Ted merely smirks.

“Wouldn’t want you to be lopsided.”

The Tuesday after Labor Day, Ted passes by the kitchen window with a ladder. Rebecca follows him out to the stand of apple trees at the back of the garden, which, over the last few days, have started to drop shiny ginger-golden fruit onto the grass underneath. 

He sends her up the ladder, which she balks at momentarily, until he jokingly assures her he’d try real hard and catch her if she fell on him. She narrows her eyes at him, and screws up her mouth, trying in vain not to smile at his tone.

He tells her how to feel which apples are ripe, and she tosses them down at him, giggling heartily through her apology when she accidentally hits him on the head.

A few minutes later, she feels the color literally drain from her face as some little beady eyes emerge from the leaves near her hand. It’s a snake, slithering along one of the branches towards the trunk of the tree, and her. She pulls back with a shout and feels Ted have to steady the ladder underneath her.

“Jesus Fucking fuck! Ted! Theres a fucking snake up here.”

“The heck, Rebecca? What color?”

“What does that matter? What do you mean, what color is it?”

“Well, if it’s gonna fall on me and bite me, the way you’re yellin’ at it, I wanna know if your first American driving experience is gonna be taking me to the hospital, Doctor Quinn.”

His jokey tone reminds Rebecca to breathe, and she regards the little creature with a more friendly eye. “It’s black with sort of- yellow racing stripes almost- Actually, he’s kind of cute.”

She hears Ted sigh humorously. “Yeah he’s not gonna hurt ya. Lil’ ribbon snake, probably just looking for birds eggs or big ol’ bugs eatin’ the apples.” Ted chuckles. “Not gonna kill ya’, Cleopatra. Like a basilik or anything Medusa would wear on ‘er head.”

Rebecca groans, he’s never gonna let her live this down is he? True to form, Ted makes snake jokes for the remainder of the day; the best one of a terrible lot comes as she finally hands down her second full basket from the tree and climbs down behind it.

Ted grins at her as he pulls a wayward leaf from her hair. “Feel like I should call you Eve from now on- talkin’ to a snake in an apple tree.” He looks her up and down, just toeing over the line of flirtatious, into the realm of blatantly suggestive. “He tell you the difference between good and evil?”

“Yes actually,” Rebecca smirks and picks up her basket, heading for the kitchen door. “True evil consists of endless snake jokes when your best friend nearly falls out of a tree you sent her up in the first place.”

She can almost hear Ted’s eyebrows raise as he tries to catch her up. “Best friend?”

“You heard me.”

When they get back inside, arms aching under the weight of their apple baskets, Ted attempts to teach her how to bake apple pie- and though her results aren’t as amazing as his, she secretly enjoys being taught hand-over-hand how to roll out pie crust. Rebecca cuts a tidy sunflower pattern into the top of her pie, and Ted cleverly cuts a little snake into his, making Rebecca finally laugh out loud when she sees it as he puts them into the oven.

They’re having dinner with Dee two nights later- Ted’s ‘not-an-actual-snake-of-course’ pie waiting for dessert under tinfoil in the kitchen- when the question finally comes up. It’s the question Ted and Rebecca have both started avoiding in therapy now that some emotional scars have formed and begun to lighten with the passing days and months.

They’re still harvesting tomatoes and zucchini by the armloads almost daily, though Rebecca still insists on calling them courgettes. There’s zucchini in everything Ted cooks now, and Michelle has taken to jokingly threatening to stop letting Henry stay the night if Ted keeps sending him home with zucchinis hidden in his bag just to get them out of the house.

So naturally, tonight, they’re eating zucchini pasta with homemade sauce that Dee has been teaching Rebecca how to make and preserve. Ted already knows how, and Rebecca was a bit glad about that; she’s wanted a buffer the past few days, putting off being completely alone with him for long stretches of time. 

She’d mentioned this to her therapist, and was still processing the resulting breakthrough. Admitting that she felt entirely safe with Ted and was terrified to ruin it by allowing it to become more, despite knowing it was headed that way, Rebecca had reasoned that it was because her relationships had universally failed. Her therapist had nodded once, and reminded her that the end of her marriage had been a necessary choice, not a failure. She then commented that Rebecca had a decision to make here. To decide whether or not the growth and natural conclusion to the safety, joy and attraction she felt with Ted was something she was willing to give up, or stall out, on purpose, to maintain her invulnerability. Rebecca’s entire mind had revolted instantly at the thought, and she’d found herself saying she’d rather sell her own nude photo back to the tabloid she’d bought it from than potentially hurt Ted that way- and there had been her answer.

It was all down to bravery and timing now, so the ensuing ride home from therapy had been- interesting- to say the least; quiet, but for a very different reason than a few months ago. 

Thus, the needing of space while she attempted not to cover Dee’s kitchen in tomato splotches.

At dinner, Dee tells them all about the beagle puppies born down the road to one of their neighbors’ dogs- six in all- and Rebecca watches Ted’s smile fade halfway through the story, as if he knows something is coming.

“How long you two plannin’ on avoiding your real lives? Been a while now, Son.”

“I dunno, Mom.” Ted looks down and pushes his fork around his plate, and he’s never looked more sixteen to Rebecca before. Rebecca sends an apologetic look across the table to Dee, who shakes her head slightly in understanding and moves the conversation on to a new topic.

The air changes as they’re finishing dinner and Dee warns them to get home before the storm hits. The sky is blood red on one side and deep purple on the other, where impossibly tall thunderclouds tower as they roll in over the river. She can see the sheets of rain and flashes of lighting in the far distance as they walk briskly up the hill from his mother’s in the almost dark. It won’t be long now.

The heavy pressure in the air crushes at them and the static electricity builds. It’s all gonna break soon and there’s just no stopping it. She’s come to love this about Kansas, the raw power of the summer storms- the warning signs and the silence in the just before. No birds sing, and even the crickets and cicadas have gone quiet. Rebecca feels the systems’ pressure on herself too, it pushes through her skin and constricts her veins, she has to let something out or everything in her is simply going to explode as the house comes into view and Ted chats meanderingly about making a grocery list for the upcoming week.

“Your Mum’s right, Ted. We can’t do this forever. This isn’t our life.”

“Why not? It could be.” He throws the phrase over his shoulder, not even meeting her eyes. He says it like a joke, but they both know he isn’t really joking.

“Ted.” She warns firmly.

He turns on her, waving his arms about, anxiety-ridden, obviously not thinking before he speaks. “But you love it here! Don’t you? I do. I had no idea when I asked you here- but the way this works? How we work? Together? It’s, god- I-”

Her gasp is stolen by the cool breeze steadily blowing in their direction, heralding the coming storm. The casual mention of them as a unit is something they’ve both studiously avoided discussing all these months. Nearly four now, she realizes with some surprise as she glances away from his eyes, past the setting sun. It hadn’t seemed all that long, but also like an entire lifetime; time moved so differently here. The team in London was already playing their first matches back in the Premiere League, and as much as he wasn’t admitting to it, she knew he was keeping track. He’d been suspiciously excitable after Richmond had won last week.

“Ted-” She has no idea what to say. The truth is still so tightly bound up with her recent failures. She’s unbound so much this summer, by herself, and with help, but she’s still holding on to the last few knots with tentative fingers- they’re the ones that keep her safe from him- safe from her own not so carefully hidden feelings. 

His eyes plead with her, and every aching word tugs at her to let go. “If we go back- what’s to say it won’t happen again? Letting the world get in between us and everyone else’s voices and opinions and our own bullshit drive us to barely talking? I couldn’t take that again Rebecca. Not now. Not anymore.”

He doesn’t look at her as he finishes, and she watches his shoulders flinch at his own cursing- he clearly hadn’t intended that to sound so harsh, so desperate.

Rebecca finds her voice, speaking firmly into the blustering air. “We won’t, Ted. We couldn’t. Not after- this-” She stops herself from using the word ‘us’, though ‘us’ is exactly what she means. 

He continues, the wind and his anxious fingers making a riotous mess of his hair. “But how can we be sure? I can’t lose track of you again. Look what happened when I did!”

“Nothing that happened was your fault Ted!”

“But I didn’t see you, I wasn’t looking! I wasn’t there! And you got hurt.”

“You can’t take on responsibility for protecting my feelings, Ted!”

“Yeah? Well, maybe I want to!”

She watches his hands clench and him shove them into his pockets as he keeps walking and she quickens her steps to get closer to him. She hasn’t seen him this close to panic since June- he’s been so calm recently, so at peace, even when hard things were clearly coming up in his therapy sessions. And it seems this is all related to her. She knows why; they both know why. The unsaid thing- the unacknowledged truth of what they are to one another. He’s faltering at the idea of being without her, going back to having biscuits once a day and a shared meeting if they were lucky, friendly drinks once in a while, maybe a team dinner or two. She’ll admit it’s weighing on her also- heavy like the dense atmosphere they wade through to get home. 

They have to talk about this now. This thing they needed to let lie to heal is awakening, stronger now, as undeniable as the power of a thunderstorm. It could break them either way, and she needs it to break over them together so it doesn’t force them apart. Rebecca catches up to him at the crest of the hill, his shoulders getting higher by the second. “Ted, stop. What are you feeling? Please-”

Distant thunder interrupts her. The cold wind is whipping up even harder now under the low, orange-grey sky, and blows a cloud of grass and dust over them; Rebecca shields her face just a little too late.

“Ow, Fuck!” She rubs at her stinging eyes, trying to dislodge the grit.

Ted’s back with her in seconds, internal frenzy entirely forgotten the moment he knows she’s in pain. His hands cradle her face, callused thumbs wiping away the tears streaming from her eyes as he tries to get a look.

“Can you open them a bit?” He asks gently, all the former weight and pressure evaporated from his voice. She cracks her reddened eyelids open and he peers in, turning her into the rapidly disappearing light of the sunset.

“Yeah, okay. I see it. Lemme get that.” he lifts his cotton shirt from the bottom hem, stretching it up and dabs at the grit in her eye. The pain subsides little by little as she blinks. The wind picks up again as he wipes at her cheeks and she shuts her eyes firmly, reaching out for Ted to steady herself. Her fingers brush his bare side unintentionally and she flinches away like she’s been shocked. His skin is so warm, touching him something she’s been idly daydreaming about for weeks now, and she can’t take the jolt of skin-to-skin along with the pressure that’s been building in the air between them tonight- it’s too much.

“I’m alright now, thank you.” Rebecca murmurs, opening her eyes, mildly terrified of what she’ll find when she does.

He’s still close, a hand on her shoulder, and she realizes why they’ve stopped standing this close- why they don’t linger in their hugs anymore. The air literally crackles around them, it pushes her to reach out her fingers again and slide them along the buckled hem of his shirt, where he’s dropped it and it doesn’t quite reach the waistband of his jeans. She knows now how that expanse of skin feels under her fingertips and in this moment it feels like the most dangerous knowledge she’s ever possessed.

His eyes drop to her lips, and she breathes in as she watches him do it. She knows she is doing the same.

“Marry me.” is the last thing he says, and the words crack in the violet air as the clouds burst overhead and the first heavy droplets of rain splash onto their shoulders and foreheads, soaking them through in seconds.

He grabs at her hand as they make a run for the porch. It feels like emerging from a waterfall, the dry boards groaning as puddles form around them and she can’t see a thing beyond the edges of the porch- like the outside world is only a deluge and they’re hidden away in the last warm dry place that exists.

Ted grins at her, breathless and dripping as he shakes his hair out and Rebecca simply can’t take it anymore. She kicks off her muddy sodden sandals, strips off her soaking wet plaid shirt, steps into him and kisses him firmly, his wet chest and neck radiating warmth under her hands. He responds immediately, deepening the kiss and sliding his hands around her waist, bending her further into him. She gasps into his mouth at the feel of his searching fingers under her damp camisole top, wet fingers dragging against mostly dry flesh; they leave trails like feather light kisses up to her ribs as he slides his tongue against hers and she claws at the heavy hem of his t-shirt, needing to get closer to his warmth, his skin.

His shirt lands with a wet thwap into a forming puddle and Ted draws her back into him with darkening eyes and strong tanned arms. Rebecca has never been this close to swooning in her entire life. It’s like she’s been magnetized and if she isn’t touching him she’ll collapse right onto the floor. His kisses move across her cheek and under her jaw, he sucks into the sinews of her neck wherever she moans or swears the loudest, like he’s marking a page in one of her books for later- noting her sighs, whenever she digs her fingertips into his back, when she shifts her hips against his, pressing into him, searching for relief.

He reaches for the button on her jeans as she reaches for his, the blood pounding in their ears and the sharp chill of the rain washing over them as the wind changes, buffeting back and forth, showering them in mist as the deluge pours down around them.

His jeans are loose enough to drop and step out of. He kicks them into another shallow puddle as he folds the waist of her tight jeans over and peels them down her legs, leaving kisses on her thighs as he crouches and removes them, lifting each of her feet in turn. Rebecca buries her hands in his hair and tries to catch her brain up to what’s happening right now, the immense step they’ve just taken and are about to- He can’t help but gaze up at her as he tosses her jeans on top of his, and trails his fingers up her legs and against her center as he stands, pressing in where he knows she’s desperate for him to. She keens his name and falls against him, rendered incoherent by a single touch. He hoists her up against him, lifting her from the floor and she wraps her long legs around his waist. He wrenches the screen door open with the hand that isn’t on her ass and she giggles into his neck as he struggles with his wet hands on the front door handle. 

Her giggles make him groan and push her back against the heavy oak door, finding her mouth again and kissing her fiercely. Rebecca loosens her legs from his waist just enough to grind herself against his hardness and he tears his lips from hers with a sharp low grunt, leaning his weight into her- his forehead against her cheek as he grits out his next words into her hair.

“Not gonna fuck you on this porch in a thunderstorm, Becca. Not ‘xactly safe.”

She laughs in her throat at his profanity and whispers seductively into his ear, nibbling it gently for good measure.

“Then take me inside.”

Another groan and he finally gets the handle turned and they stumble into the dry house together, the loud crack of the door swinging around against the wall lost in the roar of the weather outside. She drops her legs from his hips and shimmies out of her knickers, which are nearly as wet now as the clothes she can see scattered behind him, but for a very different reason. She watches his eyes track her naked body and feels nothing but pride and adoration under his gaze. Stepping into him again, she pushes his wet hair off of his forehead and trails her hand down his shoulders and chest, then entwines their fingers and leads him up the stairs. 

The windows had been left open in her room, and tiny droplets on the rain soaked breeze mist over them occasionally as they move together on the bed- one in the heated dark. The light from the open door is the only illumination other than flashes of lightning as he watches her face contort with pleasure, eyes glimmering up at him adoringly as she pulls him back to her for a scorching kiss that he feels all the way down to his toes. The thunder and lightning mix in with their sounds; her high needy whimpers as he trails hot kisses down past her hips; her loud gasp as he licks into her center for the first time. The wail of her first orgasm around his fingers disappears into the clangor of the sky outside. The deep groan he releases against her neck as she takes him in hand and guides him into her rumbles through her so intensely she feels as if the storm is inside her too, as if she is the heavy sky and he is the storm that rages against her- searching for the break.

He sucks her breasts into his mouth, each in turn, wetting her nipples and toying his tongue and teeth over them as he thrusts into her with such skill and abandon she briefly wonders who this version of Ted is- This side of him she’s only glimpsed for half seconds at a time before tonight. Seeing all of it now is intoxicating. He’s as fierce as he is tender and as confident and striving as he is full of curiosity and wonder. His grins turn wicked when he’s aroused, his eyes darken and observe closely, his language and voice roughen. There is so much of the earth about him like this; she can sense down to the root of him as his eyes and hands want her, as he applies himself fully to her pleasure.

Rebecca is glad they did this here; the release of this years old tension, on his own land, in this utopian dreamscape they’ve created around themselves over this stolen summer; their unpredictable yet inevitable breaking point raw and real under tempestuous skies that drown out even their loudest shouts of ecstasy. 

They come together, sweat slicked and kissing. She bites into the fullness of his lower lip as she peaks, the sharp pain along with her desperate cry sending him into the final lightning strike with her. 

The rain slows to a steady pace as they wind down. He kisses all over her skin, unhurried in his exploration, eventually matching his lips to the drip of the eaves outside her window against her stomach and inner thighs. He kisses up from her navel, licks up her breastbone and nips at her left collarbone before returning to her lips and letting his fingers drift over her center once more. She sighs against him and opens to his touch. He brings her over the edge again with his fingers, seemingly unable to stop touching her. They sleep bare under the quilt after cleaning up and shutting the windows and curtains. Rebecca hears Ted wander downstairs as she climbs back into bed- the door creaking as he steps out onto the porch, probably retrieving all their scattered clothes in case his mother happens by in the morning. The thought of Dee finding their jeans in a muddy heap with her bra tossed on top of them makes her smirk into her pillow. 

She falls asleep to the sensation of him tracing her edges, learning with his fingers the shapes his eyes are already so familiar with that they sometimes  feel like a part of his own form.

A golden thread of sunlight wavers across Ted’s relaxed features when Rebecca wakes and turns over to look at him. The curtains block out the rest of the morning, a barrier to the outside world until they’re ready to emerge. She follows the bright line over his face with a gentle fingertip, savoring his stillness for a moment before she unwillingly rises. He’s awake when she returns from the bathroom, and she can’t help but grin as he admires her with sleepily aroused eyes. He reaches out and she gives him her hands, letting him pull her back into bed. She smiles into his kisses, fitting herself into his lap, her new favorite place to belong; as sighing under his eager lips and greedy fingers becomes her newest, most delightful hobby.

Eventually, after a hundred more caresses and two more magnificent shuddering peaks, Ted rises up to let the light in. She looks up at him and catches a breath as the bright day streams in behind him, haloing his naked form. He’s her sunshine; her own personal means to grow and bloom. He always was. A bright, clear Kansas sun, steady with safety and warmth after a night of storms harsh with lightning and loud with thunder. She remembers how they crossed this line- the commitment he had asked of her just before the clouds opened up- and everything wells up inside her, the overwhelming sense of being known and loved by this wonderful man spilling out over her cheeks as she stifles back a sudden sob. Ted rushes back to her from the window, gathering her to his chest, thinking something might be wrong instead of incredibly, completely right for the first time in heaven knows how long. 

Rebecca wipes her face and beams at him, sunshine glittering in the corners of her wet eyes and reflecting off her reddened cheeks. “Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you.”

They stay in Kansas until midseason, until both of them are sure of themselves. Rebecca changes her name once more- having known the Lassos, having lived on their land and put her hands in their soil, having brought life up out of it with time and effort and care. She wants to be a Lasso; wants her legacy to live with this name.

Mr. and Mrs. Lasso move back to a quieter, more supportive Richmond that January, determined to win the whole fucking thing; and whenever she signs her new name, Rebecca feels a small prickle of pressure-saturated summer air on the back of her neck. A reminder that she is both fully human, and fully loved.