Things Worth Remembering Read Free Page B

I’ll wait for you on the patio. It’s a perfect day. In fact, we should have gone for a swim this morning before I cleaned up.”
    I’m not at all ready for him to go when he
jumps up and takes off with one more “Come on!” I hear him very nearly running down the stairs, and I know I should get going.
    If he hadn’t come home with me, I might have slept all morning, but Marcus, like Dad, is a morning person. Actually, he has many of Dad’s traits. I noticed that right away.
    We met in a way I’d recommend to anyone who wants to know what someone is really like. Our campus houses joined forces to build a house in Mexico the spring break of my sophomore year, and we ended up riding in the same van, though I sat in the front, and he and his buddies sat in the back. We exchanged smiles and little else on the way down, except for somewhere in west Texas, when he asked me if I wanted a drink of his Dr Pepper. On the way back, it was a different story. We sat side by side in the middle of the van and talked about life as the youngest of five children and as an only child. Most of the time, though, he loaned me his shoulder, and we took long naps resting our heads on either side of a shared pillow.
    We were exhausted from mixing concrete, hauling lumber, nailing up chicken wire, troweling on stucco, and doing anything else that putting up a two-room house required. It wasn’t much of a home, we thought, standing back and looking at what we had accomplished when our workweek came to a close. But the family we built it for had been living in a cardboard hovel, and they seemed to think it was a palace. It was during this week that I saw how dependable and hardworking Marcus is. He is also pleasant and kind. Unlike a few on the team, he ate any meal the host family generously and sacrificially prepared for us, and he always cleaned up the work site and then himself, never complaining about the trickle of cold water that passed as a shower or the truly disgusting bathroom conditions. These qualities drew me to him more than his incredibly good looks.
    I was so hooked.
    He was too, though. He said he began falling for me when he saw me—sweat dripping, hair tied back in a bandanna— patiently showing the ragged children who had congregated around me how to mix concrete. He said he was “irrevocably” in love with me when, after a day of hard work, I brought out the Play-Doh I had packed and let the kids make colorful houses of their own, constructing a whole village before they were done. When they showed us their masterpiece, we clapped as if they had just unveiled Michelangelo’s David .
    Returning to the university after that exhausting and exhilarating nine days, we unfolded ourselves from our middle seat, limped off the van, and exchanged bandannas and phone numbers.
    We were a done deal.
    Kendy
    “Are you going to sleep all morning?” Luke asks, wearing nothing but his black boxer briefs.
    I glance at the clock that now reads 7:46. “That was my fervent prayer.”
    He walks to his closet, takes a pair of jeans off a shelf, and pulls them on. “I’ll start breakfast. That boy has an appetite, doesn’t he?”
    “He does,” I say, throwing back the covers. I get up and stretch. “Isn’t that nice?”
    Luke pulls a black T-shirt over his head. I love him to wear black anything, from T-shirt to tux to boxers.
    I head for the bathroom but stop to give him some advice.
    “Listen, if the kids aren’t downstairs, slow yourself down and read your paper before you start breakfast. Okay?”
    “Okay, but hurry.”
    Luke is obviously ecstatic a new day has dawned. He is the ultimate morning person; if there were a club for such people, he would be the logical choice for president.
    “Don’t bother with your hair,” he says. “Leave it natural.”
    “Oh, Luke.”
    “I mean it,” he calls from the living area on his way to the kitchen. “I like it that way.”
    Actually, he likes my hair any way I wear it. My