The Wall of Winnipeg and Me

by Mariana Zapata

“No,” I replied with a little smirk on my face. “Dinner Roll is leaving now. Please make sure to tell Aiden later on when no one else is around that I said he can eat shit.”

I turned to peek in the living room to find Aiden on one couch talking to the reporter. For a brief split second, those brown eyes met mine across the room, and I’d swear on my life a crease formed between his eyebrows.

I hope they both got syphilis.

“I want you to come back.”

“You don’t even know me—” “I know you,” he cut me off.

“I don’t want someone new. I want you.”

“Marry me.”

“I like you as much as I like anyone.”

“I don’t mind you.”

“It’s only illegal if you get caught.”

“I’ll pay you,” he said while I was not checking him out. Ready to tell him one more time that I was fine money-wise, Aiden kept going before I could. He laid the bomb. “I’ll pay off your student loans and buy you a house.” I dropped my sandwich in the sink.

“It has to be you. I’ve thought about it. No one understands my schedule the way you do. You don’t get on my nerves, and you’re…” He shook his head and crucified me on the spot. “I’ll do whatever it takes. Tell me what you want and you’ll have it. Anything.”

“I’m used to being on my own, Vanessa. Nothing that I did or said had anything to do with you. I want you to understand that.”

When I was a kid, I learned the hard way how expensive the truth was. Sometimes it cost you people in your life. Sometimes it cost you things in your life. And in this life, most people were too cheap to pay the price for something as valuable as honesty.

“I always learn from my mistakes. We made a good team once. We’ll make a good team again.”

“I’m no good at this kind of stuff. I would rather give you money than have to beg, but I will if that’s what you want,”

“If you got on my nerves, I would have fired you the first time you flipped me off.”

“I need a friend—I need you.”

I’ve only loved three people in my entire life. I don’t plan on loving anyone else in the next five,”

“What is it?” “What the hell were you thinking moving here?” he

“It’s cheap.” “You’re kidding,”

“I sure will, Mrs. Graves.”

“You’re acting weird,”

“Excuse me?” “You’re being weird with me,”

“Look, everything is fine—”

“It isn’t. You don’t smile anymore. You haven’t called me big guy or given me hell,”

“I thought I annoyed you,”

“You do.” And there we went. “But I’m used to it now.”

“You’ve never made me feel awkward before, but you look at me differently now. Like you don’t know me, or you don’t like me.”

“I get it if you’re still pissed, if you don’t think of me the way you used to, but I liked the way we were before,”

“Other than that, you’re sure you’re fine?” “Yes.” “Positive?”

You’re sure you still want to be stuck with me for the next five years?” That dark, almost caramel-colored gaze, landed on me, even, intense, determined. “Yes,” that smoke-wrapped voice replied effortlessly.

“Maybe you’re used to doing things by yourself, but don’t be an idiot.” He started off calmly, totally in control. “I didn’t know where you were. There’s crime here—don’t give me that face. I know there’s crime everywhere. We might not be doing this for the reasons most people do, but I made a vow, Van. And I promised you we would try to be friends. Friends don’t let friends wander around alone.” He pinned me with a glare. “You aren’t the only one who takes their promises seriously.”

“I’m such a huge fan of yours,” she added. A fan of that ass, more than likely, I figured.

“She’s my wife.”

“Handle it for me, would you, Muffin?”

“Did you just call me Muffin?”

“I figured it was too soon to call you Dinner Roll.”

The man I’d seen kind of, sort of, maybe smile a couple of times, had a tentative grin crack across his mouth. The expression on his face completely caught me off guard. For a man who never, ever physically reacted even when he won a game, his smile… Heaven help me. It was beautiful.

“If she asks, I’ll just tell her I quit and you came after me. You realized how madly in love with me you were—”

“—and you can’t live without me, so we eloped. I figured I should stick with at least a partial truth so it doesn’t get too complicated. You got a problem with that?”

“You’ll take one for the team then, so that can be the story we tell everyone who finds out?” “What team?” he asked. “You and me. Team Graves-Mazur. We signed a contract together. Sort of.” I smiled. That bearded chin dipped to his neck, and I could see his mouth twitching. “All right. I’ll take one for the team.”

Did I love sexy lateral muscles? Of course. I had ovaries.

Then the fact that his Canadian had snuck up on him—when it only came up in the times he was really comfortable—made my little-girl immaturity that much worse.

I barely managed to turn around when Aiden’s raspy low voice spoke up. “I don’t care if you don’t want to talk about it. I want to talk about it,” he said in that authoritative, demanding voice that scratched at my nerves. It wasn’t a loud voice by any measure, but it didn’t need to be.

Do you have any idea how unimportant that makes me feel?”

He could take his real wife and shove her up his ass.

“You can’t live your life bottling everything up. You need people, even if it’s only one or two, to believe in you, and as smart as that boy is, he doesn’t understand that.”

“He used to say he would never marry, but I knew all it was going to take was him finding the right girl to convince him otherwise.

Even mountains change over time.”