And then Jonathan Hale, with his graying sideburns, narrows his deadly eyes and gives me a single dark look: drink it, son. If you don’t f**king trust me.
I go cold, put the rim of the glass to my lips—
“Lo!” Ryke yells, his hand clamping on my shoulder, about to tear the glass from me.
It’s too late. The liquid slides down, and my taste buds catch all the ingredients. Ryke rips the drink from my hands.
“Are you f**king kidding me?!” he yells at our dad. Not at me. Thinking he just broke his sobriety and mine too.
“It’s just carbonated water and lime,” I tell Ryke the truth, a pang of guilt hitting me. My dad wouldn’t sneak around. If he was drinking again, he’d flaunt it. I shouldn’t have questioned him in the first place.
Ryke isn’t convinced. He takes a swig of the drink, and after he tastes the water, his muscles start to relax.
Our dad sighs at Ryke, “I understand why you don’t trust me, son, but you should at least trust your brother. He wouldn’t lie to you.”
“My track record isn’t good,” I say under my breath and then rub my neck.
The silence stretches in the room—like I reminded everyone how many times I’ve f**ked up. It’s not like I can showcase my triumphs. They’re hidden behind every mistake.
A redheaded girl abruptly climbs the stairs into the yacht’s living room, adding to the strain. She pinches the stem of a wine glass, her glossy hair draped across her shoulder in curls, wearing a silk green dress that’s practically lingerie.
I tug at the collar of my shirt, my stomach tossing.
She’s twenty-six.
And my father’s date.
Seeing her sours my body, especially as she struts over to my dad and presses her lips against his. I turn my head the same time that Ryke does.
I spent my entire life watching women of all ages parade in and out of my house. Never once did he invite them for an extra night. He attended every party stag. No matter if I was five or fifteen or twenty. He was single in public. At night, he did what he wanted.
I never asked why he refused to marry again or to even date. But now that he’s chosen to do it with a girl practically Ryke’s age—it only makes me sick.
I try to breathe, and my ribs ache. I need air.
Without a word, I just head through the sliding glass doors, the moon illuminating the deck. I bypass the hot tub on the way to the railing.
I just…
I look up at the sky, full of stars, a glowing moon. And I inhale the sticky air, pain shooting through my lungs as they expand. I wince and rest my forearms on the railing, bent over like a force bears on my shoulders. Gravity is tugging me towards the ocean. Bringing me down.
I hear the glass door open and shut, but I don’t turn to see which sorry person has decided to spend extra time with me.
“Do you remember the Cayman Islands trip?” Lily asks, staring at the water in reverence.
My heart pounds, an added beat, happy it’s her. Here. With me. “When we were seven?” I think hard, trying to wash away the blurry haze of our childhood.
She nods. “Our dads had a business trip for the week, and they brought us on this yacht.”
It starts coming back. We were carted around to most of their meetings instead of being kept in daycare. Just us two and a ton of older cigar-smoking men. “We built a fort in the bow with couch cushions,” I recall. I smile at the image of her thin build and big eyes. She was quiet and shy and when the stewards came around to ask us if we’d like any drinks, she’d whisper her order in my ear.
I also can’t remember a night where we didn’t sleep in the same bed. Innocent sleepovers. At first they all were, and somewhere along the way, we changed. I fell in love with her.
She smiles at a memory. “You used to tell me that if I didn’t hold onto the railing, I’d fall right off the boat. Like an automatic spring would pop up underneath my feet and catapult me overboard.”
I nod a couple times. “I didn’t want you to get too close.” I was scared of my best friend drowning. I feared that possibility over my own death as a kid. And then a bigger memory triggers. “You realize we were husband and wife back then.”
She squints at me, trying to picture this.
I gape, teasingly. “You can’t remember our first wedding, love?” I touch my heart. “I’m wounded.” It was right before the Cayman Islands trip. We were just playing pretend, but after we went through the “ceremony” in our backyard, I called Lily my wife on the boat. My dad even fed into it, telling me to “go get my wife for dinner” when Lily was taking too long in the shower.
In our twenties, I never thought we’d be here again. With these feelings more intense than the first ones. With love more powerful. A bad day can overturn into a better one. And all we have to do is be with each other.
Unable to hide her own smile, she says, “We were husband and wife.”
“We were.” I wrap my arm around her waist, bringing her closer. And I kiss her nose.
She’s glowing.
And the pressure on my chest—I realize that it’s gone. Just like that.
I felt my son move tonight. It’s a thought that puts every irritation aside. For the longest time, I thought maybe he hadn’t really been alive. Maybe he was going to be swept from us.
I recognize now what’s important to me. Him. Her. All three of us. “Lil…” I stare down at her green eyes that glimmer in the moonlight. “I’m remarrying you.”
Her lips part. “What?” We haven’t brought marriage up since before I first relapsed, over a year ago.
I turn to her and cup her cheeks in my hands. “Someday we’re going to have another wedding, and it’s going to blow our seven-year-old one out of the f**king water.”
Her smile rises, but it’s filled with heartache, and one of her tears falls on my hand. “Lo,” she whispers, “it’s okay if it never happens, as long as we’re together…it’s enough.”
I screwed it up for us when I relapsed. She believed in something and then I crushed it. “Seven-year-old Lily loved being married to me,” I tell her with a weak smile. “I gave you a million piggyback rides.”
“You said that’s what married couples do,” she notes, her eyes right on mine.
My hands fall to her hips. “Someday I’m going to make it right again,” I say softly. “Promises from me don’t mean much.” I know this. “So I’m going to give you something better.” I shift her behind me, and then I easily lift her onto my back.
I can feel her smiling as she wraps her legs around my waist, her arms around my neck. I hold her securely beneath her knees and I walk towards the bow. “Fly away with me, Lily Calloway?”
She whispers, “Only if we make-believe that we never, ever have to grow up.”
“There’s a problem with that, love,” I say, carrying her on my back across the deck.
“What’s that?” she asks, and I picture her adorable crinkled brows.
I’m smiling more than I have all night. “Our make-believe always turns out real.”
From our pretend weddings, to our pretend relationship—in the end, it’s all become reality. And I would love to never, ever grow up with Lily Calloway. In one universe, we’ll be young forever.
22
LILY CALLOWAY
I stare hard at Lo’s back. It’s bare and na**d and teasing me. Normally I’d be compelled to jump on him. Koala-bear-style. Now April and back in Philly, my belly has grown much bigger since Daisy’s birthday, so large that it’s a hindrance for all future piggyback rides.