Page 34

Inevitable

Sixteen Years Old, Virginia

We didn’t waste time tackling our Things to Do in DC—Before Beck Leaves for CVU list.

The restaurants were easy. Beck had an enormous appetite, and I made a game of keeping up with his ridiculous caloric intake. Given that Connor and my dad were both history nerds, we took them with us to Lincoln’s Cottage and Frederick Douglass’s House. As spring marched on, we found the Darth Vader grotesque and the Space Window—with a tiny, embedded moonstone—at the National Cathedral. At the Library of Congress, we saw the Gutenberg Bible. We found the Exorcist Steps, a narrow set of stairs adjacent to an Exxon station in Georgetown, where the climactic scene from The Exorcist was filmed—poor Father Karras. We went to the Kennedy Center, where we had tickets to see The Sleeping Beauty ballet. I loved it; Beck fell asleep.

In May, we took Norah and Mae to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. They were thrilled to be out with their big brother and their favorite babysitter, while Connor and Bernie were glad for a kid-free afternoon.

We rode the Metro into the city, then walked the girls to the museum, where we ooh ed and aah ed at the elephant statue in the rotunda before venturing into the mammal exhibit, with its thousands of preserved specimens collected by Theodore Roosevelt in the early 1900s. Upstairs, we saw mummies, and then walked through the Butterfly Pavilion. We explored the geology and gems section next.

I was showing Norah the Hope Diamond—“I want one!” she exclaimed, eyes glittering—when Beck grabbed my shoulder and whirled me around.

“Do you have Mae?” he asked, breathless.

“I—no. Just Norah.”

“God damn it.” He raked his hands through his hair, scanning the dark hall. “I turned around for a second .”

“She’s here,” I told him, but my gaze was sweeping the exhibit too, and I didn’t see her. “She couldn’t have gotten far.”

He was already on the move, calling, “Mae? Mae!” as he looked behind each display, around every corner. I searched where he didn’t, pulse surging as I dodged museumgoers, tugging Norah along behind me.

After a frantic but futile search, Beck and I met at the entrance to the Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals. He was wrecked, sweating and scarlet-faced. I was terrified. Only a few minutes had passed, but those minutes might as well have been centuries.

“Beck,” Norah said, looking fearfully up at him. “We have to find Mae!”

He nodded, scooping her up. “We will. Don’t worry, okay?” To me, he said, “I’m gonna search the rest of this floor. Will you find security and let them know we’ve got a missing kid?”

I nodded. “Call me when you find her?”

When—not if.

“I will.” Then he was off, shouting for one sister while carrying the other.

I ran for the information kiosk I’d seen in the rotunda. There, in a harried rush, I gave a fractured account of what had happened to the silver-haired woman working the desk. She contacted security and, holding the phone to her ear, asked for a description of Mae.

“She’s four,” I said. “Strawberry-blond hair. She’s wearing black leggings and a purple T-shirt. Wait, no! A pink shirt! Her sister is in purple.”

“Pink shirt,” the woman repeated into the phone. She finished with security, then hung up, and reached across the counter to pat my hand. “It’ll be okay,” she told me. “Kids slip away all the time.”

“But she’s so little.”

“They always are. The good thing about that is when they realize they’ve been separated from their grown-ups, they cry. Red flag. We’ve never not found a kiddo.”

I nodded, feeling infinitesimally more hopeful, then gave her my phone number, which she wrote beside Mae’s description. “Her brother is looking upstairs. I’m going to search this floor. Will you please call if—”

My phone, clutched in my hand, began to ring.

Beck.

I scrambled to answer. “Tell me you found her,” I said in greeting.

“I did,” he said with a disbelieving chuckle. “With the mummies. She said she likes the way they’re all bundled up.”

I laughed, a surplus of adrenaline combined with joyful relief. “She’s okay?”

“She’s perfect.”

My information desk ally whispered, “Shall I call off the hounds?”

I nodded, mouthing thank you .

“Lia,” Beck said. “Look up.”

I did. He and the twins were looking out over the rotunda from the second-floor balcony. Norah waved. Mae shouted, “Lia! Beck found me!” He shrugged sheepishly while looking phenomenally proud.

So clearly, I remember thinking, How lucky I am to call him mine.

***

“My mom’s gonna go apeshit,” he said on our way back to his house. He’d driven Bernie’s Subaru to the Metro station, and as soon as the twins were buckled into their booster seats, they were asleep. “My sisters and I are her whole world. She’d never recover if something happened to one of us.”

He wasn’t being hyperbolic. Bernie didn’t work outside the house like my mom. Every second of her every day was spent catering to Beck, Norah, and Mae, and I’d never gotten any indication that she wanted it another way.

I reached for his hand. “She’ll understand. Sometimes kids wander off.”

“I bet you didn’t.”

“Wrong. When I was seven, I got lost at Bed, Bath and Beyond. My mom was shopping for a toaster and while her back was turned, I drifted away. When she found me, I was admiring the bath towels. You know how they fold them into those cubbies on the wall, all color coordinated and aesthetically pleasing?”

He turned to give me an endeared smile. “You’re adorable.”

“My mom didn’t think so. She was hysterical. I never walked away from her again.”

“She loves you,” he said. “Same as me.”

When we got back to the Byrnes’, he called his dad into the kitchen where his mom was watering houseplants, a dish towel thrown over her shoulder, and came clean about what happened with Mae. Connor acknowledged the incident with an easy “Kids will be kids.” Bernie was, as Beck had predicted, horrified, but only briefly. After recovering, she smothered him with a hug and told him he was the best big brother, an accolade he accepted in stride.

“They’ll always remember that you and Lia took them to the museum—it’s special, the way you let them tag along.”

“We like them,” Beck said with a shrug.

Connor clapped his shoulder. “They idolize both of you.”

“What time do you need to be home, Lia?” Bernie asked.

“Eleven.” Since I’d turned sixteen, my parents had cut me some curfew slack. Generally I was expected home by ten, but so long as I was with Beck, I got a bonus hour.

“We’re taking the twins to Uncle Julio’s for dinner,” Connor said. “Leaving in thirty. You two want to come?”

Beck looked at me, torn. He loved Uncle Julio’s guacamole, made fresh at the table, but if his parents were going out with the twins, the house was ours.

“I don’t know,” I said, holding his gaze. “The museum kind of zapped me.”

He grinned, knocking his knuckles against the countertop. “Same. Want to order food and watch a movie here?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That sounds good.”

Bernie frowned. “That sounds dangerous.”

My face went warm.

“They’ll be fine,” Connor said in a don’t embarrass the teenagers tone.

She glowered at her husband. “Define fine .”

“You can trust us,” Beck said. “Best behavior. I swear.”

Bernie arched her eyebrows. “I’ll call Hannah to see what she thinks.”

Beck took my hand and towed me to the basement, where we pushed a menagerie of plush Disney characters out of the way so we could get comfortable on the couch.

“Gotta love that at this very second, our moms are talking about whether you’ll jump my bones if we’re left unsupervised for more than five minutes,” he said.

I laughed. “Do you ever wish they didn’t know each other so well? Because then we could sneak around without them checking in with each other.”

“That’d be cool,” he said, twining a lock of my hair around his finger. “Most of the time though, I like that our families are tight. Constant intrusiveness aside.”

Bernie came trotting down the stairs. “Okay, Lia. Your mom said it’s fine for you to hang out here. She asked me to remind you to make good choices.”

I nodded, pressing my lips together, trying not to spontaneously combust. Make good choices was don’t have sex in Mother Speak. Couldn’t my mom have sent me a text?

Bernie looked at Beck and said plainly, “Don’t have sex.”

He burst out laughing. “Jesus, Mom. A little subtly? Hannah managed it.”

“Subtly has never worked with you.”

“Fine. If I promise to keep my pants on, will you leave now?”

“Don’t push your luck,” she said, whipping the dish towel from her shoulder to throw at him.

Bernie, Connor, and the twins did leave soon after. Beck ordered Uncle Julio’s for two, and while we waited for the delivery, we spent a while kissing on the couch. But my hair ended up beneath his arm and he was balancing on the edge of the cushion and we were both uncomfortable.

He pulled back with a grumble. “Want to go to my room? There’s a—” He cleared his throat. “—bed.”

“Is there? In your bedroom? I had no idea.”

He poked my waist. “I promise to make good choices.”

“Well, then. Let’s go.”

It was easy with Beck. It had been since Christmas, since our sunrise kiss. We were good at reading each other; we understood when to fill silences with conversation and when it was better to settle into them. He sensed when my introvert battery needed a recharge and let me be. I recognized that he was a wimp when it came to discomfort and babied him accordingly. He knew that when he ran his fingers through my hair, I’d dissolve into a full body shiver. I knew that when I kissed his neck, he’d simultaneously squirm and nestle closer.

That evening in his room, though, it was awkward.

The interruption was partly to blame, as well as the general expectation of what’s supposed to happen on a bed between two people who’re wild about each other. My mom obliquely discouraging sex and his mom coming right out and forbidding it was the same as stepping into a cold shower.

Beck rolled onto his side, propping his head on his hand. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Totally.”

He gave me a lopsided smile. “I think you’re spooked.”

“I think you’re spooked.”

“Yeah, I am. I’ve been cockblocked by our mothers.”

I laughed.

“I’d like to know what makes them think we wouldn’t make good choices,” he mused, cheeks reddening. He and I had talked about a lot over the years, but not about sex. I loved him so much that I was often dazzled by the intensity of my feelings. I knew he loved me—he said so all the time. But more significantly, he showed me: in lingering looks and gentle touches, in considerate gestures, and in letting me set the pace while we were walking, or teasing, or kissing.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess they figure it’s inevitable.”

He smiled bashfully, and I edged onto his side of the bed. He took my hand, turning the ring he’d given me in a slow circle. “Do you talk to your mom about this stuff?”

“A little. She asked me a while back if you and I were…you know,” I finished, cringing. I’d set my mind to being mature. Mom and Dad raised me to believe that if you’re considering sleeping with someone, you and your partner had better be able to navigate a discussion on the subject. But the idea of uttering having sex to Beck felt akin to stripping naked while he watched.

“She wasn’t being nosy,” I went on, building a blush that rivaled his. “Or maybe she was. But mostly she was asking because she wanted to be sure I know to be safe.” I ran a hand across my scorched face. “God. Why am I so embarrassed right now?”

Beck laughed, pulling me to his chest and wrapping his arms around me. “I wish you weren’t. I’m embarrassed enough for the both of us.”

“Do you talk to your mom about this stuff?”

He snorted. “Fuck no. Can you imagine?”

I couldn’t. Bernie often lacked the nuance that was inherent to my mom, who’d been pretty cool about the topic of sex. While it was clear she hoped I wouldn’t sleep with Beck anytime soon—she hit beats about pregnancy and emotional complications hard—she also offered to make me a doctor appointment so I could get a prescription for birth control.

Burying my face in Beck’s shirt, I told him as much, mumbling, “I’m on the pill as of last month. Just so you know.”

He smoothed a hand over my hair. “Okay.”

I drew back to meet his gaze, which was a mix of tenderness and amusement.

“Okay?” I echoed.

“Yeah. I’m glad you told me. Nothing has to change though.”

“Do you want things to change?”

His eyes gleamed as he leaned in and kissed me, a sweet, chaste kiss that, nonetheless, made my stomach flutter. “’Course I do. But not until you’re ready.”

“Have you ever? Before you and me?”

“No.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.” He sat up, a little indignant. “I only ever wanted it to be with someone I love, and I’ve been in love with you all my life.”

I smiled. “So when I ask you to drop your pants, you will?”

He laughed again, gathering me close to whisper in my ear, “Without hesitation.”