Page 83 of Goode Vibrations

I considered what she was saying. “So…I could love him, and he could love me, but that doesn’t mean we have to, like, be ready to get married, or know how our future will work.”

She leaned closer to me. “Lucas and I aren’t married. I love the hell out of that man, and I’d walk through fire for him. Marriage is important, but it’s not everything. Marriage is just a ceremony and a legal contract if it doesn’tmeansomething to you both. We’ll get there, someday, Lucas and I. But that’s a journey specific to everyone. For you, right now? You just need to…be open to him. To letting him love you, and seeing it when he shows you, and then accepting it for what it is, and showing him in return.”

Be open. I could do that.

The rooftop weddingwas so beautiful it hurt.

Lexie was radiant, and I understood what Mom was talking about in seeing the way Lexie loved Myles…the way he loved her. It wasn’t in the way they touched, or not only; it was obvious their sexual chemistry was off the damn charts. You just had to see the way he looked at her to know they rocked the sheets until something caught on fire. It was…his awareness of her. Her presence around him was different. She was at peace. And for Lex, that was fucking massive. She’d told me what happened to her, the molestation and all that, and it made their love all the more significant. He’d…I didn’t want to say he’d healed her—only she could do that, only she could allow herself to heal. But it had been…not his doing…god this was complicated. He was instrumental. He made her want to heal. Want to be different, so their lives would fit together.

And I saw it in everyone around me. Charlie and Crow, Cassie and Ink. The Badd brothers, all fucking ridiculous eleven of them. Each pair’s love was different. Some were fiery and combustible, some were steady and cool. Each was unique, each was inspiring.

Normally, I’d have been gagging over the amount of PDA and gushy love talk, the couples all but mating behind every corner. Maybe it was because I was in the process of figuring out what was going on with Errol and me, but I wasn’t as nauseated by it.

Inspired, if anything.

The issue was, the wedding was only a single day in a process of celebration that occurred over weeks. We’d gotten to Alaska the week before the wedding, and then I’d spent the weekend in LA with all the women, and then we came back and there was a wedding and Errol seemed all…bro-y with the other guys, as if they’d been best buds all along. Which was cool, and I was thrilled he was getting along with what was, now, apparently, my extended family.

And then after the wedding, instead of going off on a honeymoon and life returning to whatever passed for normal in this crazy group, Lexie and Myles chose to continue partying. I guess it was fairly rare for every single member of the group to be in town all at once, so the group seemed to have mutually decided to make the most of it and use the wedding as an excuse to have a two-week-long summer barbecue, essentially.

It was fun.

I made friends with everyone, and there were jam sessions on the rooftop and wild late-night parties on Harlow Grace’s yacht—yes,theHarlow Grace. There were casual gaming parties where the dudes playedFIFAandMaddenandCall of Dutyand shouted at each other and wrestled and drank clobbering amounts of whiskey, while the women sat and played cards and told dirty jokes and watched the men act like idiots.

Errol was never far, and always allowed himself to be pulled into the fun.

It was just…we never got any time alone. We crashed in the van and were too tired to talk much less anything else, which we didn’t have time alone to talk about…

So two weeks to the wedding turned into another two weeks, and those two weeks sort of morphed into me going to the gym with Cassie while Errol went hiking with Lucas and Ramsey, and me and Torie going to Seattle together and Errol was everywhere with his camera, and I was waiting tables with Kitty, and he was helping with a remodel and…we were just living life.

It was easy, natural.

But it was also anything but. The tension of a new normal without sex was beginning to wear on us.

Finally, a full month after the wedding, the tension snapped.

It was after midnight, and I’d been helping Torie remodel her house and Errol had been off with Brock doing something risky involving a two-seater stunt biplane and high-speed photography.

We’d parked the van in Mom’s parking lot, and went in for showers once in a while but mainly lived out his van. So that’s where I was, in the van, waiting for him to come back. Dozing, pretending to read a book.

Lounging in the back, reading by a clip-on light.

I woke up suddenly, and he was there in the darkness.

“Hey-a, Pop. Sorry to wake you.”

I set the book aside. “I wasn’t sleeping.”

He snorted. “You were snoring.”

“Oh.” He had something to say, I could tell. “What is it?”

“D’you remember when you talked about a cabin in the woods?”

I nodded. “Yeah.” I bit my lip around a grin. “I said we’d need a cabin in the woods and a week alone.”

“You ready for that?”

I sat up higher. Held my breath. I could only nod, until my voice returned. “Errol, I…I need that so bad. Things have been so crazy, and two weeks has turned into a month and a half, and…how did we get here?”