Page 18 of My Favorite Lost Cause (The Favorites #2)

MAREN

I dream that night about my wedding day.

I’m at my mother’s house—still in a robe but with my hair and makeup done.

All that’s left, really, is to put on the dress.

My mother is doing her usual thing, panicking unnecessarily, flapping her hands and yelling at me to go upstairs and get ready just like she did on my real wedding day.

I pass Charlie in the hallway on the way up—delicious in a tux, minus the jacket—and he must see something in my face.

When I get to my room he’s there, behind me.

“Let’s have a chat,” he says, following me inside.

He shuts the door behind him and flips the lock.

I don’t think he’s ever been in here before. He’s certainly never been in here with me alone, behind a locked door.

I have a single, crazy thought: and now he never will be .

And that thought makes my throat tighten, as if I’m losing something that matters.

It’s just cold feet . It must be.

He puts his hands on my shoulders and pushes me to sit on the little ottoman beside my vanity, and then he crouches in front of me. “What’s wrong?” he demands .

I’m sad that the two of us will never be alone like this again, not in the way I suddenly want to be, and that’s way too crazy to ever give voice to.

“Nothing.” My voice is faint. I force a smile to make up for it. “Just pre-wedding jitters.”

A muscle flickers in his jaw. “You don’t have to do this, Maren. I can sneak you out the back. We can go anywhere you want.”

He doesn’t suggest he’d be doing this as anything but my stepbrother, as anything but my friend. But the possibility that we are something more is there, isn’t it? His eyes burn in a way that says more than a volume of poetry ever could.

I picture myself jumping onto a plane with Charlie, taking him to my favorite island in the Azores. I picture some brief debate about whether we’ll need one room or two, and we’ll end up in one. I picture his hands—still on my shoulders—pushing the robe off to reveal me.

Except I’m the daughter of two reckless people—a woman who has cycled through boyfriends and husbands, and a man who took off before I was born and later knocked up a student two decades his junior.

I want a normal family, a normal life. Things I can have with Harvey.

Leaving now—it’s the kind of shit my mother would do.

But is making the mature choice supposed to feel like dying inside?

“Okay,” I tell Charlie, untying the robe. “Let’s go.”

I wake in the darkness, my heart hammering. It happened. Aside from that last bit, the part where I agreed to go, it happened just the way it did in my dream. How could I have forgotten?

Maybe I read too much into what he was saying. Maybe I read into that look on his face.

I must have. We’re family. There’s no way he wanted me to run away with him like that , in a romantic sense .

Only now, in the dark, will I admit something to myself, something I’m never going to think about again: he might not have wanted it that way, but I did.

I’m making breakfast with my left hand and scrolling through tile samples with my right when Charlie calls my name from the foyer. He sounds amused. “You got a delivery,” he says, arching a brow and nodding toward the oak nearest the house, against which two bikes are leaning.

My stomach sinks. I’d pictured staying here longer. I’d pictured spending Sunday—the day Elijah and his guys aren’t working—exploring the area with him.

“I bought bikes.”

“Yes, I actually deduced that part myself. Why did you buy bikes, Maren?”

Suddenly my reasoning sounds incredibly childlike. I thought it would be fun. I thought we could have a picnic .

“It’s a good form of exercise. And I thought I’d have more time here.”

“Since when do you care about exercise?”

“Fine. I thought it would be fun. Never mind! I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition.”

A slow, sweet smile spreads across Charlie’s face. “You thought it would be fun. That’s all you had to say.”

A shiver races over my skin, and it’s both bad and good.

It’s a shiver that says this is what life could be like with someone who actually cares about you, someone who cares about your happiness. This is what you’re giving up, remaining with Harvey, and why would you ever be willing to live without it?

I walk away, pulling out my phone to text Harvey as I go.

Hey, I’m not coming home tomorrow after all, but I’ll be back on Saturday in time for your event.

Even if it only gives me two extra days here, I’ll take them.

Harvey sends an array of rage-filled responses—implying that I’m sleeping with Charlie, that I’m just like my mom, that I’m not looking like a good candidate for motherhood—and I just swipe my finger over each, deleting them as if they’re notifications from an app I never meant to download.

Beyond meaningless—simply an imposition.

Charlie cuts out early and we go into town to gather supplies for our bike outing.

There’s this cute store in Oak Bluff that actually has an adorable wicker picnic basket in the window—the inspiration for this idea in the first place—but Charlie says his testosterone level has already dropped dangerously low in agreeing to ride on the “girly” bikes I bought and he’s putting his foot down.

So we end up at the Stop-n-Shop instead. Martha and I are friendly now. I enjoy my near-daily chats with her as she rings my groceries up.

Today, while Charlie runs back to grab one more thing for our bike trip, she grins at me.

“You’ve shrugged it off,” she says. “That pall you had over you when you first came? I can see all your colors again.”

I smile. “I guess a week out of the city was all I needed.”

“It’s not being out of the city.” She nods at Charlie. “It’s him. He’s what brings your colors out.”

Once again, I have no idea how to respond. “I mean, I guess maybe I’m just more comfortable around him since he’s family.”

She laughs. “It’s not because he’s family.”

By mid-afternoon we’re setting out, and it’s a perfect day for it: slightly overcast, breezier than normal. Not a single car passes us as we ride on a paved road that should, eventually, lead us to the beach.

I was on a road sort of like this in my dream. And I don’t know if I’m embellishing things now or not, but I remember details I didn’t notice when it was happening: the swirl of skirts around my feet. My friends wearing broad-brimmed hats.

I’ve been accused of having a vivid imagination before, but this is extreme even for me.

The trees get sparser and eventually turn to brush, and suddenly we’re crossing a bridge with dunes on the other side.

We dump our bikes when we reach them and climb over to reach the long sand beach.

It’s the perfect time of day—still light, but the sun has lowered, and the sky is now cast in bright blues and muted orange.

Charlie spreads the blanket while I get out our snacks, and then the two of us settle back to look around.

The tide is out, the water calm. Gulls swoop over the placid water, hunting for their dinner.

“I wish I could stay here forever,” I tell him, turning my face toward the sun as it breaks through the clouds.

“I’m glad you came with me,” he replies, “even if you cost me a million dollars.”

I fight a smile. “I paid for the bikes.”

He laughs. “I was referring to the house .”

Oh, right. I do feel bad about the cost. I’d have covered it, if he’d allowed me, although Charlie was full of crap.

There’s a big difference between not having money and not wanting to spend your money, and he was doing the latter.

I know he’s sunk a lot of money into this arena football team he’s funding in Texas, but he’s a venture capitalist. They always have extra on hand, just in case a new opportunity presents itself .

“You agree now, though? That you ought to keep it? I mean, mostly because it’s amazing but also because your mom asked you to?”

“It’s not that amazing, Maren, and I’ve got no fucking use for this place, but yes, I agree I should have kept it for my mom’s sake. It’s the bare minimum of what I should have done.”

I wish I had a tool to excise that shame from his voice. “What do you mean?”

“I was a shitty son,” he says quietly. “She came up to visit me last winter, and I barely made time for her. She wanted to go to MOMA, and I took her, but I spent half of the trip on my phone replying to emails.”

I shake my head in silent argument. I wasn’t there, but I know him, and this can’t be true.

“I once read that we never truly remember anything…we simply remember the last time we remembered it. Don’t let this story you’re telling yourself be the way you recall those last days.

Tell me a moment that you actually enjoyed, because I know there was one, and I want to make sure you remember it. ”

He frowns, watching the gentle waves near us collapse into foam.

“I got up, on one of the days that I’d taken off, and she made breakfast. A big breakfast, like the kind she used to make here.

And it was ridiculous…I don’t even eat breakfast at home, but we sat down, and we ate together, and she was just smiling the entire time, watching me.

She used to do that…” His voice cracks. And he stops talking.

I squeeze his hand. “She used to do what?”

“She used to like to watch me eat. She loved me so much that it just made her happy to watch me eat. It took so fucking little to make her happy, and I didn’t even try.”

I place my head on his shoulder, my gaze trained on the gently curling waves.

“Charlie, you did try. I bet you remembered her birthday every year, and Christmas and Mother’s Day.

I bet that anytime she ran into a financial issue down here, you offered to swoop in and save her, and anytime you heard about someone being a dick to her, you tried to fix it, the same way you do for all of us.

And if I ever have a child, all I will want is to sit back and watch him eat his breakfast, nothing more required, as long as he’s happy and fulfilled. ”

His smile falters. “I’m not sure my mom ever saw me happy and fulfilled.”

“Maybe she’s watching to see it happen now.”

A low laugh rumbles out of his chest. “I know you’re trying to console me, but if I thought my mom was watching twenty-four hours a day from beyond the grave, it would put a real damper on my private life.”

I sort of think his private life could use a bit of a damper, but I’ll keep that to myself.

“She had more faith in you than you have in yourself,” I say, pressing my lips to his cheek and enjoying the tickle of his scruff against my mouth more than I should. “That’s the real reason she asked you to come.”

He smiles. “What she should have had faith in is that you’d convince me to do the right thing. But I’m glad you did. I think I’m going to stay.”

My head lifts from his shoulder. Stay? For entirely selfish reasons, I hope I’ve misheard him. “Wait. What?”

He stares at his lap. “If someone had asked me how I was a couple weeks ago, I’d have told them things are great.

I’d have rated my life a seven, at least. But…

I’m happier here. I wouldn’t rate this a ten either, though.

Nowhere close. Which means in New York, I was maybe at a three or a four and lying to myself.

I think maybe my mom knew it, and that’s why she wanted me down here.

So I’m gonna stay for a bit. Until the inspection, anyway, but probably longer.

I don’t have to be in Texas until mid-summer. ”

Mid-summer? I’d barely see him over the next month anyway—only at a family dinner or something to celebrate Kit’s engagement. There’s no reason at all to feel as if the ground is swallowing me whole.

So maybe it’s for the best that I’m leaving in a few days after all.