Page 47

“No,” I reiterated. “Not necessarily. Forever looks a hundred different ways to a hundred different people. Why do you want to take the most boring route?”

Gigi stared at me, silent, her mouth open.

She tried to find an answer—any answer, really—but nothing came to mind.

Her eyes fluttered. Like she was recalibrating herself, and I had to wonder, how long had she berated herself for thinking she was broken?

Because, what, she didn’t want to get married ?

It wasn’t either of us who broke the silence.

“My sister’s got a point, Gi,” said my brother as he pulled open the ticket window. He leaned out of it, propping his head up in his hand.

Gigi looked like she wanted to burrow into the ground and die. “ Babe! ”

I glared at him. “Were you eavesdropping?”

“No,” he replied, and held up a flashlight. “I was finding flashlights in case the generator goes out. Found candles, too.”

Gigi stared at him in horror. “Mitch—I—what I meant was—”

“Hey, it’s my fault for eavesdropping.”

“You didn’t deserve to hear it like that,” she said, tears coming to her eyes again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. And I’m sorry that I’m going to let Wyn down. I don’t want to do that.”

He pulled himself through the ticket window and over the counter and was to her in two quick strides.

“No, don’t you dare— you know our mom. She won’t be upset.

She’ll be mortified that you put your life on hold.

And, babe? So am I.” He stared down into her eyes with nothing but adoration.

“I’m here to ride shotgun wherever you wanna go. ”

Her bottom lip wobbled. “Really?”

“Yeah.” He smiled. “Besides, all I heard was that you wanna spend forever with me. I don’t care how that forever looks. As long as it’s with you? That’s all I need.”

Gigi’s mouth pursed into a line as she tried to keep her composure, but she quickly lost it as she took him by the sides of his face and kissed him.

I turned away awkwardly. They might’ve been my brother and my best friend, but it was still weird . “Gross,” I muttered.

Gigi and Mitch broke away with a laugh. “Oh, you’re still here?”

“Ha.” I rolled my eyes.

Mitch kissed her again on the cheek. “I’ll give Mom back the ring, and hopefully she hasn’t made her mixtape yet …”

“Oh, no, I’ll take the mixtape,” Gigi joked. “I wonder what songs sound like us—”

There was another crack of thunder, though it sounded strange and deep. The lights flickered again dramatically.

“ After we survive this hurricane,” he added to Gigi. “Hey, speaking of songs, Jo—how’s the writing going with Sebastian Fell?”

“I told him about it,” Gigi supplied to me.

I hadn’t even considered that she wouldn’t tell Mitch everything. “We finished it.”

Mitch wiggled his eyebrows. “Did you now. And where is your rock star boyfriend?”

“He left,” I replied simply.

They gave a start. It was not the answer they imagined.

I tried to reason their shock away. “It’s a hurricane and I didn’t want him to get stuck here, and if he could get out, he should get out and I had to come here —”

Gigi interrupted, “So, you like him. And it frightened you.”

“Oh.” My voice was tiny. It was no use protesting. “Is it that obvious?”

“Considering you’re wearing his shirt,” Mitch said, “yes.”

I frowned, fiddling with the buttons on the front. “How do you trust someone wants you for who you are? It’s so scary.”

“Good,” Mitch replied.

“That I’m scared?”

“Absolutely. Right, babe?”

“Hell yeah. My grams used to tell me that love is rare. The real kind.” Gigi pulled her arm through Mitch’s, her face thoughtful and adoring. “It’s not given, it’s not stolen—love is borrowed, she always said. It’s borrowed, and how lucky we are to be afraid of losing it.”

Mitch pecked her on the cheek. “Then I’m the luckiest man alive.”

“And the most handsome.”

I fiddled again with the buttons on Sasha’s shirt. Lucky ?

I hadn’t thought of myself as lucky. But I supposed that I was.

Lucky to have met him on that balcony at the Fonda Theatre.

Lucky to get to know him. Lucky enough that he wanted to get to know me.

I’d been in my own head for so long, writing songs and seeing the world through them, that I’d forgotten what it had felt like to be in the world.

A part of it. I was successful, and I was talented, and I was on the precipice of something extraordinary, but Gigi had seen right through me.

She was right. I wasn’t satisfied. I couldn’t write because of the emptiness inside of me—and I’d thought it was my grief, my fears about my mom, but it turned out that my career had made that hole.

I couldn’t write because deep down I knew I didn’t want this.

It wasn’t my dream. Not this version of it, anyway.

This was Mom’s version. This was Dad’s, too.

Gigi’s. Mitch’s. This was the version of my life that everyone else wanted for me, but I was the one who had to live it.

Outside, the rain turned into torrential gray sheets, the wind carrying them sideways.

I said worriedly, “I think I messed up.”

“Then we’ll worry about fixing it after the storm. No going around it, there’s only through. C’mon, let’s help pass out those candles,” Gigi said, motioning to the box by the office door, so we did. There was little else I could do, anyway, with the cell towers down.

The candles were all different sizes, some long waxy ones saved for Halloween séances, others donations of seasonal Yankee Candles, all half-burnt with crispy wicks.

Dad had pulled out a small AM/FM radio that murmured the weather alerts, but most people only half listened while they all picked out their candles.

The Revelry was cozy, and with Mom cueing up more songs on the jukebox, and Dad carrying on with another one of his stories about his eternal fight with the seagulls that kept roosting in the eaves, and the two kids chasing the dogs, and Uncle Rick sneaking in splashes of top-shelf liquor as he bartended, and Mitch helping Gigi sort the soundproofing blankets, it almost felt like there wasn’t a hurricane outside at all.

I hoped Sasha had gotten inland. I hoped he wasn’t caught in this storm.

Just as I thought it, a sharp crack of thunder rattled the building. The lights flared. Then plunged the entire building into darkness.

Hurricane Darcy was here.