Page 53

MOM AND I sat on the bench together that evening to watch the sunset.

She loved this bench; she loved the peacefulness of it.

She always joked that she’d go blind eventually by staring at the view for too many years, but she never would.

Dad was piddling around in the garden behind us, snipping dead buds off the rosebushes while he hummed the new song to himself.

“You know,” he said, straightening, “I like this one a lot. What’s it called?”

Sasha quietly looked at me, perched on the other side of Mom, waiting for my answer. He quirked an eyebrow, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he’d forgotten what I’d called it or—

Dad went on, “It sounds like love. I like it.”

I agreed. “Yeah, it kinda does.”

A smile spread across Sasha’s mouth despite him trying to fight it, and he shook his head out of adoration.

Even though I couldn’t hear his thoughts anymore, I found that I still knew what he was thinking anyway, in a strange roundabout way.

I wasn’t sure if it was a sliver of magic left, or if this was simply a part of this new feeling in my chest that fluttered every time he looked at me, like a bird finding out it had wings.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could almost see a different life, one where Mom and Sasha sat at the bar in the Revelry and played guessing games with the songs on the radio, and laughed about the awful new beers Mitch ordered. And that life would have been good.

No, it would have been perfect.

“You remind me a lot of her, you know,” Mom told Sasha. “Ami.”

He sat up a little straighter. “I do?”

“More than you think.” Then she tilted her head in thought, and leaned close to him and asked, “Wanna hear about the time she ran out of her flip-flops away from the cops?”

He barked a laugh. “What? Really? What did she do?”

“Oh, what didn’t she do!” Mom cried, and put a hand on his arm, and told him everything. We sat there for hours, and I listened as she talked about a woman she loved very much, unfurling all the memories she had tucked close to her heart, and let them fly away.

I wished we could have stayed in that moment forever.

But eventually the tides receded, and the highways cleared, and Sasha admitted that he probably should return to Los Angeles.

We spent a few days helping clean up the town, and at night we curled up on the couch in his rental house, dreaming about anything and everything while eating take-out Chinese and too many pieces of pizza.

Next week, he’d have to go home and I’d help my parents with the sad task of taking the photos off the walls in the lobby.

We’d gone through all the storage rooms already; we put the office in order.

The photos were the last thing. I think my parents put it off so long because they were sentimental, and so was I.

There was an idea picking at the back of my brain, and when I was alone, I’d take it out and examine it. Wonder if it was a bad idea.

Perhaps it was, but change didn’t feel so scary anymore in this strange future. The storm was still on the horizon, but I didn’t have to weather it alone.

Sasha and I had been dancing around the whole dating thing. We never really confirmed it, so I didn’t know, and I was a little afraid to ask—so he asked for me.

We’d gone to get his favorite treat on the Shores, Italian ice from the little vendor on the boardwalk. We were sitting on the bench, watching kids chase away seagulls. “Girlfriend or partner?” he asked.

I’d choked on my own breath. “What?”

“How should I introduce you? As my girlfriend or partner?”

“I … don’t really have a preference. What do you want me to be?”

He shrugged nonchalantly and replied, “My safe word’s ambidextrous .”

I almost choked again and pinched him on the arm. “There are kids around!”

He rolled his eyes. “I was in your head, bird. You’re just as bad.”

“Not aloud .”

“Mmh, what a pity. I kind of miss your dirty thoughts,” he replied, and leaned over to kiss my mouth, and savored it, smiling. “Cherries, like always.”

“Girlfriend and partner,” I decided. “If we’re going to keep working together, I want to be your partner. I also want to be your best friend.”

He grinned, and even with his sunglasses on, I could imagine the tricky glint in his eyes. “And what do you want me to be?”

Here , I thought. With me.

But I couldn’t say that—I knew I couldn’t say that. He had a whole life back in LA, and that idea in the back of my head was solidifying the longer I stayed here. It wasn’t lost on me that my last long-distance relationship ended badly. What if this one did, too? What if …

He tilted his head toward me. “Penny for your thoughts?”

I picked up his hand and traced the lines on his palm.

His nails were so well manicured, while mine were bitten to the quick.

The afternoon was warm, but the wind carried with it cool, salty air.

There was another storm on the horizon—you could smell it, a deep and earthy scent.

I imagined putting our suitcases in his driver’s car together, and going to the airport, and flying back to LA hand in hand.

I imagined what it would be like to have the key to his apartment, and watch bands in his private box at the Fonda, and deliver a late lunch to him at the school where he taught kids piano in the afternoons, and write songs with him in extravagant recording studios, and catch my name on Page Six.

And the more I thought about it, the brighter the idea I’d tucked away grew—until it was so bright I couldn’t ignore it. No, I didn’t want to ignore it.

That life I imagined with him in LA wasn’t mine. I didn’t want it. What I wanted was …

“I want the Revelry.”

When I spoke it aloud, the idea solidified. It became real. And terrifying. And—and crazy , if I was being honest. I quickly looked up at him to read his expression, to see how insane the idea was echo across his face.

But he didn’t look surprised by that at all.

He folded his fingers between mine and brought our conjoined hands to his mouth and pressed a kiss against my knuckles. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

“So … it’s not a bad idea?” My heart beat hopefully in my chest. “It’s not—it’s not a deal-breaker?

I’ll have to stay here. I’ll have to move home.

I have a small nest egg from my song royalties, so I can buy it out from my parents, and I’m sure people know good plumbers and electricians and roofers, and I can figure out new ways to liven up the beer selection and—”

“And you’ll always have a musician on tap,” he added, squeezing my hand tightly. “Whatever happens between us—I think my mom would’ve gotten a kick out of the idea. I’ll even charge you my family rate,” he said with a wink.

You’re the worst , I thought, but my heart was full. “But—but what about your career? Your music? The song?”

“The song will always be ours,” he replied thoughtfully, “and … I don’t think I’d realized how unhappy I was out in LA until I got here. I’d fit myself into a mold that everyone else wanted for me—that I thought I wanted for myself.”

“You are a bad bad boy …”

“The worst . I even think I’d miss my Hawaiian shirts,” he added. He was wearing one of my favorite shirts today—a garish print that reminded me of old Taco Bell decor. It was gaudy as hell, and looked so perfect on him.

I picked at one of his buttons. “Really?”

“I know, I know,” he replied tragically. “You changed me for the worse .”

Even if I had, I couldn’t stop smiling. “So what will you do?”

“I dunno,” he replied, “but right now I know whatever I want to do, I want to do it with you. Wherever you are.”

I didn’t want to breathe. Didn’t want to blink. I didn’t want to move from this moment. “Do you mean it?”

“Of course I do.”

He kissed the back of my hand.

My heart, full of hope, rose into my throat.

“Bird, you are the first person I want to hear in the morning and the last person I want to say good night to.”

Oh— oh , I knew this feeling in my chest now. I remembered this fluttery feeling perched on the edge of my heart.

“You feel like home, bird.”

I felt myself smiling, but I couldn’t stop. Everything in my body just wanted to jump and dance. I wanted to shout at the sky. I wanted to tell the world that Sebastian Fell—that Sebastian fucking Fell —said I felt like home. No one had ever told me that before. I’d never been that before.

I pressed my forehead against his. “Stop saying stuff like that,” I murmured, unable to hide the blush rising across my cheeks.

He cupped my face with his hand, his thumb tracing my bottom lip. “Too mushy for you?”

“I’m just afraid if you say any more, I’ll fall madly in love with you.”

He wiggled an eyebrow. “Well then, I’ll just have to find another way to make you fall.

” And then his gaze dropped down the length of my body, and the heated look he gave made me feel sexy even in jean shorts and an oversized Rolling Stones T-shirt.

He purred, his voice deep and gravelly, “And I won’t utter a single word. ”

Then he drew me close and kissed me. He tasted like rainbow Italian ice, sticky and sharp and sweet.

I thought I would miss the way he kissed when he was in my head and I was in his, but with each new kiss I found myself falling deeper into the way he smelled, the way he tasted, the brush of his fingers against my cheeks and through my hair.

Where before it was an onslaught of everything, now it felt simple.

Cherished. Like the world narrowed down to just him and me in that moment, his breath against mine, his tongue sliding across my lips, his teeth nibbling.

Now, there were fishhooks tugging in my stomach, pulling me toward him harder and harder, with the certainty of stars orbiting each other.

This was right. For the first time in years—this was where I needed to be. I knew it was, deep in my soul.