They cried and laughed and hovered over their child. They kissed and held each other, and when Ivy passed the baby to him, he cradled his daughter in his arms with more care and wonder than I’d ever seen a person possess.
They were three, their love creating another, a bond between them that couldn’t be broken. Their lives would forever be full of love, full of joy. Full of pain too, because that was the nature of life, after all. But I knew without a doubt that they would cling to each other just as they did now, with all the hope and love they held in their hearts. Which was a lot.
I was struck again with a longing, a moment of wishing for that other life, the one with the easy Sundays and the abundance of kisses. I added a new daydream to the reel, one just like this.
And there was only one man I could imagine it with.
I felt myself approach a moment, a precipice. A cliff face where I was given a choice. The wind of change whipped my face, beckoning me closer to the edge where I’d have to decide—fly or flee. The life I had or the one I dreamed of.
I knew what I wanted to do, but what would I sacrifice to do it? Could I have it all, the life I wanted and the one I was living? Was there an in-between, a middle ground, or was I destined to have one or the other?
And how much did I even want what I had?
I didn’t know the answer, not yet.
But the wind carried me closer to the edge all the same.
22
Girls Like Her
KASH
I smiled down at my phone where a picture of Ivy and her baby smiled back at me.
“Lemme see,” Luke said impatiently, reaching across the worktable where we’d perched that night, the display I’d been helping him build finally ready for Tess’s finishing touches.
When I passed my phone over, his face went all gooey.
“Man, would you look at that? A baby. Ivy has a baby.”
I laughed. “She’s been pregnant for a year or something. Didn’t you ever figure that was going to happen someday?”
“I mean, theoretically, sure. She’s just the first person I’ve ever known to actually have one. It’s wild—a few hours ago, that baby was inside her. All this time, that little baby has been right there.” He shook his head at the screen.
“That’s usually how it works.” I held out my hand for my phone, amused.
He sighed and passed it back. “Someday, that’s gonna be us. Someday, Tess is going to have a baby—my baby, if I play my cards right.”
“And that doesn’t scare you?”
“No, it really doesn’t. Because it’s Tess. Things that should scare me just don’t anymore.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t explain it. But I figure if I have her with me, I can do just about anything.”
My smile tilted as I leaned against the table across from him, folding my arms. “Never thought you’d commit, Lucas.”
“Everybody’s got to grow up sometime. Isn’t that what they say?”
“That’s what Mom says. I dunno about anybody else.”
“How about you?” he asked. “Things going good with Lila?”
“They are. So good. Probably too good.”
His brow quirked. “What’s that mean?”
“We came clean last night and it went well. It went so well, in fact, that I woke up this morning terrified something will go wrong.”
“How doomsday of you.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve seen my track record,” I joked.
But he didn’t laugh. “Come on. You don’t actually believe she’s anything like the rest of them.”
I didn’t—in fact, I knew she was nothing like the women I’d dated. But I couldn’t explain to my brother that when I’d woken up with her in my arms, my unbound joy was immediately dashed at the thought of losing her.
That fear rose swiftly and without warning, and I’d struggled to contain it ever since.
“I know she’s not,” I answered, defaulting to levity. “But you’ve gotta admit, things like this happen to you, not me. I’m not the one who gets the girl and rides off into the sunset. I’m the one who has the girl for a minute before she rides off with a guy like you. Or in this case, a guy like Brock Fucking Bancroft.”
“Fuck that guy,” Luke shot. “And if she doesn’t want a guy like you, then fuck her too.”
My brows drew together. “Watch it.”
“I’m just saying. If she’s going to be a snob, she doesn’t deserve you.”
“I wouldn’t know a Gucci bag if it hit me in the face. She lives a life full of things I can’t even wrap my tiny little brain around.”
“A life she affords just fine on her own. She’s not looking for a meal ticket, Kash.”
I shook my head. “I know. I really do. But it’s Pavlovian. I keep doing the same thing, over and over again. It’d be naive to expect new results. I can hope. But I can’t expect. This could be the best thing to ever happen to me, and I hope it is. But I’m not wrong to be scared.”
“Lila isn’t Ali.” He called me out quietly, sternly.
“No, she isn’t. But this is the first time I’ve involved my heart since Ali, and we all know how that turned out.”
“I know you’ve been conditioned to think you’re not worth more than a night, but have you ever stopped to consider they never wanted more because you were so sure it couldn’t be?”
“Maybe,” was all I was willing to concede. “I want to be the one to make Lila happy, and I finally have the chance. We’re together, really together after all our skirting around our feelings. Trust me when I say that I am relieved. Relieved and hopeful and finally happy, happier than I’ve been since…well, since I don’t know when. It’s just not so easy to believe my luck won’t run out, that’s all. But I won’t let her go without a fight.”
“No, I don’t think you will. I’m only saying all this is in your head. Who knows—maybe you’re soulmates and everything will be a cakewalk.”
“We’ve been official for less than twenty-four hours. I hardly think that constitutes being soulmates.” I shook my head at him, laughing. “I might be dumb, but I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“Saying what?”
“That you’re dumb.”
“Because what do I know? I’m just a gardener who lives with his mother.”
“And I’m just a fuckup who couldn’t hold down a job. Oh, and who also lived with his mother.”
“Lived, past tense. Plus, you went to college and moved away and lived on your own.”
He pinned me with a look. “You could have if you’d wanted to. Why not just own the fact that you didn’t want to?”
“Because it doesn’t matter what I want. It matters how it looks.”
“To who?”
“To people.”
“To Lila?”
“You know how it is, Luke,” was all I said.
“I don’t get it. I don’t get why you think you’re not good enough,” he fired off in challenge. “It can’t be money—you have that just as much as the rest of us. It can’t be your job because you fucking love your job, and don’t lie to me and say you don’t. And you don’t live with your mother because you can’t take care of yourself. You live with your mother because she can’t take care of herself. There’s a big difference, and anybody who doesn’t see that is an asshole.”