Lark (First & Forever 5)

“It’s different online,” I told him. “I’m basically playing a character—a sexy, confident version of myself.”

Eliot looked confused. “But you used to work as a stripper. Wouldn’t that take a huge amount of confidence?”

“I was playing a role then, too. I can act a certain way when I’m in front of an audience, but when it’s just me and a cute guy face-to-face, I’m super dorky and awkward. Anyway, that’s not the point,” I said. “I don’t want to go to the party to try to hit on people. I want to celebrate with my friends, and I want all of us to ring in the new year together.”

Kel chewed his lower lip before saying, “I just don’t know if I’m up for it.”

“Please? We all just had the most wonderful holiday season together, and I really want us to make one more memory before everything changes.”

Eliot asked, “What’s changing?”

“It’s just a matter of time before Casey officially moves in with Theo, and who knows where the rest of us will be this time next year?” My voice broke a little at that last part. I really hadn’t planned on getting emotional, but there it was.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Eliot muttered.

“I don’t plan to either, but we just don’t know what the new year will bring,” I told him. “Besides Casey moving out, which’ll happen any day now, Kel could end up moving in with his boyfriend, if Hudson gets his act together. Plus, once Yolanda and JoJo get married, maybe they’ll want to become parents, and maybe they’ll stop renting out rooms because they’ll need the space for their kids. Or maybe not, maybe they’ll rent Casey’s room to someone who ends up changing the entire dynamic of this place. Who knows? All I know for sure is that we have something special here, and I think of you guys as my family, so I want all of us to celebrate New Year’s together.”

I was rambling by that point, and I was right on the verge of tears. Kel got up and crossed the kitchen to me, and he gave my shoulder a friendly squeeze as he said, “Don’t be sad, Lark. You don’t know if any of that’s going to happen, except for Casey moving out, which is inevitable. But Theo’s house is only five blocks from here, so it’s not like we’ll never see the two of them again. Like you said, we’re a family. That’ll never change, no matter where we end up.”

“You’re right.” I blinked a few times to keep myself from crying.

“And you’re right too, about all of us going out tonight and making a good memory,” Kel said. “Count me in, I’ll go to the party with you.”

Eliot sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but what the hell. Count me in, too.”

I smiled at my housemates and told them, “This is going to be great. You’ll see.”

6

Dylan

I paused on the second floor landing and watched my phone screen for a few moments, in case Lark sent me another message. When it became obvious the virtual conversation had ended, I stuck the phone in the pocket of my dark blue hoodie and continued downstairs to the parking garage.

My first stop was the car wash. Once my truck was spotless, I made a quick stop at the farmers market, then continued on to my parents’ home in the Berkeley Hills.

They’d decided to downsize three years ago, and now they lived in a beautiful Craftsman bungalow with a view of the San Francisco Bay. They were both academics who taught at UC Berkeley, and this new home was perfect for them, both for the short commute and the manageable size. I missed the old house in Oakland though, the one I’d grown up in, not that I ever told them that. They didn’t need me casting a shadow on their happiness.

When I reached their front porch, I shifted the flowers and box of muffins I’d brought them and plucked a folded note off the door. My name was scrawled on the outside in my mother’s fluid handwriting, and inside it said: Hi sweetheart, let yourself in and make yourself comfortable. One of our neighbors is having a crisis of sorts, so your father and I went over to lend a hand. We won’t be long.

They’d given me a set of keys as soon as they’d moved in, but I’d never actually used them before. It wasn’t like I had a reason to come over if my parents weren’t home, and it felt odd letting myself into the house. Since I’d never lived here, I just didn’t have that feeling of belonging that I’d had with the old house.

I went to the attractive kitchen with its mahogany cabinets and dark green stone counters, and after I put the muffins beside the coffee maker, I began hunting for a vase. I had to give up after a while though, because I had no idea where my parents kept anything. The closest I could find was a glass pitcher, so I filled it with water and stuck the flowers in it for the time being. My mom could sort it out when they got home.

After that, I wandered into the living room. I knew what I’d find there, and I knew it would make my heart ache, but I went anyway.

The fireplace was beautifully made of dark wood in the Craftsman style, and there were about twenty photos on the wide mantel in various wood frames. I exhaled slowly and stepped closer.

My mom had arranged the photos more or less chronologically. On the far left was my parents’ wedding portrait. Beside it were a few photos of my sister Diane and me from our childhood, along with a pair of family portraits, taken ten years apart. Near the center of the mantel was Diane and her husband Rob’s wedding picture. And right beside it was mine and Travis’s.

I picked up the framed portrait and studied the two of us. My husband and I looked like kids, and in a lot of ways, we had been. Travis and I were twenty years old when we got married. Everyone said we were too young for that type of commitment, but they were wrong.

People used to joke that we looked like brothers, but that wasn’t really true. It was just that we were both tall and Black with the same muscular build, and we wore our hair very short. Okay, so there were some other similarities too, including the fact that we both looked a little dazed in that picture, but we were beaming at the camera. That really summed up our wedding day—we were so happy, but later we agreed that we’d felt a bit overwhelmed by the huge number of guests and the formality of it all, which his mother had insisted on.

I returned the photo to its spot on the mantel and continued moving to the right. Next up was another family portrait. It included Travis and Rob, and it had been taken just a few months after I got married. Diane was pregnant with her daughter at the time, but none of us knew it yet.

That portrait was followed by pictures of Diane and Rob’s children. Like my sister and me, the kids were two years apart, an older girl and a younger boy. There were posed photos of them as babies, then as kids, followed by some pictures of our family taken at various events—a Thanksgiving dinner, a Fourth of July celebration. Travis was in several of those photos.

And then he just wasn’t.