All I need is this home. These dogs. My girl. A cold beer…
He pulled out the piece of paper and the pen from his shirt pocket and wrote down the lyric.
“Is he…writing a song right in front of us?” Delia asked Helen in a voice that carried through the big room and they all looked at him.
“You get used to it,” Helen said and winked at him.
He’d had a glimpse of this when he was young and had been chasing it ever since. Family.
But he’d put it together through a distorted lens. His stepfather’s scraps of affection and baseline tolerance hadn’t been love. Protecting his brother and taking responsibility for the shit he pulled wasn’t love either.
He thought of his mother and the way she’d compromised everything for security. Including him.
That was such a difficult kind of love.
“Hey, rock star,” Alice said. He liked Alice. His fame meant absolutely nothing to her. “We’re waiting on you.”
He realized everyone was sitting and beautiful slices of steak were being handed out along with big platters of frites and Caesar salad. And the middle of it was Helen. Safe and secure. Loved.
I love her, he thought, the words coming out of the fog. This feeling he had, this inspiration, this compelled obsession, he’d been pretending it wasn’t love. But he couldn’t lie about it anymore.
He loved her.
And he was where he should be. On the outside.
“Coming.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Helen
Bea fell asleep in Helen’s arms at the table, something she hadn’t done in a really long time. Though it had been a long time since the family had lingered at the table like this. Even on Sundays, dinners were a faster affair.
But tonight, Micah was telling stories and everyone was asking questions, and another bottle of wine had been opened and another pot of tea made, and Bea had climbed into Helen’s lap, put her head on her shoulder and fallen asleep.
Helen was so reluctant to leave. So reluctant to stop holding this usually squirming bundle of energy. So reluctant to leave the warm glow of this table.
But then her hand fell asleep. And her arm.
And Bea started snoring.
The party, for her anyway, was over.
“I’m going to get Bea in bed,” she said to her mom, who was sitting next to her.
“You need help?”
“No. You, my mother, have done enough.” She leaned over and kissed Daphne’s cheek. “I’m going to put him in the big cabin,” Daphne whispered. “Just so you know.”
“I’m going to get her home,” she said to Micah, ignoring her booty call-arranging mother.
“Do you need some help?” he asked, rising half out of his seat.
“No,” she said. “It’s a whole thing. She’s going to wake up at some point and then I’m going to have to read some stories and listen to some stories and there will be cuddling. It’s a one-man job.”
“Of course,” he said. Her whole family watched as he rounded the table toward her, and her heart was beating hard against her chest, against her daughter’s chest and her own little heartbeat.
And it felt like she was on some kind of loop. Wanting him and dying a little bit the closer he came.
“I’ll walk you out,” he said, standing at the door to the kitchen. And still her family watched. Some playing it cool. Some, her mother being the worst of them, staring with hearts in their eyes.
Don’t, she wanted to say. Don’t get excited. Don’t get me excited. This isn’t the start of something. It’s the end.
They walked through the kitchen, where the teenagers were not cleaning up, but instead sitting around the kitchen with their phones out.
“Don’t you dare take pictures,” Helen said to each of them as they walked by.
“Pictures of what?” Stella asked, and she wasn’t even being sarcastic.
Micah laughed, holding open the back door to the kitchen. “Man, I got real boring real fast.”
“Don’t take it personally.”
Outside the moon was waxing, just above the dark shadows of the trees. And stars were visible beneath dark clouds. The night was cool and she held her daughter a little closer. The gravel crunched under their feet, the only sound between them.
What do I do? How do I say goodbye? Is this, like…over? No, she thought, suddenly relieved to remember the picnic. I’ll see him again. But then she chastised herself for weird, wishful thinking.
“Wow,” he said. “I can practically hear you thinking.”
“I’m just…it’s been a wild few days, you know?”
“I know.” He glanced around at all the cars. “Which one has the car seat in it?”
Oh, he was a sweet guy. He really was. She pointed at her mom’s car, the gray SUV with Farmers Feed Cities bumper sticker. He held open the back door and she bent to put Bea in her car seat. She protested, grumpily, her curls all over her face. Helen clipped her in and then brushed her hair away, kissing her forehead. Bea fell right back to sleep.