“Which one?” he asked, a small smile on his face.
“The real one. The one with just the two of us.”
He laughed because it had been far from perfect. “May, we bickered the whole time and you threw up in the bushes outside City Hall.”
“My morning sickness was terrible!”
“You looked beautiful though.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “I was in jeans and a T-shirt. You were in cargo shorts.”
“It was very us.”
She smiled at him, but he could see that his use of the word us sapped the electricity out of their back and forth. She took a step back from him and they both dropped their arms from one another. There was no us anymore. Now, it was just two people who used to be something.
She cleared her throat. “I’m hungry. Are you? Should we get back to the barbecue?”
“Yeah. Okay.” He followed her back into the villa and was grateful when Ricky was right there next to him to distract him from everything he’d lost.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next day, the men and Ricky had tromped off to do some fishing and the women lounged around the pool after a good, brisk hike around the island.
Geo was swimming laps in the pool while Naomi, Bex, Elena, and May all lounged on a huge inflatable that came equipped with cupholders and a tray for the chips and salsa they were currently taking straight to the dome.
“Sometimes I can’t believe this is my life,” Bex muttered, her eyes closed to the sun. Bex’s life had been drastically different a year and a half ago. She was a former stripper who’d witnessed a murder when she stumbled into Atlas’s life. The large, goofy blonde man had made it his mission to make Bex’s life as safe as he possibly could. “Eighteen months ago, I was literally homeless and on the run from a psychopath. Now I’m vacationing at the expense of the most famous man in the world. What a mindfuck.”
“I know what you mean. Sometimes I can’t believe I have so many friends now,” Naomi added in. “Before I got pregnant with Brookie it was pretty much me, myself, and I. Now it’s me, myself, and I and Brookie and Sequence and Atlas and Bex and—“
“We get the picture, Mama,” Elena cut in gently. Then she moaned and rubbed her stomach. “Blech. Something about that guac is not sitting right.”
“That’ll happen when you’re pregnant,” May said offhandedly, halfway toward dozing into a dream. Her eyes sprang open once she realized she’d said those words out loud.
“What?” Elena asked, sitting up. “What did you just say?”
“What’d I miss?” Geo asked, out of breath and balancing by her elbows off one end of the inflatable. She hoisted herself aboard and squeezed out her hair.
“Um. I think May just told Elena that she’s pregnant?” Bex said, glancing back and forth between the two women.
“WTF, May, you’re pregnant?” Geo screeched.
“Shh!” May scolded. “Don’t say that out loud. You know there’s a ninety percent chance that Rook has this place bugged for security purposes. And no. For the record, I am decidedly not pregnant. Unless it’s with baby Jesus himself.”
“Then I’m confused,” Geo said, crunching a chip.
“May thinks that I’m pregnant,” Elena clarified in a quiet voice.
“Elena, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s just a stupid hunch. I’ve been wrong before. It really doesn’t mean anything.”
“No,” Elena said in that same hushed tone. “You’re right. I am.”
“What?!” Naomi sat up so fast and with so much exuberance that she rolled off the inflatable and into the pool.
Bex and Geo hoisted her back up as all the ladies laughed.
“Yup,” Elena confirmed, tears in her eyes. “Ced and I have been trying for a couple of months. We found out like two days before the trip. I have my first doctor’s appointment when we get back.”
“Wow. Elena. Congratulations!” Geo clapped hands with her and grinned. Geo might be a total badass, but she was a sucker when it came to kids.
“Wow,” Bex said, lying on her stomach and swinging her feet in the air. “Can any of us make it down the aisle without getting knocked up first? It’s like a Rook Securities curse or something.”
“You laugh now, little girl,” May said, pointing a menacing finger at Bex. “But just you wait until it happens to you.”
Bex’s pupils shrunk down to pins. “Point that finger somewhere else, devil woman! I don’t want you cursing me!”
Everyone laughed and Elena took a long sip of the seltzer she’d been sipping on the whole trip so far. “You don’t want kids, Bex?”
“No, I do. I definitely do. And so does Atlas. But we’ve agreed that we don’t have nearly enough money for a kid right now. We’re saving up.”
“You want to know a highly guarded secret of parents worldwide?” May asked, adjusting her sunglasses. “There is literally never enough money for a kid. They’re designed to suck you dry. It’s just how it works.”
“Is she giving you the speech about how I stole her youth?” Ricky called as she pushed through the back gate, a fishing pole over her shoulder. “It’s all lies. That woman’s ass is tighter than mine.”
Rook buried his face in one hand as he followed his daughter through the gate. “Ricky, please don’t talk about your ass.”
Just to stir up trouble, May rolled onto her stomach and looked over her shoulder. Sure enough, Rook’s eyes had landed squarely onto her aforementioned tight ass. She smirked and faced forward again. Let him look.
Her smirk melted off her face when she caught Geo’s eye, who had apparently been watching the whole exchange.
Later that day, May had just finished changing into clothes for dinner when she left her room and jumped a foot into the air.
“Jesus!”
Geo was standing in the hallway, her arms crossed over her chest and a shaft of light diagonally striking across her body.
“Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Really? Because you were waiting out here like a murderer.”
Geo laughed. “I just wanted to talk to you before dinner.”
Although May was pretty sure she knew exactly what this was all about, she brushed her fingers through her just-washed hair and strode past Geo into the small living room of their cabana. Rook and Ricky were apparently already at dinner.
May plunked down on the two-seater couch and Geo grabbed the desk chair and flipped it backwards.
“What the hell is going on with you and Rook?”
May raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t take you for a gossip, Geo.”
Geo rolled her eyes. “You know I’m not trying to get the dirt, May. I care about you two. And as far as I knew, you two were distant but polite. Now suddenly, you’re putting your ass on a platter for him and his eyes are following you every step you take. I’m not asking for the details, I’m just checking that you know what the hell you’re doing. Because if I’m noticing then you can sure as hell bet that your perceptive-ass daughter is noticing as well.”
May’s indignation wilted. She stopped brushing through her hair and let her forehead sag into her palm. “You’re right. I don’t know. Things have been a little… charged lately.”
Geo shifted. “What’s changed? It seemed like before you two really had the whole divorce thing figured out.”
May genuinely considered the question. “I think that right after the divorce our feelings were really, really hurt. We could barely stand to be around one another. But we did it for Ricky. And little by little the awkwardness has faded. About a year ago, we started being friendly to one another again.”
“Around the time you went on vacation as a family and dumped your boyfriend two days in?” Geo asked. She wasn’t goading May, she was just being blunt.
May frowned. “I guess. Yeah. Around that time.” May could be freakily perceptive—Ricky had inherited it from somewhere—but that didn’t mean May didn’t take joy out of being deliberately obtuse. “But it’s
not necessarily related.”
“Sure,” Geo said drily. “Anyways, go on. You’ve been getting friendly…”
“And then the break-in happened and he swooped in, muscles blazing and, yeah, now we’re on vacation together. Things are maybe a little bit confusing.”
“I thought you didn’t like it when he swooped in muscles blazing. I thought that was part of the reason you filed for divorce.”
May sighed. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate his need to take care of me and Ricky. It’s that I’d come to depend on it.” May took a deep breath. “I depended on him, truly depended on him, during a time when he wasn’t there to support me.” May looked off into the past. “He enlisted when I was still pregnant. I had the baby on my own. I didn’t even call my mother until the labor was over. He didn’t even meet Ricky until she was four months old. Did you know that?”
Geo shook her head somberly. “I didn’t know that.”
“I needed Rook and he wasn’t there. For years. He wasn’t really around, in any consistent way, until Ricky was about seven. And even then, it was because of his injuries that he decided to leave active duty and come home. And by then, Ricky and I had our routine down pat and Rook was almost a hindrance…” She paused for a long minute. “I’m rambling. Sorry.”
“No. Don’t be sorry.” Geo considered her from across the room. “May, this might not be convenient for you to hear, but Rook is a good dad. He’s a really good dad. Trust me. I can smell a bad father from a mile away, and Rook ain’t one of ‘em.”
“I know,” May said quietly, stubbornly. “He’s a natural. He just wasn’t around for the first half of our daughter’s life. And after a while, I just had to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to forgive him for that. And I realized that while he was gone I’d stopped needing him to be around. I’d become so independent that I preferred to do it on my own. There just wasn’t room for him anymore.”
“And now you’re thinking there might be room again?”
There was no censure or judgment in Geo’s question. But it still took the wind out May. “No. No, there’s no room for him in my life. I’ve just been lonely and there’s so much history between us. But I’m not going to get back together with him. Or even fool around. Not when there’s so much that we stand to lose.”
Geo nodded. “All right. I’m sorry to corner you like this. I just wanted to make sure that you weren’t accidentally headed down a road that wasn’t smart for you to be on.”
“I appreciate it, Geo. A girl’s lucky to have a friend who will tell her like it is.”
“Don’t I know it.”
***
May couldn’t sleep that night, which was a common thing for her after she’d been talking about her divorce. There were just some subjects that were better left in the box, because once you let them out of the box, they acted like they owned the place.
She laid in her bed, the silky black sky outside of her white curtains, and she thought and thought and thought.
Annoyed with herself and restless, she pulled herself out of bed around 1 am. She shuffled down the hall, and in a very old habit, creaked open Ricky’s door to check on her. Right as rain.
The bungalow was just small enough that May couldn’t watch TV without waking Ricky, who’s room was right next to the living room. She decided to go sit by the pool, but as soon as she got there, she heard familiar voices on the other side of the villa wall and scented the smell of campfire on the air.
It was warm enough that her sleep shorts and oversized T were enough to keep her warm, but the raw heat of a campfire sounded delicious to her right about then.
She padded across the pool deck and down the path to the ocean. There she found Moreau, Atlas, Bex and Rook.
They were stretched out on little low-to-the-ground camping chairs, looking at the stars. The group looked up when she approached.
“We didn’t wake you, did we?” Moreau asked anxiously. “Sometimes when the wind is right, the noise from the beach travels right up to the cabanas.”
“No, no.” She waved her hand. “I just couldn’t sleep and thought I’d join the party.”
There wasn’t an obvious place for her to sit, but Bex solved the problem by vacating her beach chair and going to sit on Atlas’s lap. May plunked herself down.
“Wow, the stars are really incredible.”
“We saw some shooting stars right before you came down,” Rook told her from across the fire.
“Did everybody make wishes?” May asked, looking around.
Atlas nodded solemnly. “Sure did. But I can’t tell you or else it won’t come true.”
May blew a raspberry. “Urban legend.”
Moreau chuckled. “You really think that?”
“I don’t know.” May shrugged. “Sometimes I have opinions on things just so I have something to say next.”
The whole group laughed at that and May could feel Rook’s eyes on her from across the fire, but she didn’t look up from the flames.
“Anyone up for swimming?” Atlas asked, standing up and dusting the sand off his swim trunks that had Van Gogh’s starry night printed on them.
“Me,” Bex said, a grin on her face and her hand waving in the air.
May wouldn’t have minded a swim, but Atlas and Bex were so obviously excited to be alone together that she kept her lips zipped.
They stripped off the clothes over their suits and ran down the beach toward the inky black water.
“I’m surprised you didn’t get in,” Rook said.
She shrugged. “The lovebirds can have their midnight swim together.”
“You enjoy a swim?” Moreau asked.
Rook laughed. “This woman has the soul of a fish.” He frowned. “Wait. That didn’t come out right. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“How about the soul of a mermaid?” Moreau offered helpfully.
“That’s the one,” Rook said, pointing a finger at Moreau and taking a swig of a beer he’d had screwed into the sand next to him.
“I take that as high praise. Mermaids are hot.”
The men laughed and May watched the two swimmers. Whatever part of her had woken up when she’d become a mother, it wasn’t easily turned off.
“But yes,” she said after a moment. “I’ve always loved the water.”
“Are you a water sign?”
May laughed. “I can’t believe a movie star just asked me what my sign is.”
“I dare not hit on you, May Jones,” Moreau told her with a grin.
“And why’s that?” She gave him a knowing little smile.
Moreau’s eyes flicked to Rook’s face, but he was smiling as well. “Because when your girlfriend is as trained in combat as mine is, well, you don’t take the chance.”
May chuckled. Geo could certainly kick her ass. But then, Geo could kick anyone’s ass.
Rook stretched out, his eyes on the constellations. “She’s a Cancer. And once her crazy-ass aunt gave us an astrological reading—”
“Oh my god! Don’t you dare tell this story!”
Rook lifted his head and grinned at her from across the fire.
“Well, now I have to hear it,” Moreau insisted.
“Can I?” Rook asked. And it touched her that as much as he obviously wanted to tell the story, it was her crazy family he was talking about and ultimately he was leaving it up to her.
“Oh, go ahead.”
“Well, May and I had been married for about two years when her aunt got super into astrology and all sorts of mystical stuff. And I mean super into it. Like, crystal balls and incense and tarot cards.”
“She’d cleanse your aura before she’d hug you,” May cut in.
“And put crystals at the bottom of your water glass.”
May grinned. He’d been such a good sport through all that, trying so hard to be kind to her family. Her smile faded a little with sadness.
“And anyways,” Rook continued. “She never
really liked me. Apparently Tauruses and Cancers are supposed to steer clear of one another.”
“No, no,” May cut in. “You’re remembering that wrong. Tauruses and Cancers are actually really compatible. But she didn’t like your rising planet.”
“Oh. Right. Anyways. The real reason she didn’t like me was that I’d knocked up her precious niece while we were still in high school. Go figure.”
Moreau laughed, his head bouncing back and forth between the two of them. “And what happened two years into marriage?”
“Well, it was Thanksgiving and I was on leave for once. So, May, Ricky and I went to her family’s turkey dinner. And it was there that Aunt Sue decided it was finally time for my astrological reading. She dragged me into the middle of the room and performed the whole thing in the front of the entire family. And let me tell you, it was bad. The worst. Everything unfortunate that can happen to a man was gonna happen to me.”
“Plague, cursed luck, failures in business,” May listed, laughing as she recalled the ridiculousness. “She predicted that Javi was going to lose his looks, become a drunk—”
“Become impotent,” he added drily.
“Wow,” Moreau replied. “She really didn’t like you.”
“No, she did not. But here’s the kicker. All that bad stuff was going to happen if—and only if—I stayed with May. But, she said, there was an opportunity to avoid all the bad stuff, if I left May for a ‘tall, statuesque blonde woman’.”
“What?” Moreau sat up straight, horror and humor mixed on his face. “Your aunt said that to your husband in front of you?”
“And in front of my entire family. But that’s not even the worst part.”
“What could be worse?” Moreau mused.
“Well, she told this whole story about how a tall, blonde beauty was my actual destiny and unless I left May and went after blondie, I was destined to destroy my life and May’s life. Just when I was really starting to roll my eyes and be done with the whole business, someone knocks on the door.”
“And Aunt Sue is all my, my, my who could that be?” May said, swooning like a southern belle.
“And in walks a tall, statuesque blonde. Who Aunt Sue had apparently invited for Thanksgiving dinner.”
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