by Evans, LJ
I pulled the bag of marshmallows out, and everyone focused on toasting the little bits of heaven till they were the perfect color instead of being focused on me and my rose-colored wishes for our country. While the rest of them ate the marshmallows with chocolate and graham crackers, I ate them sugar for sugar, one after the other.
Georgie was watching me with a half-smile.
“Sweet tooth.” I shrugged. I’d already told her that once, but it felt like it needed repeating.
“I think you just mean a sugar tooth, because chocolate and graham crackers are certainly sweet, but the syrup you doused your French toast in and the marshmallows you’re pounding down are really just pure sugar,” she said.
“Remember that time we came back to his dorm room and found him pouring the box of sugar straight into his mouth?” Truck smirked at Eli.
“God, yes. Or how about the time we had to literally pull the third box of Captain Crunch out of his hands so he wouldn’t O.D. on the stuff,” Eli replied.
“This is quite a serious problem,” Georgie said to me, her smile easing into my soul and opening up all my nerve endings so I could feel the blood pounding through my veins way more than the sugar I’d inhaled. And I knew she was right. This was a serious problem, and it had nothing to do with sugar at all.
♫ ♫ ♫
I was groggy from alcohol and lack of sleep the next day when my alarm went off. It was early, but I wanted to be on the way and out to sea before the day got later. Before the sight and smell of Georgie had me deciding to stay another day…and another day after that.
The temptation of her was growing.
I hit the shower and then packed the few things I had. When I got to the kitchen, Truck groaned at me from the couch where he’d been sleeping.
“What the hell time is it?” he asked.
“About five thirty.”
“And you’re up because?”
I was running. I couldn’t risk being around Georgie another day. She’d had this hypnotic pull on my soul since the first time I’d seen her standing above the crowd in her salon in New York.
If I stayed, I’d just want her more. Every moment I’d had with her since arriving in Rockport had my heart beating out a tune that talked of futures tangled together. It made me both a jackass and a chickenshit that I was choosing the life I’d always pictured for myself over that. Over the possibility of a future with someone I could love.
But if I wasn’t going to give up my career plans for Nash—who’d been my brother in blood—I wasn’t going to give them up for a woman I’d met three times in my life. I couldn’t cross that bridge, because if I gave it up, all the years I’d spent working on those dreams would have been for nothing. A waste.
“I’m leaving,” I told Truck.
“What? I just got here.”
I nodded. “Dani needs me.”
And I knew he wouldn’t argue with that. Truck understood siblings needing you. He’d do anything for his brother.
“You can come with me if you want,” I told him.
“You making me choose between my two best friends?” Truck chided.
“We all know that I’m the favorite.”
Truck snorted.
“Think of it this way,” I added. “The two lovebirds are going to be even more lovey-dovey now that they know there’s a little Wyatt on the way. You’ll be stuck around that.”
“I’ll be stuck around Georgie.”
I tried not to react. Tried not to let it show how much that one comment pissed me off and made me hate myself all at the same time.
“She just dumped some guy. Don’t think she’ll be ready for everything Travis Dayton has in store yet.”
“Not because you want her for yourself?” he teased. I looked up and knew I hadn’t been able to hide it from him. The desire. The emotions that rolled off of me when she was in the room. I looked down the hall, making sure the doors to the bedrooms were still shut.
“Can’t happen.”
“Why not?”
“She’s one of Ava’s best friends. I’m walking down the aisle with her in October. Shag-and-bag would just backfire.” I shrugged.
“What if it wasn’t a shag-and-bag?”
I groaned. “Are you coming or not?”
“You’re leaving now?”
“As soon as I can say goodbye to the happy couple.” And I inwardly hoped that would be before Georgie emerged from the room. I could escape fairly unscathed that way.
My phone pinged.
BRAT: Have you left yet?
ME: Shortly. Trying to convince Truck to come with me.
BRAT: The family would be happy to see him.
ME: But not me?
BRAT: We like him better than you. You didn’t know that?
ME: This is why you don’t have a boyfriend.
BRAT: Who has the time for a boyfriend?
This was so like Dani. She was the only single one of my three sisters. She was focused on her career, just like I was focused on mine.
ME: Is our roommate there yet?
BRAT: No, I told you, might not be till the end of the month.
ME: Right. I’ll be home about the same time.
BRAT: Be safe out there on the high seas. Don’t get abducted by pirates.
ME: **muscled, shirtless pirate GIF**
BRAT: **puke emoji**
ME: Again. Why you don’t have a boyfriend. Pirates are supposed to be hot.
BRAT: Do we need a press release about you being gay?
ME: That’s just rude to the gay community. They wouldn’t want me.
BRAT: You’re right.
ME: Love you.
BRAT: Love you, too. Be safe, for real.
I looked over at Truck. “Dani says the family would rather see you than me.”
“Well, that’s because they're smart.”
The master bedroom door crept open, and Eli emerged. He looked like I felt. Tired and gritty.
“Hey, thought I heard your voices,” he said.
“I’m just heading out. Truck here has decided to come with me because I’m the best friend,” I teased.
“That’s it. You’re both out of the wedding.” Eli pretended to growl.
“I hadn’t agreed to go with the douchebag yet, but if I’m out of the wedding that easily, maybe I should,” Truck said, getting up and shoving things into his bag.
“You want us at that wedding; you need us at that wedding,” I teased, using my very best Jack Nicholson voice.
They both groaned.
“We use words like honor, code, loyalty…” I continued, and Truck threw a shoe at me.
“Just go with him. We both know we’ll only hear whining for months if you don’t,” Eli said.
“I don’t whine,” I retorted.
Once Truck was packed, we hugged Eli and told him to give Ava a hug also.
“And Georgie? Should I be sharing the hugs with her as well?” Eli asked with a knowing look. Both my friends knew me better than I ever gave them credit for. They knew I was running with my tail between my legs. It killed me a little, knowing that I may very well look back on this moment someday and be filled with regret for what could have been.
But it wasn’t enough to make me stay.
Georgie
YOU SAY
“I keep fighting voices in my mind that say I'm not enough,
Every single lie that tells me I will never measure up.”
Performed by Lauren Daigle
Written by Ingram / Mabury / Daigle
Hushed voices brought me from my sleep, but when I emerged from the bedroom, it was to find only Ava sitting with a bag of candied ginger at the counter. I made my way to the coffeepot.
“Morning,” I said. “Where is everyone?”
“Eli went into the office for a few hours. Mac and Truck headed back to D.C. on Mac’s boat.”
My hand stilled. “They
left?”
She nodded. My heart constricted. Mac had left because of me. I knew he’d leave, but I hadn’t expected him to go without saying goodbye. My heart didn’t know if it should have been celebrating or wallowing.
“Is the coffee smell going to make you sick?” I asked.
“No. Just don’t make me drink it,” she laughed. “You know, it hit me after the guys left. You’re going to law school in D.C.”
“Yeah.” I knew where she was headed and already wanted to end the conversation.
“And Mac lives in D.C.,” she continued.
“Don’t even start.”
“Why? You both seem to have a lot of…you know.”
“Chemistry?” She nodded, and I continued. “There is, but I just want to concentrate on actually finishing law school this time. And it sounds like he needs to work on finding the perfect little wife for his political endeavors.”
“You’re saying you wouldn’t be the perfect wife?”
My heart banged at her words. “Have you met me? No. I don’t intend to be anyone’s wife. Let alone some politician’s.”
I distracted Ava from talks of Mac and me with the wedding magazines that were sprawled out on the coffee table. Ava and Eli’s wedding was in October, and she had her dress picked out, but we were still trying to settle on the bridesmaids’ dresses. She’d said she didn’t care what Jenna, her best friend from childhood, and I wore to the wedding, but Jenna and I had slowly ganged up on her to pick something.
“I kind of like this black halter with the A-line,” I said, showing her the dress I’d sort of fallen in love with. It wasn’t very formal, more like something you’d wear to a simple party, but it was also sophisticated enough for the beach wedding Ava and Eli were having.
“It would look beautiful on you. But I’m not sure black is really Jenna’s color.”
“She could do a red one, and I could do the black. Those are your colors, after all.”
Ava took the magazine and looked at the dress.
“Why do I have to decide?”
“The wedding is only four months away, and if we have to order them, it could take that long to get them.”
“Then, send it to Jenna. If she likes it, go for it. I told you, I don’t care what you wear. I just want you there on the beach with me.”
I took a photo and shot it off via text to Jenna whose number I now had because of all the wedding stuff we were planning with Ava. I realized that we’d have to make some changes to the bachelorette party, because Ava would be four months along by then.
“Does she know about the baby?” I asked before I hit send.
Ava shook her head. “No, she and Colby are coming to stay in a couple weeks, and I want to tell her in person.”
“Phew. Good thing I asked.”
Ava tossed a magazine at me. “Don’t spill the beans. She’s already going to be ticked when she finds out that you and Mac Truck knew before her.”
I laughed, but my heart flipped at Mac’s name.
“You have that look,” Ava said.
“What look?”
“That wistful, ‘if only’ look.”
I laughed. “I am never wistful.”
“I wish I’d videoed it. You totally looked wistful.”
“If I’m wistful, it’s because I missed out on sweaty, vacation sex. Truck would have done as nicely as Mac.”
Ava laughed. “I didn’t say you were wistful over Mac, but now you’ve proven it to me.”
I flushed. “Okay. It would have been nice to have sex with a ten.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I told you. I don’t want it to be awkward every time we’re all together.”
“I think it was more than that.”
“Nope. Just that.”
I could feel her eyes boring into me as I flipped through the magazine she’d tossed at me. I held up a picture of a cute guy in a tux. “Do you think you can find me one of these so I can have hot, wedding sex?”
“Think about what Mac will look like in a tux.”
Holy hell, that made my fingers completely stop flipping through the pages. Mac would be beyond stunning in a tux. So stunning it made it hard to believe, even in my imagination.
Ava laughed, and I knew my face probably revealed the shell-shocked feeling I had.
“Yes…yes, he would,” I breathed out.
“I need food.” Ava left to go find something to munch on. Probably crackers. Or Cheerios. That had been her food of choice yesterday.
My phone buzzed.
RAISA: Malik says he is coming with me in September. HELP!
ME: Malik just wants to come to the States, period.
RAISA: But I do not want to be his excuse. In addition, he has been acting very strangely.
ME: More strange than normal?
RAISA: He is moody and silent.
ME: And that’s different than normal, how?
RAISA: You will see when we meet up with you in New York.
ME: I won’t be in New York, remember.
RAISA: Maybe this is good. He will not want to go to D.C. He likes New York better.
ME: He already asked to come see me in Washington.
RAISA: You have been no help.
ME: I want to see you both. I miss you.
RAISA: Fine. But you get to deal with his moods.
ME: I can do that.
RAISA: Love you, moy dorogoy.
ME: Love you more, malyshka.
I suddenly felt the need to get my new life settled. To move to the glamorous apartment with Daniella and her brother. To get my schedule and my textbooks. To research and discover my new city and my new campus. To have things ready for when my siblings came to see me. It meant that I needed to leave behind the little cloud I’d been living in with Eli and Ava.
When Ava came back to the couch, she had the Cheerios I’d expected, but she also handed me a bag of Skittles. They were my favorite. “I hid these from Mac because he would have eaten them in one sitting.”
“Wow. He really does have a sweet tooth.”
Ava smiled and nodded. “Obscene. It’s going to catch up with him and that trim figure of his someday.”
“I can’t imagine him ever going all lumpy around the middle. Look at Eli; he’s married with a baby on the way and no fat on him.”
Ava’s smile disappeared. “I’m going to have lots of fat.”
“It won’t be fat; it’ll be baby. There’s a difference.”
“I know. But…it’s going to be an adjustment. I’ve never really worried about my body or what I ate. It was just me, you know?”
“I don’t think you have to worry now, either. Just be healthy, be balanced. That’s all that’s important. Plus, you have the ocean sitting right there; you can go swimming whenever you want for exercise.”
Ava waved a hand at my phone. “Who was bugging you?”
“Raisa. She and Malik want to come visit on her way to Stanford.”
“Malik is coming with her?”
“Well, Mom can’t step foot in the U.S., and as much as I adore Petya, he’s not exactly a welcome visitor here, either. I’m pretty sure every time he steps in the States, he’s followed by half a dozen agencies that use up all the letters of the alphabet.”
“I can never imagine that side of your life.”
“I love them all. But in a lot of ways, they are like friends who come to stay or who I go and visit.”
“Like me?”
I smiled at her. “Honestly, I’m closer to you than all of them. Raisa might be the exception.”
Ava nodded. She understood not being close to family. There was no judgment in her eyes or her face. Her relationship with her father was nonexistent. He’d been a controlling, emotionally abusive bastard to her growing up, done some awful things to Eli and his friends, and basically walked out of her life once she got control of her trust fund.
�
��But at least you still talk to them. They’re happy to hear from you,” Ava said quietly, a hand to her flat belly. My heart panged for her, knowing that her father wouldn’t know or care about his grandchild.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I have Jenna’s and Eli’s families. I have Andy and Lacey. I have so many people who will care about this little critter that the one missing isn’t a big deal.”
She was confident in her words, but I knew there had to still be a very small part of her that ached for the loss of her parents. One by death, one by choice.
I still had my parents. I got a note and random calls from Dad in prison. I got a lot of texts and calls from Mom. I had people who would notice if I went missing. Before Eli had stepped into her life, Ava hadn’t had many people who would have realized that something had happened to her. I was grateful to be one of them.
♫ ♫ ♫
Two days later, I boarded a plane back to New York and the storage locker that I’d placed the few belongings I’d kept after moving out of the apartment I’d lived in for over twenty years. It seemed strange that everything that mattered had fit into the smallest unit I could rent. My life with Grandma had been narrowed down to a few boxes.
After emptying the unit into the small truck I’d rented, I shut the door with a click that sounded harsh and final, as if it was confirming with noise what I knew in my heart to be true. Everything was going to be different now. My life was on a precipice. Like the ending of the first book in a duet. The crescendo high and yet so much still to come.
I was ready for my new life.
When I got to D.C., Daniella hugged me as if we’d been friends for a decade. If there was a poster child for professional D.C. staffers, she was it, in her pinstriped pencil skirt and matching jacket. She had on a lavender silk blouse that peeked from the suit and accented her gorgeous purple heels. Her hair was a shade darker than mine, and it made her blue eyes stand out. She had a smile that was wide and striking with full lips that tugged at a memory.