“We did,” I agreed, the “but” I could have easily added dangling on a hook above me, ready to drop.
We did. But we had a lot of terrible ones, too.
We did. But it doesn’t change anything.
We did, but that’s over. When it ends, it ends.
I decided not to say any of them. Lindsay knew these things as well as I did. The only productive thing I could do was let them go, one piece at a time.
After she thanked me again and left, Cohen came bounding down the lawn. “That looked pretty painless.”
“Definitely not painless. But, you know...not awful, either.” We both lifted our hands in short, polite waves as her car pulled away. “Progress.”
* * *
The day we moved into our new place, I set up my surprise for Mara on the screened porch and blindfolded her. Which was pointless, since she could hear the surprise as soon as she stepped outside.
“You hung up the wind chime!” she grinned, and pulled the bandana down around her neck to see.
“Do you like it over there?” I’d suspended it on a hook in the ceiling; the porch would keep the glass clean, but the wind could still reach it through the screen. A compromise: protect what you love, but make sure you can actually enjoy it.
“I love it there. I told you the porch is my favorite spot in the whole house, so this is perfect.” She walked underneath it and ran her fingers through the pieces. “Thank you.”
“One thing in this place, put where it belongs,” I said, easing up behind her and slipping my arms around her waist. “Only...what, two-thousand more to go?”
“Not that much. Give yourself some credit. You gave up a lot.”
“And kept a lot,” I reminded her, “which means we’ve got a lot to unpack." I pushed my mouth against her neck until she laughed, trying to push me away. “But I could use a break.”
Mara freed herself, face flushed. “You’ve unpacked one thing.”
“And I deserve some downtime.” I trailed her into the house and caught her in front of the kitchen island. Our laughter quieted when I roamed my hand between her legs, pressing myself against her. Showing her how much I wanted her, right then and there.
“Let’s christen our new place.” I kissed my way down her neck, dizzy on the faint sweat of her skin, the detergent in her shirt, and the trace of perfume clinging to her hair.
“Honey,” she sighed, but tilted her head back against my shoulder, giving in. “We have so much unpacking to do.”
“Let’s make a game out of it.” I increased the pressure of my hand, blood running hot at the quiet moan in her chest. “We fuck in one room, unpack it...then go to the next and do it again.”
Before she could answer—though the sounds I was hearing definitely added up to “hell yes”—I bent her over the island and pressed my erection against her sex. She moaned again and pushed back, the fabric of our clothes adding friction that was both unbelievably divine and incredibly frustrating.
I undid her jeans and pulled them down to her ankles, panties going with them, before unzipping myself. Her sex glistened for me in the fading sunlight.
“You wet, baby?” I whispered, pressing myself back into the same spot, bare skin sending a chill through us both.
“You know I am.” Her hips bucked against mine. “No foreplay, come on.”
“And you know that’s not how I do things.” In truth, I was beyond ready to drive into her—but the temptation to drive her crazy first, just for a little while, was too strong.
“Kick off your boots,” I ordered. She rolled her eyes, but obeyed. I crouched to slide her jeans and panties off her ankles, then tossed them behind us without a glance when I stood.
I started with one finger, one digit, barely moving.
“Levi. Seriously.”
“What?”
She threw me a bored look over her shoulder. “You know what.”
“Maybe I do. But you still have to say it.”
Her mouth flinched with a smile. “Finger me.”
“Hmm.” I pushed my finger deeper, then added another, but stopped halfway. “I don’t know...doesn’t seem like you meant it.”
“Levi.” This time, her voice was practically a whine. “Please—please finger me.”
I smirked and added a third, flexing them against her G-spot while she breathed my name onto the counter. The syllables left a streak of steam.
“Fuck, baby.” Her face contorted like she was about to cry, but I knew the expression well: she was lost in the pleasure.
I moved my fingers faster.
“Yes,” she cried, thighs trembling as she struggled to stay standing. I felt her wetness dripping down my wrist, spreading across the linoleum under our feet.
“Look at that. Look at what I’m doing to you, baby.” I paused my hand as she righted herself on the island, arms trembling.
The second she looked down, I pulsed my fingers wildly inside her, even harder and deeper than before, and reveled in the amazed cry that left her lips. She could barely keep her eyes open, it felt so good—but she couldn’t look away, either, determined to watch her body lose control.
Finally, her arms gave out; she lowered herself back down, pressing her cheek against the counter.
“Oh, my God.” Tears formed at the corners of her eyes. “How do you do this to me?”
My fingers slipped out of her slowly. I pulled down her shirt to kiss her shoulder blade, at the exact second I guided my erection inside her.
“Just good at what I do,” I whispered, loving the shudder that ran down her spine as I filled her.
Truthfully, I wasn’t sure how I did this to her. Ever. It wasn’t like I’d been bad at sex, before her—but I’d never reduced a woman to tears and tremors. With Mara, I did it every time, without fail. I didn’t have to decipher signals or reactions to know what she needed, or when. When we were together...it just made sense.
Of course, she had an identical effect on me: sex with her was the way I imagined sex felt, before I’d ever actually had it. Whenever she touched me, I felt each nerve spark to life. Every kiss wiped my brain clean of any other thought. She was all my fantasies, everything I wanted and needed at the same time.
“What about you?” I asked, as my speed increased. “You’re damn good, yourself.” She pushed back in time to my thrusts, wanting me as deeply as possible. Far be it from me to deny her request.
I sank all the way inside and held it there, feeling her adjust around me as her eyes slid shut. Every inch, every twinge: I wanted her to feel the effect she had over me.
“I don’t know,” I whispered on her neck, “how you do this to me.”
Her smile was real, but fragile. She was almost there.
I rocked in and out of her again, speed and force mounting as my free hand—the one gripping her hip, while the other braced against the counter—slid around her body. As soon as I made contact with her clitoris, she gasped. Her thighs trembled again.
“Levi...Levi, I’m so close,” she whimpered, brow furrowed and glazed with sweat. Her fingers gripped the edges of the island. I loved the sight of it.
“Me, too.” I hadn’t been, until I knew she was.
Her gasps turned into moans. The grip of her muscles made me lightheaded.
“Oh, God,” she stammered, “Levi, I’m coming....”
I lost all semblance of self-control, hearing that sentence spill from her mouth. My orgasm tore through me like an electric current, transferred right from her body to mine.
As I released into her, breath held, she kept shaking underneath me. Downright uncontrollably, from the looks of it.
God, I loved her.
It was probably the only thing we hadn’t told each other, by then—and yet I thought it every single day, in one situation or another. Like now, with our bodies synced and flying. Or first thing in the morning, when I woke to find her limbs tangled with mine in the blankets.
Whenever she changed my truck stereo to jazz,
even going so far as to switch my presets. When she moved furniture without asking.
Every time she cried, or laughed, or slipped her arms around my neck like they belonged there.
“Good God,” she panted, when it finally ended. I withdrew slowly, holding her hips until she regained her footing. “That was definitely more fun than unpacking.”
I nodded, but I’d barely heard her. My heart was thundering through my ears.
“I love you.”
Mara did a double-take when I spoke, already bending over to gather her panties. “What?”
Out of sheer nerves, I laughed. I had no idea why I’d chosen to say it now.
Then, because I also had no idea why I hadn’t said it sooner, I said it again. “I…I love you.”
Her eyes widened. It didn’t settle my pulse.
Slowly, she smiled. “For real?”
I laughed again and dipped my head to kiss her. “For real.”
My scalp tingled as she drew her fingers through my hair, nails grazing my skin. Her lips parted against mine. “I love you, too.”
Altogether, it took us over a week to finish unpacking. It was worth every extra second.
That’s the other thing about starting over: once you take that first step, the hardest part of the journey complete, you don’t really mind how long it all takes. You’re just happy to be doing it at all.
They say you can’t choose your family. And it’s true in the literal, genetic sense, but that damn sure didn’t stop me from trying.
As a kid, I wanted Jesse and Becky from Full House for my parents. I’d add a big brother. Sometimes Mike Seaver, sometimes Eric Matthews—someone with Danny’s older-brother kind of snark, who’d pick on me in good fun but protect me at any cost.
If I’d had my way, we would have owned a house just like the one in Father of the Bride. My Stamos dad would age gracefully, not in huge bursts during his work trips. He wouldn’t go on work trips at all: he’d manage a bank or a grocery store, maybe push papers in an office. But he would always come home for dinner.
My mother would only look better as the years passed. She’d swat my brother and me out of the kitchen with a dishtowel when we snuck cookies, sew my stuffed animals when they got too old and tattered, and greet my dad with a kiss after work, every evening.
That’s the problem with fantasies: you’re allowed to make them impossibly perfect. No one’s there to bring you back to earth. You think, As long as I’m dreaming, might as well dream big.
Then, when you don’t get all those things you’ve dreamed up, you’re more disappointed than before. Expect perfection, and you’ll never be happy.
Once I figured that out, I spun in the other direction as fast as I could: expect nothing, and you’ll never be disappointed. On paper, the theory panned out.
In practice—not so much. Because if you expect nothing for long enough, you’ll think that’s all that’s possible. That it’s all you deserve.
Levi was the first person to make me believe otherwise.
“It’s okay to admit you’re scared,” he told me, the day after I ditched the second dinner at my dad’s house in a row. It was Christmas Eve, and a spitting, iced rain had cancelled our plans to crawl the city and gawk at lights. First on the tour would have been the Acre, then the shopping promenade across town, ending with the historic neighborhoods, even though they rarely did real lights: most had flickering white candles in the windows and nothing else. It was still beautiful, though. Still fun to peek into other people’s lives, just for a minute.
Instead, while the storm crashed across the roof, we stayed home. Brandy in cider and cheesy holiday movies on TV, our feet tangled under the same blanket: I could get used to this tradition.
“I’m not,” I said firmly, “scared. I bailed on the dinner with them yesterday because I had a migraine.”
“Liar,” he smirked, picking at a hangnail on his thumb.
I stole his brandy off the console table and finished both. Couple-wise, we were still finding our stride, but some things came easily from the start. Like stealing his drinks and food…or him calling me on my bullshit.
“Fine,” I sighed, my breath a wash of alcohol and apples. “I’m scared.” Over the rim of my mug, I looked at him. “But I don’t even know why.”
“Because you’re afraid of everything going right.”
Sure I’d misheard him, I said, “You mean, ‘everything going wrong.’”
“Nope.” Levi burrowed into the couch and slipped his hands behind his head. “Stuff was already going wrong. That’s why you cut contact with him in the first place, and why you hated visiting your mom. Things going wrong is nothing new. Things going right…that’s what scares you.”
He paused, waiting for me to confirm or deny his assessment. I stayed silent.
“Because,” he went on, “that means eventually forgiving your dad completely, and talking through all the stuff from your past.”
“We’ve already covered this,” I reminded him. I turned my attention to the clay reindeer prancing on-screen. At least, I pretended to. “I know it’ll be hard, but I’m not scared of doing those things. The one-step-at-a-time thing, I can do that.” The last time we’d broached this subject, Levi had likened reconnecting with my family to climbing down the fire escape of the Acre: terrifying...until you take that first step. Then you take the next, and the next, until you’re suddenly on something solid. You can’t focus on the distance to the ground, everything you might lose if you fall. You have to focus on the destination.
“That’s not what I meant.” He scratched his beard and thought a moment. I liked that about him. Whereas I spoke almost as soon as the words were in my head, Levi chose his more deliberately in times like these.
“I meant,” he said, “you’re scared of the result. Having a family.”
I made a face. “Why would that scare me?”
“Because you’ve never really had one. And, I don’t know…it seems like you convinced yourself the reason you never had one, is because you didn’t deserve one.”
My heart tripped over itself, the way it did whenever Levi unlocked another part of me I didn’t even know existed. My instinct, always, was to deny.
“You don’t have to tell me if I’m right or wrong,” he added. That was another thing I loved about him: I, like most humans, tended to assume my opinion was right, purely because it was mine. But Levi left room for error. He let you decide what to do with his words: keep them, or cast them aside.
Problem was, he was almost always right.
I called my dad on Christmas morning. Levi invited me to Juliet’s father’s house with him, since his mom was stuck in Ohio until further notice, courtesy of a nasty snowstorm and ancient tires. I’d agreed to stop by in the evening and join them for dinner, then waved Levi on his way after breakfast.
The house felt emptier than usual. I told myself it was psychological: I knew today was a holiday, so I felt guilty for not going out and doing something special. It’s just any other day, I reminded myself. I didn’t have to go anywhere.
My phone kept beckoning, though.
True, I didn’t have to do anything. But I deserved to.
“Mara.” Dad sounded completely unsurprised, like he was expecting my call. Maybe he was. If there’s one day a year that can inspire Hallmark-worthy reconnection, it’s Christmas.
His house was decorated inside and out: bright white lights, forest green boughs, red ribbon everywhere I looked. He had three Christmas trees: one in the upper window of the foyer, facing the street; another in the living room, beside the fireplace (which was up and roaring); and a small metallic one, in my mother’s room.
“You, uh...you really went all out,” I commented, unsure of what else I could say. The renovations were going well, with the elevator and chair lift already complete. All that was left, he explained, were the bathroom modifications, so that Mom could trade sponge baths for real ones.
“You know how she loves he
r bubble baths,” he smiled.
Without meaning to, I smiled back. “Yeah. I remember.” Like perfume, Mom had an affinity for scented oils and salts. I wondered how long it had been since she’d gotten to enjoy them.
We gathered around the tree in the living room and sipped hot chocolate with Danny. Mom told me, “Merry Christmas,” the words surprisingly clear.
“She just learned that this week,” Dad said proudly. “You should have heard her yesterday, when some carolers came by.”
“I didn’t even know people could…. This far out, I mean, is it common to learn new…?” My question sounded too cynical, so I shut up. Clearly, the doctors had been wrong when they told me if she didn’t improve in a year or two, she never would. I was wrong, for giving up hope.
“She can hold a pencil again, too.” Danny slipped one into Mom’s hand and held up a notepad. She scribbled a series of stuttering loops down the page. “She’s determined to write again, so she can communicate better.”
“Probably wants to scold me in novel form, for not visiting more,” I said quietly, afraid I would cry if I spoke any louder. I fixed her hairclip, pulling the loose strands from her eyes, thinking of all the times she’d done it for me.
We made small talk most of the morning. It wasn’t as hard as I expected, but I was aware of the fact it didn’t feel like family chitchat. It didn’t feel like talking to strangers, either. Something in-between—that ribbon of memory that stretches between each word, whenever you talk to people you used to know.
“I didn’t bring gifts,” I apologized, when Dad parceled out the wrapped packages from beneath the tree.
“That’s okay. You didn’t know you’d be here.” He smiled slyly and handed me a box, wrapped in silver paper. “But I did.”
My nails broke the tape along the edges. Danny, fiddling with his new headphones from Mom—with the tag in Dad’s handwriting—pretended not to watch.
The paper tore off in one piece. I turned the shoebox in my hands until I found the final piece of tape, broke it, and opened the lid.
It was Kiki.
Honey, When It Ends: The Fairfields | Book Two Page 22