by Serena Bell
And apparently Justin is a huge fan, because he goes from bouncing to kicking and—
I double over, clutching my junk and groaning.
“Brody?”
Rachel is leaning over us, understandably concerned.
“Gah——d—daaang—it. He kicked me in the balls.”
She’s trying not to laugh, and I’m trying not to die.
“Fu—g. Fuh, gah.”
Now she’s definitely laughing. “Son of a biscuit always works for me in a pinch,” she offers.
I glare at her, and she makes a contrite face.
I turn my glare on Justin, who is all big-eyed innocence. “He got bigger since the last time I had him in this thing.” I slowly straighten up, still trying to tamp down that bone-deep sick feeling that comes with taking a shot to the jewels.
“You okay?” she asks.
“I will be. In a year or so.”
“Want me to take him?” She holds out her arms.
I unfasten one side of the Bjorn and pass Justin to Rachel.
“Do you want the carrier?”
Working the carrier requires some serious advanced skill, and it takes both Rachel and me using all the contents of our big noggins several minutes to get the carrier on her chest and Justin in the carrier.
“Did you do that on purpose?” she asks when I brush my fingers over her nipple, which is taut and peaked under her tight-fitting t-shirt.
“I may have.” I grin lazily at her, then lean down and kiss her over Justin’s head. He is still kicking madly, so I keep one hand loosely cupped near my crotch, just in case I want to give him fun cousins one day.
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out her phone, her eyes roaming over the screen. She smiles, then bites her lip.
“What is it?”
“My mom got a clean bill of health at the doctor’s. She’s off crutches.”
“Oh, that’s great!” I say reflexively, before I realize: It’s not so great. It means Rachel can go back to Boston.
Not that I thought the moment could be postponed indefinitely. I always knew it was coming. Rachel is a woman with a plan, and I’m her vacation from reality.
“So you can book tickets home now,” I say. “You must be psyched to get the plan back on track.”
“Uh,” she says. “Yeah.”
“So you go back, you move in with, what’s your friend’s name? Louisa? You go back to your library job? And then, onwards to the awesome boyfriend, right?”
Please, I think. Please don’t.
“Brody,” she repeats.
But just then, a familiar voice says, “Well, well, well,” and I look up to find a gaggle of Wilders and assorted relatives. Gabe, Easton, Lucy, Hanna, Amanda, Heath, the kids, and my mom.
The voice in question, of course, belongs to Amanda.
Rachel blushes wildly. Justin kicks, elated to be surrounded by a pack of his favorite people.
“Look at this picture of domestic bliss,” Amanda teases me. I’m not sure if I want to punch her or hug her.
We exchange a round of warm Wilder greetings and hugs.
Rachel works open the carrier so she can pass Justin around, and various Wilders take him, one by one, and coo in his face.
The world must seem like a really fucking weird place to babies.
But I’ve got bigger worries on my mind. Because hustling up behind my family, hands full of cotton candy, is Connor.
He looks from me to Rachel and back again.
“What the—?”
“Connor,” Rachel and I say, at exactly the same time.
He puts up both hands. “Don’t. Just—save it, okay?” He gives me a look made of laser beams and loathing. “You asshole.” It’s soft and dangerous. His hands are clenched into fists, and for a second, I think he’s going to bury one in my face, phalanx of Wilder backup be damned.
But he doesn’t.
He shoves the cotton candy bouquet into Amanda’s hands, turns, and stalks off.
I shoot an agonized look at Rachel.
“Go,” she says. “I’ve got Justin.”
I go.
33
Brody
“Connor.”
He ignores me.
“Connor!”
He breaks into a run.
I chase him all the way to the parking lot and manage to grab his arm right before he reaches his truck. “Connor. It’s not what you think.”
“What do I think?” he demands. “You tell me what I think. You fucking explain to me what I think.”
I take a step back, let his arm drop. “She and I—we—”
He raises both eyebrows. “Oh, Jesus, Brody, what kind of fucking mess have you made?”
It’s a blade between the ribs.
We’re both out of breath from the run, and he’s glaring at me so fiercely that it hurts. In all the years I’ve known Connor, he’s never gotten mad at me like this.
He really, really fucking doesn’t want me with his sister.
I need to not think about that too hard.
“This isn’t just me getting my rocks off, Con. I care about her. A lot.”
“Jesus, Brody.” Connor’s head is down, but when it comes up, I see something in his eyes that shakes me to the core. Pity. “Dude. This is what I was fucking afraid of. This is why I told you to leave her alone. I knew one of you was going to wreck the other one and I’d have to pick up the pieces.”
“What are you talking about?” I demand.
“I’m talking about the fact that you are obviously in so deep here, and she’s just—”
He winces.
“What?”
“I heard her say something to her friend. On the phone. I didn’t put it together, because I didn’t know then that you were—” He hesitates again. “—with my sister. But now I know she was talking about you. And it was a while back, so maybe it doesn’t mean anything. But I just thought you should know. Maybe it’ll make it easier to walk away.”
I’m staring at him with a sensation in my gut like wet concrete. “She said it was her”—his hands come up in air quotes—“walk on the Wilder side.”
Walk on the Wilder side.
“She didn’t mean it that way,” I say.
“Maybe not,” Connor says. But he doesn’t sound convinced.
“When was that?”
“It was a while ago,” he admits. “Couple of weeks at least.”
“Things were different then.”
“Different how?” he asks.
“We hadn’t—we weren’t—”
But when I think about it, when I go to explain to him what’s happened, it melts away like sugar in water, insubstantial. We have spent lots of time together, but never, in all that time, did she suggest that she might want to drop the plan. She never said I was more to her than a good time or that she was weighing the possibility of putting Boston on hold.
So maybe it’s not so different now.
“I’m going to talk to her,” I say, trying to hold onto the confidence that I felt earlier today, when we put Justin in the carrier on her chest. Or the confidence I felt yesterday when I made her come with my mouth. “I’m going to ask her to stay.”
“Brody, no,” Connor says, sounding so alarmed that my heart grinds to a stop. He’s shaking his head. “Please don’t.”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this serious about anything. Not even the time he begged me not to ask Julia Shree to the senior prom because he was—he claimed at the time—in love with her.
I didn’t.
He wasn’t.
But the point is, Connor is pleading with me.
“Please don’t, Brody. She’s been through way more than enough. I’m asking you not to make this complicated for her. Just, put a nice neat ending on it. Closure. Tell her you had a really good time but you know she’s got a life in Boston. You’ve known Rachel her whole life, Brody. She wants it all. The white wedding dress and the suburban house and the Ivy League husba
nd. She needs things nice and organized and steady. Predictable. She needs to keep things neat. Let her go back there and live in her sublet with her friend Louisa and take her librarian job. Let her meet a guy who’ll take good care of her and make it easy for her.”
A guy who’ll take good care of her and make it easy for her.
I can almost see it. The kind of guy Connor means. They meet at a party with some friends. Or maybe an event connected to the library. A library fundraiser. He’s there in dress pants and a button-down shirt, and he chats with her about books they’ve both read. He asks her out to a nice restaurant and drives her around in his Prius, and he lets dates three, four, and five pass without putting the moves on her because he wants to make sure they’re really comfortable with each other first.
“And you’re—” Connor rakes a hand through his hair. “You’re not—”
He stops.
“I’m not that guy,” I say, so he doesn’t have to.
He scowls. “Jesus, Brody, I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
This is Connor. My best friend. The guy who has been with me through thick and thin. The guy who knows—who should know—that I would never do anything to hurt his sister. Who should see that I am fiercely loyal and totally faithful and trying so fucking hard to turn this ship around and make myself into the kind of man who deserves a woman like Rachel.
And if he can’t see it?
Maybe it’s not there.
Maybe all the people who didn’t think I had it in me to take care of the people they loved—my dad, Gabe, Zoë…
Maybe they were onto something.
34
Rachel
I travel with the pack of Wilders, waiting for Brody to come back. I’ve got Justin back in the Björn, and he’s dozing with his little cheek pressed against my chest. He’s warm and heavy and I think I’ll implode from the cuteness.
Finally Brody comes back, alone, with his head down. Damn, that can’t be good. The Wilders apparently think we need space, because they immediately drift away, citing all the other places they need to be—main stage, food booths, home.
“Hey,” I say to Brody, when they’re gone. “Everything okay? Ish?”
He shrugs. “I mean, yes and no. He didn’t punch me in the face and I don’t think he’s going to kill me.”
I smile at that. “I’m grateful for that. I’d miss you if he did.”
His head swings up, just enough for me to catch a flash of green. “Will you miss me? When you go?”
This is it: This is the moment to ask him how he’d feel if I said I was thinking about staying. For him.
“Will you miss your walk on the Wilder side?”
He says it almost like a tease, but the familiar words catch me with a jolt, and I can hear the hurt. Plus his head’s still down. No eye contact.
“Did Connor—?”
He nods.
“Brody. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should never have said that Wilder thing, even as a joke. It was more about me than about you.”
“I know,” he says. “You had to prove something about yourself. That you weren’t any kind of girl. And you did.”
“No—I mean, that wasn’t all it was, Brody. It might have started that way, but it became something else.”
He lifts his head, turns toward me. And stares at me. Green eyes, long lashes, his hair rumpled. His stubble is golden.
He has never looked more beautiful to me, and I know that the more I get to know Brody Wilder, the more beautiful he will be.
And I can’t read his expression at all.
“I care about you, Brody. A lot.”
Say it, Rachel. Say you’ve fallen in love with him. Tell him you love him.
I almost say it: I love you, Brody. I want to stay, if you want me to.
But I don’t get the words out before he says, “It’s been a good adventure, Rach. And I’ll be sorry when it’s over.”
Wait.
This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.
This isn’t the plan.
The thought stops my breathing.
Have I done it again, without even meaning to? Have I leapt so far ahead in my fantasy world that I stopped clearly seeing the man right in front of me? Have I written a whole plan for a man who wants nothing to do with it?
As if he can hear the voice in my head, he says, “You can pick up your plan right where you left off. Like you said, you didn’t even lose too much ground. You have your job again, in Boston, the apartment with Louisa.”
Now, Rachel. Now.
“But you’re here.”
“Rachel,” he says, sounding tired. Like it hurts him to say my name. “I’m not the guy in the plan. I don’t—”
We lock eyes. Something stills in his, like a spark that has flickered and gone dark.
“You don’t what, Brody?”
He shakes his head. “I’m really fucking sick of not being the man people need me to be, Rachel. I couldn’t do that to you. You’d end up resenting me.”
“That’s not true, Brody!” Can I make him believe me? “You’ve never disappointed me, and I know you won’t start now.”
But he won’t look at me. I can’t even see his eyes; they’re hidden by the fall of his hair.
And all of a sudden I get it.
“You don’t want to be the guy in the plan,” I say dully.
I wait for him to fight me.
I wait for him to look at me.
But without lifting his head, he shakes it, and I know it’s over.
How ironic, I think. Werner wanted me to the be the girl he married, but not the girl he fucked. And Brody wants the opposite.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay.”
He holds out his arms. For a brief, startlingly wonderful moment, I think he is holding out his arms for me. I think we are going to be okay, that I misunderstood him.
But as I start to step forward, I remember the weight on my chest. Justin.
He’s holding out his arms to take Justin.
He waits patiently while I unstrap the carrier. My hands are shaking, and I think he sees that, but he doesn’t reach out to help. I’m glad he doesn’t; I don’t know what I’d do if he touched me now.
Probably start to cry.
To distract myself, I kiss Justin on the top of his head. When I lift my face, Brody looks away.
“So that’s—it,” I say.
He nods, without looking at me. And then he turns away, completely, opens the truck door, and settles Justin into his car seat.
I stand there, helpless, watching, wanting to say something, anything, the one right thing that will change the outcome.
Even though I know that thing doesn’t exist.
I take a deep breath.
I walk away.
Just about the time I get to the edge of the parking lot, the engine roars to life. And then he pulls out of the parking lot and he’s gone.
I double over, out of breath and out of shape and hurting so bad in my stomach and chest that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to draw a full breath again.
35
Rachel
I’d forgotten that Brody and I have to do one more party together on the boat. It’s a group of college students this time, friends from the University of Washington—a totally different vibe from the partiers so far. Most of the students are much savvier about toys, having grown up on a steady diet of Internet ads, Tumbler gifs, and Rule 34.
Rule 34, I learn, states that If something exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions.
“The rule came about when a comic artist on the web learned that there was Calvin and Hobbes porn,” their de facto ringleader tells me.
“Oh, God!” I say miserably.
I want to look at Brody, to see if this makes him as unhappy as it makes me, but it hurts too much to look at Brody. Blank-faced, stoic Brody. Not even a scowl to let me know he’s in there. And the few times I’ve tried to catch his eye, he’s turned
away. Not that he’s ignoring me. He was entirely civil to me as we loaded the boat. He held out his arm so I could balance myself climbing in. He has been nothing but polite.
And I hate it.
My chest has not stopped aching since he told me that he doesn’t want to be the guy in my plan. Not that I should have been surprised. If you decide to bag the bad boy, it’s pure fantasy to think that you’ll live happily ever after with him. Especially if the two of you reside on opposite sides of the country and are as different as two people can be.
Still, knowing that doesn’t stop the pain.
“Rachel?” Ringleader asks me.
I get back to business.
In addition to the savvy students, there are also a few in the group who are like me: they grew up knowing this stuff was around but never quite got up the courage to delve into it. Maybe they were afraid their browsing histories would keep them out of college, maybe they were afraid to own toys in a household with nosy little siblings, or maybe they just kept meaning to get around to it and never found time.
So I aim my chatter at them, and like almost everyone who’s brave enough to attend a party in the first place, they eventually open up, asking questions, and, well, buying a truckload of new toys.
I’m going to miss this, too. Part of me thinks maybe I’ll get my own Real Romance business when I get back to Boston, but I’m not sure how that’ll work with a full-time job. And maybe it’s just a fantasy, too, that I’ll be able to capture and keep part of Rush Creek Rachel when I go home.
Maybe Rush Creek Rachel only existed for a brief, glorious moment.
Maybe I need to let her go, too.
I fly home to Boston. Louisa picks me up at the airport and brings me to the large apartment she shares with her two friends. I really like both of them. They’re fun, lively, and kind. And my room passes muster. It’s bigger than I was expecting—probably a good fifteen-by-fifteen—and gets western light through two big windows. We all use the same kitchen, but everyone is generous about sharing and great about respecting each other’s stuff, and it even looks like we might set up a rotation so we can each cook one or two dinners a week.