by Ciara Shayee
“Do you need some help?”
She offers me a distracted smile, carefully sliding the cake from its box so she can get the two tiers assembled. “Please, that would be lovely.”
Setting down my drink, I put my hands where she directs them, passing her the candles once she’s got the top tier settled. “Umm…”
We both look at each other and laugh; there’s no good place to put the candles.
It’s a beautiful cake, two tiers with stunning teal frosting made to look like the ocean. The bottom tier starts off darker at the bottom, each wave getting lighter before tapering off when it reaches the incredibly realistic looking sand that separates the two tiers. There are some chocolate seashells and a fake wood plaque made out of icing that reads ‘Happy Birthday KP!’ on the front.
My favorite part is the white Adirondack chair right on the top, a blue icing towel thrown over the arm and a few more shells scattered around it for good measure.
“It’s the perfect cake for Kellan.”
Mom hums, but I can tell her thoughts are elsewhere.
“Mom? Are you okay?”
“Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine.” Smiling brightly, she loops her arm around my waist and sighs. “Have you noticed anything going on with KP? Anything out of the ordinary?”
My heart rate speeds up. Uh oh. “With Kellan? No, nothing.” Clearing my throat because my voice is way too high and squeaky to be natural, I force a confused smile. “Why do you ask?”
“He just seems different. I’ve been noticing it for a few weeks. It’s not in a bad way at all, don’t get me wrong.” If it weren’t for the fact that I’m absolutely terrified of her reaction—and Dad’s—I’d just tell her what’s really going on with Kellan. I’d tell her that we’ve been seeing each other for a few weeks now and I think it’s getting serious.
Mom and I have always been close, we’ve always been open and honest with each other. It feels wrong to be keeping something like this from her, but for now at least, it’s necessary.
With a twinkle in her eyes, she admits, “I think he might be seeing someone. Do you think that’s possible? Do you think it’s someone from the restaurant?”
My choked breath is, thankfully, drowned out by Dad telling, “Bethany, he’s pulling up outside!”
“Oh! Quick, we need to get everybody outside.”
There aren’t words to describe how relieved I am when Mom rushes from the pantry, tugging me with her and closing the door behind us. “I’ll get the door,” I offer, butterflies taking flight in my belly.
“I’ll gather everyone together outside.” She’s so excited, I don’t think she’s really thought through the repercussions of throwing a big party for a man who is more comfortable in small groups. Mentally crossing my fingers, I wait until she’s ushered all the guests outside before steeling myself as I head to the front door. I pull it open just as Kellan raises his hand to knock.
The wide grin that takes over his face steals my breath away. My girly sigh would be embarrassing if we weren’t alone—which I quickly realize we aren’t when Sullivan sticks his fingers in his mouth and pretends to gag on them, appearing from behind his brother.
“Hey, hot stuff,” he chuckles, lifting me off my feet in an exuberant hug before sniffing the air. “Somethin’ smells amazing.”
“Hey, Sully. Come on through. Dad’s cooking his baby back ribs.” Shooting Kellan a silly smile, I add, “Kellan’s favorite.”
“Spoilt brat,” Sullivan tsks, cocking his head. “If I stick around long enough, will Carson make ribs for my birthday?”
I’m still looking at Kellan, still soaking him in, so I see the hope that crosses his face at the thought of his brother sticking around that long.
“Ask him,” I shrug, waving them both in. “I can’t see him saying ‘no.’”
“He’ll say ‘yes,’” Sullivan says confidently, leading us through the house after checking he’s going in the right direction. It’s been years since he was here last, and the décor has probably changed ten times since then.
“Have you had a good day?” I ask Kellan quietly.
Offering me a small grin, he nods. I know, thanks to the conversation we had on the phone this morning, that he and Sullivan were planning to haul the surf boards out of his garage and hit the beach to catch a few waves. From the sun-kissed glow on his cheeks and the light in his eyes, I think it must have gone well.
“It’s been great. I’d forgotten how much I like hanging out with him.”
We reach the kitchen then, and I feel the sudden need to warn him, so I stop him just before we hit the last corner. He frowns a little, peering down at me with deepening confusion. “Are you okay?”
“Kellan…” I breathe, wringing my hands.
Lord, why am I so nervous? Christ.
I answer my own question in a millisecond.
I want him to like this. I want him to like what we’ve set up for him. I just…want him to be happy.
Before I can open my mouth and spoil it, I hear Mom’s muffled “Arlo, wait!” just seconds before he skids around the corner on socked feet, wide grin in place and white frosting smeared over his cheeks.
Someone got into the cupcakes already.
“Hey, Easy. You need to hurry.”
Kellan cocks his head, taking Arlo’s hand as he tugs him through the kitchen. “I do? Why?”
“You’re gonna miss your surprise party, silly!”
Well, here goes nothing.
Twenty-five
Kellan
“Surprise!”
Blinking in, well, surprise, I try to gather my wits while being pummeled with confetti poppers and birthday wishes, all while being passed from one set of arms to another, and another, and another.
Little Grandma, Freddie, a couple of Carson’s six sisters and their husbands are here en masse. I recognize some of their many grown-up kids. The Samuels are here, as are the Paulsons. I grin as I’m pulled into a familiar set of arms, Mr. Eddison’s wrinkled grin flashing.
“Happy birthday, son.”
“You’re sneaky,” I laugh, pointing at him. He told me he was out of town when I invited him to what I thought was going to be a low-key birthday dinner.
“Hey, I just did what I was told to do by Mrs. Fitzgerald, boy,” he tells me with a soft chuckle, then I’m moving into a new set of arms. Everly, Rosie, Gianna, Sebastian…and so it goes on.
Arlo sticks close by me, his little hand in mine until I decide he makes a great human shield and scoop him up. Bethany is one of the last to get at me. Her smile is a mile wide as she slips her arm around mine and guides me over to a table with a selection of both kid- and adult-friendly drinks.
“Are you surprised?”
“Very,” I mumble, managing a faint smile. “Beth…”
“I know, I know. We shouldn’t have done this, we didn’t have to, blah blah blah.” Arlo giggles as she tweaks his nose and grabs a beer from the cooler under the table. “You’re a part of this family, we love you, and it’s your birthday. You don’t get to complain that we want to celebrate you.”
Right. Well…
A little choked up, I pull her into a hard one-armed hug. “Thank you. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful.”
With her blue eyes crinkled and her lips curled in a fond smile, she pats my cheek. “You’re very welcome, KP.”
Wandering off to answer the call of one of the children, Bethany leaves me alone with Arlo for all of a few seconds before I feel a hand at the small of my back. Piper appears at my side with her lip between her teeth and a tiny, worried frown pulling her brows together.
I suddenly realize this is why she looked so nervous when I arrived. Relieved, I smile.
I’d wondered if she was going to break it off with me, just barely deciding she wouldn’t do that to me on my birthday when Arlo appeared.
“Is this…okay?” she whispers, looking around at the people mingling in
the sunshine, the vast array of delicious-smelling food, and the beach themed decorations littering the back yard.
“It’s perfect. It’s too much,” I amend with raised eyebrows, but my smile widens. “But it’s great.” Draping my arm around Piper’s shoulders, I wish I could do more. I wish I could lean down and kiss the relieved smile off her face. I wish I could hold her to me the way Sebastian is holding Gianna across the patio. I wish I could tell everyone that she’s mine, that’s she’s the reason I’m in a good enough place to handle this today, and that she’s the best birthday gift I could have gotten.
Before her, before the boys, I wouldn’t have been able to cope with something like this, but they’ve brought me back to life.
“How old are you today, Easy?” Arlo asks.
Grinning, a wicked glint of mischief in her eyes, Piper pipes up before I can. “Easy is old, Arlo. He’s almost forty.”
“Almost bein’ the key word there,” I tell her gruffly before taking a mouthful of my beer, shaking my head as Arlo giggles.”
“That’s old, Easy! Momma is only twenty-one, right, Momma?”
Snorting beer out of my nose, I attract more than one person’s attention. Piper laughs until she’s red in the face but kindly grabs me a napkin from the nearest table. Forcing a frown even though a grin is struggling to free itself, I adjust a cackling Arlo on my hip. “Is that what she’s told you? Your momma is telling you lies, bud.”
Arlo’s eyes widen with glee. “Ooh, Momma. You’re not s’posed to tell lies.”
“I’m not lying, Lo,” she tells him airily.
“You’re not twenty-one, you little liar,” I chuckle, pulling her to me. The impulse to press a kiss against her head is strong; I resist, but barely. “Your momma is twenty-seven, Arlo. Not twenty-one. In a few years, she’ll be thirty.”
Piper holds up her hands, crossing her fingers. “Don’t cuss at me,” she grumbles good-naturedly as her boy cracks up and tells her she’s old, too.
In that moment, everything is right in the world.
Afternoon shifts into evening with the fading sunlight and the glow of the fairy lights strung over the patio.
One beer turns into two, three, then four before I switch to soda. I see the way Brayden’s eyes narrow for a beat when I amble over to where he’s sitting with Ashley, Ivy, and TJ. He’s wondering why I’m not drinking, or guessing what I’ve put in the Coke I’m carrying.
It’s with pride that I admit I’m done drinking for the night. A rising sense of satisfaction spreads through my body when he grins and nods.
“Good for you, man,” he says quietly, taking Ivy from Ashley’s arms to hand her to me.
I’ve seen her a few times since her birth almost two months ago. She’s grown a lot, her eyes more inquisitive, more alert. When I tickle her chin, she makes a snuffly sound that will eventually become a giggle, and when I lift her high above my head, she offers me a gummy grin that I expect to bring pain.
The pain doesn’t come. I slowly lower her to my chest, running a hand over her soft white-blonde hair, and realize it doesn’t hurt so much anymore. I’m not sure how to feel about that, but Kendra’s words run on a loop through my mind as Ivy grasps my thumb in her tiny hand, staring up at me with trusting blue eyes.
Living your life doesn’t dishonor Willow’s memory.
“Oh, look at you, little girl,” Piper breathes over my shoulder, goosebumps rising in the wake of her breath against my skin. Resting a hand on my shoulder, she coos over Ivy and lights me on fire. Memories of me in this position, Willow in my arms and Shannon at my back, are replaced with fantasies of me and Piper with a blond-haired, gray-eyed baby, and it’s too much.
Mumbling an apology, I hand Ivy back to her mom and head inside to clear my head.
In the living room, I find an empty couch and sit my ass down, my head in my hands and a long breath rushing from my lungs.
The familiar clack of sandals on hardwood alerts me to an approaching friend before he makes it all the way over. I heave another sigh as a wrinkled hand lands on my shoulder.
“I just need a few minutes, Mr. Eddison.”
He tuts. “How many times have I asked you not to call me that? It’s Dale.”
Snorting, I peer up at his face and nod. “Sorry, Dale.”
He nods, shakily lowering himself to sit beside me. His white hair has been combed back in the same way he always styles it, and he’s wearing the specs he calls his ‘party’ glasses—the ones with the purple arms instead of the all-black, ‘everyday’ pair.
“I saw that look on your face out there,” he finally says. “You’ve got to stop your past from ruining your future, son, or you might as well throw away your best shot at being happy.”
Rubbing the back of my neck, I glance sideways at him. “What do you mean?”
He raises his eyebrows at me. “Now, son, I’m going to tell you a story about Evelyn and me, but I don’t want any of your pity, you hear? It’s all in the past, it’s been and done.”
Nodding slowly, I hum my agreement even as the old pangs of sadness flare up in my stomach. Evelyn, his wife, was a wonderful woman.
She would have adored Piper and the boys, I realize.
“All right.” His eyes seem to glaze over as he casts his mind back, remembering. “I married my Eve in 1958, just after we both turned twenty. In 1959,” he pauses for a second before continuing, “we had a daughter.”
My entire body seizes up as his words sink in. “You…”
“She never opened her eyes,” he adds, and grief for this man who I respect and admire wells up in my chest.
He lost a daughter, like me.
“I didn’t…shit, Dale, I didn’t know.”
Slowly, he seems to come back to me. His lips form a faint smile. “I know you didn’t, we never told you, for lots of reasons. It’s the club no man or woman wants to join. There’s a name for husbands who lose their wives, wives who lose their husbands, and children who lose parents. There isn’t a name for people like us, son.”
He’s so right. So agonizingly right.
Squeezing my shoulder, he brings me back from the cloud of misery threatening to blanket me. “We got a second chance with Dale and Rhys. Of course, I wish we hadn’t lost my brother and sister-in-law like we did, but those boys became like sons to us.”
“That’s right. You raised your nephews.”
I’ve met them a couple of times—the twins, Dale and Rhys. They’re a few years younger than me, I think. Dale and Evelyn were already in their fifties when his brother and sister-in-law were killed in a boating accident on vacation.
“Now you…you have a second chance, too.”
My eyebrows lift. “What—”
“Don’t play the fool with me, boy,” he chuckles, patting my shoulder. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the changes that have been taking place right next door to me. Do you think I’ve suddenly gone blind and deaf?”
Shit.
His smile makes his eyes crinkle, his nose wrinkling the same way Arlo’s does when he grins fully. “Embrace it,” he urges me, taking both of my hands in his. “Don’t let a single day pass you by without appreciating this second chance. I understand it might be complicated, but nothing is too complicated if it means you might all be happy.”
With one last squeeze of ours hands, he nods to himself and says he’ll see me back outside when I’m ready.
My mind in turmoil, I remain right where I’m sitting for a few more minutes, until another soft voice pulls my head from my memories.
“Hey.”
Glancing up, I watch Piper walk toward me. She sets her glass down on the end table with a quiet clink of glass meeting glass. Her hips sway with her steps, the gypsy skirt she’s wearing clinging to her curves and her loose-necked shirt exposing her collarbones on one side. Her hair is twisted to one side in an intricate braid that has come loose over the course of the day. I reach out to tuck th
e wispy bits behind her ear with a long sigh that makes her smile shakily.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m perfect now. I just need a minute.”
“I’ll go—”
“Stay. Please?”
Eyeing me for a moment, Piper nods. Her weight barely shifts the couch cushions, but her quiet understanding as she sits with me while I work through my thoughts and emotions—and Dale’s revelations—means more than all the surprise parties anyone could ever throw me.
*
The last month of summer blows by in a whirlwind of shaping my days around work, Piper, and the boys.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had to worry about anyone but myself, but I quickly find myself missing them all when I don’t get to see them for a few days. I even miss Max, the fluffy beast who loves chewing up my shoes.
We eat together on the patio at their house or mine any time Piper and I work coordinating shifts, but the busyness of summer in a beach town means that I often end up sneaking to my office to video call the boys before they go to bed. They like to give me the rundown on their day at school, and I love hearing all about it.
Arlo loves his teacher, Jaxson and Finley are pleased they’re in the same class, and Piper is just glad they’ve all settled in and made friends so quickly.
When I’m not working all weekend, we take the boys to the beach or Lake Eola. The first weekend of September, we’re joined by Sullivan, Brayden, Ashley, and the girls. None of them question the potentially odd grouping, but Piper and I keep it strictly clean. It’s torture not being able to hold her hand like Brayden holds Ashley’s and I almost throw caution to the wind a hundred times that one day, but I resist.
Sleepovers at my house become a thing the boys request often because they like being able to jump in the pool before they’ve even had breakfast. They also love having Sullivan on hand to play soccer with them whenever they want.
He’s made no mention of wanting to head home to his mom, so I’m content to just enjoy his company while it lasts.
Fall brings slightly cooler weather, but only slightly. It’s still hot enough that I can easily get a rise out of Piper by walking around without a shirt. For this newly-thirty-nine-year-old, it’s a huge confidence boost to see the effect I have on her.