by Cassia Leo
Julian walks in pushing a rolling cart with my boxes and luggage from the dorm. “Where do you want this?”
“In the living room is fine,” Chris says.
Placing his hand on the small of my back, he leads me closer to the boxes. He looks them over for a minute until he finds a heart scrawled in marker on the second box from the top. Lifting the top box off the stack, he sets it down at his feet then pulls a blade out of his back pocket and slices through the tape to open the box.
My heart begins to race as I anticipate what is inside this box that made him mark it with a heart. He lifts the flaps and I see it instantly. And I instantly begin to cry.
He lifts the photograph of my mother and me out of the box; the photograph I thought I had lost when I moved into the dorm my freshman year; the only photograph I have left of the two of us together. He hands it to me, a soft but slightly worried expression on his face.
“My mom found it when she was packing your stuff. I had her frame it for you. Is that okay?”
I nod, unable to speak or tear my gaze away from my mother’s smile. “She’s….”
“Beautiful.”
I nod as I clutch the frame against my chest. “Thank you. Do you think… do you think this is what Abby will look like?”
“I don’t know.” He kisses my forehead and nods toward the hallway. “Go put that on your side of the bed. We can unpack this stuff later. You have some studying to do.” My jaw drops and he chuckles. “No, the real kind of studying. Why do you think there’s no TV in here? I wanted to make sure you don’t get distracted?”
He hands Julian some cash and thanks him as he leaves. Taking a deep breath, I look around the room and through the glass door leading onto the patio. Everything about this apartment is new to me, except for Chris. That’s when I think of the quote on the little sign hanging from Cora’s front door: Where we love is home.
I turn around to look him in the eye. “It feels like home.”
Chapter Seventeen
Lindsay
December in Laguna Beach, California is not as cold as Carolina Beach. It’s almost spring-like, with a light mist of rain and barely-gray clouds infused with the glow of the sunlight they’re obstructing. Every few minutes, a gentle gust of wind comes along and a skirt flutters or someone’s hair is ruined. And all I can do is hope that one of those breezes carried some of Nathan’s ashes eastward. Laguna Beach may have been his favorite beach in the country, but it wasn’t his home.
I hate thinking of Nathan in past tense.
I almost wore heels to trudge through the damp sand, until I saw that everyone was removing their shoes for the memorial service. We all stood barefoot in the cold, wet sand at the edge of the water as Nathan’s mother, Gianna, walked into the freezing ocean to release the ashes. She walked so tall and proud, showing such strength, while I stood twenty feet away, every muscle in my body clenched tightly so I wouldn’t collapse.
Now, as we plod through the sand on the way back to the rental car, I still find it hard to breathe. The beach smells of him.
“It’s okay to cry,” Adam says as he adjusts the blanket over Kaia’s eyes to block the sun.
I don’t even want to know what Leo, Nathan’s father, thinks of the fact that Adam came to the funeral with me. He called me two nights ago to ask me why I never contacted him or Gianna when Nathan didn’t come home three weeks ago.
“It took the county coroner over a week to identify him.”
His words have played in my head for two days straight. If I had worried about Nathan’s wellbeing rather than suspect him of cheating on me, there might have been more than just a few bones and teeth left. There would have been more ashes to scatter in the ocean. That was the implication in Leo’s words.
“I don’t want to cry in front of them,” I whisper as I reach for Kaia and she balls up her fists as I pull her against my chest.
Adam is dressed in a black suit that reminds me of the suit he wore to my cousin Luanne’s wedding last year. It may even be the same suit. That wedding came just a month before everything started falling apart between us. Before I lost all hope that I would ever see Adam in a suit like that at our wedding.
“If you don’t cry, they’re going to think you don’t care.”
“They already think that. They haven’t even attempted to see Kaia since she was born. They don’t give a shit about us, including Nathan.”
“Don’t say that.”
I draw in a deep stuttered breath as I attempt to hold back the tears, but the aching in my chest shoots straight up through my throat and lights my face on fire. The tears come so fast I can hardly catch my breath. This is only the thirtieth time I’ve broken down in the past seven days. Every time I think of the last time I saw Nathan, I want to bury myself under the covers, or right here in the sand would be great.
Nathan was not the love of my life, but he was there for me when Adam wasn’t. When Adam lost himself in the haze of his bong, Nathan would pick me up and take me to the beach. When Adam refused to talk about what was going to happen after graduation, Nathan promised me we would live in a grass hut in Fiji if we had to, as long as we had each other and the ocean, that was all we needed.
The day Nathan left for California five weeks ago, he stood next to his car in the driveway with a big smile on his face, his gold tooth flashing in the morning light, and said, “Fiji is just around the corner.” I always told Nathan I didn’t want to get married because I didn’t want him to feel tied to me by a stupid piece of paper. I wanted us to wake up next to each other every morning by choice, not by law. The truth is that, when I got pregnant with Kaia, I felt I owed it to her to stay with Nathan. When Nathan told me Fiji was just around the corner, his words filled me with sadness for the life we dreamed of that I no longer wanted. The life I never wanted.
Leo and Gianna reach the concrete staircase leading from the sand up to the street where we all parked our rental cars. Gianna looks over her shoulder at me and grabs Leo’s arm to stop him. The look she gives me has the power to frighten the ocean away from the shore. I wipe the tears from my face, at first trying not to smear my makeup, then I just say, “Fuck it,” and wipe the sleeve of my black dress across my nose.
Adam reaches for Kaia. I don’t know if he does it instinctively because he sees me struggling to hold her and keep up with the flow of tears at the same time, but this gesture does not go unnoticed by Gianna as she and Leo approach us. Thankfully, they don’t know anything about Adam. Right now, they probably think I’ve already moved on with some random guy just one week after the news of Nathan’s death. Little do they know that Adam and I both moved on months ago.
I give Adam a look to let him know that I’ll hold onto Kaia and he should probably take it easy on the dad-like behavior. He doesn’t look too pleased, especially since Kaia is beginning to stir.
“Lindsay,” Gianna says in her husky voice.
The wind is blowing her unnaturally red curls, but other than that she looks flawless as ever. Leo looks Adam up and down a couple of times before he turns to me just as Kaia lets out a frustrated yelp. I pull the blanket off her face and her face scrunches up. She’s going to start wailing.
“Is she hungry?” Adam asks, unable to hide his concern.
Gianna glares at me, but she makes no attempt to offer assistance; as if she has no desire to hold her granddaughter in her arms.
“She’s not hungry,” I reply, though she automatically begins sucking on my finger when I press my pinky against her lips. I take my finger out of her mouth and she starts crying again. “She needs to be changed.”
“Just give her to me. She can feel your anxiety,” Adam says as he reaches for her again.
I hand her over just as I start to cry again. How can he already know what she wants?
Gianna watches in disgust as I wipe my face. “Are you going to the wake at the Doubletree?” she asks coldly.
I don’t care if she hates me, but the idea that she may h
ate Kaia for being a part of me makes me want to slap her or collapse into myself like a dying star. How can someone be so cold and still make me feel as if there’s something wrong with me?
I’m dumbfounded. I don’t want to spend another two or three hours in the presence of these two people. If they feel so repulsed by me, there’s no doubt they’ve already told their friends and relatives what a terrible person I am. They’ve all already made their mind up about me.
“We have to put the baby to sleep,” Adam says.
I want to thank him and kick him. He said “we.” Now they’re really going to think Adam and I are together.
“He means I have to put the baby to sleep. We’re in separate hotel rooms,” I clarify. “This is my friend, Adam. Adam, this is Gianna and Leo Jennings.”
Adam holds out his hand to Leo to shake, but the gesture is not returned. Whatever Adam feels about being treated like a dirt-bag by the parents of the person I cheated on him with, he hides it well. In fact, something about the look on his face makes me feel like he’s holding his tongue so he doesn’t tell a joke at such an inappropriate moment.
“Well, then, thank you for coming,” Gianna says awkwardly.
“That’s it?” I shriek. “No ‘see you in Durham’ or ‘can I hold my granddaughter, whom I’ve never even seen?’ That’s it?”
I can’t bring myself to say it aloud, but I’m glad Nathan wasn’t here to see this.
“Nathan told us about the paternity test,” she says, glancing at Adam. “We’ll be in touch to arrange visitation with… what’s her name again?”
Grabbing hold of Adam’s jacket, I yank him toward the stairs before I say something I truly regret. A gust of wind sweeps over the cliffside and up the stairway. I press my hands against my thighs so my skirt doesn’t fly away. A loud scream makes me whip my head around and I catch a glimpse of Gianna a few feet behind Adam. Her beautiful mane of red curls has flown away and Leo is lifting it out of the sand.
“Don’t touch that!” she shrieks. “Give me that!”
Adam looks at me and I know there’s no way he can hold back now. He leans over and whispers in Kaia’s ear, “Your grandmama’s so bald, I can see what’s on her mind. And right now I think she wants us to leave.”
I hold in my laughter as we race up the stairs to the street level and I dive into the backseat with Kaia. By the time I get her strapped into her car seat, the giddiness has passed. Still, I can’t help but acknowledge what I’m feeling as Adam pulls out of this tiny side street and onto the main road toward our hotel.
When we arrive at the hotel, Adam carries Kaia up to our room on the 14th floor and sets her down gently in the middle of the bed. She never even stirs.
He watches her for a moment before he turns to me. “Want to order room service so she can sleep? I don’t know about you, but I’m fucking starved.”
“I’m not really hungry,” I reply as I take a seat in the desk chair.
“Don’t start with that shit. You have to eat.”
I shrug my shoulders and grit my teeth as I try to hold back the tears. “Do you think you’ll ever forgive me for what I did to you?”
He’s about to sit on the edge of the bed when he remembers Kaia is asleep. He leans against the desk instead, so close I can feel the heat of his legs inches from mine.
“I’ve forgiven you. I just don’t know if I can ever forget that feeling… like I can’t trust myself to fall in love with the right person anymore.”
“I’m so sorry.”
I bury my face in my hands because I’m certain I must look as ugly on the outside as the monster I feel like on the inside.
“Hey, you don’t have to hide,” he says as he kneels before me and pries my fingers away from my face. I turn my head so he can’t see me, but he grabs my face roughly and forces me to look him in the eye. “Look at me.”
“Stop,” I whisper, as I close my eyes.
“It wasn’t all your fault. I know that our relationship didn’t begin under the best circumstances. I wasn’t the easiest person to trust.”
I open my eyes and he lets go of my face, but his green eyes are locked on mine. The whole time we were together, Adam never wanted to acknowledge the fact that he left his former girlfriend for me, after cheating on her with me for two weeks. I knew he felt awful about it, but I got so used to him blowing me off every time I tried to talk about it, that I never even brought it up when we broke up in March. It didn’t matter, anyway. I was pregnant. I couldn’t fight for Adam anymore.
“And I should have just been honest with you about the fact that I wanted to start competing again after graduation, instead of stringing you along,” he continues. “I was stupid to think that you would have held me back. I was the one holding myself back.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t even ask you how you felt today, being back at that beach.”
The resolve in his expression dissolves as he stands up straight. “Believe it or not, I felt happy being back there.”
I’ve only seen Adam cry once, the day we broke up and he was hauled away in that police car. I don’t think he was crying because we broke up. I think he cried because of what he had done to Nathan. As I look at him now, clenching his jaw as the tears well up in his eyes, I realize he’s been holding this in since we arrived at the beach this morning.
“It’s okay to cry,” I say, repeating his words from earlier.
He gives me a faint smile. “I’m happy. I swear these are happy tears. I think being back there today made me realize that, even if there is no heaven, Myles died in a place he loved. In a place and time where he was happy. Like Nathan. I don’t think I ever would have realized that if I hadn’t come here.”
We’re silent for a moment, before I finally pull off my sweater and hang it on the back of the chair I’m sitting in then pick up the phone on the desk. “What should I order?”
Chapter Eighteen
Chris
One of my secrets that I’m most ashamed of is that I have never made a real breakfast. Living with my mom, the best chef on the fucking planet, has made me spoiled as shit. Even when I lived on my own in L.A., I never made breakfast. If I woke up before noon, I’d fix myself a bowl of cereal or grab a coffee on the way to the studio. I’ve never had the patience for cooking. The only thing I know how to make is steak, but I can’t make anything to go with the steak. So the fact that I’m reading a box of waffle mix at eight o’clock in the morning and making a disaster of my kitchen has me questioning my sanity.
My hands tremble a little as I crack the eggs into the bowl. As I whisk the eggs with a fork, I wonder when I should make the coffee. Should I wait until the waffles are done or should I make it now so it’s ready when the waffles are finished? How long does it take to make waffles?
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m visiting the tenth circle of hell, but you’re not allowed in here. I don’t need any help. Go away.”
“You don’t need any help?” she says with a chuckle. “Then why is there flour on the back of your head?”
She comes up behind me and lightly brushes away the flour with her fingers, sending a chill through me. “I’m serious. Go wait somewhere else. I want to do this alone.”
She wraps her arms around my waist and presses her body against my back. “I want to help,” she says as she slides her hands into my boxers.
She lightly runs her fingertips over the full length of my cock, and it drives me crazy. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I say as I drop the fork in the bowl and turn around. “I gave you like four orgasms last night.”
“I know. I just want to even up the score,” she says as she slowly kneels before me. “Plus, watching you crack those eggs was really hot.”
“Cracking eggs might not be the best topic of conversation while you’re down there.”
She slides my boxers down and grips the head of my erection firmly in her hand then slides her hand all the way down to the base. I suck in a deep brea
th, which I hold in as she lightly licks the tip of my cock. Her tongue is warm, but it leaves a cool, wet trail that sends a shiver through me.
I suck in a sharp breath through my teeth as she takes me into her mouth and I hit the hot, fleshy part at the back of her throat. She moans as she bobs her head and the sound reverberates through my cock. I smile as I thread my fingers through her hair. “Jesus Christ, Claire.”
She chuckles and I wince as her bottom teeth scrape me. “Sorry,” she says before she lays a soft kiss on the tip of my cock.
“It’s okay. Don’t stop, babe.”
She smiles at me as she takes me into her mouth again, then the doorbell rings.
“Fuck!” I whisper.
“Let me finish,” she whispers, grabbing my hips so I can’t move. “They’ll go away.”
I smile as I squat down and kiss her forehead. “Get up.”
She stands from the floor. I yank down her panties so they’re at her feet and she laughs as she steps out of them. I pick her up to place her on the counter and her ass knocks over the bowl of whipped eggs, sending it tumbling into the steel sink with a loud clunk. Then the doorbell rings again.
“Go away!” I shout as I kiss her stomach.
Her hand grips the bottom of the cabinet behind her head as she leans back. I force her legs apart and smile at her lovely, pink center. Sliding my finger inside her, I’m not surprised to find she’s wet as the Portland streets in April. She whimpers as I finger-fuck her and stroke her clit with my thumb, getting her ready for my mouth.
The doorbell rings again.
“Christopher! Open the door!” my mom shouts through the door.
“Fuck!” Claire and I both whisper.
“Oh, my God! Go answer it. I have to get dressed!” Claire whispers as she slides off the counter and reaches for her panties. That’s when we both notice the box of waffle mix that must have dropped on the floor.
I grab her around the waist so she can’t leave. “You look fine like that. I can’t answer the door like this,” I say, pointing at my dick.
“I’m not answering the door in panties and a tank top!”
“Fine. Get some pants on. I’ll be in the bathroom.”
When I come out of the bathroom, grabbing a T-shirt off the bedroom floor on my way out, I find Claire on her knees in the kitchen, sweeping up waffle mix with a wet rag.
“We don’t have a broom. Did you know that?” she says, glaring at me.
“Why do I need a broom when I have a cleaning lady?”
“What did you call me?”
“Not you! I have an actual lady who comes to clean the apartment three times a week. Her name is Petra. She’s taking a few weeks off for the holidays. Maybe I should buy a broom.”
“Or another cleaning lady.”
“Yeah, that’s a better idea.”
“Why are you both home today?” my mom asks from where she’s standing by the glass doors overlooking the balcony.
“It’s Sunday,” I reply as I squat down and take the rag from Claire’s hand. “I’ll take care of this.”
“That’s right. I work every day. I can never keep track of the days of the week,” my mom calls to us from the living room.
Claire smiles at me as we squat over a pile of waffle mix. “When are you building that house in the country?”
“Whenever you’re ready,” I whisper as I kiss her cheekbone.
We clean up the mess together and I toss the rag into the sink before we meet my mom in the living room. She’s holding a stack of mail and looks slightly annoyed.
“What were you doing in the kitchen? Wait—I don’t want to know,” she insists as she holds out the stack of letters.
“Mom, I told you I’d be by to pick up the mail tomorrow. You didn’t have to drive all the way down here.”
She frowns as I take them from her hand. “There’s a certified letter in there.”
I flip through the envelopes until I see the green certified sticker and the return address makes my heart race. The letter is from Hirschberg, Leidenbach, and Associates. Tasha and I were finally able to sit down with the Jensens and Ira to discuss the agreement last week. I’ve been trying not to think about the meeting too much because I left the meeting feeling as if the Jensens regretted allowing us to hold Abigail.
“What is it?” Claire asks as she sits cross-legged on the sofa.
I stare at the return address for a moment before I turn the envelope over