by Julia Kent
I rub the back of my neck and motion for him to come in. He walks with a steady, comfortable gait, attired in his standard jeans and casual shirt. He hasn’t shaved in days.
A quick rub of my palm against my own cheek tells me I probably look a little grubby, too.
“A drink?” I ask. “I’ve got Scotch.” Shannon told me long ago it’s his favorite second only to local microbrewed beer.
His eyes flash with mischief. “Sounds great.”
I hand him two fingers, neat.
“You pay attention,” he says slowly.
I shrug, then slam my own drink down like a shot of tequila at an all-night poker game in Vegas. Normally, I’d never drink while burning the midnight oil like this, but something about Jason makes me think it’s not a bad idea to loosen up a bit.
He follows my lead, then sets the glass down on my desk and walks to the window. City lights dot the ground like an inverse blanket of stars.
“Helluva view,” he says with a longing sigh.
Nodding, I just smile. “It is.”
“You’ve grown up with this.” A tone of marvel fills his words.
“Yes.” Why argue? He’s right.
“But your dad didn’t.” Jason runs a hand through his thinning hair. “He may have married into money, but he wasn’t born into it. That’s for sure. I remember James. Smart as hell and determined.”
“You knew him?”
“Only because of Marie,” Jason says, looking at me with eyes so similar to Shannon’s I have to check myself and remember they’re not attached to her. “She kept bringing these injured animals to the vet where I worked back then, and one night she brought James in. You’d have thought she’d asked him to eat dinner at the garbage dump.” He laughs. “And yet he found a way to pay for every injured animal. That was right before he hit it big.”
“Before he met my mom.”
Jason frowns. “Your mom. Marie told me about your talk at the cemetery.”
Of course she did.
I stay silent, wondering if I should pour us another round.
“Your mom’s from Mayflower people, right?”
I nod.
“And old money.”
My body goes tight. Where is this conversation heading.
“Yes.”
“She helped James, didn’t she?”
“With investments? Sure. My grandfather did.” That’s all public record.
“You’ve grown up with all this wealth your entire life, then.”
“Yes.”
“But James...James is all Southie.”
“Jason,” I ask slowly, fighting back a defensive tone, “why are you here?”
He gives a wan smile. “It’s about Shannon and the hospital incident.”
“Which one?”
He chuckles, then shakes his head. “My girls and their mother are one of a kind, that’s for sure. How many men can ask what you just asked?”
A smile stretches my mouth before I can stop it.
“We’re lucky.”
“Either that, Declan, or we’re just stupid and don’t realize it.”
“Speak for yourself.”
We stand and stare out at the city until he says, “You kicked us out of Shannon’s room.”
“Yes. And with good reason.”
He nods and grimaces at the same time. “Marie’s awfully hurt.”
“So was Shannon. And Shannon’s my priority.”
“She’s ours, too.”
“Wouldn’t know it back there.”
He clears his throat, tongue rolling between his teeth and lips. “You’re fairly new to Shannon’s life. The jokes are how we all handle stress.”
“Doesn’t make it okay.” This moment is crucial. Thirty years from now, I’ll reflect back on it and if I don’t make the right choice right here, right now, I’ll regret it.
I’m not a man with many regrets. Not adding one right now.
“That doesn’t mean you should have ordered us out.”
“You could have fought me.” I want to ask why he didn’t, but the answer might be too raw. Baring my soul to Shannon is hard enough. Opening myself up to Marie at the cemetery was a surprise. Hell if I’m going to be soft and fluffy with Jason over this issue.
If I can’t do it, I won’t ask another man to do it, either.
He pauses, carefully considering his words. That’s one quality I like in Jason. Unlike Marie, who rushes to fill in silence, Jason is comfortable with it. He can take his time before he says what needs to be said.
“I certainly could have. Legally, we had the right to boot you out of that room. We’re still Shannon’s next of kin.”
“But you didn’t.” Because I was right, I want to add.
“No. It was clear that Shannon wanted you to defend her like that, and even if Marie couldn’t understand that, I could.”
“Marie could have seriously hurt her with that back-smacking stunt,” I growl, showing more emotion than I want to.
“I know. She knows it, too. She’s back home kicking herself and falling into a shame spiral that no amount of Netflix and pampering can pull her out of.”
Shame spiral? These people read too many self-help books.
“But that’s not why you made us leave, and you know it.”
“Why do you think I made you leave?”
“Because you care more about Shannon’s feelings than ours.”
Zing.
“Right.”
“Which is fine,” he adds, searching the room for his glass. He walks over to my desk and picks it up, shaking it in the air. “Got more?”
Relief floods me. I not only have more, I need more. Two generous glass refills later and we’re back at the window.
He drinks half his tumbler and looks out at the inky night, words aimed at me, eyes aimed up at the stars we can’t see.
“Which is fine,” he continues, as if we never paused. “But at some point you have to realize Shannon is part of a family, and that eventually all the family members do need to be considered.”
“How can I not realize that? It’s shoved in my face every day. My penis—excuse me, penith—has been made fun of by a child born in the twenty-first century and you and my father engaged in a version of wrestling banned for its eroticism in seventeen countries. At my work. And don’t even get me started on Marie...”
I swig the rest of my Scotch and give him a narrow look. “You think I don’t understand I’m not just marrying Shannon? That you’re all a package deal?”
Jason blinks, eyes tired but steady. “It’s like that, huh?” He sighs. It’s a sound of disappointment that makes my stomach clench. “You’re just going to do what you do and we’ll do what we do and it’s going to be a mess.”
That’s the most plainspoken description of my interactions with Shannon’s family I’ve ever heard.
“Yes.”
“As long as you always put Shannon first, I’m fine with that.” He offers me his hand. I shake it.
“Yes, sir.”
He steps back and walks with purpose to the door to my office, ready to leave. I watch him go, mind spinning from trying to understand why he’s here and, probably, a little from the Scotch.
“Declan?” he adds right before he walks out. He’s smiling, eyes friendly and sharp.
“Yes?”
“Make sure you understand that I’ll always put Marie first when you two clash. Just so we’re clear.”
And with that, he’s gone.
Poopwatch, Day 4...
“Auntie Shannon pooped! She pooped!” My phone crackles with an excited eight year old’s voice as I answer a call from what I thought was Shannon.
“Poopy! See poopy in da fesh fy tay!” chants Tyler in the background. I’m hoping “See” is his version of “She,” because the alternative is just too gross.
“She got the ring, Declan!” Jeffrey crows. “You can be my uncle now. Uncleth give good presents to their nephew, right? And you’re rich.
I want an X-Box K’nect with—”
Shannon’s voice appears, dripping through my ears like honey. “Sorry about that,” she laughs. “Jeffrey got a little too excited and knows exactly how to use my phone.”
“See? I was right.”
“Huh?”
“Little boys love to talk about poop.”
She makes a sound of disgust, but hey, she’s got to admit I’m right.
“You got the ring?” I ask.
“Yes.”
Thank God. Poopwatch 2015 is over.
“Everything okay?”
She snorts. “My mom brought me a bunch of chocolates yesterday. Turns out they had a little something special in them.”
“Xanax?”
“Laxatives.”
“Ouch.”
“Right. I needed an epidural to—oh, why am I talking about this with you?” she screeches, her voice changing from casual closeness to horrified harpy in the blink of an eye.
“You can talk about anything with me, Shannon. I miss you.”
“I promise,” she says in a rush of urgency, “that we’re having your mom’s ring cleaned. Sterilized. In fact, we’ve arranged to have a nuclear bomb detonated so close to it any living organisms will be killed. That should ensure it’s truly spic ’n span.”
I chuckle and then have no idea what to say. I don’t even clean my own underwear, so how would I know what you do in a case like this?
“I can have Grace arrange everything,” I tell her. “It’s the least I could do.”
“Declan, when we have kids someday and I’m not around and a diaper needs to be changed, you know you can’t call Grace.”
Kids. She mentioned kids.
“That’s what nannies are for.”
“Nannies? More than one?”
“Of course. Three of them in round the clock shifts.”
“You’re joking.” Her voice drops to a register that tells that even if I weren’t joking, I have to pretend I am.
“Yes, I am. But not about the diaper part.”
Her voice goes soft. “Dec?”
“Yeah?”
“We need to talk.”
My chest tightens. “We do?”
“Well, there’s this ring here, and....”
“About that,” I say with a smile. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Throwing all my French fry trays away.”
“After that?”
“Going to work.”
“How about a helicopter ride?”
“To the lighthouse?”
“No. Somewhere better.”
Somewhere perfect.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Proposal 2.0...
Marie’s helicopter envy is understandable when you look at cities from the standpoint of having to get around in them. Landing at the Anterdec helipad is a breeze compared to trucking into the city from JFK or LaGuardia, limo or no limo.
Anterdec’s New York City driver, Sam, takes our bags and delivers them to our corporate suite at the company’s finest hotel in Manhattan.
“Where is he taking my bag?” Shannon shouts over the sound of the copter.
“To the hotel.”
“Aren’t we going there?” she asks, looking at me with curiosity.
“Not yet.” First things first.
Shannon is remarkably silent on the limo ride to our destination, giving me half smiles and little caresses. Sex in the limo in a new city is a bit daunting, and for once I don’t want to sleep with her.
I know, I know. Back up the limo. That’s right.
I don’t want to sleep with her. Not now.
I’m too wound up, too full of cortisol and adrenaline and testosterone and whatever hormones drive me to ask her to marry me. My cup runneth over and I’m both full and empty, both free and chained. Cupid’s arrow struck me but it was attached to a rope that binds me to Shannon. We’re tied to each other for eternity.
The proposal is just a formality.
“How can you get away from work like this?” she asks, as if the thought suddenly came to her. “Isn’t the New Zealand launch a big mess? How can you take two days off?”
I give her a puffed-up, proud smile. “Got it all under control. Dad handed me that big mess but with the right management, I got new subcontractors in on the development, a crack software support team, and we sent coupon codes out to sixteen thousand subscribers as an apology. Sales are through the roof, systems are functional, and Dad can go eat a pile of monkey dung.” That little condition for getting Mom’s engagement ring didn’t work. I bested Dad.
She gives me a half-pleased, half-sick look. “Can we talk about something other than poop?”
I squeeze her hand and laugh.
As the limo stops in from of the sleek silver and glass building, she smiles.
“The MOMA! I’ve never been.” Her smile dazzles me as we enter the Museum of Modern Art.
“I know.” We get out and enter like everyone else, though I have a membership card. When your family donates the equivalent of the GDP of a small island nation to the arts, you get free admission and ten percent off the gift shop like everyone else.
We walk in, bookshelves and brochure racks everywhere, and I take Shannon past all of it, to the right, pressing the button for the fifth floor on the elevator panel.
“What are you doing?” she asks, puzzled yet intrigued. Her earnest brown eyes search mine, and she squeezes my hand. Mom’s ring rests in my front pocket now, no longer needing to be hidden. Shannon knows I want to make this right, to propose and ask her to marry me, but she doesn’t quite know the particulars.
But you can be damn sure there won’t be tiramisu within a hundred feet of us.
Years have passed since I’ve been here, but the route is ingrained, an invisible hand guiding me.
“Wait! Dec, I want to look at—” Shannon objects as we fly by other paintings.
“We will. Trust me,” I say back, squeezing her hand.
“Is this some special speed tour? Like speed dating, but for the MOMA? Ten seconds per painting?” she jokes.
We turn a corner and then there we are.
The Van Gogh gallery.
I stop so fast that Shannon bumps into me from behind, her body soft and yielding. I’ve become a brick wall, shrouded by a supernatural sensation, an eerie feeling that is a combination of deja vu, grief, and pure joy. My muscles pulse and my heart begins to beat so fast it feels like my chest shudders. I’m numb and on fire, cold and tense. At ease and alive.
I can feel her here. My mother. Her ring is in my pocket and her soul is smiling on us.
Maybe Shannon will get a chance to meet her after all.
“Honey, what’s wrong?” Shannon asks, turning me toward her, hands on my cheeks. All I can do is blink. Senses on fire, ears perked for sound, it’s as if I can hear her if I just focus enough. Feel her. Call her.
My eyes catch on the painting that is my destination and I take one step toward it, then two, holding Shannon’s hand and bringing her there. My hand crushes hers but she doesn’t flinch, her purposeful strides matching mine. She does not question me now. She only follows.
And there it is.
We stop, captivated, Shannon’s eyes on the painting.
But mine are on her.
And there, in front of tourists wearing earbuds to listen to guided tours in their native language, amidst parents with toddlers in backpacks and elderly people in wheelchairs, in the swirling pleasure of humanity in every shade, every voice, every belief, I drop down to one knee, Mom’s ring already in my palm before I look up at Shannon’s beautiful face, and I say her name.
“Shannon.”
A hush fills the already-quiet gallery.
“I came here as a boy on the edge of manhood with my mother. We stood in front of this very painting, and she told me that one day I would find my morning star. The yin to my yang. The love of my life.”
She pulls her fingers to her mouth, covering her l
ips, and tears fill her eyes, a shaky smile making her ethereal.
“You are the star that lights up my darkest nights. You are the sun that I revolve around. We met in a men’s room—”
The hush becomes a series of troubled murmurs in the background, and Shannon laughs, then sniffs.
“—and you nearly broke my penis on our first date—”
The crowd around us gets bigger. Shannon’s openly laughing now.
“And I wouldn’t have it any other way. My life before I met you was neat and orderly. I had all the control. All the power. My world made sense and if it didn’t, I made it make sense. What I didn’t have was any of the love, Shannon.” My voice catches, wobbling as I say her name. “You brought back love.”
“Oh, Declan,” she says, bending down, eyes filled with tears, searching my face.
I’m determined to do this just right, and swallow, hard.
“You brought the love that I needed, even when I had no idea I was living with a hollow hole where my heart should be. That I’ve been living half alive without you and thinking I was complete.”
I hold up the ring.
“You have the other half of my heart, my love. And I think I have yours. Will you marry me, Shannon, so we can be whole, together?”
The crowd gasps, collectively holding their breath. I’m right there with them.
And then:
“Oh, yes, oh yes yes yes,” she whispers as I slide the ring on her left ring finger.
It fits perfectly.
I stand and we kiss on the shining floor of the gallery on that fifth floor at the MOMA, a security guard clearing his throat, the crowd around us applauding and calling out congratulations.
I can’t hear any of them, though, over the sound of our hearts beating in sync.
* * *
We take our time. Shannon’s fingers move slowly over the buttons of my shirt, soundlessly opening me to her touch. Moonlight bounces off the diamond resting in its platinum setting, her left hand weighed down by the newness of the ring. The thin band of metal is cold against my bare chest, the sensation making me sigh as her palm slides under my shirt, following the planes of my body.
Another button, another breath, another look. She kisses me on the breastbone, then over my heart, my own hands gentle at her waist, my body primed to make love yet held in check.