Winona sniffs. “They’re safe?”
“Very, very safe.”
Winona nods, still tearful, but she stares out at the scenery more like Sulli did. Ryke distracts Winona by taking out her stuffed sea turtle.
She hugs Simon like she’s protecting him from the zoo’s fences.
Sulli hops off the bench. “Can we see the monkeys before we leave?”
“Sure thing,” I say.
Bethany left us with a map, so we find our way around the zoo alone. It’s easier for Ryke to carry Winona, so he props her on his side with only one hand. She rests her cheek on his arm, a little mopey and downtrodden.
In time, she’ll feel better, so we don’t push and prod and try to yank a smile out of Winona. I walk backwards with Sulli, our smiles rising, and Ryke directs us which way to go.
“Fucking right,” he says.
“Not fucking left?” I tease—then I accidentally trip over my own feet.
Ryke catches my wrist, keeping me upright, and his brows rise as my smile appears.
“So you didn’t say fucking down then?”
Ryke eats me alive with his gaze.
“You’re in L-O-V-E,” Sulli singsongs, still walking backwards, the monkey and ape exhibits in sight.
His arm slides across my shoulders, and I clutch his hand that drapes down. “Did you hear, we’re in L-O-V-E?” I ask him. “What will my husband say?”
Ryke almost smiles. “That he’s in fucking L-O-V-E with you too.”
“My husband would’ve said it just like that.”
He pushes my cheek lightly with the same hand that I hold.
Sulli rotates as we reach the noisy monkey and ape habitats. Trees rustle, dark green foliage cascading. We all stand by the glass, silent as we watch. Ryke lets Winona down, and she puts her nose up close, fingertips against the window.
“Look.” Sulli points to four chimpanzees swinging from branch-to-branch, squeaking to one another. “It’s us.”
We all laugh together, and mine transforms into an overwhelmed smile. I look to Ryke, but I can’t do anything but nod at him—you know those moments where you’re just so full you can barely breathe? So full of feelings you only hope to meet.
They crash against me like freefalling. Like cliff diving and bungee jumping. Like screaming at the top of my lungs. Like one-hundred-and-fifty miles per hour.
All with Ryke Meadows.
He holds my cheeks with both large, rough hands, and I reach up and hold his with my small, soft.
Ryke laughs into his own beautiful smile, and he says, “This is our fucking life, Calloway.”
Every moment is wild, even the quiet ones.
< so long >
April 2028
Zoo
Utah
RYKE MEADOWS
In another fucking lifetime, in another world, Daisy is alone.
I’m alone.
We have no girls, no fucking kids to call our own—and it’s just not what’s here today. It’s not what I feel when I wake up in the morning. It’s not what I feel when I go to fucking bed.
I’m not alone.
I have a fucking family.
Daisy radiates beneath my hands, holding her face like she holds mine. And I kiss the most beautiful fucking thing on this Earth. Her smile pulls one from me, from the dark, lonely crevices.
Winona gags, and our eyes open on her—just as she says, “Old people kissing are so gross.”
Sulli smiles, but she’s busy clucking her tongue at the four chimpanzees.
I rest my arm on Daisy’s head while she nuzzles against my ribs like a fucking bear. “You think we’re fucking old?”
“So old,” Winona says, her stink-face ending with a smile. I’m glad she’s not as fucking sad.
“How old?” Daisy asks while I slip my hand up the back of her shirt.
Winona kicks a twig. “Eighty-four.” That’s incredibly fucking wrong.
Daisy looks up, and very quietly, only audible to me, she says, “You’ve been fucking an eighty-four-year-old. How does that feel?”
“Feels like we’re finally the same fucking age.”
Daisy laughs a full-bellied laugh. “Touché.”
We spend the next thirty minutes hanging around the monkey exhibit. Winona plops down by the glass and captures the fucking attention of an orangutan. “He’s orange like me!” Winona exclaims before watching intently as the animal inspects her from afar.
The orangutan might be fucking confused by her giraffe onesie. While our girls do their own thing with the animals, I film them with our video camera—and I fucking flirt with my wife.
In the last ten minutes, we watch Sulli who has grown really fucking quiet, no longer clucking or whistling. She searches left and right and scratches at her neck. Then she finds a bench nearby the staff exit and takes a seat, pulling her legs up to her chest.
I turn the video camera off and stuff it into my backpack. “Let’s fucking ask,” I tell Dais.
She nods, her flower crown halfway off her head after I messed her hair. I catch her wrist before she rushes ahead, and I situate the crown on the fucking top of her head while we approach our daughter together.
“Sullivan?” Daisy slides next to our daughter on the bench. Sulli rests her forehead on her knees, and Daisy rubs her back, searching Sulli as fucking quickly as I do.
I take my baseball hat off and run a hand through my hair—fuck.
I know this position. I’ve seen Daisy in it more than enough times. I put my hat back on. It’s not casual legs-to-chest—it’s a fucking pained, upright fetal position.
Sulli mumbles something.
“We can’t fucking hear, sweetie.” I stay standing above them, and Winona starts hopping over to us. She hangs onto the armrest of the bench, peering up at Sullivan.
“Sulli?” Winona whispers.
Sullivan lifts her head, fucking pale. I put my hand on her forehead while she mumbles out, “My stomach hurts.”
She’s not warm.
“How about we go to the bathroom?” Daisy says. “Maybe it was the extra whipped cream on your pancakes.”
“But Sulli always eats extra whipped cream,” Winona says, open-mouthed in confusion. Then in a quick fucking flash, she crawls beneath the bench and out the other side, racing to our backpack.
“Winona!” I yell. Fucking A. “Don’t go any fucking farther than that backpack!” When it comes to their safety, I’m a bigger hardass. To this day, we’ve never let them do anything dangerous that I didn’t do at their fucking age.
She screeches to a halt and waits there.
Daisy helps Sulli stand, our daughter nearly doubled-over.
I shake my head, thinking this is more than a stomachache. Her fucking appendix. “Sul, do you want me to fucking carry you?”
“No,” she sighs like Dad but winces again. “I’m ten…I’m not a baby anymore.”
She fucking reminds me at least once a week. We regroup and locate a bathroom about two minutes back. In agonized determination, Sulli walks to the bathroom on her own, Daisy rubbing her back all the way. Winona holds my pinky finger while she hops.
I must only wear dark fucking concern because Winona asks, “Is Sulli okay?”
“Yeah.” I nod a few times, but the truth is, I don’t fucking know.
We reach the bathrooms, and Daisy tries to open the women’s door. She jiggles the locked knob. Fucking really? I try the men’s door.
“It’s open.”
Besides employees, the zoo is still fucking empty and so is the men’s bathroom. Four urinals and only two stalls. Sulli quickly slips into one, and I keep an eye on Winona who drifts from my side.
“Why are there strange looking water fountains?” Winona asks, hopping over to the urinals. I fucking scoop her up in my arms.
“Those are fucking urinals.” I flip her upside-down, hanging my daughter by the feet.
She shrieks in laughter, and I concentrate partially on Daisy, who asks Sulli i
f everything’s okay through the stall. Dais glances back to me, worried.
Really fucking worried.
I upright Winona in my arms, and she spits hair from her mouth. I keep her close, supporting her against my chest with only one hand.
“Mom, can you come here?” Sulli asks, fear pitching her voice.
I want to fucking go, to help, but she asked for her mom, so I wait. Daisy disappears inside, and Winona grows quiet, blinking at the blue stall.
She whispers up to me, “I don’t think Sulli’s okay, Daddy.”
Fuck this. I near the stall and knock. “What the fuck’s going on?” I need to know if I should call 9-1-1 or if it’s mild like puke.
“It’s okay,” Daisy calls out to me. “We’ll be out in a second.” She sounds hurried, and I might be fucking pushy, but I don’t push here.
Winona has other thoughts. Before it registers what she’s doing, she’s already boosted herself in my arms and tries to peer over the stall. She inhales. “Is that blood?”
“Nona!” Sulli yells like shut the fuck up.
I go rigid. It all makes fucking sense. Why I thought the position was so familiar—and maybe I knew. Maybe I just didn’t want to think that today of all fucking days, she’d go through this. Because she’s really young.
“Did she fucking start her period?” I ask bluntly.
None of us are abashed. We’re open. We curse. Winona will fart on fucking cue if you ask. We gave Sulli a sex talk without batting an eye. This shouldn’t be any fucking different, right?
The door swings open, and I back up so they can exit. Sulli is first, sighing heavily. “This sucks.” She washes her hands in the sink. “You’re so lucky you’ve never had to deal with this, Dad.”
She started her period.
Daisy slips beside me. “We need to make a drugstore run.”
“She’s only fucking ten,” I whisper to Dais, shaking my head repeatedly.
“Some girls start early.”
It’s what rings in my fucking ears while we exit the zoo. While I drive our green Jeep to a tiny hole-in-the-wall drugstore, the closest nearby. Sulli unpacks a change of shorts and underwear from her luggage with Daisy’s help, and Winona, buckled in her booster seat, plays with Nutty.
We’ve been on a fucking road trip, all four of us, plus our husky. And Price, who follows the Jeep on a motorcycle. Sulli needed to take off school for a swim competition, so we just extended that time by an extra two days and took off out west.
Minutes later, Winona and I peruse the drugstore aisles while Daisy and Sulli are in the bathroom. Winona carries our shopping basket, and I have pads in my hand, only putting light fucking things in her basket—like a bottle of pain meds.
I pick out about five or six fucking chocolate bars and toss them in.
“Do girls on periods like chocolate?” Winona asks.
“Period or no period—girls like fucking chocolate.”
Winona shoves three bags of chocolate kisses into the basket, and I catch the fucking handle, just as it weighs her down. I hear the creak of the bathroom door, Sulli and Daisy exiting, still wearing identical flower crowns.
Six-foot-three, I stand above every shelf here, and they both meet my gaze. Sulli is the first to give me a thumbs-up, and Daisy smiles like everything is okay.
These girls are my life, and all I want is good health and fucking happiness for each one of them. I’d trade places with Sulli in a second like I would’ve traded places with Daisy back then, but I couldn’t. All I can do is be here. Be caring.
Be loving.
Hold them when they’re fucking sad.
I’d do it every day.
When we check out, Sulli adds four bottles of root beer. I pop her bottle open on our way to the car, and she takes a giant swig. We pile the couple drugstore bags in the trunk.
Then we’re on the road.
I drive the green Jeep down a scenic two-lane highway, the faintest ache in my right knee. Sandstone cliffs rise in brown and green gorgeous fucking hues. Some rust-colored crags up ahead, spiked in unique shapes that can’t be found anywhere but right here.
Right now.
Daisy rolls down the windows, wind whipping through the Jeep. There’s no car in sight down the lengthy stretch of highway. I look to my wife, to the road, and back to my wife, her lips upturning playfully.
“What do you fucking say, Calloway? Fast or slow?”
Daisy smiles so brightly, so fucking heartfelt—it’s hard to stare for long, but I always take the fucking risk. My eyes burn like I’m meeting the sun.
And she says, “I love you.”
In ten years, our love has never fucking waned. I raise my brows at Dais and feel my smile touch my lips. “Fucking fast then.” I step hard on the gas, her smile flooding the car, and the Jeep races down the highway.
“Whoa,” Sulli says and immediately sticks her head out the window. Nutty joins, tail wagging.
Winona shrieks in glee, bouncing in her booster seat. “Faster!”
Already flying, I pretend to go fucking faster but keep this speed. Daisy stays in the car, her long legs extended across my lap. With her hand, she draws waves in the wind.
No words need to fucking pass. No radio needs to be flipped on. Our music exists right here. We’re alive. We’re alive.
God, we’re all fucking alive.
In this present moment.
In this place together.
{ goodbye }
May 2028
The Lake House
Smoky Mountains
LILY HALE
“I’ll pick up where I left off.” Luna flips through her journal, multi-colored stars doodled on the cover. Inside I spot pages and pages of scrawled words. Eight-years-old and so smart already.
I told Lo that she’ll turn out to be a Ravenclaw like her namesake.
Lo told me that Ravenclaws don’t forget to brush their teeth and flush the toilet.
I snapped back, “You just want her to be Hufflepuff.”
“So what if I do.” He pinched my cheek.
I smile at the memory, but Lo isn’t with us this late morning. Luna and I share a pillow, lounging on the bottom bunk in a lake house bedroom. I split a Pop-Tart with Kinney, my three-year-old tucked up against me, her elbow on my bony shoulder as she eats.
“How far through are we?” Kinney asks, crumbs spilling from her lips.
I glance at my hair. Yep. Tart crumbs are all over my shoulder-length strands. I brush them away but give up when they break apart into crumbier crumbs.
My hair has seen so much worse than this.
“We’re at the end,” Luna tells us, her Hulk slippers swaying with her feet. I’m quiet, but I like listening to my kids just as much as talking.
Luna finds the correct page, and then with an alien headband, she pulls her long, light brown hair back, little green bulbs swinging.
Kinney finishes off her Pop-Tart faster than me, and she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. She also has my round face, but unlike Luna, she has my big green eyes and shade of brown hair. Where Luna is outlandish and spirited, Kinney appears thoughtful and attentive.
Sometimes I wonder if they’ve taken after the two sides of me: goofy but introspective.
Luna begins reading, and I’m engrossed, not even realizing I’ve eaten my whole Pop-Tart until I try to shove an invisible piece in my mouth.
“Zhora forgot her ray gun and fluffy mallows on the hovercraft,” Luna reads loudly, “and she needed to hurry. Dash was waiting.”
Kinney scrunches her nose. “Where are the ghosts or the trolls? Is there a witch at least?”
“Just aliens.” Luna taps Kinney’s nose. “Beep, beep.”
Kinney barely flinches. She says matter-of-factly, “Ghosts are better than aliens.”
Luna shrugs and flips a page in her journal. “Everyone likes different sorts of things.” She glances at me, and when she starts smiling, I realize that I’ve been beaming at my eight-year-old
like she’s the empress of an intergalactic universe—and I’m just a little astronaut floating by, witnessing this beauty.
Luna Hale might not have any friends outside of relatives, but she has more confidence at eight-years-old than I did when I was twenty.
Never ashamed.
My daughter is never ashamed.
“You made Mommy cry,” Kinney says and starts drying my tears with her Darth Vader pajama shirt.
“Happy tears,” I tell them, wiping at my wet eyes, tears overflowing.
Luna touches her Hulk slipper to my Thor slipper and singsongs, “Fan fiction.” She makes a smooching noise, Hulk kissing Thor.
I laugh at the Hulk-Thor alternate universe. Kinney scoots higher, sitting up on my stomach. I hold her waist, bony like me. Like Luna, too.
I squint at Kinney. “So you’re not scared of any ghosts?” I’m scared of ghosts and all the horror movies Lo watches with Garrison. They act like they’re comedies.
The only funny thing about horror movies is my petrified face in the black credit screen.
Kinney tells me, “I’m scared of nothin’ in the world.” For being three, she says this very seriously—to the point where I think I believe her. I try to recall any frightened Kinney moments, but most are just content Kinney moments.
“Uh-huh, not true,” Luna says, tapping Kinney’s nose.
Kinney swats her hand away. “Is too.”
“Then ask Eliot to tell you a ghost story and see what happens.”
“Let’s not,” I interject while Kinney says, “Okay.”
“Nonono,” I slur. “Not okay. We’re in the middle of a fun story about aliens.” I like these aliens. There are marshmallows and lots of chaste naps on the hovercraft. I almost think I could exist somewhere on Luna’s planet.
“Mommy’s scared,” Kinney says with a devilish smile.
Now I’m scared.
Luna annoys Kinney with another beep beep nose tap, and the devilish smile seems less Children of the Corn.
I convince them to return to the story by just pointing at Luna’s journal and asking, “What’s happening?”
Some Kind of Perfect (Calloway Sisters #4.5) Page 62