Lovely You

by Jamie Bennett

  I handed him a piece. “You already know how I feel?” I asked Nate. “Well, then, I guess I don’t have to say it.” I looked at him, with so much love, and joy, and happiness brimming up inside me, that tears started again, and I didn’t try to stop them. My voice got husky. “But I will tell you, because I’ve been wanting to say it, too. I love you, Nate.”

  “On a beautiful beach, or beneath the stars, or on this airplane. Anywhere, Scarlett. Always.” He kissed me, and leaned his forehead to mine.

  The plane lifted into the air and we flew off together, my heart soaring up so high, I didn’t think it would ever come back down.

  Epilogue

  “Iris! Please tell your brothers to swim back in,” Daria called to her daughter. “They’re out too far.” Her preteen daughter rolled her eyes, serious sass, and ran down to the beach.

  “Teddy!” we could hear her yell from our position on the lanai. “Get Eli and get your butts back up here!” Pause. “Why? Because Mom says. You have the brain of a hermit crab.”

  “Kids,” Daria said. “They’re pure gold.”

  I laughed, and so did my sister-in-law, Lanie. Her three children were down on the beach with their dad, digging a hole, like Brooks and I had done when we were little. It fascinated his kids as much as it had captured me at the time. Brooks and Lanie had made the move to Texas and their family just kept expanding. I didn’t get to see them as much as I wanted, which, if I was being honest with myself, was weekly. Daily would have been fine, too.

  But we all made a big effort to be together, which had brought them to our house on the Big Island for Christmas. We had strung lights around the palm trees and told their kids that Santa could surf, just like their Uncle Nate.

  Zara and her two children were here too, out walking on the beach looking for shells, I thought. Bradley, of course, was back in California, or at least not here, which was good. They had separated years ago, after Zara had realized that the work she was putting into saving their marriage just wasn’t worth what she was going to get out of it: a life with a guy who was at his core, pretty much a jerk. But he had stopped drinking entirely, and tried his best as a dad (which I did appreciate, even as I hated him).

  We all kept our mouths shut about Bradley for the sakes of my niece and nephew and for Zara, who didn’t like to be reminded of it all. She still did better when she was ignoring things. She had a long-term plus-one, Russ, who I thought was going to make it official between them sooner rather than later. He was probably with them right now, carrying the bucket of their gear, because he was a good guy. I thought she deserved to have somebody nice to her after the time she had spent with somebody who wasn’t.

  My good guy lifted his head from the barbecue. “Almost done. Is everybody ready?”

  “The table is set, we are hungry.” I raised my voice to holler to Brooks on the beach. “Gather the troops!” He raised his hand and I heard his voice calling the kids as I turned back to Nate. We had been together for a lot of years now, but still, when I saw him, when he looked at me with those dark eyes, my heart beat a little harder.

  I smiled and held out my hand, because I had missed him while he and Joey had been so busy cooking. Kiana was pregnant (again, for the fifth time in about as many years) and between dealing with all their brood and his tired wife, Joey hadn’t been much help with the gigantic dinner. And my help, as usual, had been politely declined. “We want people to enjoy the food, Scarlett B,” my husband explained. “Have a seat, and let the experts take this one.” But he had said it with his hand on my breast and his teeth about to work on that part of my neck that drove me a little wild, and those maneuvers removed any possible sting from the words. And I really didn’t want to cook, anyway.

  Nate wiped his hands on his t-shirt and came to sit behind me on the chaise. He broke out the ties only on very specific occasions now, like Joey’s wedding. Our wedding had been us on the beach, barefoot, no neckwear required, and absolutely perfect. “I can sit with you guys for just for a minute. I’m at a critical point in the dinner, the point at which all the food could burn and our guests would go hungry.” He rubbed my shoulders, then palmed my stomach. We had taken our time to get married while I sorted out my issues and he helped me, and we took a little longer before we decided to start a family while I worked on my business with Daria and he grew his.

  But this little one, the little girl gently kicking under his hand, was much anticipated, by our dog child, Keiki, who rested at my feet, and by our son, Joseph Brooks, currently being carried up on his uncle’s shoulders from the beach. And she was much anticipated by her parents as well. Her father had teared up when he heard we were having a girl. I, as per my usual, had cried my eyes out.

  I turned my head so I could see his face, and nuzzled into his chest. This was definitely my favorite place to be.

  “You guys having fun?” Nate kissed my lips now, and gently rubbed my tummy, our growing family. “Are you happy, Scarlett?”

  “We couldn’t be better,” I told him. I rested against my husband, his arms around me, the ocean rolling on the shore before us. I was surrounded by all our family and a lot of our friends. Nate and I were together with our kids, in beautiful, blue Hawaii, where all my dreams had come true.

  about the author

  Jamie Bennett is a reader turned writer (but still a reader). Due to writing this book, her current passion is watching unusual sports. She particularly enjoys talking about herself from the third person point of view.

  Her many other novels are available on Amazon. You can reach her via Instagram and Facebook @jamiebennettbooks (and join the Rocinante group for extra updates).

  Thanks for reading!

  And if you enjoyed this book, please leave a review!

  Read Lanie and Brooks’ story in THE ONE I’M WITH

  “You didn’t have time to get it straightened? Or work on the color?”

  “They couldn’t fit me in,” I told my mom, which was a lie. I hadn’t tried to get in for an appointment because I liked my hair the color it was, brown with a little red left over from the summer sun. And since I had gotten older and better at taming it, I didn’t mind my curls anymore. Not as much as I had as a kid, anyway, when at one point I had wanted to shave my head and had sold lemonade and other items from our refrigerator to get enough money to buy a wig. My mom had been too busy to mess much with my hair; she had sent me to her stylist, but on the days when there wasn’t a professional around to handle it, my nanny had pretty much thrown in the towel on all issues regarding my head.

  My mom nodded, now clearly disappointed, and twisted my hair into a knot, securing it with pins. “There, now we won’t have to see it as much.”

  “Thanks.” My voice sounded dull. I had thought it was fine but now I guessed that she was right, it hadn’t looked very nice the way I’d styled it myself.

  She tilted her head. “You know, you have my neck.” She looked at herself in the mirror in front of us and tapped under her chin with her fingers.

  “Really?” I smiled. My mom had such a graceful, long neck, like a queen. I turned my head and looked at myself in the mirror to check to see if I did, too.

  “Everything else from your father, though.” She bent and put her face next to mine, and it was true. We looked nothing alike, because she was pretty much the feminine ideal of beauty and I was…not. There was nothing wrong, exactly, but I wasn’t my mom. Even our expressions were different: a big smile on her face and a sulky frown on mine which I turned into a neutral stare back at her. My mom’s eyes flicked down. “Lanie, did you stuff your bra?” she asked.

  “It’s just padded,” I answered defensively. “A little, subtle padding.”

  “Subtle? It looks like you have pillows in there. Very unnatural.”

  Which was kind of ironic, given the amount of injections, surgeries, peels, creams, and other aids my mom used to look “natural.”

  “This looks grotesque. They have to come out,” she instructed me,
and I reached down my dress and pulled the pads—ok fine, I pulled the pillows out. The dress kind of clung, and the effect just wasn’t the same without them. I frowned down at my deflated chest.

  “Much better,” my mom approved. “Natural is better. I remember when I was modeling and all the girls were having breast enhancement surgery but I wouldn’t do it.”

  Why would she have needed to? She was a size two and her bra was a D-cup. Her pillows were real.

  “They told me that I wouldn’t get on MTV without having it, but I did.” She nodded, satisfied. “And I was always glad, later, that I didn’t have to deal with some of the problems from those old implants. Not that surgery is always a mistake,” she added quickly, and I saw her studying my face. She had never pushed me into getting anything done, but I knew that she wouldn’t have objected if I had come up with the idea on my own.

  “Thanks for helping me with my hair, Mom.” She had come to my house to check on me and after a while had taken the brush to step in. I knew that she really wanted to help, and I was grateful for that. I just always wished that her assistance didn’t make me feel so bad.

  “I can do your makeup,” she suggested hopefully.

  “I’m done with my face,” I answered and I could read in her expression what she thought of my work. “Don’t you need to get back with your own hair and makeup people?”

  She gave herself one last look in the mirror. “You’re right. I know Ava is busy, if you want to come up to the house a little early to give her a hand.” She kissed me on the head, careful not to disturb her handiwork with my hair.

  “Maybe.” No way in hell. But then I did find myself wandering up a little early for the party, not to help Ava but to check things out. My mom really did it up for her parties, even the minor ones like this, which was just to introduce an artist newly arrived from Russia to people in the art scene. It was close to Christmas, so everything had a vaguely holiday feel, but nothing too overt because she hated Christmas parties and thought they were tacky. She had a long list of things that she considered in poor taste and part of Ava’s job was to make sure none of them appeared in my mom’s eyeline.

  Ava looked as frazzled as I’d ever seen her, which meant that there was a tiny line on her forehead between her eyebrows and that was all the sign of worry on her face. She looked beautiful in a red sheath dress (nod to Christmas) with a flower on the shoulder that no one, including my mom, would have called tacky. I hid behind some of the potted trees that had been brought in for décor and watched her supervise the servers, the florists, the valets, everyone. She didn’t need my help.

  Finally she spotted me, despite my best efforts at camouflage. “Guests will start to arrive in about ten minutes,” she greeted me, while checking her phone. “You have just enough time to go change.”

  I looked down at my dark green cocktail dress (nod to Christmas), which I had liked, until this moment. “I already changed.”

  “Oh.” She looked me up and down and then shrugged. “I guess being comfortable is the most important thing.” Her eyes returned to her phone.

  “It’s not like I’m wearing yoga pants…”

  Ava held up her finger as she read something on the little screen. “I’m going to lose my mind,” she said, her voice perfectly even. “The caterer left two cases of champagne unrefrigerated. Nightmare scenario.” The tiny line reappeared: her worried face. “Talk to you later, Lanie.”

  I went back behind the trees, then, as the guests came, emerged to talk to the people I knew. I managed to get out of attending most of my mom’s parties so I hadn’t seen most of them for a while. My mom’s new husband, Kristian, came downstairs finally, wearing a scarf in a way that made me want to vomit a little when I thought of how long it had taken him to achieve the specific drape of it. He caught me sneering and shot me a look of death. We did best when we ignored each other.

  My mom was in her element so I watched her for a while. I had done that when I was younger, then gone up to my room and stood in front of my mirror to imitate her. I had held up a flute of orange juice and practiced her laugh, how she threw her head back and shook her hair, and the habit she had of putting her hand on the arm of the person she was talking to, widening her eyes and kind of pursing her lips so that she looked absolutely fascinated by what she was hearing. I had watched myself do it in the mirror, but I always looked like I was smelling something bad, rather than that I was interested.

  I talked and talked to people, and listened a lot, and had a cocktail, and some of the canapés, and waited. The Wolfes were notoriously late to parties. I saw my mom’s husband, Kristian, lead the new artist around, introducing her, their arms interlocked. I studied Ava, standing with a man in a suit the same color as her dress. I watched as she leaned forward, putting her hand on his arm, then threw back her head and laughed, shaking her hair. She really did it well.

  I waited.

  They all entered the room together. Scarlett with her new fiancé, a San Francisco guy who was always on his phone, both of them already looking bored and Scarlett very sullen, too. The oldest Wolfe child, Zara, wearing heels that added four inches to her height, clinging to her husband as if she needed the support. And Mrs. Wolfe, Pamela. She was walking with her son and smiling at something he was saying to her.

  Brooks. It was Brooks—I inhaled a bit of canapé and it lodged in my throat. I coughed but the hard piece of bread stuck there. I kept coughing until tears streamed down my face, blinding me. I held up a napkin and tried to return to my spot behind the trees, hacking away. The crowd parted like the Red Sea, as if I was spreading consumption or French pox or something and not being asphyxiated by a bread crumb.

  “Lanie? Lanie, are you ok?” Brooks appeared in my face, concerned. “Here.” He grabbed a drink off a passing tray. “Take a sip of this.”

  It was not how I had planned our reunion. There was no cooing like Mae West, no running one of my long, painted nails down his cheek. They were still all bitten, and anyway, who could talk like Mae West when she was bringing up a lung? I coughed again and took a gulp of liquid from the cold glass Brooks handed to me. It burned fire down my throat. In honor of the Russian artist, my mom was serving icy-cold vodka, straight, and I had taken in at least half the glass. I spat it out, right onto Brooks.

  Oh. Holy. Shit.

  He licked his lips. “Vodka. Tasty.”

  “Brooks…”

  He started to laugh.

  I mopped at his face with the napkin I had been coughing into but then realized how disgusting that was. “I’m so sorry!”

  He used his sleeve and wiped off the rest of the liquid. “It’s fine. I should have expected it. I remember wearing your ice cream cone at one point, a hot dog you shot out of a bun, and a chocolate doughnut with sprinkles that landed in my hair. I prefer the vodka, actually. You ok?”

  I gave one last, halfhearted cough. “Yes. Part of the canape got…never mind. How are you, Brooks?” I used the napkin to wipe under my eyes.

  “A little wet, and smelling like a distillery, but other than that, I’m great.”

  “Oh, shit. I’m really sorry.”

  Brooks laughed again. “No, I am great. I’m happy to be home. California in December is a much more friendly place than New York is.”

  “I’m glad you’re back.” I sounded ridiculously fervent, like I was saying “amen” in church.

  “Me too,” he said.

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