The False Flat

CHAPTER 50

LIFE REALIZATION #24: ALWAYS PUT PANTS ON BEFORE YOU CRY

“This is it,” Grant said. “Tomorrow we get married. You’re really going to go through with this?”

“You’re really going to go through with this?”

We were back at Chuck’s cabin in a room with a large, carved canopy bed and a bathroom attached, settling in before Grant and I became husband and wife. Deanna, William, Chuck, and Celia were here, but everyone else was scheduled to show up tomorrow evening. Aurora was staying in the nearest hotel. I wanted to forgive her, but I needed time.

I’d asked Hannah to tell me what to do because wanting my mother in my life, after everything, seemed wrong. She told me the following:

There’s nothing wrong with me wanting my mother in my life.

Sometimes people are too damaged to react logically; the past obscures the present, so what you think you’re doing isn’t what you’re doing at all.

A child never stops loving their parents, not fully, and you can love through hate.

Love is stronger than hate.

Love is stronger than anything, can overcome anything.

It’s my life, my decision.

I need boundaries.

Grant pulled me over to him and kissed me, his slightly scraggly mustache tickling my nose. How could I ever live without that mustache tickling my nose?

Is love stronger than death?

“I’m going to shave it,” he said.

“Your mustache?” I immediately shook my head. How had he known I was thinking about his mustache? “No.”

“She’s not the same.” He held out a razor. “Henrietta leaves on her own terms.”

I tried to smile but frowned instead.

He shook his head. “I don’t want you crying on my wedding eve.”

“Can I cry tomorrow at your wedding?”

He wrapped his arms around me. “We’ll both cry tomorrow. But tonight, after we shave Henrietta, we make love. Show me again.”

I lifted my shirt, exposing the onggi, the little kimchi fermentation pot I’d had tattooed in the same spot Grant had his blueprint. I’d only been able to hide it from him for two days, and then he kept asking me to see it. It had turned him on even more than I’d hoped.

He groaned. “Needles? For me?”

“Turns out there’s not a lot I wouldn’t do for you, Grant Miles.”

He licked his lips like I was dinner. “On second thought, you might cry from pleasure tonight because I’m going to try something new. New face, new sex—”

Someone knocked lightly on the door.

I looked from the door back to him. “I’m not into threesomes. Unless it’s Jason Statham at that door, and then I’ll think about it.”

He shoved me onto the bed. “No, gross! That’s my sister.”

“Please forget I said anything.”

“Gladly. And for the record, I’m not sharing you with anyone. I texted Deanna, asking her to come in here. I think now’s a good time to have that talk. Get it out of the way before the wedding.”

I nodded. I couldn’t take another “talk,” though, especially if I wasn’t supposed to cry.

He opened the door, and Deanna breezed in, arms crossed. “I’m kinda busy preparing for tomorrow, since snow is forecasted and we’re doing this outside and I need to refine my five backup plans. Snow. Flood. Tornado. This is Tennessee weather, fickle as—”

“Deanna,” Grant interrupted.

“Just remember that as you keep me in here.” Her voice quieted. She knew.

I hurt for her.

“I’ll let you two have a few minutes. I’m taking a shower.” I gave Grant a soft peck on the lips and shut myself in the bathroom, avoiding eye contact with both of them.

“You feeling okay?” I heard Deanna ask, hesitation in her voice.

I tried not to listen, but the door was thin. I removed my makeup with a tissue as their voices floated through, almost as if I were still in the room.

“Couldn’t be better,” Grant replied.

“This was the perfect place for the wedding.”

I pulled off my leggings and reached for the knob inside the wood-framed glass shower, to warm it up before I removed the rest of my clothes. Then I realized my shower cap was still in my bag, beside the bed. I couldn’t shower without it. Tomorrow was my wedding, and humidity was the devil.

I flattened my palms against the slab of wood serving as a vanity and eyed my toothbrush. I’d brush my teeth.

“Deanna,” he said. “The end is going to be ... hard. For me, sure, but for you ...”

I pulled my hand back from the faucet, waited as a blob of toothpaste fell onto a knot in the wood.

“I thought you were going to be positive.”

I wanted to close my ears, to turn the rain-style shower on, get in and pretend this conversation wasn’t happening, but I couldn’t. In my oversize sweatshirt and panties, I slid down to the flat rug that was edged with little white trees and wrapped my arms around my legs, my toothbrush forgotten.

“How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life,” I heard Grant say. “That’s what Captain Kirk says, anyway.”

“You know I hate Star Wars.”

“Star Trek. But seriously, there’s a difference between positive and realistic. If you’re too in the moment, then you might avoid planning for the future, and you should always plan for the future.”

“We were supposed to grow old and gray together.” Her voice rose. “Me, you, William, and now Pen. That’s how it should be. That’s how I pictured it.” I heard a thud, like she’d slammed her fist against something. “That’s what I want. I want your positivity, your advice, your strength. I want my brother!” she nearly yelled as I completely lost it on the floor. Not crying was too tall of a request. “I don’t want to lose you, Grant.”

“I don’t want to lose you either, Deanna.”

I silently sobbed, my heart inching out of my chest, tears slipping into the bathroom rug.

I don’t want to lose you either, Grant.

How do I tease right now out of all the forever we might not get? How do I stop thinking about what I’m going to lose before I even get it?

How am I going to do this?

Silence pulsed beyond the door as I attempted to slow my tears, until Grant said, “Don’t think for a second I didn’t need you as much as you needed me. Not long after Mom and Dad died, Aunt Jamie tried to convince me to let you come live with them. Told me you’d be better off. Because she said that kids learn not what you teach them, but what they see, which was too much on my shoulders. She was wrong. I needed you, D, to make me who I am because I knew if I didn’t get it right, they’d all be watching, waiting to take you away from me. But most of all, I became who I am because I knew you were watching.”

“We needed each other.” Deanna’s words were muffled but still audible.

“You’re going to be okay, sister.” His words were adamant. I visualized him looking into his sister’s face. “You’re going to be okay,” he said again. Then he told her to say it.

“I’m going to be okay,” she repeated.

“Say it again but mean it this time.”

“I’m going to be okay.”

“Again.”

This time, I silently said it with her.

I’m going to be okay.I didn’t believe it for a second.

“Deanna.” He paused. “You’re going to be okay.”

“I’m going to be okay,” she repeated again.

I lay down on the rug, my fingernails ripping at the blue loops of fabric.

“And when the time comes you feel like you aren’t going to be okay anymore, remember this, when I held your face, and then repeat that phrase for as long as you have to until you are again. And when that’s not enough, when you can’t do it for yourself, do it for me.”

I heard her say she would.

I was jelly.

“This is what Penelope never got to have. There was no one there to keep her going.” He paused, then continued: “Promise me you’ll be her family too.”

“I can’t promise something will be that already is. Pen has found home, and I’m not letting her go anywhere.”

Did Grant know I was listening? The shower had never turned on, and surely they could hear my sobs. Noise traveled both ways.

This was confirmed when he called my name. After I feebly said, “Yes,” he opened the door, and he and Deanna bent down to wrap me in their arms. And the three of us held on to each other.

“I shouldn’t have been listening.” I sucked in breath, my voice too high through tears.

“I told you not to cry on my wedding eve.” Grant brushed my hair back from my face, and they both pulled away slightly.

“Life is about balance,” he continued. “Without the bad things, we have no idea how good the good things are.” He smiled at me, then lifted me to my feet. “Now, help me give Deanna her present.”

She put a hand to her chest. “A present? For me?”

Grant grabbed the silver bag with the single piece of tissue I’d talked him into and held it out for his sister. “Merry Christmas.”

She eyed him as she glanced into the bag, then pulled out a small, framed picture of a black-and-white building, a picture I’d taken of Grant with his final, finished project several days ago.

She ran her finger around the inscription on the frame.

To: The greatest chef I’ve ever known. From: The greatest architect who ever lived.

Her eyebrows knit together, and Grant and I waited for Deanna to read the sign on the building above the door: DEANNA’S B AND B.

“Is this—” She stopped speaking, looked down at the picture again. “Is this real? This is mine?”

“You know anyone else named Deanna who wanted her own B and B because she’s a kick-ass chef, and who has a kick-ass brother who would build it for her?”

She threw the picture on the bed and wrapped Grant in a hug. “I don’t know what to say.” Over her shoulder, he winked at me, then looked pained and mouthed, Help me.

“Say you love it.” His voice was strained, like she was cutting off his oxygen. “Say you love me. Say whatever you want. Just don’t hug me again.”

“I thought you didn’t want me to waste my time with a B and B. What changed your mind?”

He proceeded to tell her how he’d found the place, how I’d inspired it. Then, he looked at me with admiration in his eyes, and it made me forget, for just a second, that I wasn’t wearing pants.

Deanna squealed. “I have this brand-spanking-new B and B because Pen’s a kick-ass businesswoman?”

“My fiancée is a kick-ass businesswoman, isn’t she? And yes, I wouldn’t have done all this if not for her.”

“This is nuts.” She sat on the bed and grabbed her head in disbelief.

He shook his head. “This is right.”

“I’m forever in debt to you both.” She hopped up and headed for the door. “My repayment starts tomorrow evening, by giving you the wedding you both deserve.” She moved out of the room and started down the hall, calling out, “I’m going to kill William if he didn’t bring my cream-colored satchel with the cloak!”