46. Sully
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
sully
“ICAN’T BELIEVE IT’S been a whole year since the last time we were here,” Noah said to me, but his eyes were on Gemma and no one else.
She sat between her sister and Ellie on the opposite side of my mom’s large back deck, which overlooked the calm, shimmering lake.
The fire table in front of them illuminated their faces, expressions glowing a pretty shade of orange, a color reflected in the mess of fallen leaves on the stained floorboards of the deck. “So much has changed since then.”
“It really has,” I agreed. “Last year, you were too much of a chickenshit to even kiss Gemma—”
“Excuse me, I did kiss her,” Noah cut in, and I snorted.
“In a bar bathroom. Talk about romance, Noah.”
“Fuck you.” He rolled his eyes at me, but the corner of his mouth twitched like he was remembering it.
Sinking lower into Mom’s padded patio furniture, Noah kicked his legs up on the little wicker table.
He must be exhausted, but he wanted to come over to spend the evening with everyone after the game.
Mom had put out drinks and snacks, and people had spread out in the backyard, enjoying the brisk fall evening.
I gave a soft chuckle. “I think you made up for it with the whole buying Gemma a house and proposing, though. Once you got your shit together, you didn’t waste any time, huh?”
“You bet I didn’t.” He shrugged. “It’s not like you’re going to wait now that you have Ellie back.”
He knew me so well.
“It’s a daily struggle not to whip out the ring I’ve been carrying around for years.”
I glanced over at Ellie, who looked so fucking cute wrapped up in a blanket. I didn’t notice it before, but Honey was sitting on her lap. And my heart felt like it just might explode.
“Are you guys doing okay?” Noah asked, his voice lower, and I dragged my gaze away from Eleanor. “Been worried.”
“Oh, yeah, you know. Old house and all, but as long as the Wi-Fi doesn’t go out, we’ll surv—”
“Sul.” Noah sighed. “I wasn’t talking about the house.”
“Yeah. I know.” It was just easier sometimes than identifying feelings.
Putting them into words. Admitting that shit was hard.
I looked at Noah, deflating into something more sincere and honest. “We’re okay.
But grief is real. And it’s, I don’t know, confusing a lot of the time—how I feel.
I’ve always wanted kids, but I naively didn’t realize what that really entailed. ”
“Pregnancy is terrifying as fuck, man,” Noah said with a nod, and God, it felt good to hear someone else say that.
“I was constantly worried about Gemma. It was like—” He ran a hand through his hair.
“Irrational half the time, but I couldn’t stop.
Poor Blake, I fucking texted him constantly with medical questions and shit. ”
“That’s true,” our oldest brother cut in, making a timely appearance as he walked out from the house and dropped into the open chair on the other side of Noah. “Not that I cared.”
I glanced at Blake and the very prep boy quarter zip he was wearing. “Did Delaney tell you I called her?”
He nodded, and his dark hair flopped in front of his eyes, longer than normal. He pushed it back. “Yeah, just before we flew out here, she mentioned it.”
Sinking lower into my seat, I threw the hood of my sweatshirt up to combat the chill in the October air. “Sorry to call your wife and not you, but I was spiraling a little, and Ellie said she was the only one who knew.”
“I don’t mind.” Blake shrugged, seeming truly unbothered. “Lane’s a great person to call. But you can call me, Sul. About other things. About anything.” His dark eyes—the color of our dad’s—shot over to me. “You know that, right?”
My nod was flippant. “Yeah, of course.”
Blake gave me a pensive look, words on the tip of his tongue. And then, “Delaney said you mentioned not wanting to bother her or us—”
I interrupted him with a pointed finger. “I believe, actually, what I said was that bothering my siblings is my favorite thing to do.”
“Sul,” Blake said, same tone and everything that Noah just used on me.
Fuck.
Instead of looking at my brother, I focused on the ends of my sweatshirt’s drawstring, fiddling and tying them together. “Yeah?”
“You can call me just like you used to.”
“I know,” I sighed, throwing my head back and abandoning my strings. “Thanks, man.” And then, as I stared at the sky and the stars in it, I blurted, “You know anything about vasectomies, Dr. London?”
Blake chuckled, like he thought I might be joking.
I wasn’t.
“I’m serious.” I lifted my head, giving him a look. “Consider this your first call.”
Blake sobered, leaning forward. “Well…it’s not my area of expertise, but what do you want to know?”
I lifted a shoulder as though this wasn’t a big deal.
As though I hadn’t been thinking about this constantly.
“El’s birth control options are limited.
She can’t have any hormones without risking the reoccurrence of a life-threatening condition, so I proposed getting snipped.
She wants to make sure it can be reversed one day. ”
The way Blake’s lips pinched together was not a good sign.
“Chances are pretty good, yeah. But Sully, the snip is like a fifteen-minute thing. The reversal is a full surgical procedure. I know why you want to do this, but that direction is not usually recommended as a birth control option if you think you might have kids one day. You could always freeze your sperm as a backup, but…” He sighed.
“I have a buddy from med school who is a urologist, if you want me to connect you. I know your circumstances are special.”
“Eleanor is special,” I murmured, glancing her way.
A smile had lit up her face at something Gemma said, and I realized I badly wanted to taste it. I wanted to taste her happiness.
“We know,” Blake said softly, and I looked back at him.
His comments about vasectomies weren’t a surprise. I’d been reading things, but a part of me had hoped that his medical perspective would somehow counteract what I’d learned, tell me it would be fine, that it was a good idea.
“That’d be great if you could connect me,” I said anyway. “I’ve done some research using Theo’s university log-in—don’t tell him—but anything helps.”
Blake shook his head, his grin crooked. “Will do.”
It fell silent for a moment as the three of us sipped our drinks.
Dad was on the lawn below, tending to the crackling flames of a campfire.
A loon call echoed over the lake. Laughter trickled over the deck from the girls.
And I wished I could fully sink into this moment, appreciate it for what it was, but my brain remained stuck in a loop, bouncing between thoughts of Eleanor and kids and risks and the future.
“Would you do it again?” I asked, wondering aloud.
When my brothers were silent, clearly not having followed my train of thought, I turned to Noah.
He raised a brow, understanding dawning. “Have another kid?”
I nodded, and Noah blew out a breath.
“Eventually,” he said after thinking for a long moment. “Gemma wants Delilah to have a sibling, and I do, too. But I’m glad she’s okay with waiting for a bit.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t bring Delilah,” I said, and then a thought struck me. “You didn’t do that because of…El and I, did you?”
Noah started to shake his head, but then it turned into a sort of indecisive bob.
“It was a consideration, but no, not entirely. Gemma hates planes, and I didn’t like the idea of her having to navigate flying with a baby when I couldn’t be there to help because I had to be with the team. I know she had her sister, but still.”
“That makes sense,” I acknowledged. “And I supposed the Briggs didn’t mind helping.”
“No, not at all,” Noah answered. “They were thrilled to spend the weekend with her. I know Mom and Dad were sad we weren’t bringing her, but there will be other times.”
I nodded. “Ellie and I will have to plan a visit.”
“What’s next for you guys?” Blake asked. “Are you pretty much moving into Maple Street with her?”
“I don’t really know, to be honest,” I confessed, my eyes skirting over Eleanor.
Always back to Eleanor. “There’s a lot we still need to figure out.
I haven’t wanted to push too much onto her at once, and there’s no rush to make decisions.
We can both work remotely, so we could stay here, or we could… go anywhere, I guess.”
“You could get a new job, too,” Noah muttered.
“Why would I get a new job?”
“I don’t know, maybe because you hate it?”
“I don’t hate it.”
“Doesn’t seem like you like it.”
“It’s…” I waved a hand around, looking for the right word. “Fine.”
Blake snorted. “You could literally do anything, Sul.”
“Literally,” Noah agreed, and I frowned, caught off guard by this weird intervention my brothers were tag-teaming. “You’re like the smartest fucking person I know. Why are you staying in a job you only tolerate?”
“First of all, it’s a good, nicely paying job,” I said, feeling a bit defensive.
“Second of all, I am not the smartest person you know. Are you forgetting who the rest of your siblings are?” I jabbed a thumb at the cardiologist next to him.
“Or that my girlfriend, your friend, went to fucking MIT? Or that I almost failed many classes in my academic career?”
“You didn’t almost fail them; they almost failed you,” Noah said. “They just didn’t accommodate the way your brain worked.”
“Also, you definitely could have gone to MIT, too, but you were scared of Ellie,” Blake muttered.
“Oh, shut up,” I grunted, but Blake was unapologetic because we all knew it was the truth. “Sometimes I wish I’d followed her.”
I’d never acknowledged that thought before, certainly not aloud, but I’d thought it many times.
I’d hidden that desire so deep in my brain because Blake was right: I’d been terrified.
What if she’d left because she really hadn’t wanted me?
What if I wasn’t good enough for her and the dreams she wanted to chase?
What if she’d wanted more, and I couldn’t give it to her?
I should have chased her, but I’d been so hurt and broken by her leaving that my brain reinforced the idea that I’d deserved it. That there was a reason she’d left me behind. And there was nothing that could be done about that reason.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement. Ellie stood, wandering away from the girls, across the deck and down to the lawn.
And I decided to do what I should have done all along—follow her.
I wasn’t the only one, though.
Ellie walked to the edge of the lake before making her way to the end of the wooden dock, which jutted over the smooth water, and not long after I reached her, I felt the bounce of the boards beneath my feet, meaning we weren’t alone.
How annoying.
Probably my brothers, wanting to continue to ride my ass about shit.
Reminding myself that I’d get Eleanor to myself again soon, I turned to see who it was.
And it was…everyone.
Of course it was everyone.
Chloe, who had somehow weaseled out of her bedtime, ran down the dock first, followed by Natalie and Cameron. Behind them, I saw the rest of my siblings and their partners trailing after. Blake and Delaney carried a pile of blankets, and Theo looked like he had snacks in his hand.
“Okay, Champ,” Cameron said to Chloe when she was busy twirling in place at the end of the dock. “Pick the best stargazing spot before someone else takes it.”
That got Chloe’s attention, and she flopped herself—a little too hard, actually—onto the deck, dangling her feet over the edge and looking up at the sky.
“Dad!” Natalie called, and I glanced to see him leaving his post by the campfire in the yard. “Chloe wants to hear your stories.”
“Ah,” he chuckled, his voice carrying across the still lake. “I bet Theo knows all of them by now.”
“Doesn’t mean I want to recite them,” Theo laughed, and my dad shook his head, wandering through the limbs and bodies, which were now sprawled out on the dock just like Chloe. His walk was slow and careful, but he made it to the end, just behind me and Ellie, sitting on the bench there.
Unprompted, Blake threw me a blanket, and somehow, I caught it before it flew over my shoulder and into the lake. I watched as he lay down on the wooden slats next to Delaney, and then I followed suit, dropping onto the dock beside Ellie, who had already flopped back to stare up at the sky.
“Hi, Eleanor,” I whispered, and her grin was blinding when she turned it on me.
“Hi, Sawyer,” she whispered back.
“How’s the view, Ellie Bellie?” Dad asked.
“Perfect,” she said, eyes flicking up to the cosmos. “Might even be better than out in the fields.”
“I don’t know about that.” My dad’s head was tipped skyward, judging the view of the stars. “I’m not sure anything beats the back of that pickup.”
“This is at least a close second,” I said, tipping my head back to look up at the clear autumn night. It was perfect for stargazing, actually. Minus the chill in the air and the stiff wooden boards beneath my back. But the viewing was crystal clear, and the stars twinkled down at us.
They remained unchanged from when we were young, an ever-present reminder that the universe was vast, and we were just a blip, a speck in a timeline of constants.
Ellie was my constant. I would love her for light-years, for the amount of time that it took for the most distant stars to reach Earth. My love would be loud and bright and warm. And even after I was gone, even after she was gone, people would still see it.
For a million years more.