Chapter 15 #2
We cycle through the options: blush peonies, wildflowers in sunset colors, classic red roses that Jo immediately vetoes because “Dean would have a heart attack if I walked down the aisle looking like a Valentine.”
Jo and Dean. Getting married. After all these years of circling each other, they figured it out.
Will Levi and I figure it out?
My phone vibrates in my pocket.
I try to ignore it. Fail.
“Go ahead,” Jo says, catching me. “I can tell you’re dying.”
It’s Levi: Just got out of the meeting. It went okay. Miss you. Call tonight?
Okay. The meeting went “okay.” What does okay mean? Good okay? Terrible okay? “You have to move back to LA permanently” okay?
Yes. Call me anytime. Miss you too.
I put the phone away. Emma watches me with a knowing expression—one that says she’s been through some things.
“Long-distance?” she asks.
“Not exactly. He’s just…away for a few days.”
“And you’re climbing the walls?”
“I’m not—” I stop. “Yes. Completely.”
Emma laughs, warm and understanding. “I remember that feeling. When you’re so in love that their absence feels like a missing limb.”
“Were you...?” I glance at the kids inside. “With their dad?”
“Once upon a time.” She adjusts her camera settings, her voice light but with something underneath. “Then I wasn’t. But that’s a story for another day and a lot more wine.”
Jo appears at my elbow. “Speaking of wine—Emma, you should come to book club.”
“Book club?”
“A bunch of us meet every few weeks. Romance novels, wine, life talk. Therapy without the copay.”
Emma’s face lights up. “I haven’t had a book club since I moved. I would love that.”
“Perfect. I’ll text you the details.” Jo glances at the lowering sun. “Now let’s get these photos done before we lose this magic.”
An hour later, Jo has approximately three hundred photos of herself looking radiant against nautical backdrops, and I have a definitive answer on the bouquet: blush peonies with trailing greenery, soft and romantic without being fussy.
We’re packing up when Paul appears on the dock below with his son Dawson, carrying a box of popsicles as a peace offering. There’s an exchange about grape popsicles and “relations between vessels resuming,” and I watch Emma and Paul bicker through what is clearly foreplay disguised as hostility.
Jo grabs my arm and steers me toward the parking lot.
“Married,” she whispers. “Before we know it. Mark my words.”
I think about Levi, about how we danced around each other for so long, afraid to admit what we felt, and how much time we wasted.
“I hope they figure it out faster than we did,” I say.
Jo squeezes my arm. “You and Levi are figuring it out now. That’s what matters.”
Are we, though? Or am I just waiting for the other shoe to drop?
Jo drops me at Mom’s house just as the sun is setting, the sky streaked pink and orange like spilled watercolors.
“You did good today,” she says through the window. “Getting out of the house. Not checking your phone more than seventeen times.”
“It was at least twenty.”
“Progress is progress.” She squeezes my hand. “He’ll come back. That man has been in love with you since before most of us understood what the word meant.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because you’ve got that expression.”
“What expression?”
“The one that says you’re already planning your escape route.” Her voice is gentle but firm. “I’ve known you for months now. I’ve heard the stories. You run. But maybe this time…don’t?”
I don’t know what to say, so I just nod.
She drives away. I stand in the driveway, watching her taillights disappear.
My phone lights up.
Levi: Can I call now?
I answer before the second ring.
“Hey.” He sounds tired but warm. “I missed hearing you.”
“You talked to me this morning.”
“That was ages ago.”
I sink onto the porch steps, letting the evening air wash over me. “How was the meeting? Really?”
“It went…complicated.” A pause. “They want me back, Delilah. Really back. New album, a tour, the whole thing.”
My stomach drops. “What did you tell them?”
“I told them I needed time to think.” A longer silence. “And that I have something in Twin Waves I’m not willing to give up.”
“And what did they say?”
“They said I have a few weeks to decide.”
A few weeks—that’s not much time.
“Levi—”
“Don’t.” His voice is soft but certain. “Don’t tell me to go, or that my career is more important. I already know what everyone thinks I should do. I want to know what you think.”
I close my eyes. The sunset fades, pink turning to purple turning to deep blue, and somewhere down the street someone grills dinner while a dog barks and the world keeps spinning.
“I think,” I say slowly, “that I want you to come home.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. But I also...” I take a breath. “I think we need to figure out what home actually means. For both of us.”
He’s quiet for a long moment.
“I’ll be back tomorrow. We’ll figure it out together.”
“Together.”
“Together.”
I stay on the porch long after we hang up, watching stars emerge one by one.
Together—a nice word, a scary word.
But maybe, for once, the right one.