Epilogue - Part Two
We blinked, and now Josephine is going off to college.
Everyone is a mess, and there’s not a dry eye as we celebrate the end of summer at the beach on the last Friday before Josephine, Lainey, Grayson, and Brady leave on Monday.
I don’t know who has it worse—Shayla and James, who are sending not one but two kids off to college?
Miranda and Sherman, who will soon become empty nesters?
Autumn and I, when we can no longer say goodnight to Josephine and tuck her into bed?
Or Ivy, who’s losing all of her best friends in one fell swoop, since she’s younger and going into her senior year of high school while everyone else moves away.
The only consolation is that the four will have each other, since they’re all going to Texas Springs State University.
The school, completed recently after nearly six years of construction, is only a little over two hours away from home by car.
Close, but not so close that their parents will be breathing down their necks, as the kids have joked.
Smart investments and scholarships have taken care of Josephine’s four years of tuition, and her personal spending account is more than healthy after depositing eight-plus years of swear-jar money into it.
It’s the same for the other kids, or rather, young adults now.
They’ll be among the first graduating class at TSSU, ready to take the world—and our mental health—by storm.
I’m not anywhere near ready for it. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready. But I put on as good of a front as I can. Hopefully, I’m doing a better job of it than I am at volleying the ball over the net we’ve set up on the sand. Of course I nail my teammate, Martin, in the back of the head.
“Sorry!” I shout, cringing with embarrassment. Playing disc golf with Isaiah and Sherman for close to a decade has done nothing to improve my hand-eye coordination. They only keep me around so they have someone to beat when we tally our scores.
“Nice one, BigDawg,” Autumn says with a laugh.
“Oh yeah? Let’s see how well you do, shrimp,” I tell her when Martin tosses the volleyball to her.
“I’m going to make you eat your words,” she says as we switch places.
I catch her elbow and bend to whisper in her ear, “If you make it over the net, then I’ll eat you.”
“Deal.” She skips to the corner and sets the ball, jumping higher than someone her height should be able to, and she launches it over the net. “Ha! Told you!”
“Fuck me,” I say harshly under my breath, watching her breasts sway in her tiny, neon yellow bikini that matches her pretty pedicure.
I’m so distracted by my wife that when one of the players on the other team sends the ball flying back over the net, it nails me between my shoulder blades. The ball hits me so hard that I go down like timber, landing with an oomph, and the other team cheers.
“I give up,” Martin says after helping me up. “Someone switch with me.”
Of the four playing opposite, Lainey happily volunteers. “I’ll switch!”
To her frustration, she’s even shorter than Autumn.
Between Isaiah and Grayson, towering over her, she’s seen no action on their team.
Neither has her boyfriend, Miles, who is a tall, gangly boy with sun-streaked gold hair.
Grayson has shoulder-checked him so many times that he’s bruised to hell and back and has probably eaten dirt more times today than he ever did as a kid.
Miles nods to my fourth teammate, Brady, to switch, which Brady happily does. My brother-in-law doesn’t like losing any more than Sherman and Isaiah do.
“That’s not fair,” Grayson says, his brow darkening with a scowl as he clutches the net. “Now I can’t hit the ball as hard.”
Lainey sets her hands on her hips with a sneer. “I’m not a baby.”
“Say that to your face,” Grayson says with a laugh.
Lainey double-checks that her parents aren’t around before she gives Grayson a middle finger. “What are you scared I’m going to beat you?”
“Oh, please,” he says with the roll of his eyes. You’re as bad at this as Uncle Forest.”
“Rude,” I say with a huff, though he’s not the least bit wrong.
“Come on, scaredy cat, give me your best shot,” Lainey goads.
“Not on your life, short stack.” He stalks under the net and tells Autumn, “Switch.” When Autumn lifts a brow, he says, “Please switch with me, Auntie A.”
Miles throws his hands up and lets them fall. “Fucking great,” he mutters. There goes his chance of surviving Grayson’s aggressive domination.
Geez, now I’m even more distracted, having the perfect view of Autumn throwing herself left and right on the other side, her skin slick with sweat and utterly divine. At least I touch the ball a few times, but only when it grazes past my fingertips.
“Easy pickings,” Isaiah says with a grin before setting the ball, intentionally targeting me when he sends it flying at my face at warp speed. Autumn and Isaiah high-five each other when I duck and cover my head.
“Come on, Uncle Forest. I can’t carry this team all by myself,” Grayson says with a groan.
“You wouldn’t have to if you quit jumping in front of me!” Lainey yells when she shoves Grayson, who doesn’t move so much as an inch. “Ugh! You suck!”
Lainey gives up with a huff and grabs her boyfriend’s hand. They run off toward the mass of kids in the water, who have tied their inner tubes together, which are staked in the sand so they don’t float away.
Madelyn jumps up and motions to one of the free inner tubes. “Saved you one, Lainey!”
At eight years old, Madelyn knows how to give me as much hell as her mother and now Josephine do, which I should have expected, and I love her all the more for it.
She might not have gotten Josephine’s talent for art, but she makes it up by being a math whiz.
Watch out, world, that kid is going to take over Wall Street.
It’s game over, since Grayson immediately bounds after Lainey and Miles, kicking up a spray of water. Whether or not it was his intention—I bet good money that it was—he kicks the back of Miles’s knee, sending him sprawling in the water.
Lainey helps Miles up and shouts at Grayson, “Stop following us!” She tries to shove her adopted brother backward. I don’t know why she keeps trying that move since she knows better than anyone else that, at six-foot-two, he’s an immovable statue.
Grayson twists when she shoves him again, then darts forward to tug one of her two long, wet Dutch braids. “I’m not following you.”
“Yes, you are! And quit pulling my hair!” She grabs her braid and tries to yank it out of his hands, all while Miles stands there like a lump on a log. I might not be a fighter by nature, but I’d never tolerate someone doing that to Autumn.
Grayson bends to say something in Lainey’s ear, and still, Miles does nothing. Those two wouldn’t last even if they weren’t going to different universities.
A swell that none of the three notices crashes against Lainey’s side and sweeps her away.
Grayson lunges and immediately yanks her up high out of the water, her feet dangling above the surface.
For a second there, it looks like she’s going to thank him, then suddenly grabs the back of his hair and yanks viciously.
As soon as she’s back on her feet, she shoves him again, finally breaking free, and dives under the water to get away.
Grayson curls his lip at Miles, shoulder checks him once again, then dives in after Lainey.
“Jesus, it’s never-ending with those two,” Autumn says, slipping her sandy fingers between mine. “They should have applied to different schools. They need a break like Bailey and I did. We’d have killed each other without Mom’s supervision.”
“She won’t be able to go anywhere without Grayson watching her every move and bossing her around,” I say.
“Bless her heart,” Autumn says sincerely, then purses her lips. “Might not be a bad thing, though.”
“Yeah, it is. For her, at least.”
I squeeze Autumn’s hand as we trudge through the sand to where we have our vehicles backed up toward the water, having been able to drive and park directly on the beach.
We have a sun sail strapped to the corners of our open trunks to create a shady canopy where much of our family is lounging, eating lunch, and watching the younger kids build sandcastles.
“I’m sure James and Shayla will appreciate it,” Autumn says, which makes sense. Lainey has had her fair share of trouble with boys hounding her throughout high school, just as her aunts did.
Though I appreciate it, too, from a father’s perspective regarding Josephine, who Brady and Grayson are also protective of, I hold my tongue as we load up our paper plates with hot dogs and chips.
No one seems to see what I do when I look at Lainey and Grayson.
In case I’m wrong, which I doubt I am after years of observing the pair interact, I don’t need the whole family turning on me should I share my concerns.
I get two bites of my hot dog before Sebastian trips while kicking the soccer ball to Benjamin, and accidentally sends it flying beneath the canopy.
“Heads up!” Benjamin shouts, but not in time for me to avoid the ball slamming against my forehead.
“Sorry, dad!” Sebastian yells, then takes off running with the ball again after Sherman kicks it toward him.
“Oooh, that’s gotta hurt,” Autumn says when she lifts a bag of ice from the cooler, and presses it to my forehead after bending to kiss my new bruise.
“That’s not the only thing that hurts,” I mumble quietly as her tits swing directly in my face.
“Sorry,” she whispers, flicking her eyes down to my erection when I grab a towel to cover my lap.
“No, you’re not,” I huff.
“You’re right, I’m not,” she says, angling her back to her family so she can shimmy her shoulders, and thus her tits.
“Angel, please,” I groan, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Don’t worry, sir. I’ll make it up to you tonight,” she whispers in my ear before tugging on my lobe with her teeth.