Chapter 30
30
Kieran
The parking garage was packed, and we strolled from the spot we’d snagged on the top floor. The midday sun made it feel like spring, and Sybil unzipped her jacket to reveal her Joe’s Donuts T-shirt. We’d gotten one made for her that actually fit, but I missed the way the first one hugged her body. “There will be a lot of people there in addition to my mom,” she said, pointing to the Science Center of Iowa, where rivers of kids moved through the front door. “Think of it as guerilla marketing.”
“When you said your mom wanted us to stop by her workplace, this is not what I imagined.” I’d assumed we’d be dropping by some kind of corporate office, which hadn’t made me more comfortable, but Sybil had asked, and it was harder and harder to tell her no, so here we were. “And I don’t think that’s what guerilla marketing is. I think it’s just you liking how good you look in that T-shirt.”
She was looking at me with an incredulous expression, the one where her eyes narrowed slightly and that plump lower lip dropped open, without it being clear if what was coming next was going to be a laugh or a cutting remark. Without overthinking it, I touched my fingertip to her lower lip, feeling the give. That was a mistake, because it only reminded me how much I’d wanted to kiss those lips that night on the bridge. How I’d replayed the moment in my head a hundred times. She’d melted when I kissed her neck, and I’d wanted nothing more than to stay there all night. Now, at my touch, she pulled that lip into her mouth, her front teeth sinking down, and then there was her smile, that grin that seemed to always make me second-guess everything. She giggled. “I do look good in this. My boobs are amazing.” She held open the jacket and studied her own chest. “Even though you can’t see my freckles.”
“No comment,” I said, gripping the door handle and looking the other way with an almost superhuman strength. “But I still know they’re there.”
“Such a horndog!” She laughed and swatted at my back.
“It is a weird place for a date, I’ll admit,” she said, motioning to the Science Center across the street as a stream of kids filed through the glass double doors. “Isn’t it for kids?”
I shrugged, pulling my hand back to avoid reaching for her again. “I guess science is for everyone.”
Sybil gave me a light laugh, the sound filling my car. “Mom wants us to see the new exhibit she’s been working on,” she said, reaching for her own door handle. “And we can get freeze-dried ice cream! When we did field trips here as a kid, I always remember getting some.”
I stepped out of the car, too, our eyes meeting over the roof. “Anything for you, baby,” I joked, letting my voice go deep in the way that always made her smile.
“It’s a lot of families.” Sybil leaned in close as we waited at the counter to pay for our admission. “Do you think anyone will recognize us here? It might be kind of nice if they didn’t.”
The scent of her perfume tickled my nose, and I lowered my lips to her ear. “Sybil Sweet is tired of attention?”
She chuckled, swatting at my stomach. “If you tell anyone, I’ll deny it.” She leaned against me, her body molding to mine. “It’s just nice to not have to pretend in real time. Our last few selfies blew up.” She’d taken one of us in the shop with Granddad between us. He’d taken credit for the popularity of the photo, going so far as to create an Instagram account so he could track the engagement and reply to comments. She’d also snapped one after we left the bridge, both of us soaking wet from the torrential rain, and it had been physically painful to stand close to her, her dress soaked and clinging to every curve, and not lose control again.
Really, this was the best possible location if we needed to be seen in public. No one would expect us to keep close contact in a place filled with so many screaming kids, and I’d meant what I said to Sybil on the bridge. I liked her too much to lose control for one night, and every time our hands brushed or I thought about kissing her, I wanted more. More that wasn’t possible. So this place would be safe.
“So, you just want me for my selfie potential now?”
“You’re twisting my words.” She swatted me again, though this time I caught her hand. “I’m also using you for your truck.” Her grin was playful and wide as she jumped out of my grip, laughing at her own joke.
I reached into my back pocket for my wallet as we neared the front. “Are you finally going to cave and buy a new car?”
“Kieran! I haven’t seen you in years.” Before Sybil could answer, we both whipped around to see a woman approaching with three small children in tow, one of them perched on her hip. “I thought that was you!”
It took a moment for my brain to place her, to go back to high school. “Erin,” I said, stepping forward to greet my old friend. “Hi.”
She brushed her hair off her face, blocking the toddler’s grasping fingers a moment before they took hold of her glasses. “I haven’t seen you in years, and now you’re on the news. Wild. How are you?” Without her eyes leaving mine, she reached for the arm of a little girl, pulling her to her side.
“I’m good.” I glanced from child to child and back to her. “You?”
“Busy!” The third kid, whose face looked like a map of chocolate bars, was reaching up for Sybil. “Percy, no!” Erin hurried past me to pick up the sticky child. “Sorry,” she said.
“No problem. I thought he might know where the best chocolate was around here,” Sybil said, giving the little boy a smile and then holding out her hand to shake Erin’s. “I’m Sybil. You’re Kieran’s friend?”
She took a step closer to me, linking her arm around my waist. We were pretending after all, but she was doing a good impression of possessiveness.
“We went to high school together,” I supplied, still marveling that Erin Akers had three kids. Because of our last names, we’d sat next to each other in every honors class for years, and the idea of dating her had been the only thing that came close to my laser focus on getting into college and medical school.
“And we were friends,” she chided. “We volunteered together with Pennsylvania Street Shelter. Gosh, it’s been so long.” The little girl tugged on her hand and said something about the dinosaurs.
“I took Sybil there with me to volunteer the other day. I still try to help when I can.”
Erin smiled—she still had a pleasant smile, but there were none of the butterflies it had evoked when I was seventeen. “I never have time. We’re those people who throw in money and not time now.” She looked wistfully at her kids. “Long way away from my parents, huh?”
I nodded, remembering the long talks we’d shared about our families while getting to know each other, and I warmed under the collar of my polo. That had more to do with Sybil’s inquisitive stare than memories of my high school crush on Erin.
“Anyway, it’s great to see you. If I don’t get these three inside soon, there will be a riot, but we could have coffee sometime and catch up?”
Sybil tensed next to me, and I placed my palm on her back. I wasn’t even certain what I was reassuring her of, but it felt like the right response. “That would be nice. It was good to see you,” I said, motioning for her to step up to the counter ahead of us.
“Nice to meet you, Sybil—you’ve really got a good one here!”
Sybil returned her smile, her arm still wrapped around my waist while Erin flashed a family pass and was dragged toward the dinosaur exhibit by her kids. “High school girlfriend?”
“I had a crush on her, but I was too scared to do anything about it.” I chuckled, setting down my credit card before Sybil could pull out her phone. “I wasn’t the bold flirt you know today.”
Sybil’s laugh bubbled from her, and she slid her hand in my back pocket, the move so familiar and her hand against my butt such a strange combination of playful and sexy. “You’re not a bold flirt.”
“I got you, didn’t I?” I felt the absence of her hand when I tucked my wallet away again, and we walked past the front desk to head into the main atrium.
“You got lucky with me,” she said, immediately sweeping her gaze around the exhibit entrances on the first floor and the swirling artwork on the second level above us.
“I know,” I answered, letting my hand fall to hers. “Let’s start upstairs. We’re not meeting your mom for thirty minutes or so.” Sybil’s mom had shared about the reptiles and how you could sometimes feed a snapping turtle, which seemed like something Sybil would get a kick out of.
“What did she mean about your families?” Sybil and I walked up the stairs to the second level, dodging a stream of screeching kids in matching party hats zooming by us and a couple double-teaming a stroller.
That same familiar heat moved up my neck. “Neither of our parents were around. Hers did a lot of work with relief agencies around the world. That’s what she meant by being different.”
Sybil nodded, and we narrowly missed another line of kids on a mission as we reached the top of the stairs and walked toward the brightly lit exhibit filled with glass cases and information about prairies. “And your mom never came back? She’s still using?”
I shook my head, and we walked along the pathway, pausing to admire the snakes. “She got clean and met a guy eventually.” I tried to swallow the bitterness in the words. “As far as I know, she’s still sober.”
“She never tried to get you guys back, though?” She looked from where she’d been admiring a sleek black snake to me.
The snake in the case nearest us tilted its head, staring out at us before slowly slithering up the glass. “The guy she met had a lot of money and could give her the support and security she wanted,” I said. “But he didn’t want kids, so she made her choice.”
Sybil was quiet for a few beats, and then her fingers linked with mine. “She made the wrong choice, for what it’s worth.”
“I’m sure it’s complicated,” I said, unsure why I was defending my mom and her life in Colorado, or wherever they’d moved since the last time I’d heard from her.
“I’m sure it is, but I don’t care about her. I care about you. Do you ever hear from her?”
I tugged her along toward the turtles in the habitats along the wall. “Once in a while. She sent a card when Lila finished high school and flowers when Granddad was in the hospital.” It had been a ridiculously large arrangement, the white roses and lilies extending out over the edge of the heavy vase. A reminder of how well she was doing, how much money had probably changed things for her. I’d thrown the arrangement in the dumpster behind the shop, a flurry of white rose petals falling to the ground in the alley. “It’s fine. It’s in the past.”
We listened to the guide talk about the turtle’s feeding rituals and how they cared for it. I hadn’t wanted to talk more about my mom leaving. Lila was curious sometimes, but I wasn’t interested in paying attention enough to be disappointed again. My mom had chosen money and security over us, and that was how I’d filed her away in my mind. Sybil grinned at the turtle nearing her fingers resting against the glass, her face lit with the midday sun streaming in from the floor-to-ceiling windows in the exhibit. Sybil had more money than she knew what to do with, and she wasn’t running. Sybil wasn’t a parent or an addict and everything was different, but it felt like with all this wealth, she’d still chosen me, and I kept a hold of her hand as we moved into another room of exhibits.
“Hey.” I felt a tug on my pants and looked down at Erin’s son looking back at me. “You’re my mom’s friend. How does this work?” He pointed at a model of the human circulatory system nearby, and I crouched to get on his level. I saw Erin not far away, showing her youngest something on the wall, and looked back to the little boy. The model showed a network of blood vessels leading to a clear acrylic heart. “Well,” I said, “this is how the blood moves inside our body. Pull that lever at the top”—I motioned to the device—“and you can see the blood flow.” The kid very carefully pulled the lever and watched the liquid move through the vessels with wonder, his eyes widening. “Wow! Where’s the machine to show how we poop?”
I coughed into my hand, my gaze flicking up to Sybil, who was covering her own giggle, though she wasn’t alone. Her mom was standing next to her and watching me. “You know, I don’t think they have anything to show that,” I said, rising to my feet.
“That’s okay,” he said, holding out a palm for a high five. “I’ll just look at my own the next time I go!” He ran away toward his mom, and I chuckled.
“You’re good with kids.” Sybil’s mom wore a dinosaur hat and held a clipboard. “It’s nuts today, but I want to show you two the new exhibit,” she said, holding up a pen that looked like a leg bone.
Sybil inched closer to me, and I wrapped an arm around her waist. She’d said of everyone in her family, her mom would be the hardest to convince, and while touching Sybil felt beyond natural now, I was careful not to pull her too close or take the opportunity to steal a kiss. Instead, I pointed to her mom’s pen. “Is that a model of the Supersaurus ’s hind leg?”
Sybil’s mom beamed. “You did your homework! Yes, it is.” She gave me a rundown on the high points of the exhibit, and it was interesting, thinking about how kids learn scope and context for creatures they’ve never seen. “I have to show a group around, but can you come down in twenty minutes?” She grinned widely, and I saw the resemblance between Sybil and her mom. The suspicious, protective mother seemed to have faded, and she pulled me in for a hug, too. “It’s a treat to get to show off my work to my kids,” she said, hugging Sybil again. It was the first time I’d seen Sybil’s energy and giddiness reflected in someone else in her family. She was convinced she was vastly different from them all, and I wondered if she saw it, too. I heard her mom whisper something in Sybil’s ear before heading for the stairs. “Twenty minutes,” she called from across the room.
“I’d say she’s warmed up to you,” Sybil said. “You even got a hug.”
“That was unexpected. She seems excited. Kind of reminds me of you. What did she whisper to you?”
Sybil shrugged, but I saw the hint of a grin on her lips.
“And I’m begging you not to make a bone joke. Especially not a joke about your mom holding a bone.”
“Give me a little more credit than that.” She nudged my arm with her shoulder. “I won’t make a bone joke until I see the Supersaurus .” She lowered her voice and linked her arm with mine. “You know, when I can test if my fingers will wrap around the bone like my mom’s did.”
I pointed toward the IMAX theater to the left, where a sign announced the next show would be starting in a few minutes. “She actually whispered that she was wrong, and you really seem like a good one,” she said as we walked into the darkened auditorium.
I felt an unexpected pride in having won over her mom. More than that, the feeling of wanting more, of wanting excuses to keep showing her family how good we were together, and how great Sybil was in general. “Your plan is working,” I said, motioning for her to walk ahead of me, but she stopped abruptly and reached back to grab my hand.
Soon we found spots on the second level, spreading out on the floor to watch the show above us. “Any reason you needed my hand so suddenly?”
Sybil settled against me as we stretched out on the floor. “Your high school girlfriend was waving at us from over there,” she said, flashing a smile at Erin. Sybil was right, and I gave Erin a wave. I guess we were back to pretending, though I didn’t mind, because this particular pretending felt a little like Sybil being jealous. Erin didn’t have a phone pointed at us and had already refocused on wrangling her kids.
“Okay.” I squeezed Sybil’s fingers as the announcer welcomed us to the presentation on black holes.
“You know,” she said quietly, “speaking of holes…”
“You’re better than that,” I turned my head to whisper, and my lips grazed the shell of her ear. The lights lowered as the presentation began, the narration playing over the swirling vortex of space above us. “Pay attention to the stars.” I ran my thumb along the edge of hers, and the way her breath hitched left my body with a reaction completely inappropriate for an explanation of astrophysics.
“I like the stars,” she said, resting her head against my shoulder, the curls tickling my chin.
“Me, too,” I murmured, inhaling and trying to memorize every moment we were sharing. In the dark, we weren’t pretending, not even with ourselves, and I could feel my hold on control slipping, because I hadn’t thought about getting back to school all day.
I leaned closer and whispered in her ear, “Do you mind no one recognized us? I mean, besides Erin?” I made circles on her shoulder.
“No,” she said, looking up at me in the darkened theater. “Means we get to try again another time. I’m not sure I’ve ever spent this much time with a man without things getting out of hand.” She slid her thumb back along mine. “I like it.”
I tipped my head back and followed the moving images above us. “Me, too.”