Chapter 11
Now
Bea
THE LIST:
Adopt a pet. I narrow it down to: Adopt a dog.
Eat one of those insane sour candies you have to special order.
Bake bread. Try a few different kinds. Artisan, focaccia, and sourdough. And, my added touch: Eat carbs with every meal.
Go deep-sea fishing. Find out if halibut are real. As someone who has lived next to the ocean her whole life but has never been on it (or in it), this is aspirational enough for me as it is.
Put Merritt’s name on something permanent.
“If you have a girl, maybe you could name her after her?” Silas offers in response to number five.
“No,” I say, woven inside a chuckle. For some reason, the ease with which he brings up my hypothetical baby makes me feel like I swallowed a bubble gun. “Merritt would hate that.”
“Really?” He sounds surprised.
“Yes.” I’m certain of it. “She hated anything that felt obvious.”
There is also everything Mom said about me living my life for her still, and this baby .
. . this baby would be mine, regardless of DNA.
Judging by the way the letter sounded to me, at least, I think Merritt wanted her name on something that was hers.
I’m not sure how I’ll figure that one out, but I’ll get there.
When it comes to the final item on the list, it takes me a little bit to come up with the right phrasing for my ultimate goal, because I believe in setting goals that are realistically achievable.
Get pregnant has too many variables beyond my control, and I have to accept that maybe I won’t.
On the other hand, Do my best to get pregnant feels too vague.
Do everything I can to take care of myself in every way so that I feel ready and excited to try is a mouthful, but it’s what I land on for number six.
Silas asks if he can get back to me on his item, but admits he has something in mind. For being as open as he typically is, I figure if he wants to keep it close to the chest for now, I should let him.
We’re quiet on our walk home, the night air running over my skin like cool silk.
When we ramble back through his gate and into his yard, I fall into one of his Adirondack chairs and let the rest of my senses take it all in, too.
The rhythmic whistle-chirp of insects and the smells of sunbaked trees and brine.
The lights he’s got strung up around the ancient madrone’s branches.
“Déjà vu,” Silas murmurs.
My head whips his way. I wonder if his mind was drifting off to the same night mine was, or if he’s talking about when he brought me home from Wren and Ellis’s wedding. The latter, I think. Must be.
“Do you want to check off one thing from the list tonight?” he asks.
I frown at the 9:47 time on my phone and then at him.
“I’ll be right back,” he says, then runs inside.
He comes back with a small jar, seats himself in the chair opposite me, and places it on the end table between us.
Death by Sour, the label says in bold, medieval-looking script. Inside appear to be black candy balls coated heavily in white powder. “You ordered some of these already?” I ask.
“I did. And I really did have to sign a little waiver. I am honestly terrified.”
I am . . . I can’t cry over this, can I? I feel like I ingested a hot lump of coal. I don’t know why it’s moved me so much that he’s taken this initiative.
“Did I overstep?” he asks tentatively.
I shake my head and crush my lips together. “No. No, you didn’t. You’re just . . . You’re a really good friend, aren’t you?” I say to him.
His eyes widen, and his smile falls away. “I—no. I mean, I don’t know,” he says, mouth turned down at the corners. “I doubt that’s something I’m known for.”
“You are.”
His head does a small shake. “They were like ten bucks after shipping, Red. It’s not a kidney.”
And I have a feeling he’d give me one of those if I asked him to, too. I don’t know what to do with this information yet, this new angle of him that’s crystallizing for me. But I’m more determined than ever to try to be a good friend to him.
I twist off the lid and peel away the seal, pluck a candy out and pass it to him, then pick one out for myself.
“Why sour?” Silas asks. I’m glad he’s stalling, because I’m suddenly nervous about the stupid thing.
“I don’t really know.” I shrug. “My best guess is that when she was writing that letter, she was hungry, and sour candy was all that sounded good. Before she got sick, she’d been a bit of a foodie.
She really wanted to do something in food science.
Maybe a dietician. That’s what she was going to school for originally.
” I need a fortifying breath. I look out into the dark night at the smattering of stars that can be seen through the marine layer.
“But cancer treatments made foods taste different and ruined a lot of her favorite things. And when she was doing chemo, hard candy helped with the nausea. The sourer, the better.” Even now, I know I’ve got some Lemonheads and watermelon Warheads rolling around in the bottom of my purse.
“To Merritt, then?” says Silas, holding his ominous candy up in salute.
I laugh through my nose even as it tingles. “To Merritt.” I knock mine to his and put it on my tongue.
I don’t think it’s too ba—
—I can’t even complete the thought.
It hits us both at the same time. Silas does an eughhuughhhh as I lurch back into my seat with a yell, every muscle in my face trying to peel back from my bones. My hands shoot up and claw at the air, and I shove myself to my feet.
Silas is up right behind me, big shoulders hunched, face screwed up like crumpled paper in the patio lights. He’s got the candy in his palm and a river of drool pouring out of his mouth.
“WHAT THE FUCK!” he cries.
I explode into a maniacal laugh, the candy rolling off my tongue onto the concrete at my feet. If I look half as unhinged as Silas, I could be used to frighten children at Halloween. I try to wipe at the drool falling out of my mouth and more takes its place.
I can’t catch my breath. I barely eke out “Water” before rushing into the house, Silas hot on my heels. We take turns at the sink with our mouths open beneath the faucet.
“That,” I say, “could not have been meant for human consumption.”
“I feel like I just washed my mouth out with diesel,” he complains.
Our laughter eventually dies down, but my pulse jumps again. Alone together, in a quiet house at night. . . . It’s jarringly intimate.
I start looking around for something to busy myself with, thinking I may as well start to desensitize. Exposure therapy, trial by fire. But then my eyes land back on Silas, and I find him looking down at me with that patient sort of smile again. Hair mussed, cheeks still flushed from laughing.
“I don’t know about you,” he says, leaning a hip against his counter, “but I’ve got energy to burn, all of a sudden.”
The gears in my brain screech to a halt. “Pardon?”
“We should just get it over with, don’t you think?
” He palms the back of his skull with both hands, leans back a little, stretching .
. . studying me through his lashes. The overhead lights in this kitchen are doing things to all his angles and making him unfairly beautiful.
I catch a sliver of his torso and completely forget what we were talking about.
“I just think if we took care of it, we’d feel so much better. ”
“I’m confused.” I’m addled is what I am. We just made a deal tonight, and here he is talking about having energy to burn and how good we’ll feel and something about inevitability. I’m hot in the backs of my knees and heavy-limbed.
“Just put me to work,” he says.
“Excuse me?”
His lower lip juts out, and his big hands drop down to his sides. “Let’s finish unpacking? Get your furniture set up? I’m off tomorrow, and I want to help,” he adds. “I could go all night.”
Of course he could.
We put together the minimal furniture I brought with me; a dresser, two nightstands, and a full-length mirror. I unpack most of the essential, smaller things that were tucked away in boxes.
At one point, after we’ve gone quiet for a few minutes and he catches me looking at a photo of Merritt, he asks, “Was it hard? Packing up her things?” He looks away and starts tightening the screw on something I know is already tight.
“When my mom died, Ellis had to be the one to handle all of her clothes and stuff. My dad couldn’t. ”
“Not . . . not really. That part wasn’t too bad for me.
At least, not the worst part,” I answer honestly.
“Merritt’s mom came and got all her furniture from her room pretty soon after.
Her sister has a couple of boys and wanted it for them, and I was just glad someone could use it.
You know they all moved back to Portland a few years ago? ”
“Yeah, I’d heard that,” he says. “Is she . . . er . . .”
A laugh tumbles free when he tapers off. “It’s a little disconcerting when you try to ration your nosiness, Silas. You can ask.”
His hand whisks over his jaw. “Is Merritt’s mom excited? I mean as excited as she can be expected to be.”
“Yeah, actually, she is.” A smile pulls at my mouth when I think of my last text from Bonnie.
A picture of Merritt and me around age thirteen.
Braces and oversized headbands and our hands perched on popped-out hips, looking ready to take on the world—or a surprise Jonas Brothers concert my mom and Bonnie sprang us out of school for.
A twinge of guilt, thinking of Mom. We haven’t spoken at all in the two weeks since she gave me the boot.
“There were a few months right after, where I wasn’t doing great,” I confess.
“I wasn’t even doing okay. . . . Honestly, Silas, I wasn’t even doing.
My mom was over a lot and saw the worst of it, and I think—I think that’s why she’s having a hard time with this. ”
He picks at a callus on his palm, a single line bisecting his brow.
“Everyone does grief differently,” he says thoughtfully.
“I was nine by the time my mom died. We’d known it was coming for more than a year, and we were supposed to be prepared, but I still just .
. . couldn’t. People say kids are resilient and I guess that’s true, but I remember thinking my bones were breaking from everything in me every day.
Even compared to—this.” He gestures flippantly at his scarred hand.
“And even after all this time, I’d still say that was more painful. ”
For the blip of a second, he’s limned in so much profound sadness. It ripples through him like a current—I think I feel it in the floorboards connecting us. But as soon as it’s there, it’s gone, replaced by one of his mellower grins.
“I wish I’d known you better back then,” I say.
“It’s good you didn’t,” he’s quick to say.
“I was an obnoxious, troublemaking little shit. I was me, but I was barely contained in a smaller package. Mom called me her ‘irascible rascal.’ She always had funny names for shit.” His forearms come over to rest on his bent, spread knees and he chews his bottom lip, one dimple winking at me.
And I know it’s late by the way my melancholy nose-dives into something hungrier.
The way I want to say something to reveal that other dimple, too.
I grab my phone from my back pocket and check the time. “It’s almost twelve. I think we better call it.”
He punctuates my sentiment with a yawn. “Good idea. I hear redheads turn into pumpkins after midnight. Or is that ogres?”
He shrugs off my first thank-you when I walk him to my door, but when he starts down the dark hallway toward the stairs, I decide to push the point. I need him to know I’m grateful.
“Silas.” He turns around with his brow lifted. “Seriously. Thank you again. For everything tonight. The meal, the beer, the candy.” A punch-drunk laugh rolls out of me. “Your face made my whole week.”
His eyes widen like I’ve scandalized him. “Oh my god, Red. Easy on the dirty talk. Don’t tell me what I do to your hole.”
“Get off my floor, Silas.”
He’s still laughing when he climbs down the remaining stairs, and I fall asleep with a dumb grin still plastered on my lips.