Chapter Twelve
Arms, legs, lips, heat.
My feet pound against the sand, each step sounding out the rhythm like a song looping in my mind. I can’t get the four words out of my head.
Arms, legs, lips, heat.
“… and of course, Gary Petersson gets hard the second we start talking about merging, but I string him along because…”
Not even my father’s voice breaks cleanly through; it’s just a vague drone in the background.
I woke up around two this morning to find Anna wrapped around me. Despite what she’d told me about sleeping in one place all night, at some point she’d migrated across the massive bed to throw a leg over my hip, send an arm over my torso, and press her face to my neck. It took monumental focus to not go hard against her inner thigh, and because of it, I’d slept like absolute shit.
Our running route has circled the beaches of the main island before switching to marked trails that cut through the lush forest. At various points, a spotted lizard darted across the path, a nest of baby birds squawked from a nearby tree, a sea turtle sunned itself on a rock in the foamy sea spray, but I barely lingered on the magic of any of it. With every blink I see the curve of Anna’s hip where the sheet fell away, feel her firm breasts pressed against my ribs, hear her warm, sleeping breaths so close to my ear.
Arms, legs, lips, heat.
Arms, legs, lips, heat.
“… some hot piece on the back nine, and I said, ‘Steve, I’ll let you take a shot at…’?”
We reach the end of the main beach again and I bend, cupping my knees, trying to catch my breath as my father finishes whatever one-sided conversation he was having.
“… Doug Krantz all over my jock, and that’s where I need him, because he’s got that connection to the dairy lobby.”
Should I bring it up with her? One night in and I already feel like Anna and I need to set clearer boundaries.
Or should I let it go? It’s not like she intentionally did anything wrong. Some people are just sleep-cuddlers, I guess.
But if I let it go, it’s unlikely to be a onetime thing. If she found her way to me on our first night together, she’s only going to do that more as we grow more comfortable with each other.
“What do you think?”
My father’s question penetrates my fog, finally, and I straighten, pushing my salt-water-and-sweat damp hair off my forehead. The sun has only just come up and it’s already sweltering. I bet Anna has already kicked off the blankets, letting the air cool her overheated skin.
Her legs—
“Liam.”
I snap over to where he’s watching me expectantly, annoyance etched in every line on his face. There’s some real dark magic at work here, because he’s sixty-one years old and barely breaking a sweat. “About what?” I ask.
“About Krantz.”
I squint to the distance, piecing together the words from the past few minutes. It infuriates me that he thinks he can ask me for my thoughts on business issues after everything, but I know Anna is right and showing up isn’t enough. The only way to placate him this week is to play along. “I think if he can’t even come up on share price, then he doesn’t get a meeting. Eighty is a nonstarter. Call Marty Chu over at Liberty and see if he’s willing to play now that Doug is hungry for it. Marty always lets others do the legwork for him. I bet he bites now.” I hook a thumb over my shoulder. “We good? I’m gonna go shower.”
Without waiting for an answer, I turn and jog back to the bungalow and the woman who, after a single day here, is hijacking my every waking thought.
“JESUS CHRIST,” I BLURT, the second I turn at the corner of our bridge and step onto the deck of our bungalow. Anna is curled up in a papasan, with a sketch pad in her seemingly bare lap. Honestly, from the first glimpse I get, I think she might be naked. “What are you doing?”
I’ve got a hand over my eyes, but I hear the creaking sound of her standing, the soft padding of her bare feet on the deck. “I’m sketching. What the heck do you think I’m doing, you weirdo?”
I can smell sunblock and her shampoo, and carefully lower my hand to find her only a foot away from me. I’m relieved to see she isn’t actually naked, but she might as well be. Her… bathing suit? Is essentially a few palm-sized scraps of tropical-print fabric. “Oh. I thought you were sitting naked in the chair just now.”
“Right?” she says forcefully, gesturing to her, wow, incredibly lithe body. “Vivi bought me four suits, and this is the one with the most coverage. How am I supposed to swim in it? It’s dental floss. Also, the tag was still attached, and I pulled out my phone to do the math: the price per square inch is criminal. I might have to wear it to the wedding to help justify the cost.”
My tongue feels too big for my mouth. Thank God she managed to get it on with those nails, because I never would have survived having to tie those flimsy straps around her back. “I need to shower.”
“I see that, Mr. Shirtless.” I frown, and she laughs, amending, “Sorry. Of course, I meant Professor Shirtless.”
I turn to walk inside, but she stops me with a hand on my arm. The muscles of my stomach jump with the contact. “Just be quick, okay, because we have kayaking in an hour, and I want to grab something to eat first.”
“Kayaking?” I shake my head and walk toward the bathroom. “Pass.”
Anna follows me. She’s loosely made the bed, but it still looks rumpled. Slept in. By both of us. I squeeze my eyes shut against the reminder.
“You can’t pass,” she says. “It’s on the official itinerary.”
“It’s not like they’ll fine us if we don’t show up to everything.”
“Sounds good. I’ll send a message to your mom that we’re too busy having kinky sex to see anyone today. I’m sure she’ll understand.”
My brain shorts out before I can formulate a response.
She glowers at me. “It’s your sister’s wedding, you cyborg. You’re a groomsman.”
I sigh. I know she’s right but I’m already sleep-deprived and functioning on less than full brain power today. I’m not sure I’m capable of dealing with both my family and Anna in this suit after last night. “Fine.”
But she doesn’t move. I raise my eyebrows. “Hello?”
“What?”
Her eyes are focused on my bare chest, and I feel a current of satisfaction at seeing her derailed, too. Perhaps she doesn’t remember what showering in this tropical goldfish bowl means. It means I’ll be standing in a very beautiful but very open tiled corner at the back of the room.
Fuck it.
I reach up, tucking my thumbs into my waistband and dropping my shorts to the bathroom floor.
“Oh!” Anna jerks a hand over her eyes. “Your Goddamn! Right there!” She turns away. “Sorry! I just—spaced out—on your—God. And you’re not even harrrrrrr—Fuck me.” She coughs. “Okay. I’ll just meet you down at the restaurant.”
I see her shadow pass by the window near the bedroom, hear her footsteps grow distant as she jogs down our bridge. I hold my breath, waiting a few seconds longer until I’m sure she’s gone before I turn on the water and step beneath the spray. With the memory of the heat of her leg over my hips, the view of her in that tiny bikini, and the echo of her soft breath in my ear, now I am hard.
And I take my aching length in my hand imagining—just one time, only this one time—that it’s her bringing me relief.
BY THE TIME Imake it to the beach, the wedding party is gathering around Eko, the activity host, who is passing out double-ended paddles. Anna stands with Blaire, Reagan, and Alex, who, I note, is definitely checking out Anna’s ass behind his wife’s back.
Approaching, I step directly into his view and give him a pointed look as he jerks his eyes away. I send my arm around her waist and realize immediately that it’s a mistake. My hand rests on her nearly bare hip.
Arms, legs, lips, heat.
And she leans into me, pressing the side of her bare arm against my chest. With her free hand, she passes me something warm wrapped in paper.
I lift to smell.
“It’s a biscuit with scrambled egg, cheese, and some roasted tomatoes,” she says quietly. “I asked them to make you a little breakfast sandwich. I was worried you’d be starving after the run.”
“Thank you.”
She smiles brightly up at me. “You’re welcome.”
Breaking eye contact seems suddenly impossible, and I look away only when Alex speaks up.
“Heard you went running with Dad this morning.”
“Yep” is all I say, pulling my arm free to tuck into the sandwich.
“Guess you fold as fast as everyone else when you’re with him. Early morning probably left you pretty tired, huh, little bro? Don’t worry, I’ll take it easy on you.”
I can feel Anna’s eyes on the side of my face. This is how it always starts with Alex, and whatever suspicion he has about my marriage will only make it worse. I know it’s irrational and a remnant of how we used to one-up each other for our dad’s approval when we were kids, but I want to beat him. At everything.
It’s an instinct that’s hard to shake.
Anna slams the brakes on this line of thinking by putting an arm around my back, resting the other hand on my stomach and gently scratching, just like she unconsciously did last night. I work to suppress a shiver. Turning, she looks at him over her shoulder.
“He probably is tired,” she tells him with a brazen smile. “My bad.”
Jake catcalls. My mother tells him not to encourage us, but I appreciate this save. I lean a little closer to her, breaking her gaze only when Eko calls our attention so she can go through the plan.
“We’ll be paddling about half a mile out to the reefs just past that small island you can see on the right side of the horizon.” She points to a little speck of green in the distance. “The only tricky part is getting past the waves right here, and you can see that they’re pretty calm now, so it’s a great time to get started. Once we’re out there, we can tie the kayaks together and everyone is welcome to hop in and do some snorkeling.” She looks around at those of us gathered and splits us into pairs: me and Anna; Alex and Blaire; Jake and Reagan; Mom and Dad; Charlie and Kellan; Kellan’s parents; and two of Charlie’s bridesmaids who I think arrived last night.
Eko goes through the basics of paddling, giving us tips about what areas of the reef to avoid as we approach. “Is everyone comfortable with the basics of kayaking?” she asks.
Alex squints out at the water. “Got a couple Nash Sea Hawks back home. Blaire and I take them out on the Back Bay most mornings.”
“Here we go.” Blaire rolls her eyes. “It’s not a race, babe.”
Alex and I exchange a look. We were raised by Ray Weston. Everything is a race.
I reach back, pulling my T-shirt up and off, tossing it to the side. Alex hesitates and then does the same, his expression turning homicidal when I smirk down at his soft little paunch.
Beside me, Anna claps obliviously, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “I’m excited for kayaking!”
Alex snorts, looking at her derisively, like she’s an idiot. In a hot flush, my hackles are up, and every rational thought goes out the window.
“Course you are, sweetheart,” I say, steadying my voice and looking down at Anna. “I went running without you this morning and you really let me have it.”
She looks up at me, confused. “I did?”
I hum, letting my eyes drop to her lips.
“Does that mean what I think it means?” Blaire whispers to Anna.
“I… think so?” Anna says vaguely, still frowning up at me.
“We work out together every morning.” I’m speaking to Alex but holding Anna’s gaze. Maybe it’s the pent-up frustration from last night, or maybe my brother just brings out the worst in me and the best way to drag him is through his wife’s dissatisfaction, but I keep going. “Gets the blood flowing, doesn’t it?”
Blaire exhales a shaky breath. “Jesus Christ.”
Anna’s eyes go wide, and she nods enthusiastically. “Sure does.”
I kiss the top of her head. “This’ll be fun.”
“Regardless, Blaire and I can’t be beat on the water,” Alex says, more aggressively now. “We go out nearly every morning. We exercise together all the time.”
I nod, smiling in the condescending way he hates. “You said. Not sure we’re talking about the same thing, though.”
“I’m talking about kicking your ass,” he says.
My mother steps between us, hostess smile firmly tacked to her face. “I hope everyone has a lovely, relaxing time this morning. This vacation is chock-full of things to do!” Then lower, Mom Tone activated: “Let’s enjoy each other.”
“Eh, let them battle it out,” Dad says. “Alex has got his panties up his ass.”
Eko has clearly dealt with family bullshit before and rolls on as if she hasn’t heard any of this. “Everyone ready?”
Without further permission, I take Anna’s hand, leading her immediately to the best-looking kayak in the group.
“What the hell are you doing?” she mumbles when we’re out of earshot, stumbling after me.
“Nothing,” I tell her. “Alex just gets competitive.”
“Alex does? Really?”
“Just… let me do the paddling.”
“I can help once I figure it out,” she says, laughing. “I’ve been in a kayak once, when I was, like, seven.”
And that much is immediately apparent. She trips as she tries to climb in. I hold the boat steady for her, but she still ends up getting in backward and then having to awkwardly turn around in the tiny space. I pretend to scratch my shoulder with my chin, glancing behind us. Fuck. Alex noticed.
I climb into the back, pushing us off the shore with the oar, and paddling hard, propelling us forward in a blur. Alex and Blaire are still climbing into their boat. I grin, turning to face forward. “Hell yes,” I hiss with satisfaction.
But then Anna digs an oar in, and we veer hard right, our momentum slowing immediately.
“Just leave it to me,” I tell her. “I’ll get us out there.”
“But I want to paddle,” she says, trying again. With the force of my strokes, her inept paddling just sends us into a wide circle.
“Anna, come on.”
“No, West, it isn’t a competition! We’re here to have fun!”
I look behind us again; Alex is working furiously, close to catching up. In the front seat, Blaire half-ass paddles, yelling something over her shoulder at her husband.
“Please, Anna, I know this is dumb, but I’m in it now.”
She sighs, resting her paddle across her legs. “Fine.”
I get us going, sweating and exhausted from the erotic nonsleep and the run earlier, growing too warm under the sun’s insistent heat. My arms burn, my lower back grows tight, and as the distance between us and Alex’s boat grows, I wonder what the fuck I’m doing.
This isn’t who I want to be.
Just then, Anna looks over and lets out a high-pitched shriek. “West! A sea turtle!” She leans to the side, and her oar slides off her lap and into the clear water.
“Shit—Anna—your oar!” I point to where it starts to float away. “Grab it!”
The kayak wobbles precariously as she leans to get it, and already it’s out of her reach. With a tiny yelp, she dives in, but no sooner has she dog-paddled a few feet from the boat than she screams, scrambling for the side of the kayak. “Oh my God, something touched my leg!”
“It’s just the water moving,” I tell her. “Grab the paddle!”
“It wasn’t the water! It was a shark! Or a ray! Oh my God, West, pull me in!”
I reach for her, but she’s panicking and slippery with sunscreen, and in the chaos, my paddle falls in, too, and I dive in to fetch it. I can’t even see hers anymore; it’s already been carried away by the current back toward the shore.
“Please,” she sob-laughs, seemingly aware how crazy she’s being but unable to help it. “Help me in, West, I’m terrified of deep water and had no idea until right now.”
I set my oar on a stable point in the boat, and then help her climb up and flop onto her seat before hoisting myself in.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, twisting around to look at me. The sky is a perfect stretch of clear blue behind her. A flock of black-headed gulls fly overhead. “I won’t fall in again. And look, I can’t even paddle, so it’s all you now! We can still beat them there!”
I look to the side and realize how far we’ve drifted from the group, our kayak bobbing gently in the current. The other boats are small, colorful dots just passing the small island about a half mile out from shore. It really is beautiful out here. I wish I could pull my head out of my ass long enough to enjoy it.
“It’s fine,” I say. “Leave it.”
She gestures helplessly to the water. “Don’t you want to go snorkeling with the group?”
I shake my head, feeling immense relief the second I decide to let this stupid race go. “It’s nice just to be out here. We can snorkel here if we want.”
“I tell you what: I am not getting back in that water. The ocean is monster soup, and I don’t want to die today.” She lies back against the stretch of kayak between us, and I stare down at her nearly naked body, wondering precisely how fucked I am.
With her eyes closed, Anna says, “Tell me more about your relationship with your brother.”
“It’s not therapy hour, Green.”
“Okay, then I want to go snorkeling with the group.”
“He and I have never been close,” I say quickly, suddenly and deeply uninterested in spending the morning anywhere but right here with Anna. “I think from the moment he was born, the only thing he cared about was impressing our father.”
“What’s the age difference?” she asks.
“He’s three years older,” I say. “Then Jake came four years after me, and Charlotte four years after that.”
“Your mom was pregnant and raising kids for over a decade?” Anna whistles, dropping a hand over the side of the boat to skim her fingertips through the water. Her limbs are so long, so graceful. With her eyes closed I can just look, admiring the shape of her collarbones, the small valley of her breasts beneath her swimsuit, and down the smooth skin of her stomach. “Actually, so was Blaire, now that I think about it. No wonder they always have drinks in their hands.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” I say, forcing my gaze away. “They have help.”
Anna laughs. “Help being pregnant and birthing children?”
“No, I mean nannies.”
“Look how quickly you dismiss all that work.” Anna lifts her hand, flicking water back at me. “Your mom birthed four babies and helped your dad manage an empire. Blaire birthed four and is married to Alex. Of course they have nannies.”
We bob in the water while I sit with this. She’s right. So why am I diminishing what she’s done, just like my father does? When I poke at it, resentment builds.
“I have a complicated relationship with my mother,” I admit.
“I get it,” she says easily. “Is it like, your dad is a dick, and your mom enables it?”
I stare at her, wondering how she so concisely summed up the pathos I spent the better part of my twenties working through. “Something like that.”
“But back to Alex…” Anna says, her voice somehow soothing even when she’s pressing at all of my bruises. “Maybe you two are so competitive because it serves your father for you to be at odds with each other.”
This makes me laugh a little. Nail on the head. “You think?”
“You drive Alex crazy because he can’t ever beat you even though he’s the older brother. He’s probably jealous because you’re tall and hot and smart and he’s short and—”
“Annoying. You can say it.”
“You two don’t seem to bring out the best in each other,” she says instead.
I laugh wryly. “No.”
“Why not try being nice to him?”
It takes a second for me to know I’ve heard her right. “Nice to Alex? Why?”
“Uh, because it doesn’t seem like anyone else is? Because you’re his family?”
“Spoken like someone who has no family.”
The second the words are out of my mouth, we both go silent. Fuck. What a terrible thing to say. “Sorry. That wasn’t great. Let’s strike it from the record.”
“All good.”
“Do you…” I reach up, cupping my forehead. “Please tell me you have family. Otherwise, I’m going to dive into the monster soup.”
Anna laughs. “My dad, yeah.”
“No siblings?”
“No.”
“You’re—”
“Don’t say lucky.”
“I wasn’t,” I say. “I was going to say, are you close to your dad?”
“Yes.” She smiles. “Very.”
I pause over this next question. “And your mom?”
“Well,” she says, drawing out the word, “you have daddy issues, I have mommy issues. We’re evenly matched.”
She doesn’t elaborate, so after a few quiet moments, I change course. “I realize I never asked why you switched your major.”
She smiles up at me, squinting against the sun. “You mean telling you I was shitty at all the coursework wasn’t a sufficient explanation?”
I laugh. “Fair enough. But now that I’ve spent some more time with you, I guess I’m surprised you ever chose it to begin with. You lack the typical med student—”
“Intensity?” she finishes for me.
“I guess so,” I say, quickly adding, “That’s not an insult, or at least I don’t mean it as one.”
“Oh, trust me, I know this about myself. Whenever someone asks me what my Enneagram is, I’m like, ‘Whichever is the lazy, affectionate, cheese-loving one.’?” She shields her face from the intense sunlight. “And, I don’t know. In hindsight I went premed for all the wrong reasons, related to the aforementioned mommy issues. She left when I was five, though she’d pop in and out without pattern or warning, which made it hard to ever move on from her leaving in the first place. My mom was an attorney, my dad is a mechanic, and I think when they first met, she was attracted to the hot blue-collar guy, the kid from the other side of the proverbial tracks. But as an aspiring adult, now I see how those kinds of surface attractions wear off. She didn’t hide her feelings about his coworkers or things like how his hands are never fully clean, even after scrubbing. Even as a kid I absorbed the sense that his was a job, not a career, and that there was a value difference there, in her mind.” Her rib cage expands and relaxes with a deep breath. “It sucks, honestly, but when I was starting college, I chose what I thought would be a career. We hadn’t spoken in a few years by that point, but I was still trying to make myself lovable to her.”
“You were just a kid. You weren’t doing it to reject your dad.”
Anna smiles. “I know. Dad knows, too. Once I figured out that I chose premed for the wrong reasons, it was easy to choose to do what I loved, rather than what might make someone love me. The bottom line is that my mom was never really interested in being a mom. But David Green more than made up for it.”
She says this like any other fact: it’s hot today, the sky is so clear, my mother wasn’t ready to be a mother. For a breath I’m so envious of her easy vulnerability. My siblings and I were raised with our shields up, swords drawn. It’s taken me years of therapy to be able to talk about what’s going on inside me, and I’m still not very good at it.
“Remind me where you grew up?” I ask.
Anna pulls her hand from the water and sends it absently down her stomach, leaving a trail of water that quickly pulls into droplets and evaporates in the heat. “Is it weird that we lived together for two years and you don’t remember this?”
“You didn’t even know my first name,” I remind her, laughing.
She grins. “Yes, but no one’s money is ever on me to be the keeper of details, Golden Boy.” She reaches up, throwing her arm over her eyes, and I look at the long line of her body soaking up the sun. “I grew up in Fontana. I can hear that face you’re making, you coastal snob.”
I rearrange my grimace. “I wasn’t making a face.”
“You were. And before you ask, no one calls it Fontucky anymore.”
I’m not so sure, but manage an unconvincing, “Fontana is… nice.”
“See? That’s how you do it! Say things like that to Alex.”
“I’ll try.”
“Practice with me. I’ll be Alex, you be you.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s stupid,” I say, but my smile softens my words. “Tell me more about your dad.”
She takes a deep breath, causing the bikini to press into her breasts, and I might dive into the monster soup just to cool my rapidly heating… Goddamn. My sanity certainly isn’t in this boat with me anymore. “He’s a Taurus,” she says, “loves fishing, and always has a baseball game on in the background. He’s worked on cars since he was a kid. He specializes in Volvos but can fix anything. And not just cars, actually: TVs, plumbing, refrigerators. He rebuilt the frame on your old couch when I hired some high schoolers to help me move and they dropped it. They wanted me to pay them in weed, so I’m not all that surprised they sucked at the job.”
I don’t know what face I’m making, but whatever silent emotion it’s communicating is enough to make her bark out a laugh. “I said they wanted me to; I didn’t say I did it! Who do you think I am, giving weed to America’s youth! Anyway, back to my dad. He’s amazing.”
The current is returning us to the island, but I steer the kayak with a gentle dip of the paddle into water. The closer we get, the more I can see beneath us. The jagged reef, schools of brightly colored fish, some kind of crustacean making its way along the sandy bottom. “What did he think about you coming here?”
“I didn’t tell him the specifics of our arrangement. I told him I was coming here to paint wedding portraits.”
“Good cover story.”
“Even if I told him everything, though, I think he’d understand. It’s good that I’ll be able to—” She cuts off, frowning below her arm. “It’s just a good thing I’m here, that’s all. I really appreciate the opportunity to make some money.”
My paddle stills in the water. “What were you going to say?”
“No, it’s really nothing.” She moves her arm, cupping her hands over her eyes to block the sun. “You may have noticed I have a tendency to overshare.”
“You were digging about my relationship with Alex. Isn’t this therapy hour? What’s said in the kayak stays in the kayak.”
She laughs but doesn’t elaborate further. It bothers me for reasons I can’t entirely dissect—and which certainly don’t feel fair—that she’s suddenly sealing up with me.
“Are we moving?” she asks, pushing up onto an elbow to watch.
“The tide is taking us back, but we can stay out here as long as you want.”
I squint, though, realizing a number of the boats are already returning to shore. Even from out here I can hear shouting.
“What is that?” Anna asks, pointing.
Paddling in earnest now, I tell her, “I don’t know. Something’s going on; let me see what it is.”
The second the kayak pushes up on the beach, I’m out and jogging over to where Jake is sitting on the sand, his leg covered in ice. “What the hell happened?”
Our father paces on the sand, on the phone with someone, voice raised. I get the impression the island doctor isn’t in-house today. Mom bends beside Jake, rubbing his back. It’s only now that I realize her cover-up has the word Gucci printed all over it, and she’s wearing bulky gold jewelry on her neck, wrists, ears, fingers.
“I got stung by something,” Jake says, and Anna’s head whips to me, her eyes wide like See? Death brew!
Eko winces. “We think it was a jelly, but they’re not often in these waters.”
Mom waves Anna closer, her bracelets clinking together along her thin wrist. “Dear, can you take a look at it?”
Anna recoils. “Why?”
I set my hand on her lower back. “Because you’re the closest thing we have to a doctor here, sweetheart.”
She snaps to attention with a muttered “Oh, right,” and, with obvious trepidation, approaches Jake’s rapidly swelling leg.
He gazes up at her, smirking. “What’s the prognosis, doc?”
Gingerly, Anna lifts the ice, gasping at the small wound there. She sets the ice back down, flushed, and nods decisively. “You’ll live.”
“You sure?” he pokes. “What’s the best thing for the swelling?”
“Ice,” I tell him flatly.
My brother grins at me. “I asked the doctor-in-training.”
“Ice,” Anna says robotically.
“That’s it? You’re not going to touch it? Inspect it? Drain it?”
Anna scowls at him, and with the circle of people watching, crouches down, setting two fingers on his leg. She immediately jerks her arm back. “Wow, it’s hot.”
“Is that normal?” Jake asks, feigning worry. “Are you sure I’m not going to lose it? It’s my favorite leg.”
“It’s normal,” Anna says, cheeks turning pink from embarrassment. “It’s the… blood, and oxygen… interacting…”
“With the inflammatory cells,” I break in, frustrated with Jake, and frustrated with myself for putting her in this position in the first place. “If I’ve heard her talking about inflammation once, I’ve heard it a million times. Luckily, Jake, it looks like you’re going to live.”
He frowns up at me. “I wonder if Anna should start an IV, just to be safe.”
“I could pee on it if you want.”
Reagan gags. “Gross.”
“I’m good.” Jake waves me off.
I take Anna’s hand and tug it. “Let’s go get a nap.”
To the side, Blaire sighs. “He means ‘Let me throw you around the bed until the party tonight.’?” I look over right as she stares meaningfully at Alex.
We turn to leave, and my older brother calls after me, “Hey, remind me, Liam. When’s your wedding anniversary? Isn’t five years coming up?”
The group goes still. Anna and I look at each other. Fuck.
She says, “August fifth,” just as I say, “August twelfth.”
Anna laughs. “Well, technically the twelfth, but the fifth was when he wrote me a song and got on his knees to sing it to me, so that’s the night I see as our actual marriage.” She looks up at me, eyes soft. “He cried.”
I frown down at her. “I didn’t cry.”
“You mean you didn’t just cry. Sobbed is more like it.” She lifts my hand and gently kisses my knuckles. “It was beautiful, babe.”
My dad, having just ended his call, walks over to us. “The fuck did she just say?”
Anna smiles up at me. “Sing a little of it for me?”
“No.”
“Oh, please?” Blaire asks. “That’s so romantic. My husband’s idea of romance is three pumps and a high five.”
“I’ll sing it to you in the bungalow, Anna. Let’s go.”