5. Now
NOW
I take a long shower, rinsing off the day of travel.
Luke’s in the backyard, starting the lawnmower.
His face, in profile, is a work of art—the fading sun marking the curve of his cheekbones, his sharp jaw, his straight nose.
I step closer to the window, drawn to him.
He tugs out a weed and when his bicep pulses there’s a throb between my legs to match it.
He glances up, as if he knows I’m watching, and I hustle off to the kitchen in shorts and bare feet, damp hair streaming down my back.
Donna’s assembling ingredients on the counter but stops and smiles when she sees me. “There’s my girl. You look just like you did when you first came to us.”
I can’t imagine that’s true. I’m decades older on the inside. I arrived here at fifteen feeling dirty and used up, naively hoping I could be made clean again. I know better now.
“Sit,” I tell her. I made chili often enough growing up here that I recognize the ingredients. “I've got this.”
“You can help, but I’m not dead yet. I can still make a meal for two of my favorite people.”
My smile falters. We still haven’t discussed everything—whether she’s gotten a second opinion, or what her plans are for this place once she’s gone. I can’t bring myself to ask any of it.
“I don’t imagine you cook for yourself much these days,” she says as I start chopping the onion. “You still haven’t bought a place, have you?”
I shake my head. “I’ve been traveling so much it didn't really seem worth it. I’ll get something eventually.”
She runs a hand over my head, smoothing back my hair. “Juliet, you’re running yourself too hard. Maybe it’s time to take a little break?”
Dating Cash led to a surge in popularity—or perhaps just infamy—and I’ve got to ride the wave for as long as it lasts…
if I’m even capable of continuing. I’m too young to say I’ve already burned out, but I feel like a dried-up husk most of the time now, and I don’t know how much longer I can pretend I’m not.
“I’m fine. But you’re not really going to make me work around here, are you?” I give her my sweetest, most pleading smile and she laughs.
“I really am. I have a list a mile long of things that need to be done to the addition before the first children arrive.” This makes little sense since she has plenty of money to hire help if she needs it, but she barrels on before I can ask.
“I just want it to feel permanent. It never was for you, was it? All that time you lived here and you never put a single thing on the walls.”
My palm rests atop the onion and my knife stills. It wasn’t her fault—it would’ve given the pastor one more thing to dislike me for.
“I was just happy to have a room,” I tell her, but I’m not sure she believes me. I’m not sure if I believe it either. There was a time when I wanted to put things on the wall, a time when I still cared.
Dinner’s nearly ready when Luke walks in, freshly showered, his t-shirt just damp enough to mold perfectly to that chest of his, well-honed from days spent surfing.
He was the loveliest thing I’d ever laid eyes on ten years ago, making my heart beat a million miles an hour if I allowed myself to look too long. He’s even lovelier now. And my heart—the one I assumed was no longer capable of much—is beating just the way it did.
It can’t.
He smirks. “I figured opening a room service menu was the height of your culinary ability these days.”
“Your food isn’t going to spit on itself. I thought I’d help it along.”
Donna sighs. “I didn’t think it was possible, but the two of you are fighting even more now than you did when you were younger.”
My gaze catches Luke’s, and for just a second it’s all there again—that age-old tension between us and the reason it existed.
God, I hated the way my world seemed to flip upside down anytime he walked in the room.
I fought with him simply to hide it. But that was years ago, and I was someone else.
So why am I still picking fights? Why is he?
My hand curls tight around the counter’s edge, willing the questions away.
We take our seats and mumble grace along with Donna, her voice the only one at the table that is confident and certain.
I tried so hard to become an Allen, but it was in moments like this I felt the impossibility of it, because they were always so grateful in their prayers, while I was simply pissed off about the things I didn’t have.
Even now, blessed with the life a thousand girls in LA would kill for—money, fame, a hot boyfriend—I’m still not grateful. I’m still a little pissed.
“Look at the two of you, all grown up and doing so well,” Donna says, passing me the salad and smiling more proudly than any mother possibly could. “Juliet, did you hear Luke took second in Hawaii this winter?” She turns to him. “What was that one called again?”
Pipeline Masters .
Luke hesitates. He has no desire to brag about his accomplishments to anyone. Me, least of all. “Pipeline.”
“What a month that was. You in this big surf competition and Juliet in a magazine.” She turns to me. “I can’t tell you how silly I felt buying that magazine at the grocery store. I wish they’d let you wear more clothes for those things.”
Yeah, you and me both . I bet no one ever asked Slash to pose naked with his legs wrapped around a guitar.
Luke’s lip curls. “The lack of clothes is the only reason anyone but you bought it.”
Asshole .
But then Luke digs into his chili, eating the same way he always did—hunched over and ravenous—and it opens this unfortunate wound inside me. Why won’t it just close, that wound? What do I have to do to make it go away so that no one guesses it was ever there?
“You’re eating like a savage,” I tell him.
He raises a brow. “And you’re not eating, like someone with a disorder.”
I glance at my untouched food. I got out of the habit of meals while on tour. I don’t like to go on stage full, and I guess all the cocaine didn’t help either.
Donna, sensing tension, leans forward, reaching out to pick up a strand of my hair as I begin to eat. “I’m glad you stopped bleaching it,” she says, “but you’re so thin, hon. You’re not with that boy anymore, are you?”
Luke stiffens and so do I. I wasn’t that well known until I started dating Cash Sturgess, but man…the whole world knows about me now. Nothing like a little leaked footage of your boyfriend beating the shit out of you to garner publicity.
“It’s complicated,” I reply, because I can’t bring myself to say, “Yes, probably . ” Cash is currently away at what they’re calling rehab, though it’s actually just some ayahuasca retreat in Peru, and my guess is that a month from now, he’ll be “better” and I’ll be back.
Sometimes it’s simply a relief to be with a guy who treats you like the piece of shit you already know you are.
It’s a relief not to have to pretend otherwise.
Luke’s jaw clenches. “There shouldn’t be anything complicated about it.”
My eyes fall closed. This tiny hint that he cares, even if he’s angry about it…
God, it hurts. I ignore him while tucking this moment away, wrapping it carefully and placing it with all my favorite memories—every one of them of him.
I’ll unwrap it again when it’s safe, when there aren’t any witnesses.
When dinner concludes, Luke stands, gathering the plates and proceeding to the sink without a word.
“I think I’ll go rest on the couch a bit,” Donna says, “since it looks like you have this.”
I watch her go, my stomach dropping. I wanted to believe she wasn't actually as sick as she said—perhaps exaggerating the situation to make sure I didn’t no-show, which I might have—but the Donna I knew was tireless, always rushing off with a casserole for someone in need, or a bag of clothes to donate to Goodwill.
This Donna needs to rest after a meal and walks slowly as she goes. She really is going to die.
Reluctantly, I follow Luke into the kitchen. He’s standing at the sink, scrubbing a pan. Only Luke could make doing the dishes sexy. Only Luke could take an action as mundane as scrubbing a pan and make you realize how much more graceful you could be doing it than you ever realized.
“How much do you know about her cancer?” I ask, grabbing a dish towel and taking the pan to dry it.
He frowns. Being civil to me requires an effort he finds nearly impossible. “Not all that much. I looked it up online—she’s probably got a year at most and that’s with chemo, which she’s refusing.”
No. No . There’s got to be a way to throw money at this, to extend her life until a better treatment is available. “I’m sure they’re doing studies. I’ll have someone check into it. Stanford might—”
He grips the counter. “That's not what she wants. She doesn’t want what we can buy for her. She doesn’t want you to fucking fix this. She just wants you here.”
“Sometimes people don’t want what’s good for them,” I snap.
He turns to stare at me, his eyes narrowing. “You really think you need to tell me that?” Luke understands all too well about wanting what’s not good for him.
I guess we both do.
We complete the rest of the dishes in silence before joining Donna in the family room. I take the seat on one side of her and Luke takes the other, sitting the way he does—his knees spread wide, arm resting along the back of the couch. He looks athletic, somehow, even at rest.
We watch one of those investigation shows where the lead character is always staring off meaningfully into the distance and saying something like, “Looks like this case just got a lot more complicated.”
Donna whispers to us, telling us about each character as if they’re real, as if they’re friends.
Seven years ago, she had an entirely different future planned out.
One that involved growing old beside her husband, watching her son marry me, giving her lots of grandkids to run around at her feet.
Now she sits here alone every night, and she’s going to die.
She pats my knee at ten, and then Luke’s. “I’m off to bed, and I’m sure you two have better things to do than sit here with an old woman.”
She turns to head up the stairs, and I feel a fluttering panic in my chest at the idea of being down here alone with Luke. I jump to my feet, leaving him to stay behind and lock up.
In the safety of my darkened room, I listen for him as I sink into the mattress, slowly breathing in and out, memorizing the sounds he makes as he gets ready for bed: water running, the toilet flushing, the slap of his bare feet on the new hardwood floor.
His tread stops just outside my door, and my breath holds as if I’m praying for something. He walks away and I exhale.
I don’t know if I’m deeply relieved or deeply disappointed because, somehow, it feels like both.